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Happy with my issues 1-10 progress:



All told I have paid £56 (I got issues 1-3 free because I was an early adopter) for £112 worth of product direct from GW and that calculation excludes the paints.

Quite satisfying to see the whole lot like that. Nice work, too.

Ok, I sourced my blight haulers. Cost me £11 each for two, then the store managed to source three more.

Things are looking up. Now I am looking at conversions to make my blight haulers look different.

Only have one here but did wonder on a couple more (eventually), possibly conversion thoughts from putting the one together - cut the front track units and refit at a different angle - e.g. driving over something.

possibly add a few tentacles on the fleshy bit?

battle damage, anything that changes the brasswork logo on the front should work.

trying not to buy more here currently, have some Orks on the go at the same time and trying to avoid swamping myself.

great idea though, find myself hoping when this one finishes GW do another two armies in another run

Issue 13 and 14 are:

A. Large drybrush and pot of Mechanicus Standard Grey. RRP £8.20 (£5.65 for the drybrush, plus £2.55 for the paint)

B. One sprue of terrain. A Munitorum container with three barrels and two crates. - RRP £10 (from set of three for £30)



Listed as A and B because I don't know which order they are in.
Source:


end of video

So we get some filler issues. i was expecting exactly what we got for the terrain, one cargo container as an early terrain piece.
A pot of paint and a brush is the least value set yet, only just capping break even on price. However there is some good news there too. The drybrush was not listed on the contents of the campaign, so we will be getting more materials than listed.
Still, why a large drybrush? Wouldn't a medium serve better. I think this issue is for intro basing. Still more brushres is good news, while brushes are promised as the fifth subscription gift the gifts are not included in the campaign contents and one starter brush just doesnt cut it. Hopefully we will get some better base and layer brushes in later issues also. This will mean more filler issues, but I don't mind that as it squeezes more value into the other issues when this is done.

So, I suddenly remembered about a newsagents in the town close to where I lived, so I did a little snooping while getting wrapping paper, and I spotted the late issue, #10, still in the window.

Went in and asked if they were planning to stock every issue. They were indeed, and they said they can order in more if required and can hold one for me if needed.

Absolutely fantastic result! Independent, local newsagents FTW!

And it's helping your High Street, which is a good thing

It has been a long time since i last posted here, and my blog had stalled.
Truth be told I was having lots of problems with my Hachette Subscriptions, both for Legends and Conquest. This week they got resolved BIG TIME. So Orlanth is back with some news and reviews.

Problems with multi ordering

Twice now I have made orders of one Conquest magazine and two Legends books. This is to get my order total above £25 for free shipping and because its a quicker way to get the books. It worked for me, up to a point. Hachette are reliable for shipping magazines, or books, I have ordered books separately before and received them with no problems. However they are unrelaible at shipping combined orders of books and magazines. The problem was the database could total the amount correctly, assessing my order cost £27.97 (2x £9.99 books plus 1x £7.99 magazine) but only listed the magazine on the order inventory. This is a **double facepalm** mail ordering systems error. Hachette order database cannot apparently handle items from more than one product line, it would be like trying to order AoS and 40K items from GW website ans finding their order system could only list one or the other on the delivery teams shipping dockets.
Last week I put in my second near identical order, different issues but same arrangement. Both did arrive but they arrived seperately on different days. This however was because Hachette were monitoring this and were on the case to sort this error.

How to handle Issues at Hachette.

Hachette Customer services are polite and approachable, but not the most competent and have access to a dodgy client database. They are also very slow to respond and have errors in response. Comments on this were made in the OP. Hachette have been victims of their own success, a formerly sleepy company has now got a product line that is worth all their others combined, are already into profdit since issues 5 or 6, and it much bigger thna they expected. Customer services needed to step up. Thankfully it has.
Troubleshooters were apppointed and they are very efficient. You still have the sleepy CSRs from South Africa to deal with but if you contact Hachette corporate they will give you direct emails for Hachette Partworks.

https://www.hachette.co.uk/landing-page/hachette/contact-us/

It appears since I did this in October, Hachette have themselves stepped up and included info for contacting Hachette Partworks troubleshooters on their contact us page themselves. The notification above wasnt there before, and as I heard when contaacting Hachette UK I was not the only dissatisfied customer contacting them for a resolution.

