New Style White Dwarf Hitting Shelves Friday 2nd September
June 15, 2016 by brennon
Games Workshop have grand news for us as White Dwarf is returning to its former glory it seems with a new version of the magazine coming on Friday 2nd September 2016.
Above you can see a mock-up of how the new magazine is going to look. It will be a bumper piece at 156 pages long. It will feature...
"...news, features and pictorials you know and love and a whole chunk of new stuff you never imagined. News, Golden Demon, Battle Reports, Painting Masterclasses, Designers’ Notes, exclusive games, new rules and more!"
You can pre-order before August 14th and you will get the magazine at a reduced price which is neat. Also, if you already have a subscription to White Dwarf or Warhammer Visions this will carry over with the new magazine.
So, it's back to the monthly format from September. Does this mean we might see the release schedule change as well for their games; losing the weekly releases?
We will have to wait and see. Until then, are you happy about this switch back to the original format?
Let us know below!
"...are you happy about this switch back to the original format?"
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My guess is that they won’t be going back to monthly releases, as they’ll still want to try and get people to visit the stores regularly. If that is the case, it would mean the close of association of WD to the release schedule would be weakened, though they can still highlight the releases and use the webstore, FB, and email newsletter to get the message out on a weekly basis.
Means it might end up being less of a catalogue and more of a proper magazine where they don;t have to spend so much time highlighting releases.
BoW Ben
I’m cautiously optimistic from the wording of the release that content will be something of a priority. If they are divorcing WD from the release schedule, at least to some degree, then it would be further sign that the company understands things don’t quite work in 2016 the way they worked in 1996.
It’s a good sign for sure – I look forward to the first new/old issue
I will agree with the cautious optimism
You should of titled this article ‘Old Style White Dwarf Hitting Shelves Friday 2nd September’ as its going back to what it used to be 😉
Totally right! First advertisment will be for Wacoshop Snake Oil…
I see the first issue comes with a special gift, have they hinted at what that is?
Not as far as I’m aware. The full release is here and it doesn’t mention anything –
http://www.beastsofwar.com/groups/news-rumors/forum/topic/white-dwarf-goes-monthly/
Some new ‘cover mount’ but there’s no word on what that is.
Seeing as the best selling issues since it went weekly (according to my very non scientific straw poll of left over copies at the model shop i help out at) were the following: #1) The AoS launch issue with a free sigmarine on it #2) The painting issue with the useful wall chart (when they launched the new brush range) #3) The betrayal of calth issue with the free pin badge I expect the freebie to be a badge or mini with a poster ;), wonder if we will get card middle pages again, used to really enjoy getting tokens… Read more »
Flexi vinyl.
the mock up does claim it has “full rules inside” (whatever that means in this context)
Maybe it’s a something related to that bit ?
Spotted the tag line…I wonder if the word Warhammer will get increasingly bigger till White Dwarf vanishes…
Nobody wants a magazine that covers only the new release of the week or month. We want to have substance such as painting tips, conversion tips and test rules like old. When was the last time they covered making your own terrain. Not everyone is a Imperial player and wants the terrain kits they sell. It be good for them to show creativity once again beyond the product line they have.
“…news, features and pictorials you know and love and a whole chunk of new stuff you never imagined. News, Golden Demon, Battle Reports, Painting Masterclasses, Designers’ Notes, exclusive games, new rules and more!”
Im sorry but thats a bit insulting, never imagined? you mean returning to what we had a few years ago? You mean the arcticles that people really love to read online and watch videos for? im fairly sure we imagined it GW, you are not breaking new ground here.
Of all the things to be insulted about?
I hope you haven’t been watching Gillette razor adverts over the years, and how adding an extra razor is groundbreaking technology.
Personally speaking, I didn’t imagine we’d see so many good decisions coming from GW over the last 6 months.
In his defense, we don’t see a lot of non-acknowledgement of that-which-your-audience-is-keenly-aware-of from other game companies. GW are still famous for claiming that their minis would be the “best in the world” with the release of Finecast- and proceeded to not acknowledge even their own (superior) efforts in resin. And you don’t even see big dogs like Privateer Press talk about “The Privateer Press Hobby.” The pattern is that GW does not acknowledge publicly that they aren’t the one and only hobby game company in the world. This does not appeal to the customer’s actual conditions of existence. And it… Read more »
It is new to people not familliar with WD from decades ago …
And as fleetey says this kind of “insulting” language is standard for advertising.
You should watch any of the E3 presentations. Those were filled with buzzwords and meaningless “iconic this” and “innovative that” bits that made my head hurt after watching a mere summary.
Isn’t the weekly WD format only two and a half years old?
And from their reports, they haven’t brought in a whole lot of new customers in the past 2.5 years.
It is not so unreasonable for people to want their long-term memories acknowledged. It is just one more place where GW fail to appeal to their audience’s actual conditions of existence.
