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Slipstream wrote:
I have heard a rumour recently that a major player is considering publishing a magazine solely for sci-fi/fantasy wargaming. I can only think of one company in the UK that maybe in a position to do so and that may be Mantic I suppose.

Mantic has such a great fantasy system its sad that it doesnt just blast off and replace GW's WHFB.

http://www.coolminiornot.com/shop/ravage-magazine-1-english-edition.html

 Briancj wrote:
http://www.coolminiornot.com/shop/ravage-magazine-1-english-edition.html

I've got Ravage #7, and it's a pretty solid magazine, I like the range of articles in it, but a lot of it seems to be reviews atm... but that could easily change.

If it was a real magazine (you know, with actual articles) and had a heavy online component, then yes there would be.

I would certainly buy a wargaming mag if it had content and not adds. It has to be worth the money I spend on it otherwise I wont buy it.

i have a digital White Dwarf subscription, and a digital Ravage one...
if i wasn't in a tiny Mexican village, i would definitely have them in print instead...
it does feel better to have a real magazine, instead of digital...

Ravage is definitely more for gamers...
scenarios and campaigns for X-Wing, Dust, Mercs, and more...
Infinity background and tactics articles...
FLGS spotlights...
Dark-Age rules...
scenery articles...
loads of good stuff, but not useful to me...
still, fun to read, and $6 every two months won't break the bank...

i actually prefer White Dwarf for getting me excited to paint...
i like Blanchitsu, the Golden Demon minis, the design interviews, Forgeworld previews, and the author interviews...
for all the bad press WD gets, i still like it just as much as i did when i first started collecting it, 28 years ago...

digital WD subscription get you the mag for about $5.50 a month, more or less the same cost as Ravage...

cheers
jah

Hmmm, I am going by the last issue that featured the Vietnam-era FoW stuff on the cover and, near as I could tell with a quick flip-through, throughout the entire issue. If that was an uncharacteristic issue, I stand corrected. For my 10 bucks (or whatever, frankly I wasn't interested enough to ask) there wasn't any reason to look closer.

notprop wrote:I disagree, to say that WI is FoW/BF-centric skews it a bit. True there is prominence given to FoW and I think the level has risen but the vast majority of the mag isn't BF products. If WI stays as it is then the BF connection gives the mag a good backbone of popularist material with allot of room given over to new/different/smaller game. If anything it is rather like WD was between #85 and #99.

As to the question a mix RPG/Wargame mag is appealing to me - Old WD and Valkyrie Magazine were my fixes 20 years ago. There was another one but its name escapes me, I wanna say it was International....something or other?

Herzlos wrote:

Jack_Death wrote:
Unfortunately, WGI has gone the way of White Dwarf - it is now the "house organ" of BattleFront Games. Wall to wall Flames of War. It is great if you are a FoW fan (fanboi?) but not so great as a general wargaming mag anymore. I miss the good old days - Dragon, White Dwarf, Wargames Illustrated, The Courier, Wargames Monthly. Of course we can spend a virtually unlimited amount of time surfing gaming content online these days, so that is the tradeoff.

That's definitely unfair to WGI. Yes it's owned by Battlefront, and there's a page or 2 of FoW new releases and most WW2 articles are based on FoW, but the vast amount of content and page count is dedicated to other games and eras. I skip over the FoW stuff and still find plenty in the magazine worth reading.

There is, however, almost no SF content (it's a historics magazine) or reviews of non-gaming things

LuciusAR wrote:Talk of WI being the battlefront equivalent to WD is hyperbolic. Obviously there is going to be FOW content in each issue but there are still plenty of other periods and manufacturers covered as well. WW2 coverage is admittedly very FOW centric and even though other rule sets are covered it only tends to be ones like Bolt Action, that don’t compete directly against FOW.

I did hear a rumor that BF don't allow other 15mm WW2 makers to advertise or feature in any photos, though I've never checked to be sure. I once heard that the guy behind Plastic Soldier Company was told that WI would only carry adverts for his 1/72 or 28mm ranges. Though I don’t know if this is still the case.

Slipstream wrote:
I have heard a rumour recently that a major player is considering publishing a magazine solely for sci-fi/fantasy wargaming. I can only think of one company in the UK that maybe in a position to do so and that may be Mantic I suppose.

Mantic had a small magazine for a while - Mantic Journal (I have all of the issues).

*Sniffle* I miss Kobold Quarterly. I miss Challenge, The Fantasy Gamer, The Space Gamer, Shadis, Dragon, Dungeon, Different Worlds, Arcane, White Wolf (but not Inphobia)....

The Auld Grump

There's Gygax magazine, as a new offering for RPGs. I wouldn't be surprised if they're open to some wargame articles.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
I wonder though, if GW would even allow it's stuff pictured or reviewed in an independent magazine or if it would go after them?

I'm pretty sure there was a review/painting article on the Valkyrie/Vendetta kit in the issue of Ravage (pretty sure it was Ravage) I got with my Adepticon swag bag last year.

 jah-joshua wrote:
i have a digital White Dwarf subscription, and a digital Ravage one...
if i wasn't in a tiny Mexican village, i would definitely have them in print instead...
it does feel better to have a real magazine, instead of digital...

