Tuesday 4 March 2014

Review: White Dwarf Weekly #3 (digital & printed version comparison)



I know I'm a little late with these latest reviews, and for both the second and third ed I had the digital versions but I went on an bought the standard ones as well. Why? Because they have Dwarfs in them and I also wanted to compare the digital version to the standard one. So on to the review of #3 of WD Weekly.

News releases
So third and final week for this time with the Dwarfs, this time we get the Ironbreakers/Irondrakes kit and the Dwarf battleline bundle. So not as a spectacular release wise as we have had before, but this is probably something we have to get used to some weeks we get more releases and in some less stuff. As before they show them off in nice pictures and tell us more about them all in all they occupy six pages for these releases. We also get some info about dataslates, BL books and some info about the new PC game version of Talisman.

Jeremy Vetock
Talks about how it sometimes is hard to be a good looser in games, this is an okey read.

Battlereport 'Horned Rat Rising'
We a get a little Battlereport sporting the new Dwarfs against Skaven. Quite nicely written even if I prefer battlereports with all the facts (game turns, how many point each army are etc.) But the worst part is that we just get four pictures and I don't even know if they really where taken during the battle or just to show us cool pictures of Dwarfs against Skaven. I would like more pictures and showing us the movement etc over the battlefield. Can be hard in this short WD format but I think they can do it.

The Throng of Zhufbar
Chris Peach talks about how they went on and painted up an whole new Dwarf army of Zhufbar. What they wanted to achieve and how they thought when painting them army up. Really interesting read and these kind of articles is what I missed in the previous WD format, could have been even bigger in opinion though.

Hall of Fame
Ragnar Blackmane of the Space Wolves, a nice old miniature still holding out quite nicely even though it does show it's age compared to the new SW characters.

Paint Splatter
The same short tutorials, this time showing us how they painted some of the parts of their Zhufbar dwarfs. It helped me some actually but It's pretty much the same stuff as in the digital dwarf painting guide but a lot less of course.

Sprues and Glue
Chris Peach and Steve Bowerman talks about the art of rankning up your models and building movement trays for your regiments. Nothing really advanced but good tips for the beginners I guess.

The Rules
We get the rules for the Irondrakes, same as in the AB and show us how they work and get some tips on how to best use them from Adam Troke and Dan Harden. It does it's job and is worth the read.

Designers Notes
Colin Grayson talks about how he went on when he designed the Ironbreakers/Irondrakes kit, especially about the Irondrakes. Nice read.

This week in White Dwarf
They talk about the different grudges the Dwarfs have and three famous ones. We also learn some Dwarfish and the other small bits and bobs in in this segment like the Weapon of the Week (Balls and Chains that the Night Goblin fanatics have) and Readers model of the week (a nice FW Warrior Priest painted by Graham Shirly). We also get to see some of the WD teams hobby projects at the moment. All in all I really enjoyed reading this.

Paper versus Digital?
I much prefer the printed version, why? Well the main thing is that White dwarf is designed for the paper format in size but not on the iPad. In the paper version we have 32 pages in the digital we have 78 so every page is pretty much cut in half and this makes the Digital version harder to read and some pages looks really boring because it's just sentence in top and the rest of the page is blank. Some of them is even totally blank or just a small picture (as you can see below).

It's just don't optimized for the iPad right now, I haven't bought the Visions digitally but I hear these are better. Also I must say I prefer to read paper versions, but some issues I just don't have the time to buy in the store so I will buy more digital copies in the future as well.

Some pages have very little on them in the digital version

Conclusion 
Solid issue this month as well, a lot of stuff that is interesting if not all. Some things would be better if it got more pages but I understand that they can't do a ten page battle report in a magazine that is supposed to be 32 pages total. Hopefully the Bat reps in Visions will get better, but I don't have to high hopes about this. Also If I can get the printed version I will, so I have to recommend them over the digital versions as they are now.

Rating: 3.5


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