I started reading White Dwarf back in issue 70 or so. That was the golden 80's and WD was primarily a roleplaying magazine. And I was a starting roleplayer, so it fit me perfectly.

I saw WD's change into a Citadel miniatures magazine firsthand, and quite frankly I liked it. Even though the emphasis shifted almost completely to GW 3-D Hobby Games, as they were called back then, and miniatures, the magazine was still chock full of articles. Articles about the games, articles about the miniatures, new rules, conversion instructions and much more. This picture is a Sci-Fi tank I built using a WD article for instructions (and ad libbing a lot).

I loved it. Even though I was still roleplaying, I never really found the RPG content of much use anyway. But I loved the miniatures and modelling and getting to play with my toys was a nice plus.

Then my hobby priorities shifted and I dropped my subscription in the early 90's.

I got back into White Dwarf about five years back. I picked up some issues from the newsstand (a major change to the days of my youth, when each magazine had to be special ordered from UK). Then I got a subscription and went with it for a couple of years. I'm sad to say I saw the magazine deteriorate into a product catalog and egged on by a price hike, I finally dropped the subscription.

Comparing that White Dwarf to Playboy is not fair, since Playboy has actual articles and they don't publish the phone numbers for their models.

Well, this fall WD had a major makeover. I saw the new magazine at the club and had to get an issue myself. It looked much less like a product catalog. I was happy about this.

So last Monday I picked up the November 2012 issue, the second new style one. As I was reading it, it suddenly dawned on me that I was about halfway through the magazine and I still hadn't seen anything besides essentially ads for forthcoming products.

The final tally for a thick 100+ page magazine: one battle report and two columns. The rest is still essentially a product catalog.

I'm sad to see the promising start flounder so fast, but I guess I gotta give it another chance. The December issue should be out, though the holiday season and launch of the new Hobbit game don't hold great promise for good articles...

P.S. With Wargames Illustrated it often happens that I haven't finished reading the previous issue when the new one arrives. Well, that is not a risk with WD...

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