Anyway the idea is to get put through to either Holly or Isabelle at Hachette Partworks as they will sort things out. They did for me.

My resolution.

Whatever amateur customer services I might have had prior to this has been more thna made up for. I had missing gifts from the Warhammer Legends line, missing delivery iteams from their order system, and a failure of the direct debit system which not only delayed my shipments but finally sending failure to pay threat letters for a subscription I had an active direct debit for, that hasd previously been charged on and had always had enough funds to pay.

Hachettes response. Send me all my missing gifts, send me all my missing books, and because I was now way behind everyone, reset my Conquest subscription to start at issue 19 and ship me all the issues from 5 to 18 by priority post, for free. I received two large boxes today, one containing them ssing books and Legends gifts and the other containing the issues of Conquest, my folder, my painting handle, and no billing!!
Frankly I was not expecting this level of generosity, Hachette had messed up but they also fixed it good.

Now where were we with issues? YouTube goes as far as issue 16. So lets start there and also give you a heads up as far as issue 20. I will not be reviewing the articles in the magazines, only the supplementary models and tools.



Issue 16.

With Issue 16 we see the first of the Dark Imperium boxset sprues. Retail value N/A, one of eight sprues with Dark Imperium costing £95.
You get this one:



This is one of two identical sprues. These will contain one Inceptor, two Hellblasters and two Intercessors.
In my opinion you should buy two extra copies of this issue or the other similar upcoming issue. Some others have the same idea as issue 16 is one of those that went out of stock very quickly. The going price on ebay for the Marine half of the miniatures is between £35 and £50. It will cost us £32 in the subscription. On a price per sprue we are doing quite well and should be below or around ebay prices for same.
Assuming you are a subscriber and have only what the subscription gives you, with maybe an issue or two bought on the side, may I suggest you get two extra sprues. This will mean two extra Inceptors for a 'proper' squad of five. Four extra Intercessors which will be enough to turn the three Intercessors from issue one into a viable legal squad of seven. If you bought an extra copy of issue one you now have enough for a full legal squad of ten, both excluding the ten Dark Imperium Intercessors you will get from the subscription itself. The four extra Hellblasters gives you a total of nine, however if you do a bit of bits searching or a conversion you could add a plasma pistol to a spare miniature, either a bonus Intercessor sergeant model or the stalker bolter leiutenant you get later, and turn him into a Hellblaster sergeant for a ten man squad.


Issue 17

This issue is a filler issue with a container sprue. With a £10 retail tag this issue is a little over break even. Some subscribers have been buying issues with the containers for extra containers. £8 is better than £10 right? My advice for those who want more containers is not to buy extra copies of the issues with them. Instead buy a Killzone Sector Munitorum:

https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/catalog/product/920x950/60220699003_KillzoneSectorMunitorumENG01.jpg

You get six crates for £50 (six issues cost £48) but also get a hard map and a full set of Galvanic Servohaulers. Far better deal, and the online price is normally about £38-£42 anyway, though this may include shipping.


Issue 18

Contains two pots of paint and a paper map. Total value £5.10 for paints N/A for paper map.
It had to happen, issue 18 is the first actual issue with a total value less than the subscription cost. Dont lament this though, it is to be expected, even encouraged. We get the items promised at the start over the 80 issues, if some issues have poor total value in contents then collect one of each for the completion of the subscription, and know that for every iissue under the £8 value mark there will be more considerably over it. As calculated in the OP there is a 40% difference between retail value and the subscription cost, and that dividend is unevenly distributed over the issues.
All this means is that I will not be rushing to WH Smith to buy an extra issue of issue 18. I suggest you dont either.
It is at this point I should look at the magazine itself, normally I dont review it, except to look at the back page, but this once I will take the trouble to remind subscribers that while we are after the goodies, the magazine itself is still of value to us, when added to its folder as a collective work. If we discard the paper map for value purposes we have a shortfall of £2.89. expensive but not an unreasonable price for a magazine that one wants. I think if this is as bad as it gets we are not doing too badly.

