White Dwarf 355

This month we have the long awaited release of Planetstrike, and with it a bunch of really nice scenery pieces. Up there with the 40 ruined buildings released with Apocalypse, these new pieces have to be some of the best things Games Workshop have produced in a long time.

Games Workshop’s brush range is being revamped too, and there is 4 pages telling us all about them. It’s all well and good, but all I can see is that they’ve made them black and added 2 brush types. The beginning of the article states that this isn’t the case, but they don’t go on to justify it. They are made by hand as they always have, by the same people they always have, and they’ve changed the drybrush bristle type to make it better. What I really want to know is whether the other brushes have been improved? I suppose if I want to find out I’ll have to shell out some pennies…

It’s also time for another ‘Eavy Metal painting competition and as per usual with some really great results! Each painting an Empire wizard from a different school of magic there are some really nice paint jobs on show. The winner yet again is Darren Latham, however looking through myself Joe Tomaszewski’s Gold Wizard wins it for me, the NMM and light sourcing make it stand out from the rest. A close second for me would be Martin Footit’s Amethyst Wizard as the freehand on the book is amazing.

As for the rest of the issue, there’s the usual battle report, this time showing off Planetstrike. Also an article on Empire tactics. My interests are all in the hobby side though as you can probably guess ;).

First I struggled to actually download it. Their website was slow and temperamental. The downloader once it got it working was the same too, downloaded half of it and stopped. Finally finished off the download yesterday, only to install, launch the game, and it can’t connect to the server! Tried again today and the same thing happened. So back to the website I go – without realising I had downloaded the Korean version of the game!

OK I’m willing to accept myself being a noob and downloading from the wrong site (it could be a bit clearer though!). The European site was all good, fast download and away I went. Great I thought, I’ll finally be able to give it a try.

No.

Apparently it can’t run because of some corrupt file, and looking at their FAQ it’s a known problem that they are trying to fix. I get as far as logging in and there’s a problem “they’re trying to fix”??

So, after all this, my original idea was to do a bit of a review of the game – but I can’t. So it’ll have to be a 0/10 unless I finally get to play it!

This issue sees the release of the new Imperial Guard codex for Warhammer 40,000. As you can imagine due to this there is a lot of stuff inside for the Guard, including a massive battle report. Lots of nice shiny new miniatures, but not being a Guard fan it doesn’t tickle my fancy all that much.

There’s also a small section on the new War of the Ring. I’ve noticed lately that Lord of the Rings has gotten less coverage in the magazine, however this month – while still being small, it seems to have been given a few extra pages.

The star of the show though has to be a painting masterclass article by ‘Eavy Metal painter Joe Tomaszewski, who happens to also be and old friend of mine. In the article he describes how he painted the new Games Day Chaos Lord model, and the result is fantastic. It’s nice to see a long painting article too, this baby gets 7 pages, including a page on the theory behind NMM. Anybody who likes their painting should definately give it a read.

All in all I’d have to give it a 7/10, mainly based on the quality painting article.