I really wanted to like this.
You know it's bad when a review starts with these words. But it can't be helped... After the demise of the short-lived MARS magazine, I've been looking for a magazine that would cover science fiction and fantasy gaming in a similar way many excellent magazines cover the historical miniatures gaming scene.
Practically all the existing SF&F magazines were house organs devoted to the games of a particular publisher. They had no place for miniatures without a game system, let alone competing game systems and increasingly even scratch-building or conversions. The publishers' motto seemed to be: "If we don't sell it, the magazine does not cover it."
Enter the Ravage magazine. It is originally a French magazine I believe, but as I don't read French I was largely unaware of it until Cool Mini or Not started producing the English language edition (you'll have to excuse me for concentrating on English language magazines in general).
The magazine received a lot of raving and was so popular I was unable to secure a copy from the local hobby shop and CMoN didn't even offer subscriptions.
Then I noticed they had gone digital and took a short sample subscription. The following review is based on Ravage US edition issues 11 and 12.
First Impressions
The magazine does look slick, even though the digital version lacks the physical presence of a real magazine. Both issues were slightly under 100 pages in length.
The photographs are very good and there are loads of illustrations used though most of them appear to be re-used from other game publications. This would be very nice to leave lying on the coffee table if it was a physical product.
In Use
But at the end of the day I buy magazines to read them.
When you really get around to it, there is very little actual content in an issue of Ravage. I could read it cover to cover in less than an hour. That is even less than what it took me to read an average issue of White Dwarf (the old one). Compare this to days (admittedly not nonstop) to finish an issue of Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy, Wargames Illustrated or Miniature Wargames.
But it doesn't matter as the stuff they have is so good, right?
Well...
The news section of the magazine is pretty pointless. If they had some insider track to provide something new it might be interesting, but regurgitating Kickstarter projects that have already ended is not.
Both issues had a single short article on painting. I did not find them particularly engaging, but that might have been just bad luck. However, even if they were brilliant they are not enough to carry the rest of the magazine.
Both issues also had some game reviews. Unfortunately, I did not find these as particularly informative. I mean, who can review Relic without ever mentioning Talisman ? Did the editor forbid referring to another game in a review, or was the reviewer truly clueless? The reviews concentrate on describing the game components and mechanics without offering much insight or opinion.
Basically all the rest of the magazine is devoted to articles aimed at specific games. These come in a number of varieties:
* Game fiction: I read game fiction when I was 15 years old. I'm not anymore. These strike me as cheap filler and I don't play any of these games anyway.
* Game introductions: General descriptions of the setting of various games. These strike me as stuff that could be handed out as free promo leaflets at cons or stores and are just about as interesting. If they had had interesting insight into the game mechanics I might have been interested, but just setting fluff? And I don't play any of these games anyway.
* Scenarios: A couple of scenarios were presented for various games, but they were pretty short, uninteresting and zero consideration was given to the thought of using the scenario in other gaming systems. And I don't play any of these games anyway.
* Tournament reports: There was a pretty good coverage of an X-Wing tournament, if that's your thing. I happen to hate tournaments with a passion and I don't play any of these games anyway. But that was probably the best article in these issues. Just not for me.
Digital Version
I think the digital version is very well done. I have an iPad2 and I have found that most print magazines doing digital editions tend to just dump the PDF of their magazine out without considering the devices at all.
Consequently many of them use an unreadably small font and this must be even worse on devices with smaller screens. I guess the newer retina displays are higher resolution so they might be better but as I can't afford one, that point is pretty academic.
And no, constantly zooming around the page when you're trying to read an article is not a good solution.
Even when they do stuff specifically for the digital devices, it tends to be useless gimmicks instead of actually addressing the legibility of the product.
I can't say if it's by design or coincidence, but Ravage is a joy to read in digital format. The text is very legible and the layout is crisp and clear. They do not use pointless gimmicks.
Though there is one thing that does irk me about the digital format. This isn't really Ravage's fault as it's built into the platform, but it's still a negative point for the consumer, at least on the Apple platforms.
Buying stuff is very handy and easy and they eagerly set up automatically renewing charges on your credit card. But there is no option to subscribe without automatic renewal and actually canceling the subscription is made as hard as possible. You can't unsubscribe from the Newsstand app, and it is very well hidden indeed in the App Store. It seems almost as if their business model was counting on people forgetting about their auto-renewing charges...
You can probably guess why I know this now.
Verdict
Sadly, I don't think I'm in the target audience for Ravage. I don't play any of the games they write about and there is a great dearth of general articles, especially on modelling which seems pretty weird considering the publisher.
Ravage is veritable meringue of a magazine. It looks nice on the outside but it crumbles to nothing in your hands. It has the air of a magazine written by the marketing department instead of real journalists. It doesn't seem to be likely to be covering anything that isn't currently published by someone likely to buy advertising in the magazine.
Ravage is about games, not about gaming.
But what if I was playing one of the games they write about? Well, then I'd get one, maybe two articles in an issue. And if I'm already playing, say, Infinity, why on earth would I want to read an introduction to Infinity?
I really don't know who this magazine is for. Maybe it will grow up to be a real magazine one day... I'll check back in a year or two.
P.S. As I did not have a physical product, I didn't really have anything to photograph and I didn't want to rip any of their images...
maxxon
Sucks!
