On Wargaming Magazines

Jun 14, 2012 10:45

Yours truly faking painting. 

Note the beverage of the gods.

Being old fashioned, I actually like reading real paper magazines. But time is limited and when unread issues pile up you end up reconsidering a lot of things. Lately, I've been considering which wargaming magazine I actually want to read.

My first problem is that I have very wide and varied interests, including historicals in multiple periods, fantasy and sci-fi. As long as it's got pretty figures, I'll consider it. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a general miniatures gaming magazine like this. The historical magazines are firmly entrenched in historicals only, perhaps to avoid upsetting the most diehard historical grognards. The scifi/fantasy magazines seem to be run by game publishers and only cover the games from that particular publisher.

Wargames Illustrated

I've been reading Wargames Ilustrated for a long time. I also own the electronic copies of the really old issues too, though I must admit I haven't read them all and unfortunately they're not very easy to search for material. I've seen the format change and the ownership change. But what really counts is what the magazine is like today.

Wargames Illustrated is a really pretty magazine. It's thick, chock full of interesting articles and pretty pictures. There's a lot to read in each issue and they cover pretty much all historical subjects.

However, since the ownership change it has turned a bit into Flames of War Illustrated - every issue has lots of WWII stuff and it's always accompanied by FoW rules. I understand the business logic behind this, but I can't help thinking I'm missing out. I'd like to read about skirmish games, naval games and aerial games in WWII too.

Also, it seems that Wargmes Illustrated has pretty much stopped doing product reviews (again, some business logic can be seen behind this decision) and where are those small rulesets they used to do? Haven't seen any lately.

Don't get me wrong. Wargames Illustrated is still very much a top end miniatures wargaming magazine. It just doesn't have everything. Which leads me to the next thing...

Wargames, Strategy & Soldiers

I semi-recently ordered a test batch of three issues of WSS (the name's just too long to be spelled out every time). As the magazine is bi-monthly, I've only received one issue so far, but I was very much positively surprised.

WSS seems to be a bit more about gaming than history. I actually has reviews of books and figure lines and there was even an article comparing different WWII platoon skirmish rules - WI just doesn't run this kind of things anymore.

Unless the next sample issues hugely disappoint me, I'll definitely be getting a full subscription to this. But as it is significantly thinner than WI and only bi-monthly, I really can't see it as my only wargames magazine.

And it has no fantasy/scifi content, at least not as far as I could see. Which leads me to...

White Dwarf

I started reading White Dwarf a long time ago. The first issue I bought was number 72 if I recall correctly. Back then White Dwarf was actually mostly a RPG magazine with only a very small miniatures section called 'eavy Metal. They also covered many different games systems, though it could be argued that White Dwarf always was a house magazine as Games Workshop was the publisher, importer and/or retailer for much of the RPG stuff on the market back then.

I stopped reading White Dwarf around issue 130 or so because my interests had shifted, but I got back into reading it a few years back and even subscribed to it for a couple of years until they hiked the price to what I felt was an unacceptable level.

White Dwarf is special in one regard. It is the only miniatures magazine that is available at normal newsstands over here. Pretty much everything else you need to get from a specialist game store or direct from the publisher.

So, to refresh my memory I picked up the latest issue. It was the one with the new Necrons as theme.

The magazine looked as pretty as it ever did. But leafing through it, it felt more and more like a product catalog. There was just almost nothing to actually read in the entire magazine... Playboy has more interesting articles.

Which means I'm still looking for my fantasy/scifi fix.


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