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 Azreal13 wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:

I subscribed to a WD offer about seven years ago, by direct debit. I'm still getting Visions at roughly £2.50 an issue. At that rate I never bothered cancelling. I take a cursory flick through, show the pet chemist, and just cut the painting guides out of the back.

You have a pet chemist?

Spoiler:

Doesn't everyone?

In all seriousness, I live with a veteran formulation chemist. I mostly keep him around because what the man doesn't know about stripping could be written on a very small piece of card (and you know, liking him a lot).
Some day I'll coerce him into writing up a stripping guide and word it up nicely in the tutorial/article section.


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...By which I mean a guide on the chemical ingredients to look for/avoid on SDS and packaging. metals vs plastics and resins and how to avoid setting paint residue onto things.
...and not you know, poles and dollars.

 Buttery Commissar wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:

I subscribed to a WD offer about seven years ago, by direct debit. I'm still getting Visions at roughly £2.50 an issue. At that rate I never bothered cancelling. I take a cursory flick through, show the pet chemist, and just cut the painting guides out of the back.

You have a pet chemist?

Spoiler:

Doesn't everyone?

In all seriousness, I live with a veteran formulation chemist. I mostly keep him around because what the man doesn't know about stripping could be written on a very small piece of card (and you know, liking him a lot).
Some day I'll coerce him into writing up a stripping guide and word it up nicely in the tutorial/article section.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
...By which I mean a guide on the chemical ingredients to look for/avoid on SDS and packaging. metals vs plastics and resins and how to avoid setting paint residue onto things.
...and not you know, poles and dollars.

Awww....

The Auld Grump

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
Eight.

But I'll be square with you, having checked the cover, it's issue #3 from April 2014, so they may have learned from it by now.
I don't usually hang on to year-old recycling, I am trying to remember why I kept this particular copy.

It's also home to this fantastic example of why they shouldn't be allowed near A5 format.

Wow... I try not to participate in piling on about GW, but seriously - that pretty clearly shows they don't know what the heck they're doing regarding this publication.

It's smart to put it back at the original size, so at least they're fixing the mistake.

Wow that picture is not even a bad joke.. it's laughable.

 RiTides wrote:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
Eight.

But I'll be square with you, having checked the cover, it's issue #3 from April 2014, so they may have learned from it by now.
I don't usually hang on to year-old recycling, I am trying to remember why I kept this particular copy.

It's also home to this fantastic example of why they shouldn't be allowed near A5 format.

Wow... I try not to participate in piling on about GW, but seriously - that pretty clearly shows they don't know what the heck they're doing regarding this publication.

It's smart to put it back at the original size, so at least they're fixing the mistake.

Can someone explain to me why the picture is bad?

I know its bad but why is it bad?

Due to the page fold a lot of the detail isn´t visible.

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
Eight.

But I'll be square with you, having checked the cover, it's issue #3 from April 2014, so they may have learned from it by now.

It's not something to have learned, even assuming none of the staff had even had a media course or a half day "how to make a magazine" seminar down the local job centre, they'd know that you at least look at it before hitting print to make sure it's not total crap, especially when you're new to it.

I'm (maybe incorrectly) also assuming someone at GWHQ flicked through this before it went live and they still decided not to pull it.

It's also home to this fantastic example of why they shouldn't be allowed near A5 format.

That's nothing to do with A5 format, that's just a complete lack of any effort or consideration at all. If they can mess that page up so badly at A5, they'll mess it up just as badly in A4. That's a criminal level of white space as well considering the text. It's a pretty standard single page editorial amount, but that's assuming it'll have half a page of text around it.

My only conclusion is that GW just don't care, it's a magazine, some people will buy it and they are keeping the old subscribers because whilst it's terrible, it's not so terrible they are willing to cancel a £3 direct debit.


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 MRPYM wrote:


Can someone explain to me why the picture is bad?

I know its bad but why is it bad?

The main focus of the page (the miniature) is lost in the page fold. That's like taking a photo and cutting off an inch strip from the centre line.

The main image doesn't fill the page, there's a huge amount of wasted space. There's a term used "negative space" which is empty space in an image to allow the editor to add text in without affecting the image, so in that one the photo is taken with the aim of fitting a good hundred or so word description around.

What they should have done is moved the image to one side to avoid the fold and cropped as tightly as they can to show more miniature, or taken a few other shots from different angles and super-imposed them on the blank spaces.

I'm assuming they've been given a format to work with that just doesn't fit what they are trying to do, and no-one bothered to question it.

 MRPYM wrote:

 RiTides wrote:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
Eight.

But I'll be square with you, having checked the cover, it's issue #3 from April 2014, so they may have learned from it by now.
I don't usually hang on to year-old recycling, I am trying to remember why I kept this particular copy.