Ravage is definitely more for gamers...
scenarios and campaigns for X-Wing, Dust, Mercs, and more...
Infinity background and tactics articles...
FLGS spotlights...
Dark-Age rules...
scenery articles...
loads of good stuff, but not useful to me...
still, fun to read, and $6 every two months won't break the bank...

Sounds interesting. I do think there is a market for these types of magazines in physical form but I think they need a "gimmick" to just prevent people from just downloading them instead.. something that ads value. If they're spotlighting a particular game for an issue, a cardstock punchout terrain sheet would be enough for me. If they're doing x-wing, they could have a sheet of alternate asteroids or obstacles/objectives or even a papercraft rebel transport to use instead of the ship in the starter. If they're doing skirmish games, some 3d card terrain that you put together (like the old warhammer fantasy starter had with bretonian village) would be cool. Sorry, I couldn't find a bigger picture.



Additional tiles for clix games (like the ones SWM and DDM used in the beginning). Something physical that can't be easily replicated by downloading a torrented file instead. They could contact various independent conventions and try to work out deals that scenarios and freebies published could be used at events there. Doing that on top of quality articles, additional scenarios and rules, and coverage of various events would go along way in capturing the remaining market.

I may be a young-in (turned 16 a couple days ago)
But i drastically prefer a book/magazine/codex i can have in my hands. i have the two chaos codices, daemons and marines, and i love toting those things around.

Unfortunately i have not experience what a "good" wargaming magazine is. i have a local GW around but judging how much flakk, or rather, how little praise it receives I would rather not spend more money on a magazine i am not committed to.

I have not opened one myself, but i will eventually.

Ravage issue #5 also has a review of Dark Vengeance, so it seems it's ok to do reviews of GW products, just not previews...

cheers
jah

Well, Kenny Robb tried to get the Ancible magazine off the ground a couple of years ago:

http://the-ancible.com

The magazine managed, IIRC, four print copies before going to PDF only, then free. Their readership has now peaked, and Kenny has made the decision to start charging a fee for the PDF again, with a view to getting back to a print copy eventually.

I've always found the Ancible to have great content (admittedly, I wrote some of it) and a good mix of miniatures games, tactical card games, RPGs, reviews, hobby articles and battle reports. They would benefit from an up-tick in writer quality though (like I said: I'm a contributor; I work pretty much for free and occasional favours).

So I would say that the Ancible is the magazine you're looking for, so if you really want the content you say you would like, why not show Kenny some love and buy a copy or two?

R.

I'm subscribed to White Dwarf and No Quarter. I like having them physically, especially being able to read them anywhere, whenever I want. I work at a computer all day, it's nice to have something to read that isn't digital at the end of the day.

I'd really like for there to be a more general magazine, I'd buy it.

I think while it's declined a bit over the years due to the rise electronic media, there will always be an apeal to having a print magazine.

While mobile devices let you go just about anywhere with a pdf it doesn't entirely replace the virtues of a print magazine. Magazines get a lot of restroom read time, quck read during work breaks etc where PDF just don't "feel right".

I grew up reading tons of dragon magazines, white dwarf and especially Mordheim's Town Cryer. They offered a lot of great content that was easy to thumb through. Reading digital magazines is ok but it doesn't replace that feel. There's also something to be said about cracking open an old box of backissues, where digital versions just get deleated or stored in a subfolder that's all too easy to ignore and forget about. Also you can always read magazines by candle light when the power is out (or if you're a super geek like me) you can read it when you go camping etc. Back when I was in boy scouts we'd take our rpg stuff with us, which wouldn't wok as well with digital verisons.

The only thing that's going to give you a sucessful reader base is content which is what far too many gamer magazines ignore. Dragon was choke full of content as were the Town Cryer's, I still re-read them reguarly. Nowdays stuff like White Dwarf is nothing but a bunch of ads, the few articles they feature almost always suck. Privateer's No Quarter is a pretty decent magazine while they have some catalog shots annoucing future releases it's not devoted entirely to paint spank and has a decent amount of actual content. I'm not much into warmachine anymore but I actively collected all the NQ's while I was as they still have a good handle on what running a sucessful gamaing magazine takes.

I think there's definately a demand for good gaming magazines but proper management of content is everything.

Jack_Death wrote:
Hmmm, I am going by the last issue that featured the Vietnam-era FoW stuff on the cover and, near as I could tell with a quick flip-through, throughout the entire issue. If that was an uncharacteristic issue, I stand corrected. For my 10 bucks (or whatever, frankly I wasn't interested enough to ask) there wasn't any reason to look closer.

notprop wrote:I disagree, to say that WI is FoW/BF-centric skews it a bit. True there is prominence given to FoW and I think the level has risen but the vast majority of the mag isn't BF products. If WI stays as it is then the BF connection gives the mag a good backbone of popularist material with allot of room given over to new/different/smaller game. If anything it is rather like WD was between #85 and #99.

