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You’ve probably been hearing it for years and it is all over the internet; White Dwarf used to be so much better, why don’t they have proper articles?, it’s just a glorified sales magazine now......

Call it nostalgia, call it random internet complaining, but I really miss the good old days of White Dwarf. When I first started in this hobby back in high school, one of the highlights of the month was waiting for the new White Dwarf to be released. On a Friday, I would get off the school bus a few stops early to go to the newsagents and buy a copy- it was worth the extra walk home. I would then spend the whole weekend poring over my copy, carefully reading and re-reading every article, checking out the battle report(s) for tactical hints and tips, looking for terrain ideas to add to my slowly expanding collection. To a young hobby-er, just starting to get into the game, it was bliss!

My first issue was White Dwarf 210, way back in May 1997, and I had (and still have) a complete collection of issues spanning several years (maybe even a decade). I don’t know when I stopped buying it on a regular basis, but I think I kept it up for a good while despite reading very little of the content for a long run of issues towards the end.

One of the reasons that I so lament the fall of White Dwarf was that it was an excellent resource for a gamer. It used to have well-written articles about tactics, painting, campaigns, scenarios and making terrain. I have several shelves in my gaming room filled with back issues that I frequently use for reference. I have garnered hints and tips that I still use to this day in my painting and terrain making. I also look through them to get terrain ideas when I am looking for a project to start or for army painting colour schemes.

But that's enough complaining. Originally when I first started this post, I wanted it to be a list of my top ten articles that had appeared over the years in White Dwarf. As I began looking through my collection, however, I found that I had way more than 10 copies put aside to write about. Instead, I thought I would go through some of my favourite types of articles that used to feature, and highlight some specific articles that epitomise what I liked.

1. Designer Notes- I used to love these sections. Whenever a new codex, army book or edition of the game was released, it would be supported by an article (or several) in White Dwarf. In it, they would take you through (for example) the major changes to a new edition of 40k, explaining what had been changed and why. This helped give context to the new edition and the reasons behind the changes that had been implemented. It gave you great insight into the games development process and provided some reasoning as to why changes had been made. I specifically bought the White Dwarf issue where 6th edition 40k was launched (I had stopped buying it regularly at this point). I remember reading page after page about how 40k was being made more “cinematic” with little discussion of why new rules had been implemented or removed. I think it was at this point, I was pretty much finished with the magazine.

2. Mike Walker articles- In my opinion, the pinnacle of White Dwarf writing. Mike Walker was a contributor to White Dwarf for several years and wrote a series of articles about Warhammer fantasy. Despite not playing fantasy at this point, I absolutely loved his articles. An equal mix of insightful points and humour, he wrote about a variety of subjects including teaching new players how to play, running a gaming league, the intricacies of the magic phase and many more. His articles were well thought out, genuinely funny (with a liberal dose of humorous footnotes and Kylie Minogue references) and were an excellent read that I still enjoy to this day.

For more examples of my favourite articles, see http://standwargaming.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/fondly-remembering-white-dwarf.html

What about the rest of you? What are some of your favourite articles from White Dwarf past?

It was the modelling section of white dwarf that helped introduce me to the hobby. Our history teacher had shown us a catalog of Golden Demon winning models, which was interesting, but not more so than any other piece of art. He also had a collection of white dwarfs that he kept in his desk at school and lent one to me one day when he was trying to start up a Warhammer club. The artwork and detail in the "How to pin Treebeard with detachable hobbits" (probably not actual article name) article captured my interest. The rest of the magazine was filled with beautiful artwork from a wide range of armies as well as fluff that hinted at wide and diverse worlds.

It was that article that led me to read the rest of the magazine, then the stack, and finally to join the wargaming club.

I always looked forward to the Golden Demon issues. So many beautiful models.

I liked the tale of four gamers series. Each month 4 guys would have a budget (I forget how much) to add to their army to build and play. Was fun from a more practical point, as hobbyists would build an army up with realistic limits, and a mix of modeling fun and tabletop goals.

I always liked White Dwarf BEFORE it became a house organ, when it was a generic gaming magazine. My first issue of White Dwarf was in the teens, 14 or 15 I believe. It had articles on Call of Cthulhu and D&D and other games. It was a pretty cool mag back in those days. It also wasn't bad in its early days and through its middle age as a house organ. Sadly after that it started the shift from a gaming/hobby magazine with some advertising to an advertising catalog with some gaming/hobby info.

Heavy metal back in the day used to be really great as a resource with dozens of unique minis and pages of details on how paint and color effects were achieved on them. In recent issues I really liked the Blanchitsu section, just because John's penchant for those small inquisition themed games and the warbands he customizes for them really appeal to me. I do think his painting style is gak, though, but I love the conversions and the concepts behind the warbands. Annoyingly that feature is now in Warhammer Visions. So I don't get to see it anymore, except on the rare occasion the comic store gets tired of seeing issues sitting on the shelf for free and just give them away.

As you say OP, they were better. If posters got included, stickers, maybe the odd audio book cd, plus all the other cool stuff as long ago we'd have a good mag again.

