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I bought an issue of WD and was impressed with it, however I'm not sure I'm willing to hand over the $70 for a one year subscription. In your experience, is it worth it?

No. $70 is a lot of cash for a magazine that reads like and advertisement.

The pictures are really nice, there's occasionally a good painting tutorial, and Standard Bearer is often interesting. I wouldn't spend $70 on it though. GW might be heading in the right direction by putting the upcoming Spearhead expansion stuff in WD, but nobody knows if that kind of thing will continue. If it did, I would say maybe.

IMO...no,it's not worth it,WD has basicly become a sales catalog,and while there is the occasional interesting article,you really aren't missing out on much by spending your money elsewhere.

agreed, that money is better spent on the actual models instead of just advertisements for them. And it's not as if those painting tutorials can't be found on the internet.

I do occasionally buy a pack of 3 old WD's for 7,50 euros (so 3 old ones for the price of 1 new one), to me that's reasonable because the interesting things in there don't really lose a lot of their value over time.

Anything you can find in White Dwarf you can find on the internet for free, with better advice and better quality.

Don't waste your money on the magazine.

I've always bought WD. I see it as part of the hobby. The internet is a great source of information (once you've sifted through the garbage), but it's good to have stuff in permanent form as well.

There have been peaks and troughs in terms of qulaity, which to some extent track the peaks and troughs of their games. It hit a low during 4th Edition which arguably matched the way the game itself had drifted. I think it's generally been pretty good for the last year or so, and that's coincided with a string of quality model releases beginning with the Stompa.

I find the best issues are the ones that accompany a new codex. You'll normally get some design background, painted component photos, a battle report and modelling articles. My Blood Angels issue is now well-thumbed, and I've picked up some useful modelling and painting ideas for my new BA army. So if you're a WH40k player, maybe pick those issues up at a news agent or whatever. I subscribed at one stage, but they always arrived after they appeared in the shops, so I just get it from my local GW.

Don't suscribe to WD, at best buy it once in a while if it looks interesting. (i.e. In june)

Tailgunner wrote:I've always bought WD. I see it as part of the hobby. The internet is a great source of information (once you've sifted through the garbage), but it's good to have stuff in permanent form as well.

Save to your hard drive anyone?

I bought a sub to WD for a single year and was not impressed. One third of the adver-magazine is about a game system I do not care about. The only article I really found any interest in was standard bearer by Jervis simply because there's so much vitriol surrounding him. The battles in each magazine are rigged.

Short answer. No.

I wont re-iterate the various reasonings here, but I shall cast my vote an opinion: No.

I wouldn't buy it if I were on a tight budget, but I have a decent disposable income, so for me, the answer is yes.

If you want to look at their product on a monthly basis, just hit the website and use the exhorbitant subscription fee to buy models.

Not at all. White Dwarf often isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

The occasional issue of worth might pop up - like the upcoming Spearhead article - but other than that, it's just an pricey glossy mag that does nothing but advertise cool new release of the month.

Once upon a time WD had alot of useful articles, painting tutorials/guides, Chapter Approved mini codexes, and way way back they would even show how to convert and scratch build some stuff. Oh- and FAQ's were in WD too. I remember a time WD 232 was pretty much a required item for 3rd ed tournaments.

But a few things seemed to have changed. When GW started changing prices, WD seemed to get turned into their 20$ hooker on the street corner. Looks ok in the right light, but up close makes you cringe and run away. But people still slow down to look, and some shell out the cash because they dont know any better....

So, thank you GW for turning the once wholesome pleasure White Dwarf used to be, into a sad worn out cash cow that has no lasting value.

I buy Fine Scale or Military modeller for the modelling and painting tips. WD I read at the club (for some reason they see the sub as a "benefit" (don't know why, no-one in the club is that much of a noob).

Fifty wrote:I wouldn't buy it if I were on a tight budget, but I have a decent disposable income, so for me, the answer is yes.

Same here - if I had to count the pennies then no, but I don't have to and thus feel fine about buying WD.

Over the past six months, WD has really been degrading, with less interesting articles and more sales pitches. I only buy it to look at the pretty pictures.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Brother SRM wrote: and Standard Bearer is often interesting.

Holy Gak! Someone actually finds Standard Bearer interesting! HERETIC! Expect the inquisition immediately!

I used to get it every month back in the day #92 to about #250, by then WD had devolved into a Multi-coloured mess with reducing content. In my opinion that has begun to change and I have actually bought a few copies [say 5-6 since the Imperial Guard Codex was released]. I have even considered a subscription - 3rd off plus a squat miniature! Still considering it especially with Spearhead approaching.

WD has been GW only since about #100 when WH40K and WFB 3rd Ed were fully up and running so WD being a catalogue is nothing new, they even reference the fact on the cover to avoid confussion.

Plus hard copy has benefits that tinternet doesn't; you can read it on the bog! Handy if you are caught short on the paper front...........

Subscription might be a bit too expensive - what our FLGS does is buy old ones and then sell them second-hand. I find this is a good approach. As to the contents: it does read like an in-house advertising rag at times, but then again it is an in-house advertising rag and it's more interesting than most other magazines.

I definitely would not subscribe. Like you, I was greatly interested in doing so, but it was kind of expensive. instead, I bought a stack of old WD's off Ebay for around $15. They were around 10 years old, and they were awesome - full of all kinds of neat stuff, fluff, backstory, campaign ideas. On a whim, I tossed in the last 2 issues of WD that last time I ordered from the Warstore - it was a vastly different magazine. It's around 25% advertisements/LOTR/WHFB/40k - so in each issue, there was 75% waste. What was in there for 40k was essentially a fleshed out catalog of that month's new releases.