The paints in the issue are Rakarth Flesh and Mephiston Red. These colours at least are welcome, we were overdue a red. The red is added to the primaris librarians cloak, sergeants helmets in the default Ultramarine line and some odd highlights. Rakarth flesh is added to the text scrolls of purity seals, bone outgrowth on plague marines, skulls and teeth. Looking at the official paint scheme its certainly getting there, but all this work is ambitious for the little crappy starter brush.

The new paper map is for a new warzone. In the storyline the fighting moves on from th deck of an Ultramarines cruiser, and the little into map is left behind. The new map is of good quality heavy paper.light card and is rigid and is A1 sized. It is two sided urban map very similar to the current 40K plastic urban boards.
The map its two sided one side just shows a T-junction of Imperium urban streets. The other side is the same map but with new printed on terrain. The printed on terrain items are Ryza pattern ruins, Plasma conduits and the very old 90's Battlefield Accessory set.





The second to last page shows that the fighting has moved to Korvon II, with an image of the terrain map included in issue 18 with the above terrain items on it. The magazine did foreshadow that over the campaign there would be four locations to fight on. The first being the warship cargo deck with three containers, the second will include these items probably over issues 21 to 40. I see how this fits in with the premium content which provides the same map as a hard card map. Similar in a way to the map in Moon base Klaisus though a unique product of itself. We can expect an Ad-Mech battlefield as the third or fourth location allowing for what's next.
With a double sized map we can expect to see larger showcased battles.

Now for the back cover:

Issue 19 contains: Lord Felthius and the Blightlord Terminators. Costing £25.
- At last a proper Nurgle command character, and an easy option while kicking the Dark Imperium sprue can down the road. I was frankly expecting this later but it makes sense to have it now. The Nurgle half of Dark Imperium is going to be problematic, subscribers will need to learn they cannot complete an issues build from one sprue, its probably clearer to start this with a clear two issue kit like a vehicle before including miniatures with parts of several models over several sprues.
I don't know as yet whether I want to buy more than one copy of this issue. Nurgle terminators are not cheap, but the models on this set are of limited value due to poor loadout optimisation.


Issue 20 contains: Armoured Container. Costing £10
- Your third and final armoured container coming soon. While I would have prefered a start on other terrain and have the third container spaced out better it goes well with the new map in Issue 18. Rather than have a starter map with three printed on containers, we now have a better detailed map and three real containers to add to it. Note that Issue 20 is also when Premium subscribers get a hard map, similar to the quality found on Moon Base Klaisus or the Killzone sets.

Since I had my subscription issues fixed I went from well behind to the front of the queue.

Today I got issues 19, 20, 21 and 22. These are already released. I also received the artbook and a notification that £15 was added to my bill.

The artbook is only 64 pages and is smaller than A4, not stellar value for £15 but the production quality is good, the artwork within is nothing we havent seen before, (there may yet be one or two original works) and it is the high quality we expect from GW. The spine has the Games Workshop logo not Hachette Publications.
I will say for it that the book is in its own sturdy heavy card sleeve and is artistically and creatively done.
It's a quality product folks, and if you are unsure about the price please remember its subscribers only so will have a good resale value if looked after.

The book comes shrinkwrapped, so a tip for you. If you carefully jab a craft knife into the sleeve and run it around the inside you can free the book and remove only a letterbox of sleeve. The thick card keeps the remaining film intact and it becomes a transparent dust cover for you.

The rumoured contents from the leaked Spanish source are accurate as far as Issue 24 and should in my opinion be considered reliable for the remainder of the campaign.