Once every few months should allow enough content and profit i'd have thought? Sure it wouldn't be less than a fiver...

 Nevelon wrote:
I always looked forward to the Golden Demon issues. So many beautiful models.

I liked the tale of four gamers series. Each month 4 guys would have a budget (I forget how much) to add to their army to build and play. Was fun from a more practical point, as hobbyists would build an army up with realistic limits, and a mix of modeling fun and tabletop goals.

The budget for tale of four gamers was £150 (£50 to start and £25 for four weeks). Again, one of my favourite series of articles in the magazine. Don't know how far that budget would get you these days though.

Yes, it was better. Anyone else remember how to make lily pads from bottle caps and reeds from brushes?

Index Astartes was awesome, I think that was my favourite.

I don't think I'll ever pay for a WD again - why would I pay for a product catalogue?

 ChazSexington wrote:
Index Astartes was awesome, I think that was my favourite.

I like those article so much I bought some of them twice. Once in the WD, and one or two of the compilation books.

Definitely the battle reports - they taught me tactics
The ones nowadays are lacklustre and short (not to mention very rare)

 Scion of the Emperor wrote:
Definitely the battle reports - they taught me tactics
The ones nowadays are lacklustre and short (not to mention very rare)

I agree with that, the battle reports were a great place to get some tactical advice for a budding general. When I started doing my own battle reports on the blog, I tried to emulate the old White Dwarf ones as much as possible, including thoughts on my army selection and after battle thoughts, as well as doing overview maps for each turn.

 Skriker wrote:
I always liked White Dwarf BEFORE it became a house organ, when it was a generic gaming magazine. My first issue of White Dwarf was in the teens, 14 or 15 I believe. It had articles on Call of Cthulhu and D&D and other games.

White Dwarf was pretty much always a house organ, they were just a lot more subtle about it: Before Warhammer took off GW's bread and butter was import and distribution - if you bought any American RPG product in the UK at the time chances were it was imported or even printed under license by GW. It's ironic that GW subsequently started to falsely refer to 'The GW Hobby' as the be-all and end-all of gaming when once upon a time - at least in the UK - it actually had been.

 Gashrog wrote:

 Skriker wrote:
I always liked White Dwarf BEFORE it became a house organ, when it was a generic gaming magazine. My first issue of White Dwarf was in the teens, 14 or 15 I believe. It had articles on Call of Cthulhu and D&D and other games.

White Dwarf was pretty much always a house organ, they were just a lot more subtle about it: Before Warhammer took off GW's bread and butter was import and distribution - if you bought any American RPG product in the UK at the time chances were it was imported or even printed under license by GW. It's ironic that GW subsequently started to falsely refer to 'The GW Hobby' as the be-all and end-all of gaming when once upon a time - at least in the UK - it actually had been.

I never had a problem with advertising in White Dwarf, they had to make money some way, but the content was so good that you didn't mind it and kept buying it every month.
I was a bit annoyed when Lord of the Rings was launched and you were losing a third to a half of the magazine for a game I had no interest in (I didn't play fantasy at that point, but I still enjoyed reading about and keeping up with it).

I haven't purchased a WD in years. Its more of a GW catalog than a gaming magazine IMO. I miss the converting articles, I miss the modeling articles (how to magnetize your plastic dudes). It's definitely not what it used to be.

I sometimes get a new White Dwarf if they are showcasing new stuff I am even remotely interested in. I like the Paint Splatter parts the best, I just wish they would do more stuff like that (and not just on the new models!).

Oh man the old Tale of Four gamers where they would have a budget and could only add in model that they could afford and then would play against each other were great! The old Warhammer battle reports I could read for hours! The Perry twins! The Fat Bloke! Oh my!

It's really unfortunate going through the history of White Dwarf.

It's evolved over time quite significantly, but the last decade really saw a rather steep decline in quality, and I have no idea why anyone would pay money for it at this point unless they just *need* to see pretty pictures of whatever is coming out the next week.

Looking at it's early incarnations, you had all sorts of D&D and third party stuff, and even when it switched to a house publication they had all sorts of updates, expansions, FAQ's etc for things like Space Hulk and the mainline games. Now this got progressibely trimmed over time to largely just be 40K/WHFB/LOTR stuff by ~2004 or so, but up until that point it still had cool new stuff, awesome fluff, new rules, deisgners notes, etc.

And then after that it started to rapidly decline into just a pretty picture catalog of whatever was being released that month, and by the end of 4E about the only things worth bothering with were some of the painting stuff.

I'm really not sure how it remains profitable or why GW keeps it around. Hell, it might have more luck returning back to it's more original roots and being a generalist gaming publication.

-

Well, I remember the glorious column by the ''brain'' JJ.
I don't miss it.

I loved that every issue had articles for 40k, fantasy, and lotr. It was full of great articles (loved the eavy metal painting articles... qhat happened to those... the new painting articles look like they were painted by amateurs). I also liked the golden demon articles, terrain building articles, and multiple battle reports (from different game systems). I now buy 4 in a month that have almost no content to them... makes me sad.

