White Dwarf January 2013 - Review

White dwarf January 2013 is now out, a little later than normal (in the actual month the magazine says) and once again we get a poster... this one is a hobbit product list. It’s just a obvious way to try and promote hobbit sales but there you go. Got to sell plastic crack somehow. 

Let’s start with the new stuff that was re-leased this month. The big thing is the release of the Dark angels codex along with a duel kit of terminators (Deathwing knights and command squad), duel kit of a heavy land speeder (the darkshroud and vengeance), duel kit of bikes (command squad and black knights) and a duel flyer kit (the dark talon and Nephilim jetfighter). We also get a hand full of old characters re-hashed special characters and a couple of new ones. A couple of hobbit models are released alongside but they are somewhere over shadowed by the 40k releases. No new fantasy this month.  The multi-kits do look good but a little bit of a hefty price tag, but I'm very disappointed with some of the new special characters. The old ones look great still, but the model for Belial and Asmodai are disappointing, they just don’t stand out, in a squad they would just blend into the back ground and that just feels wrong for me. I like my characters to stand out, to look imposing, they just don’t for me.  

Forgeworld and Black library get their usual spots with forgeworld showing off the mourngul, some contemptor dreadnaughts and Imperial armour volume 1 second edition. I can’t help but feel that white dwarf are a little behind on the forgeworld stuff, I would prefer them to have some sort of exclusive preview. But what I don’t get is they do that later on in the magazine at the end for blackfire pass. Why not just put those two parts together and make it easier for every one? They are some sexy models though. Black library shows off a few new books. They sound interesting so I might pick up the rise of Nagash, gotta love that guy.

Army on parade show off a Tyranids army by Jes Bickham, the white dwarf editor. They are green Tyranids which I have seen since the 3^rd edition codex. Really they pop up in white dwarf and on line every now and then. They are a cool colour and have a number of different editions of models. He says that he has been starting since rogue trader and loved nids from the off. You can see a few second edition models but none of the old school rogue trader ones... it’s just a little odd. Maybe they aren’t his best painted... who knows. It’s just a little thing that bugged me. But it is a very good looking army, kinda jealous.

The Battle report this month is between dark angels (as you would expect) and chaos space marines, the two new big boys go at it. A little disappointing that is marine on marine action once again but such is life. They go at it in a custom scenario where the dark angels are hunting a member of the fallen and don’t use a force organisation chart.  It was a refreshing little change that they tried something new, granted its odd but why not? They should be trying out new ideas and putting them in white dwarf, not just use the same old same old (which they do... every week). Anyway back on topic, the battle report is very short again but it’s getting a little more detail than it has in the past. So I won’t give it to much grief about it. Spoiler alert, chaos lose, new boys win. A few little rules are given out which surprised me, the plasma storm battery on the vengeance appears to be a large blast, so I can only assume it’s still strength 7 ap 2. Potentially twin linked... but that one’s just a guess. And the Deathwing knights can make their attacks strength 10 ap 2... nice. Possibly over powered, but that remains to be seen. Over all the battle is nothing special but such is life.

Next we go onto a little article called The rivals where two gamers argue over which terminators are the best, assault terminators or grey knight terminators. Personally if they went one on one the assault terminators would dominate the grey knights but they put them against orks, chaos space marines, necron lychguard and then finally the swarm lord. Overall the grey knights win, which I can understand In those scenarios as the assault terminators are anti-tank and elite/monstrous creatures while the grey knights can do a little of everything. It seems a little desperate doing a ‘which is better’ against other units as it would depend on the army, what you take, what they take etc... I don’t get why they did it.

Finally we hit something totally new, a section on Golden demon, it says part 1 so I'm guessing we are getting it next month as well. It’s a good collection, showing off some of the top end entries from Germany, USA, Spain and Australia. I love some of these, I have seen some before, but I have to tip my cap to Nick James from Australia, who’s entry into the open competition was genstealers attacking the imperial guard crew of a downed valkyrie. Beautiful, it’s beautifully done.  

The rest is just the same from the past white dwarf magazines, Battle ground showing off a beautiful dwarf table, if I had the skills I would love to make a table like that. If anyone reading this would like to make me one, I will happily accept. Hell I would just love to play on a table like that a couple of times. Next we get Painting which is mainly dark angels and how to paint the Tyranids already mentioned. It’s useful, for the people who will no doubt be dragged into playing dark angels by all the new shiny stuff... and I don’t blame them. We get articles by Jervis Johnson and Jeremy Vetock which is same old same old, I can’t be bothered going over them, its nothing good, just skip it. Blanchistsu however takes a different route, he shows off similar models but by different people. I like them, they are painted to a higher level than his own stuff. They are some good conversions; I am starting to think that I just don’t like his style of painting, not the actual models themselves.

So that's the review for this month’s dwarf. No fantasy apart from a damn table!! Wtf? Come on it was there long before the hobbit and that at least gets a new release. I understand that they have to push the new stuff but come on! Give everyone a little something; don’t just push the new stuff. Very disappointed but looking at the end of it, the very last page has a picture of the Arachnarok spider. It intrigues me a little as to what’s going to happen next.  

Side note: hall of fame has Karl Franz and Deathclaw, I just want to know when did deathclaw get so many steroids? Griffons aren’t the size of a tower!!! The isle of blood griffon is the regular size they have always been, why is deathclaw thrice the size? If you can explain why tell me.