I don’t see why GW should acknowledge any other company when it’s talking about its own stuff. I’d not expect it from PP, or CB, or Spartan games, or Hawk Wargames, etc…
It is just advertising jargon; everyone does it, and tbh, if you’ve got an issue with GW doing it, then I reckon you’ve got an axe to grind with the company anyway.
GW believe they make the best gaming models; well good for them. I don’t see why that belief is regarded as a negative.
I see where you’re coming from, but I don’t think that anyone else does what they do.
The term “The Games Workshop Hobby” has no co-relation among PP, CB, Spartan, Hawk, Reaper, Wyrd, Mantic, ND, CMON etc. They’ll all talk up their products, but they don’t make statements that sound like they haven’t noticed their competition.
Personally, I don’t have a problem with the bit of ad copy for WD, and I’m quite happily watching the new direction GW is moving.
@odinsgrandson GW may be trying to convince THEMSELVES they make the best models. I don’t think any gamer with access to the internet still believes that (I’m just finishing up the last of my metal Teutogen Guard from back in the day, and I kept thinking “What the f*ck happened to you GW?” Beautiful models). I guess that makes me a ‘hater’. 🙂 I’m guessing the ads are aimed at tweens who might be convinced to buy their stuff. They’re too schlocky to be aimed at adults. I’m always entertained when their weekend ad hits my inbox. Still hoping the… Read more »
@cpauls1 That puts you in category 1- the GW are putting on blinders and believe all of their own marketing theory. The “GW are in willful denial that the rest of the industry exists” is just a variant on this theory. For the record, I see “Other companies do the same thing with their marketing” as a variation on category 3 “GW are bad at marketing.” Mostly, because no one is arguing that it is good ad copy (and lets be honest- most ads are poor- people complain about EA’s ads all the time). And got to say- I actually… Read more »
It was a mere shadow of its former self back then.
I still have original WD’s with a Judge Dredd adventure :
https://rpggeek.com/rpgissue/55417/white-dwarf-issue-94-oct-1987
Well this is good news as it does seem like another sign that GW are trying to undo some of their terrible decisions.
Probably too late to get me interested just off an announcement but if it gets good reviews i might get a copy and see how it is.
Personally i dont mind the weekly format (but then again i get it for free in exchange for IT work done at local model shop), with the sprues and glue and paint splatter features being of a decent quality, although a return to the WD of old will be a welcome return 🙂 As for the release cadence i would imagine it would stay weekly with GW finally realising that email newsletters/tweets and fb marketing are the preferable way to notifying customers of new releases these days, with the weekly deadtree newsletter being a bit of a failure. The biggest… Read more »
Looking a the cover, I can see they’ve used the same schmaltzy writers that send ads to my inbox every weekend. Pity. Looks good otherwise.
That’s a cover from one of the current crop of White Dwarf. I really hope they go back to artwork on the new covers, some of the older ones were iconic.
Looks good. I was only the other day looking through some of my old WD (WD222 is still my favourite!). There was still a lot of ads back then, but there was always good exciting battle reports and great articles.
I’ve never had a subscription, but I might just get one! 🙂
I wonder if this means that it will be available in WH Smiths etc again (replacing Visions?)
“original format”?
The original format was back when they covered all kinds of games, before it became a GW-only rag…
Yup, back when GW imported RPGs from US to UK.
Yes, my first WD had a first edition AD&D scenario and columns about Runequest and Call of Cthulhu. 🙂
Now THAT was a hobby mag! 🙂
Oh great, and I still will not buy it.
It is just that GW makes….me ….go ….zzzzzzzzzz….zzz….
well, if ir looks like it did around the WD300 issue, then its good.
if not then the change did not matter.
I really hope they get rid of Visions and put Blanchitsu back in White Dwarf, where it belongs.
Proper articles that aren’t slaved to the new releases and painting masterclasses and I’ll be a happy man. Plus, I won’t need those poxy binders to store them. They take up a ridiculous amount of space and I still don’t understand why they didn’t put some kind of plastic slip for labels on them. I have ten binders and having to count in units of 13 to figure out which one I want is a pain.
I’ll be glad to switch my legacy Visions subscription over to this, at least to give it a try. There is some nice stuff in the current magazine but over all it’s very disappointing just because I want to read about the stuff that’s in the nice pictures.
I really hope they put interesting hobby content in there as well as personal insights from the GW staff. It should be easy to do. If they get it wrong again, I guess it will finally be time to let my nostalgia go and cancel.
Woo hoo! I’m on board, I have only bought a couple of the weeklies when there have been rules in it I’m after otherwise I’ve discovered Tabletop Gamer. Fingers crossed WD is back to how it was.
If it becomes a monthly hobby magazine great news, but it will content not style that will decide its success in my view.
I won’t be going with a sub before release, the recent history is too chequered, I will have buy it to see what it is.
156 pages?! That’s to much for a monthly mag.
Depends on price but if it is reasonable then more content is better than less.
I really enjoy this type of White Dwarf
The wheel turns, bring back the Fat Bloke as editor.
I’m sure Fat Bloke will be happy to not return 😛