Opening Salvo - Jes has toned it down to an appropriate level, and comes across much better for it. The new models are described as being terrific which sums them up and doesn't make me feel like I'm being sold to.
New Releases - Chaos Daemons, so a double release. This has always intrigued me and put me off at the same time. The fact that the minis have to be designed to be compatible with both systems must put a lot of restrictions on the design process but I think they've done a good job of keeping the grimdark in there. It's mostly (well actually only) the Nurgle kits I'm interested in and they look suitably gribbly. The Plague Drones look interesting, but the Herald of Nurgle is amazing, proper nasty stuff. These look like they'll fit in very nicely with the other daemons released a few months ago.Forge World show us what they've released over the past few weeks, with some of the special units from the Betrayal. I guess the rampagers weren't quite ready when this went to print.
Licensed Games is something slightly different this time. They've released Warhammer Quest for the ipad. I'd seen this back at GD2012 and had a chat to one of the designers, and this might actually be the first app that I pay for. I never played the original boxed game but was very interested in it from reading articles in old WDs.
Army of the Month - A very Forge World heavy marine army this month with a crazy number of superheavies. The scale of it is impressive but I don't feel as inspired by it as last months.
Jervis Johnson - The importance of letting the dice decide. My initial reaction was the think 'why don't you just develop watertight rules in the first place?' Then when I stopped to think about it, a foolproof set of strict rules would be bad (can you tell I'm not competitive yet) as it would greatly reduce the freedom we have in making this game our own.
Battle Report - Daemons v Space Marines. The daemons were a mixed god list but weighted towards Nurgle which I liked, and used the FW plague toads which is cool. The one thing that struck me about the battle was the board. It was a relatively simple set up, one that could be easily achieved by any gamer without a huge budget.
Blanchitsu - More warbands, and another showcase of a hobbyists fantastic conversions. See previous Blanchitsu reviews for appropriate comments.Hall of Fame - Urien Rakarth is nominated by Neil Green. It's cool to see concept artwork and it's a nice model. As with a lot of these articles I'm not too sure of it's classic status yet.
Parade Ground - Even even more Golden Demon entries. Possibly going too far with this series as it's taken over from the real article for a bit too long. One idea could be to have a Golden Demon section as well as Parade Ground, just showing a single category each month, that way it won't have such an impact on content.
Kit Bash - I thought they'd covered flyers a few issues ago? There's some really neat conversions but I've got a strong sense of dejavu.
Battle Ground - Further showcases from Armies on Parade. The Tau board is very eye-catching. The Imperial Fists are a little underwhelming though.
Paint Splatter - More chaos orientated mini tutorials, how to use the spray gun and the tricky subject of how to paint yellow marines.
Jeremy Vetock - This time round Jeremy talks about what fucks him off. It's an interesting piece as it highlights that things aren't always happy and rosy. Of course it's all done in a tongue-in-cheek manner to keep the mood light, and it was a fun read.
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| Beth's awesome Raider, not mentioned in the review. |
This Month In - Blanche returns to talk about the artwork of Chaos and how this informed the design process. There's talk of inspiration, thought processes and outcomes. The piece about cartography was a nice touch too.From Forge World there's some great bits that haven't been seen before. The Mechanicum Thallax is intresting, and it's great to see another RoB section in the works. Looks like this one will fit in with the first one.
I didn't feel quite as excited reading this issue as I did the previous one. It's possibly down to repetition more than anything but I'll give it a 7/10.