I'd spring for some old copies instead.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Er, that being said, one of the 2 recent issues I got did have an interesting scenario - you had 2 squads of Guardsmen trapped in a jungle, surrounded by advancing Necrons. Every turn after turn 1, you rolled a die to see if a Valkyrie arrived to evac them (with increasing odds modifier as turns went on). At the same time, the Necrons had randomly rolled reinforcements every turn, too. I could see that being an awesome, nail-biting game (despite the fact it was mostly to show off the new Valkyrie and Catachan sprues).

So, those 4 pages was the only redeeming quality, to my thinking, of the entire issue. Were they worth $9? .... maybe. It did look like a fun scenario. Your disposable income may dictate this.

I'm going to subscribe. For the price it is, I get them cheaper than normal, regardless of what they are truly worth.

Hi all.
Originaly WD was 'Games Workshops monthly gaming supliment '.

Then became 'Workshops monthly gaming supliment and minatures cataloge.'

And is now 'Games Workshops monthly minatures cataloge.'

Why BUY an advertising pamphlet from a company?

A hobby magazine full of creativity and inspiration yes.
A low brow 'BUY THIS NOW IT IS AWSOME KEWL' advertisment mag, no thanks!

TTFN
Lanrak.

Few months it worths the cash. But I keep buying all the issues in Spanish because I have all of them since #1 and I can't stop :( Well actually there are three issues that I don't have, but I do have all the other 177.

Boss 'eadbreaka wrote:Over the past six months, WD has really been degrading, with less interesting articles and more sales pitches. I only buy it to look at the pretty pictures.

Six months? The magazine has been the pits for years. I flick through the new releases section in the shop and that's about it. I wouldn't buy it.

I stopped being a regular buyer at around #250 but bought occasionally until #300, I had one issue after #300 because I liked some of the scenery pieces and there was some anniversary related stuff if I recall correctly, and I think that was the single break from the resolution I made with myself that I would never buy White Dwarf once it went up above £3.50

There's always a bit of fanboy boasting on these threads about how long ago it stopped being worth reading, it's like a badge of how long term and serious a gamer you are. There's usually at least one who say it started going down hill from as early as #90, which may be slightly true but it was still an entertaining read and had good articles and supplimentry rules. It was always worth the money anyway and that's what mattered. Chaper Approved was the last we really saw of that kind of input into the magazine and by the end it was next to nothing. So I really stopped buying regularly around #250 but I can appreciate the writing was on the wall some time before that but I dipped in as late as #300.

What it's become is a shameful excuse for £4.50. Look at the other wargaming and modelling magazines on the market, they have *real* content. Although you can no long get Dungeon or Dragon magazine in the shops, it was available alongside WD until fairly recently and was a long standing magazine, it's not an online publication. Whereas WD was devoid of rules and half decent articles Dragon Magazine was chock full of rules for new monsters and characters, new scenarios or locations to use, it had sections for detailed expansion of player characters and all kinds of features, you'd get maps for buildings/towns and fiction/background pieces, you'd even get floorplans to cut out or photocopy, it had readers letters and other pieces of art. Sometimes they'd even bundle in a large map or poster. All that and it was cheaper than WD. So why can't Games Workshop supply something that is even half of what Dragon Magazine was? It represents all that's wrong with the company, it's all about the hard sell and pushing products, not supporting games or even being particularly creative. It's cheaper and easier to produce a advertising booklet every month than it is to put some creativity into a variety of articles.

Maybe with the new change of editorship, the quality and input of WD will improve?

A subscription IMO is only worth it if you play at least two of GW's systems. If you're like me and only play one (40K) then I'd go about it on an issue by issue basis. If there's a lot of good 40K stuff then I'll buy it. If it's tailored more towards WFB or LotR then I'll skip the issue.

White Dwarf hmmm... Everything you get from White Dwarf are pretty much on the GW website.

Is it worth it? It used to when they charge me $90 CDN , and give me $35 worth of free gift.
Now, not anymore... even the "gift" costs $15 lol

It was good in the old days, the few issues i've read in the last year or so have been a waste of paper.

With an already-expensive hobby, it's the first thing to get disposed of for me.

filbert wrote:Maybe with the new change of editorship, the quality and input of WD will improve?

Some hope, it rather seems like the editor's hands are tied by senior management anyway. It's an advertising magazine now, the editor has to play with it in certain restrictions even if they wanted to do otherwise. When GW still had their own forums there was a section for White Dwarf and issue after issue it was being slated. It was claimed that those doing the magazine read the forums. The editor even went onto the forum to say that they wanted improvements and were looking for sugguestions to give readers what they wanted. Some people gave silly responses, but others put a lot of time and effort into long replies with ideas, suggestions and tried to be as reasonable as possible in saying that they expected advertising and the like but wanted a bit more of other things, actual content you know? It was claimed that things would be changed but as WD was prepared 3 months in advance it would take a while for changed to filter through. Six months later it hadn't changed, and it still hasn't. The magazine authors simply ceased responding and people were not happy as a result. The vitriol on the forum is probably what led to it closing.

I'm a bit of a completist, so I pretty much always pick it up. Having said that, I'll probably give this month's a miss. I have no interest in War of the Ring at all, and it looks like this one's pretty much given over to it in its entirety.

Such is life.