Dr Grant wrote:
As much as I lament the loss of the fantastic 'make your own terrain' articles that White Dwarf used to produces 10-15 years ago, there's no doubt that their plastic terrain was really high quality.
No doubt, but what irks me is how their plastic terrain kits
completely replaced the traditional terrain making aspect of the hobby.
All you see now in White Dwarf is GW terrain kits. Gaming boards featured in battle reports are so homogenised, they have no variety. It gets old, seeing the same old gaming boards and terrain pieces from issue to issue, or different terrain pieces that all look the same because they came from the same kits. We no longer get unique gaming boards like Shelob's Lair (remember the Shelob vs Orcs battle report?), the Dwarrowdelf etc.
White Dwarf went from very useful tutorials on how to build scratch build unique terrain (Shelob's Lair, Moria, etc) from easily available materials, to instruction manuals on how to assemble the latest flavour of the month Scenery Kit with Over Powered rules to make them artificially popular... such as the new 40K Fortifications that bring D-Weapons (the most powerful weapons in the game, which used to be found only on super heavies like Titans and Baneblades) into the standard Warhammer 40K game.
I would be fine with the latter, if it hadn't completely replaced the former. For instance, they should have had advanced tutorials showing how to scratch build Goblin town from balsa wood and polystyrene (to make a 3D board with height and multiple levels) for those who are interested in that aspect of the hobby. (e.g. Sithious's GT gaming board, or the GT board at GW Middlesbrough that I posted about last year).
And then say, "We've also got these great Goblin Town plastic terrain kits for people who want to save time, or don't have the skills and confidence to scratch build stuff".
White Dwarf used to be a genuine wargaming hobby magazine with useful articles on scratch built terrain, conversions etc. Now its just a catalogue for advertising GW's extensive range of products. Why can't it do both?
I hope these new magazines help reverse this.