I loved the good old days, like when the demo for Battlefleet Gothic was released as a selection of cardstock punch outs of cruisers, blast markers, etc, so you could play cruiser clashes with the beta rules included.

The late 90's early 2000's were awesome years to read White Dwarf.

Definitely agree the battle reports. The 10-20 page reports with maps and pictures made the experience and were a lot more entertaining to read. I like a lot of Dakka reports for the same reasons.

I loved the good old days, like when the demo for Battlefleet Gothic was released as a selection of cardstock punch outs of cruisers, blast markers, etc, so you could play cruiser clashes with the beta rules included.

The late 90's early 2000's were awesome years to read White Dwarf.

Agreed. Remember "Brewhouse Bash"? It was a mini game that came in a mid/late 90's White Dwarf. It was a small map of a pub and was basically a game about Orcs having bar fights. A real gem.

Like others, I also loved the old staples like, "A Tale of Two Gamers" and the great battle reports. One of my favorites was from the "Fat Bloke" era of White Dwarf and (I *THINK*) might have been one of the first appearances of the White Scars. The studio had just made a new trench battle game board and wanted ot use it for a battle report. Fat Bloke ran his White Scars army against Phil Kelly's entrenched CSM. In retrospect the bike army was an odd choice for trench warfare but it kind of helps illustrate some of the craziness of the time. Niether the game nor the makers of the game took themselves too seriously at the time.

My other favorite was an issue that detailed terrain someone had made over a series of lunch breaks for his Lizardmen army. Great article with some cool techniques and materials. This was back when they would advocate going to craft/hobby/hardware stores rather than suggesting you buy GW OFFICIAL CARD STOCK(TM) or any of that nonsense.

Man I miss those days.

I bought all the old issues I threw out when I got back into the hobby and they really hold up. Some of the terrain stuff was incredible. Always recall an awesome Necromunda board that was over 5 foot tall.

I have a whole bunch of old White Dwarfs. I love them.
It is a great pity what became of it.

This was my first WD, waaaay back in the early 90's.

The Tale of Four Gamers were good articles.

The first time they began releasing Battle Reports (before the internet was common, back in the early mid 90's)

The fluff back in the late 80s and early 90s were fantastic, but this was before we had the Black Library pushing out fiction on a weekly basis.

Eavy Metal

How to type articles, such as building terrain back then were fantastic.

Most of these articles are essentially dated and would not be overly good in today's society as essentially all this information is easily accessible through the internet.

 wuestenfux wrote:
Well, I remember the glorious column by the ''brain'' JJ.
I don't miss it.

Who'd of thought someone would actually let Jervis go through with all the stuff he rambled about in his column (balance is a bad thing, no points, no FOC etc)

Probably the most thumbed copy of White Dwarf amongst my friends was the one with the AD&D Necromancer character class back in the 80s. Also have fond memories of the Thrud comic strip

Tycho wrote:

I loved the good old days, like when the demo for Battlefleet Gothic was released as a selection of cardstock punch outs of cruisers, blast markers, etc, so you could play cruiser clashes with the beta rules included.

The late 90's early 2000's were awesome years to read White Dwarf.

Agreed. Remember "Brewhouse Bash"? It was a mini game that came in a mid/late 90's White Dwarf. It was a small map of a pub and was basically a game about Orcs having bar fights. A real gem.

Like others, I also loved the old staples like, "A Tale of Two Gamers" and the great battle reports. One of my favorites was from the "Fat Bloke" era of White Dwarf and (I *THINK*) might have been one of the first appearances of the White Scars. The studio had just made a new trench battle game board and wanted ot use it for a battle report. Fat Bloke ran his White Scars army against Phil Kelly's entrenched CSM. In retrospect the bike army was an odd choice for trench warfare but it kind of helps illustrate some of the craziness of the time. Niether the game nor the makers of the game took themselves too seriously at the time.

My other favorite was an issue that detailed terrain someone had made over a series of lunch breaks for his Lizardmen army. Great article with some cool techniques and materials. This was back when they would advocate going to craft/hobby/hardware stores rather than suggesting you buy GW OFFICIAL CARD STOCK(TM) or any of that nonsense.

Man I miss those days.

That was one of my favourite battle reports. It was from WD230 and featured Paul Sawyer's amazing White Scars army (they still looking amazing by current standards). I loved the trench board too. It was really inspiring when I had a go at making my own trench board. They also included White Scars themed army lists, so you could take your own army of Scars.

I was a big fan of Brewhouse bash too. A really simple game, but a lot of fun (even though, poke in the eye was seriously overpowered, they should nerf that in the next version )


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sarigar wrote:
The Tale of Four Gamers were good articles.

I loved the first version of this series. It featured another amazing army by Paul Sawyer. His Beastmen were fantastic.

 foostick wrote:
I bought all the old issues I threw out when I got back into the hobby and they really hold up. Some of the terrain stuff was incredible. Always recall an awesome Necromunda board that was over 5 foot tall.

I built my own version of that board! The original was so awesome.