So last time I finished with a summing up of whether White Dwarf was worth it if you calculate the price adjusted to account for inflation and I’m pretty convinced it was still a good deal, however what happens if you want to buy the products. In issue 91 there are an assortment of miniatures advertised along with their own board game called Blood Royale. In todays money it would cost £50 and that’s proper board game money. Will they convince me to buy it. Lets see.
First a review of the citadel miniatures releases for July. They all look awful and I wouldn’t buy them with someone else’s money, to be fair they quality of the photos of them is extremely washed out so most of the detail is gone. However considering there aren’t even painted pictures of them in this magazine it doesn’t inspire confidence.
Critical Mass is again very good, I’m wondering if he’s still doing this somewhere. I hope he’s still alive.
Next is a essay on the Cthulhu Mythos. A proper essay about what Lovecraft believed and how the Mythos fits together, its a nice intelligent opinion piece that you wouldn’t really get in today magazine and worth a read.
Have you ever wanted to add critical fumbles to your games where you go to load your crossbow and accidentally drop all your arrows on the ground. No? Oh come on.
Cardboard dungeon sections. Thrud buys a chainsaw. Dave Langford writes a bizarre three page story about some kind of apocalypse, its easily the most surreal article I’ve ever read in White Dwarf however it does have a really nice running illustration in the style of the Bayeux Tapestry.
Derek the Troll is easily the worst page of this issue. Even with only two pages per months of comic sketches it does devalue the entire magazine. Fortunately there is an advert on the following page so to voice your displeasure you could rip the page out and mail it back to them.
Next there is a full colour page advert of a Warhammer dragon with rules for use in Warhammer and a points cost. Sadly it’s still no good. You’re not missing anything.
Don’t worry it’s time for your monthly Paranoia article, all nine pages of it. Which is great. We are 2/3 of the way through now and they haven’t put anything in supporting their new £50 board game. It doing a really good job of building up the anticipation for it.
WFRP rules on how to be a noble. It’s a step up from the last issue and a lot more interesting to have a character who deals with court increase rather than calculating the profit and loss of their basket weaving startup.
If you wanted to know how to deal with the public order disturbances in Britain from the turn of the century up to 1939 in correct historical style with some examples of actual riots at this time for your British based Call of Cthulhu campaign they have you sorted.
Here we go on page 60 we have what looked like an advert for the board game but turns out to be a knightly role playing game character generation piece for a game called Pendragon to fix the rules from the book.
Then OMG we have the first ever Eavy Metal article ever, it even uses the classic logo and everything. Unfortunately rather than start out on page 1 with the best painted miniature that comes to hand they take a picture of someone’s thumb after a moddling knife accident. Oh well from small seeds…
Starting on page 70 we get into the first ever Warhammer Fantasy Battle battle report. But wait, it’s just a scenario. I went back and checked the cover and it turns out there was no actual battle report advertised so I’ll have to wait a little while longer, you can see how the front cover is filled more more adverts for Warhammer than anything else. A few more pages and it’s the letters and classified ads and there it ends. No mention of their new game past the editorial section. Wow. You think that a modern White Dwarf advertises their own products too much, this issue went too much in the other direction.
In conclusion, the focus on miniatures seemed to start here but there is a long road to go before there is any need to bust out the inflation calculator to see how much a nice looking model costs. Meanwhile they forget about the huge expensive board game they advertised. Maybe in the next issue?