It's also home to this fantastic example of why they shouldn't be allowed near A5 format.

Wow... I try not to participate in piling on about GW, but seriously - that pretty clearly shows they don't know what the heck they're doing regarding this publication.

It's smart to put it back at the original size, so at least they're fixing the mistake.

Can someone explain to me why the picture is bad?

I know its bad but why is it bad?

In the world of fashion/women's magazines etc, you would be shot dead if you presented a photograph like that in a magazine. GW's approach is an embarrassment.


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 warboss wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

We live in an age of quality cameras at decent prices, quality web cams at decent prices, open source software for desktop publishing, crowdfunding etc etc

It would take some work, but it wouldn't be that hard to get the equipment together to produce magazine quality battle reports.

I suspect more people don't do that because alot of folks aren't willing to pay directly for that from indy sources. There are wargaming magazines out there but they've increasingly become single company rags with the indies largely going either to modelling more than gaming (those customers do seem a bit more willing to pay for painting equivalent of porn) or going free online downloads. In the modern era of blogs, forums, and youtube channels, the battle reports you get from those free sources are "good enough" for most folks.

You hit the nail on the head. We live in an age where people get free music from youtube, free films from dubious sources, and an age where some people resent paying for books.

It's hard to see anybody but the most loyal followers paying for a wargames magazine, when there are tons of sites like Dakka floating around.

To be fair books are expensive these days. I still buy them because I don't like reading off a screen but I do kinda resent buying them. Personally I always pay for music, the only time I've downloaded music is when ive bought a vinyl and wanted it on my iPod as well, and quite often I impulse buy magazines, so if they made a decent magazine I'd probably buy it. I'm not sure if I'm an anomaly or if you're underestimating the amount of people who would buy them (probably the first one) but either way even I'm not going to pay £7.50 for Visions. I could almost get a book for that.

Herzlos wrote:

hing to have learned, even assuming none of the staff had even had a media course or a half day "how to make a magazine" seminar down the local job centre, they'd know that you at least look at it before hitting print to make sure it's not total crap, especially when you're new to it.

The technical term for the dead space is "gutter". The technical term for the way the magazine is constructed is "perfect bound", as opposed to the stapled "saddle stitch" of the weekly version.

When you design a magazine you construct templates, which would have both copy and picture boxes further away from the gutter for a perfect bound magazine, which can't open fully in the way a saddle-stitched mag can. And of course you'd know not to run a photo across a spread where the action takes place in the gutter. It's a basic principle of magazine design.

Sadly it's not the only incompetent aspect of the magazines. Their staff are ignorant of basic grammar and don't, for instance, employ anyone who knows the difference between principle and principal. We buy lots of expensive magazines in our family, but Visions isn't to be compared and, as pointed out before, there's a disconnect between the small format, and the luxurious image they aspire to. Small magazines were designed for women's handbags and have never worked for men's magazines (Jack, the only one to have launched in that format, from the fella who launched Loaded, was a notorious failure).

Return of White Dwarf in 2 years.

Place your bets now!

 Medium of Death wrote:
Return of White Dwarf in 2 years.

Place your bets now!

Considering that GW's chance of bankruptcy is still hovering around 70%, I would bet on that happening in the next 2 years instead of WD returning.

PhantomViper wrote:

 Medium of Death wrote:
Return of White Dwarf in 2 years.

Place your bets now!

Considering that GW's chance of bankruptcy is still hovering around 70%, I would bet on that happening in the next 2 years instead of WD returning.

Source?

I've not been paying attention.

 Medium of Death wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:

 Medium of Death wrote:
Return of White Dwarf in 2 years.

Place your bets now!

Considering that GW's chance of bankruptcy is still hovering around 70%, I would bet on that happening in the next 2 years instead of WD returning.

Source?

I've not been paying attention.

http://www.macroaxis.com/invest/ratio/GAW.L--Probability_Of_Bankruptcy

Note that I'm semi-kidding with my comment, I don't actually believe that GW will be bankrupt in the next 2 years... 5 years, maybe.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


You hit the nail on the head. We live in an age where people get free music from youtube, free films from dubious sources, and an age where some people resent paying for books.

It's hard to see anybody but the most loyal followers paying for a wargames magazine, when there are tons of sites like Dakka floating around.

The thing is though that some people still value edited works and commentary. The internet content is essentially unfiltered and likely 80% crap. It's fine with pictures because it's easy to tell, but for actual editorial stuff there's still a lot of benefit in getting a professional to compile and edit stuff for you into something coherent, high quality and interesting.

The other wargaming magazines manage this, with a good mix of accurate news, event coverage, themed issues and the propogation of ideas, all in a well written and consistent way.

WH:V does not one of that though, so it's hardly surprising it's struggling, especially since I forgot it costs £7. I can get a paperback novel for that.

