Wednesday 4 April 2012

White Dwarf 388. April 2012.

Rather than the usual pre-amble I'm just going to launch straight into the review this time if that's all right with y'all!

New Releases - It kicks off with 6 pages showing all of the 145 new paints. Now this is a good use of these pages compared to normal. It clearly shows you each of the colours, which category they fall into and is a very handy reference. I'm a huge fan of the new range, and while I am going to struggle getting my head around the renaming I think it was totally the right thing to do. It's a fresh start for an impressive release and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on some. The ones that I'm currently interested in are the Jokaero Orange and Ceramite White bases, the Moot Green and Fire Dragon Bright from the layers to see if my Tau colour scheme will still pop as much.I might pick up a texture, dry and glaze pot just to give them a try and experiment but I'm really excited about technical range, especially the Lahmian Medium for fixing transfers which are a massive pain in the arse.

Sticking with the painting tip, there's the new How to guide that comes with a DVD, will definitely take a look at that. They've also redone all the paint starter kits for beginners. There's loads of new transfers for 40k from loads of different chapters which is a nice idea. The rest of this section is taken up with the huge Empire release. While there are some really nice parts to the army I'm not a huge fan. It feels too historical rather than being fantasy. Focusing on the bits I like, the Orrery on top of the Celestial Hurricanum is amazing as is the big lens/death ray thing on top of the Luminark of Hysh. That's about it really I'm afraid.

The Citadel Paint Range - I accidentally covered most of what I wanted to say above! This article has loads of examples of how to use the new paints and glazes, as well as handy tips and comments from the Hobby team. There's a compacted paint guide that's handily sorted into complimentary colours and loads of step-by-steps for painting different models. It's surprisingly in depth and I'll certainly be coming back to re-read it in the future.

Sigmar's Heirs - So it's all about the empire. There's maps, stat lines for some of the units, background and tactics and a huge section about Karl Franz.

Warhammer Civil War - The third and final part of the expansion contains the rules for the Empire, Dwarfs and Skaven. Looking over the Dwarf rules they've put a lot of thought into it, creating some really fun scenarios.

40k Death Worlds - Phil Kelly presents an expansion to the Battle Missions supplement all about fighting battles on inhospitable planets such as Fenris and Catachan. There are three missions each with their own style of deployment, victory conditions and special rules. What's really cool about it though are the Hazard tables that you roll on to determine random events that happen each turn. This reminds me of the terrain and building rules from fantasy.

The Wolf and the Kraken - The battle report that was missing from last month surfaces with Space Wolves against Tyranids. It's only 1k each so there's not a huge amount of choice and each army has only got 1 new release in each. The interesting part was the little box at the end saying that next month they'll be showing us how to create our own ice world terrain.

Harald Deathwolf's Great Company - A short article with some step-by-step guides, a showcase and some general chat about how to start your own great company.

LotR Tale of Four Gamers - This month they expand their armies up to 500 points but there's still no budget and no real insight into what's going on.

Games Day 2012 - Tickets for those of us that are still WD subscribers we get the chance to buy our tickets early on the 7th of this month. I'll be getting mine for two reasons, one is the lovely miniature taken from the cover of 2nd edition 40k. The second is to allow GW the chance to prove they can put on a great event after last years disappointment.

At the back there's a conversion chart telling us what all the old paints are now called. This is another great resource in this time of change. I'm going to be taking it a step further and sticking labels onto my old pots with the new names written on just so that I can get up to speed quicker! Also on the back cover they've given us a preview of what's coming next month which hasn't happened in ages. It's a set of new spells and scenarios for Storm of Magic. I really hope there's some decent 40k content too as 6th has got to be coming out soon.

all in all this was a quite good issue so gets a solid 7/10.

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