Don’t miss all the new changes White Dwarf, as we compare the old format to the new, and make suggestions on how GW can make their magazine more appealing.
New Year… New White Dwarf! GW has some major changes for the magazine that we know and love. But is it for the best? Come and take a look at how Games Workshop has restructured their magazine so you can decide if it is worth your hobby dollars each month.
White Dwarf January 2019: $9
Key Features
- January 2019’s edition of the ultimate Warhammer magazine
- A new format that includes new regular columns
- Also included are new rules, background information, short stories and so much more
The first thing you will notice out of the gate is that all the content you are looking for will have its own section rather than the usual scattered around the book style. Everything has it’s own place in the new White Dwarf and should be a lot easier to find. GW also talks about how a lot of new exclusive rules content is on the way for you White Dwarf readers. More on that later…
Gone are the ads/previews for new products, in are new fiction, columns, but maybe more importantly new exclusive rules for the games we love, which hasn’t always fared well for our hobby.
Will hobbyists want to lug around a crate of White Dwarves, as well as their Codex, BRB, Chapter Approved and Vigilus supplement books to each game they play?
Here are some of Rob’s suggestions to make this great magazine better from his earlier editorial:
So just what should GW do with White Dwarf? Well, we already made one big suggestion, but Games Workshop seems intent on continuing to produce the magazine (although with a reduced staff it appears) into 2019.
Besides retiring the venerable magazine, here are more ideas on how GW can make the White Dwarf great again, or at least incentivize hobbyists to continue to buy it without including a new set of exclusive rules each month.
Making White Dwarf Great Again
Lower the Price of the Magazine
Lower the price a couple bucks and you would probably see sales increase by a notable percentage. Sure this is a hot-button issue as everyone always complains about pricing when it comes to GW, I know. But consider this- remember when the White Dwarf was a weekly magazine and only cost $4 an issue? It routinely sold-out each week at stores. My suggestion is to lower the cost of the current White Dwarf to $5-6 and I would think there will be a notable resurgence in circulation.
That being said, $9 for a monthly magazine still isn’t a bad price at all for a consumer magazine to be honest. Heck according to Mequoda Daily back in Nov of 2016;
$9.99 was a common price for 12 full issues of a consumer magazine. That policy trained generations of consumers to believe that magazines are cheap, throwaway products.
So how can you keep the price the same and still offer an incentive that doesn’t contribute to rules creep?
Hand Out Exclusive Minis
How about offering a free, exclusive mini in each or every other issue? Nothing like a character model that GW values at $35 each these days, but something like the Blind Buy Space Marines Hero series?
Come up with a new series of sorts and only offer those minis in a plastic-sealed White Dwarf over a certain period of time. They could even go as far as to cover every faction. Do like a small line of Orks, Eldar, Tau, etc. They could all be simple, unique ETB White Dwarf exclusive models.
Posters, Posters, Posters!
Another great incentive could be a monthly poster series!
Remember the old cut-away posters of the Land Raiders and Predator? Why not make some more of those, perhaps even featuring the new Primaris models, or maybe a Bolter cut-away showing all of its parts?
The sky may be the limit here, as a matter of fact, let’s take this same idea in a different direction.
Painting Charts
This cool painting system chart came out in the old weekly White Dwarf, and besides being super useful, looks great hung on the wall in your hobby beats lab. It is actually still available currently as a free PDF download, but you will have to print it in a poster format.
On that same note, a cool new bonus in the White Dwarf could be a small chart for all their combinations of mixing colors (i.e reds, yellows, greens, etc.) every month. That would cover over a year’s worth of issues at the very least. They could even expand it into Texture paints Citadel Air, and more!
Like I said before, GW deserves recognition for all of their hard work and publishing such a great monthly magazine year after year. Time, perhaps, just may not be on their side anymore, and it may ultimately benefit GW to make changes that don’t potentially add to any rules bloating for any of the games they produce.
We can’t wait to see what this new year holds for the hobby! Make sure you keep those hobby muscles strong, stay in the trenches, and check out our Pass or Fail: 2019 No-Ads & New 40k Rules White Dwarf Format video below!