Maybe I'm an old grognard, but when starting a new project (gaming era, work technology, whatever), I usually go and get a book for the serious research, and then try to supplement it from the internet when I've got a better gauge of what's useful and what isn't.

 MRPYM wrote:


Can someone explain to me why the picture is bad?

I know its bad but why is it bad?

To put simply:
This is a miniature painting spotlight. There is a figure to the left of the guy in blue. Can you see him? Well enough to appreciate how he is painted?

The entire book is full of these layouts, including several pages that you have to turn sideways to see the chopped image. I'm not out to purely trash the book, I buy the book. But it hurts from many perspectives to see my WD subscription reduced to this.

WD used to be something cool. I ended up buying several back issues for Judge Dredd RPG scenarios I wanted, and couldn't resist reading the rest. Humour, charm and I could gush for several minutes about there being a soul to the publication. Absolutely unrecognisable in comparison to the magasine I started buying in 2007. Could that format survive now? Maybe not, but there's certainly room in the world for it.


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Christ on a bike. £7.50? Even by my shoddy math, I'm paying under half, and have been since launch.

I might mail a couple of copies of what it used to be like to the current editor, in the hope that they just don't know how bad it is now.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

That's a bingo.


Rules, scenarios, detailed battle reports, detailed background articles.

You know, like the White Dwarf of 20 years ago...

That ship sailed 20 years ago

Sites like this, a hundred others like dakka, video blogs like BOW and of course the internet = the golden days becoming a distant memory. I miss the old WD as well, but the world's moved on since then.


I don't doubt their success, but they are pretty niche. Print magazine sales have been falling year on year since the 1990s. Given GW's financial woes, I doubt if they'd want to sink that much money into supporting their magazines.

Exclusive gaming content and quality articles instead of photographs, would sell the magazine. It would certainly sell more of it than just pretty photos. And I imagine production and distribution of a single magazine is cheaper than two they currently put out with little content in either.

This gak is still being printed? How has it survived some 18 months now?

 Stormonu wrote:
This gak is still being printed? How has it survived some 18 months now?

Well meaning family members getting subscription as a gift for Christmas...

And by making a massive loss, according to the last financials...

 Clang wrote:
The other obvious improvement would be to describe the contents on the cover (presuming they keep the mag in its porno-style plastic bag) - currently potential customers can't see what's in it, which hardly helps casual sales...

This keeps people from just walking into the store, reading it/flipping through it, and putting it back on the shelf....which people did all the time with the white dwarf, before they started sealing it individually..

The best visions I've seen are the ones where they throw in modeling and conversion stuff, or different painting techniques or tutorials that you won't see anywhere else.

Here's 4 pages in the middle where we show how we made this really cool looking demon prince from various bits and a model! Here's a bunch of a painting things on how to paint nids (probably from the white dwarf team, or 'eavy metal, on their color schemes. or here's some variations on the "offical color schemes" that also look cool.)

Give us more of that. Give us illustrations..wouldn't that be great? I don't think we see much of those in the new format codexes now, unless you get a limited ed.

 Schlyne wrote:

 Clang wrote:
The other obvious improvement would be to describe the contents on the cover (presuming they keep the mag in its porno-style plastic bag) - currently potential customers can't see what's in it, which hardly helps casual sales...

This keeps people from just walking into the store, reading it/flipping through it, and putting it back on the shelf....which people did all the time with the white dwarf, before they started sealing it individually..

Well yeah, I often walk into WHS or where, flick through a mag to see if theres anything of interest this month and then decide whether to buy or not based on the 2 min "preview" or a look at the contents page. Sealing the copy just means I'll bypass altogether.

Men just standing there reading the full mag (and it is normally men) in the shop are bloody irritating though!

 Schlyne wrote:

This keeps people from just walking into the store, reading it/flipping through it, and putting it back on the shelf....which people did all the time with the white dwarf, before they started sealing it individually..

The best visions I've seen are the ones where they throw in modeling and conversion stuff, or different painting techniques or tutorials that you won't see anywhere else.

But if you can't flick through it (or even see the cover properly because of the slip claiming to be from White Dwarf), how do you know if that issue contains something you'd want to pay for? For a £3 magazine it's maybe worth a gamble anyway, but when it's nearly twice the price of every magazine next to it, it's a much braver gamble.

Do the free readers make up a significant majority anyway? If it's a GW store, then you've got someone in for a while (I'd be inclined to keep an open store copy for people to read in the store, it might encourage ancillery sales like paints or mini's from people who would otherwise not come in or buy the magazine. My FLGS has WD:W in it's library and I usually flick through it over coffee/lunch), if it's a newsagent, would they have bought it anyway?

