Tzeentch's Advocate: White Dwarf Changes

Yes, I've decided to give my “Games Workshop reaction” posts a title. Perhaps one day I'll even work out what to do with it. Anyway..., the long running Games Workshop magazine White Dwarf is changing and having spoken to a local GW employee I'm rather exciting to see where this goes. Basically there'll be two magazines now: one weekly, one monthly.

The weekly will take the White Dwarf name and a significant reduction in page count. 32 pages for £2.40 (the price, the GW website reminds us, of a pot of Citadel paint) and will have some new columns, the week's releases, painting guides and new game rules. So, yes, weekly releases are go, the rumour being two weeks in a typical four week month going to GW models/rule books, one week for Forge World, one for Black Library.

Sounds good. It's the game rules being included that might be interesting: flimsy print versions of Dataslates, perhaps? Pilots for later collection are also a possibility as the various flier rules that later got collected together to be Death From The Skies.

The monthly will be Warhammer Visions and here we get to the metaphor of two traders breaking up the business. White Dwarf Weekly gets the name and goodwill while Warhammer Vision gets the truck, the tools and the address book of repeat customers.

Or, to be more literal, they get Standard Bearer, Blanchitsu, Paint Splatter and Army Of The Month. No word on Jeremy Vetock's column but I live in hope. Actually, I live in hope that in one of these magazine they'll bring back Mike Walker and the Reverend Jeff Leong, the best columnists White Dwarf ever knew.

Visions weighs in at an amazing 236 pages per issue for £7.50 and there's even more extra content than it sounds like because the store directory is being cut from the magazine because it's been useless ever since the internet got its act together.

I'll get the first copy of both on February 1^st but I'm almost certain that the new White Dwarf will be an occasional purchase and Visions will be my regular fix. It sounds like Visions will be the more hobby-focussed and Low Fat White Dwarf will be the gaming focussed one and we all know where my heart lies.