New Releases
The main thing as always in WD is the new releases and I doubt anyone had missed out on which army would a new Codex this time around. The Space Marines is back and we have all seen the pictures heard the new rules etc. So we knew pretty much everything regarding this release. We get a new Codex of course (I got my copy today and it is awesome) and some new kits, including those Centurions (still dislike the look of these, much cooler in the artwork I must say) a favourite kit of the new ones is the Sternguard, where you get some great models and some much needed combi weapons as well. We get really nice pictures of all the new kits, all of them in Ultra smurfs colours but also some small pictures of White Scars, Imperial Fists, Crimson Fists and Iron Hands. More diversity here would have been nice. We also get some pictures and information regarding the new Codex and shows us some of it's pages.
This month's Battle Report is an really interesting one and spans over 18 pages! Matt Hutson is using his really big army of Black Templars and is going off against an evil Chaos Nurgle coalition of Chaos Space Marines and Daemons. It has big pictures again and is nice and easy to read, still I think a little more Narrative had made it even better, but still a really nice Battle Report.
In Army of the Month we luckily don't get too see even more Space Marines as this time we get to see Owen Patten's Chaos Ogres. It may not be the best painted army Iv'e seen but surely one with the most conversions. He uses a wide variety of kits and I think that all of his miniatures has so kind of conversion, really nice army.
In Hall of fame this month Glenn (WD Photo Editior) nominates ones of my favourite models, the Arachnarok Spider. I usually don't fancy this segment that much but this one has some interesting insight from the Aly Morrison (one of the sculptors on the model).
Armour trough the Ages is an article about... you guessed it. Power Armour. Really interesting read actually about how the design of the different marks developed and some history behind them. Strangely we don't get to see any of the Forgeworld models and the article could have been more fleshed out to make it even better, but a nice read nonetheless.
The War Diary continues and we get more really nice models to look at. We get two pages for Dan Hardens Empire showing his War Altar of Morr (where he has borrowed the idea of using Arch Confessor Kyrinov as a Morr priest from me actually, well I think so because he made a comment about me using him as a Priest/Arch Lector whent I sent him pictures of my Empire Army). We also get so his Great Swords and Display board.
The Bad
I should rename this I guess, because nothing is really bad in this issue. Some things could have been better though. For example the Kit Bash section, here we get a Kit Bash between three kits pretty much, the new Space Marine kit, Sternguard Kit and Vanguard Kit. Sure the models looks nice but I think we all can do that. Sure the name of it is Kit Bash but I think you can go further and make even more interesting models using more kits.
Paint Splatter again it's not bad, but could be better. We get to see how to paint Space Marines and SM Tanks using drybrushing, so quite basic actually. There's some more focus on a Centurion and Ultra Marines but we get some basic tips on Black Templars, Imperial Fists, Crimson Fists, Salamanders and White Scars as well.
Conclusion
I like this issue, but if you dislike Space Marines, this is probably not the issue for you. There are still things I would like to see in future WD:s though. More fluff for example, I remember those Index Astertes in the old WD for example, something like that would be cool. Then I would also liked to see more from the other chapters and their succesor chapters in this issue, little to much of the smurfs for my liking.
Another thing I would have liked to see is and I know they don't do this no more, example army lists using each of Chapter Tactics. Like how an Iron Hands army could look like, Salamanders etc.
All in all this is an nice issue and I won't be so harsh with the rating as I maybe where in the last one so here it is.
Rating: 3