As to the question a mix RPG/Wargame mag is appealing to me - Old WD and Valkyrie Magazine were my fixes 20 years ago. There was another one but its name escapes me, I wanna say it was International....something or other?

Herzlos wrote:

Jack_Death wrote:
Unfortunately, WGI has gone the way of White Dwarf - it is now the "house organ" of BattleFront Games. Wall to wall Flames of War. It is great if you are a FoW fan (fanboi?) but not so great as a general wargaming mag anymore. I miss the good old days - Dragon, White Dwarf, Wargames Illustrated, The Courier, Wargames Monthly. Of course we can spend a virtually unlimited amount of time surfing gaming content online these days, so that is the tradeoff.

That's definitely unfair to WGI. Yes it's owned by Battlefront, and there's a page or 2 of FoW new releases and most WW2 articles are based on FoW, but the vast amount of content and page count is dedicated to other games and eras. I skip over the FoW stuff and still find plenty in the magazine worth reading.

There is, however, almost no SF content (it's a historics magazine) or reviews of non-gaming things

LuciusAR wrote:Talk of WI being the battlefront equivalent to WD is hyperbolic. Obviously there is going to be FOW content in each issue but there are still plenty of other periods and manufacturers covered as well. WW2 coverage is admittedly very FOW centric and even though other rule sets are covered it only tends to be ones like Bolt Action, that don’t compete directly against FOW.

I did hear a rumor that BF don't allow other 15mm WW2 makers to advertise or feature in any photos, though I've never checked to be sure. I once heard that the guy behind Plastic Soldier Company was told that WI would only carry adverts for his 1/72 or 28mm ranges. Though I don’t know if this is still the case.

That one was more FoW heavy than most, as it was covering Vietnam gaming. But there was (if I recall correctly) an equal number of articles on the ACW, and also decent coverage of Vikings and the Carlist war.

A good magazine is expensive to produce and thus expensive to purchase. I think the liklihood of someone producing a magazine that is worth the ten dollars it would cost is rather vanishingly small.

I sold my collection of Dragon issues 42 to 300 and something to someone in France and I am seriously thinking about ditching my White Dwarf collection that goes back to 100

A new wargaming magazine is going to be smart about it.

They will publish in the following formats:

1) Digital, designed for tablets.
2) Digital, PDF.
3) Print-On-Demand.

Now, here are the problems.

A digital magazine will be pirated. There's just no way around it. But the people who don't pay for things...will never pay for things. So this is not 'lost revenue', just 'part of the business. Your job is to make a good enough magazine so that people will buy their own copies.

It is expensive to make content. Just ask the internet. If you want quality, you have to pay people. and you have to pay them up front, not a promise of payment after you've sold the magazine. Then you have to have an editor, layout artist, a salesperson and an advertising salesperson. Yes, some of these jobs could be done by more than one person, but do it right the first time, or don't do it at all.

Creating a magazine with gaming content (pull out card terrain, etc) is HORRIFICALLY expensive. This is why magazines are now printed in places like China. It is cheaper to bulk print there and ship it OVER THE LARGEST OCEAN, than it is to bulk print in the United States (for example). And they're still not making a lot of money (no external ads), which is why there's a $10 USD price tag on the cover. but you're not getting neat insert, anymore. You're paying, monthly for a glossy multi-page advert/catalog.

And the topper on the cherry? There ain't enough people out there to support a niche magazine. Niche mags used to work, because there was no internet, and this is how you got your news and information. In this, the 21st century, that's no longer the case. To build a successful (ie: making money to pay YOU and your STAFF a decent, living wage), the work required would be enormous.

The is why the 'high quality gaming mags' out there are off-shoots of existing companies, that can afford the start-up costs, advertising costs, etc.

My $0.02. YMMV.

--B.

I think there is a market for it still, especially if you put wargaming, RPGs, and book reviews in it.

Niche magazines still are viable, many of the most reliable magazines are dedicated to niche markets. In addition to WI which has been mentioned, you still have Miniature Wargames as well

http://www.exacteditions.com/read/miniature-wargames

You also have a variety which are on the edges like Amazing Figure Modeler and Military Modeling and other magazines which blurr the line between miniatures and models.

As far as doing a proper launch of a magazine, miniature related or otherwise though...it would be a proposition that I would be hesitant to put money into. Paying writers, selling advertisements, dealing with printing, arranging distribution to get on news stands and in book stores is a lot of headaches. Before the first magazine sells, you would be into it for the price of a nice house (either in terms of time or money...or likely both). Online distribution would cut out a lot of that (Kindle versions to get on Amazon and all that). Even there though, writers contracts and legal concerns are not trvial...though small ezines skip a lot of that.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
Niche magazines still are viable, many of the most reliable magazines are dedicated to niche markets. In addition to WI which has been mentioned, you still have Miniature Wargames as well

I suspect these are still on the market due to momentum and that their demographic trends towards older, non-internet-savvy people.