Herzlos wrote:
But if you can't flick through it (or even see the cover properly because of the slip claiming to be from White Dwarf), how do you know if that issue contains something you'd want to pay for? For a £3 magazine it's maybe worth a gamble anyway, but when it's nearly twice the price of every magazine next to it, it's a much braver gamble.

Do the free readers make up a significant majority anyway? If it's a GW store, then you've got someone in for a while (I'd be inclined to keep an open store copy for people to read in the store, it might encourage ancillery sales like paints or mini's from people who would otherwise not come in or buy the magazine. My FLGS has WD:W in it's library and I usually flick through it over coffee/lunch), if it's a newsagent, would they have bought it anyway?

I have no idea. Presumably, in a GW store anyway, that's why the GW manager, is supposed to have one, read it themselves, and tell you all about why you should buy one. As for your FLGS, I doubt GW even thinks about how the sales should go out there, or they just leave it up to however the independent stores should do things.

I spend most of my time in a GW store, (the other store that I would wargame at is on the other side of town) and I don't know if they even bother carrying visions, or very many copies of the white dwarf anymore.

I have a subscription as of the beginning of this year, and I've wondered sometimes if it's even worth picking up the visions. Do I want to see the golden demon winners? Yes. Am I annoyed that they're showing me the same armyscape models they showed me in the white dwarf? Yes. Why do I buy visions? Painting is the biggest part of the hobby for me...I will spend more time on painting than anything else.

Visions never sells out at the GW store, and unless something drastically changes, I doubt it ever will.

I can see GW having lots of problems making a profitable hobby magazine without external money coming in by selling advertisment space. So they went for the weekly advertisment mag and the monthly advertisment mag advertising their own products. I had a subscription of the UK issue from 1992-1997 and the mag had bad issues even then - based on the same problem. I hated all the codex extracts and low effort articles they put into WD.

Currently I only buy Warhammer Visions - second-hand with 50-80% off - and for me it is a collection of Golden Demon/Blanchitsu/Kitbash-articles which I - at that price - consider worth it.

Visions is like a comeback of the Fantasy Minatures books from 1988-1990 which contained only photos of Golden Daemon and 'eavy Metal painted miniatures (heavily converted and well painted) and even after all those years they are indeed worth browsing through and getting inspiration.



I think the Weekly White Dwarf is not the direction the mag should have taken. But the problem started in 1987 - when they went GW products only. So going back to the good days of 99-2004? Yes please. But how is that going to be profitable with such a strong competitor, the internet? Within the strict mindset of Games Workshop's way of doing business - not at all

http://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/blog/blog.jsp

They say bad news comes in threes. Well, so does good news!

The new-look Warhammer Visions 16 is out tomorrow in Games Workshop stores, independent stockists and right here on the Games Workshop webstore. And so is White Dwarf issue 66, which features an Imperial Knight Warden on the front cover, a new breed of Knight for the war-torn battlefields of the 41st Millennium. The issue also includes a stage-by-stage painting guide for House Raven, full rules for using a Knight Warden in your games, a new mission for fighting Knight battles, a showcase of Imperial Knights we’ve been painting, an in-depth look at heraldry and insignia and a FREE POSTER featuring a complete guide to the Citadel Painting System, explaining what colours work best together and which act as the natural Layers, Shades and Drybrushes for each other. Whether you’re new to painting or a brush veteran, you’ll doubtless find some useful tips on this poster.

And the third bit of good news? From tomorrow, you’ll be able to subscribe to White Dwarf!

No matter where you are in the world, you can have White Dwarf delivered direct to your doorstep in the week it comes out. You won’t even have to leave the house to get hold of your favourite hobby magazine every week.*

The full details for setting up a White Dwarf subscription will be available on the Games Workshop webstore tomorrow morning alongside all the latest new releases. You can even set up a subscription for both White Dwarf and Warhammer Visions, ensuring you never miss an issue of either.

Weird, I'm actually tempted by the idea of a WD Weekly sub.

I'm sure it'll pass.....

A WD subscription sounds like a great plan, but chances are we'll get it a week late at the very least..

 Schlyne wrote:
Yes. Am I annoyed that they're showing me the same armyscape models they showed me in the white dwarf? Yes. Why do I buy visions? Painting is the biggest part of the hobby for me...I will spend more time on painting than anything else.

Visions never sells out at the GW store, and unless something drastically changes, I doubt it ever will.

I got my first copy last week.. I was staggered how much was repeated from elsewhere. Was looking for Ork inspiration, it simply repeated paint guides from the weekly, likewise most of the GW models - the pages pimping product used most of the same photos as the weekly.

There were some inventive Nid conversions, which still had mould and glue lines visible, and around six nicely painted Nobz. If I'd paid retail, would have been £1 for each interesting page.