Sunday 23 February 2014

White Dwarf Weekly Issue 4 Review.

As I mentioned at the end of my last WDW review this issue was going to be a bad boy, featuring the new Imperial Knights. These were leaked early, and the hype and excitement has been huge. Let's see if the official release can carry on the enthusiasm...

New Releases - Well guess what, it's dominated by the Imperial Knight! There's some seriously impressive shots of the huge kit, and a little blurb about the two variants, the Knight Paladin and the Knight Errant, and also the various Knight Houses they come from. The close up details look amazing, and I can imagine it'll be a fun kit to paint and try out some different techniques on.
There's also a detailed look at the two transfer sheets, which have some really nice designs on them. The smaller one comes included in the box and looks to be plenty sufficient, although the scope of the large A4 one is staggering, and could always be used on other kits too, like full version titans.

There's a couple of Codex style books out this month too. The hardback Codex Supplement Sentinels of Terra, detailing the Imperial Fists 3rd Company, and the digital release of the Legion of the Damned Codex. It's similar to the recent Inquisition codex in that you can ally them with any Imperial army, but other than that there's not a whole lot of detail about the contents.

Imperial Knights - Jervis takes a break from his column to introduce us to the history of the Knights, both in the lore and in the history of GW, starting with Adeptus Titanicus and Epic. Jes Goodwin then chips in with a piece about designing the models, from his original work 20 years ago leading to the new kit.

Paint Splatter - A really interesting look at the different parts of the model and how to paint it in House Terryn and House Raven colours. There's some definite ideas I'll be taking on board when I get round to owning and painting one. Next week there's apparently going to be a guide to painting Freeblade Knights.

Sprues and Glue - This looks like an invaluable guide to building the Knights so that they can be easily painted. I've recently taken a swing from painting each part individually before assembly to just gluing everything together straight away, but I think I'll be trying the sub-assembly routine shown here next.

The Rules - As well as the usual stat lines for the Paladin and Errant and each of their weapons, there's a little side note as to how it can be included in your army as an allied detachment. I'm not sure if it would be particularly fair if your opponent wasn't prepared for it since it packs a D strength weapon and essentially has 2 structure points. Other than that though it looks quite reasonable for the points. Adam Troke chips in with some genuinely useful tips towards tactics too.



This Week - It seems like a bit of a recap this time round, with snippets of information about designing knights, the Imperial Fists and LotD. At the back there's an advert for Warhammer Visions issue 2, and it looks quite cool. Plenty of Dwarfs, a Tau Kitbash and some Dark Eldar.

Like I think I said in my conclusion last week I'm really enjoying the WDW. It's compact, but because the word count has significantly increased it actually feels like there's so much more content. And after three weeks of fantasy (as much as I love the Dwarfs) it's great to see some 40k again. A very consistent 8/10 this week.

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