Monday 26 November 2012

White Dwarf 396 & Wargames Illustrated 302




This months white dwarf is of course focused on the new Hobbit releases, but thankfully they seemed to have learnt a bit and it doesn't overly dominate the magazine.  Again the first 50 or so pages are taken up with the new releases, I know it's important to showcase the new stuff but I'd really like to see the page count on this section come down.  This months battle report is Hobbit related and not a bad read, jeremy, jervis and john blanche all return, but I didn't find any of them that inspiring this month.  On the other hand parade ground (40K flyers), kit bash and the army of the month (an ogre army) were definatly inspiring.  Other than that 'the rivals' returns and the 'this month in' sections at the back were quite interesting.  A reasonable issuse overall.

As the picture above shows this months issuse also came with a very large double sided poster which is basically a giant advert for 40K, with just the standard minis we've all seem before layed out all together.  Very boring I'm afraid and mine went straight in the bin.

A couple of quick thoughts on the new Hobbit line whilst we're here, the models look great, I like pretty much all of them.  Also it's something I've wanted ever since I got into wargaming and first read the Hobbit (around the same time actually), and now they're finally here I'm very impressed, what I'm not impressed with is some of the prices.  The main boxed set looks to be OK (just), but some of the others are insanely priced (e.g. 3 plastic trolls for £50).  It's a shame I'd love an excuse to buy it all, but at these prices I can only see me getting the main boxed set, and possibly, maybe stretch to some of the plastic orcs in the future.  Also although it was predictable I'm very glad they kept it in the same game as the LOTR figures, I'm getting sucked back into middle-earth already.




The theme of this months wargames illustrated is the french and indian wars of the 18th century.  It's not a period I collect, but is one I'd like to do at some point in the future.  Theme articles were an overview, both of the history and the forces, a battle report and a look at how to make period terrain.  Flames of war is quiet this month with the only real article being about the US nationals, which features an awful lot of very nicely painted models.  Savage wars of peace returns with a look at our heroes followers and the first anglo-afghan war, I'm really enjoying this series and hope it keeps going for quite some time.  There is more 19th century action  with looks at the satsuma rebellion in Japan and the US army for the american-mexico war.  The other article of interest was an interview with Bryan Ansell, who of course has been involved with Games Workshop, Wargames Foundry and others for many years.  A good issuse all round. 

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