Warhammer Visions Review: A magazine for hobbyists

The new Warhammer Visions!

It has been years since I have had a subscription to Games Workshop’s monthly hobby magazine, White Dwarf. I have many fond memories of coming home from school and excitedly finding the next issue of White Dwarf waiting to be explored. I feel that the magazine played a critical role in driving my enthusiasm for the hobby during my early years, at times where I did not have the money to build armies, and times without the wellspring that is the internet.  The magazine offered countless pictures of painted models, including people's’ conversions (they even had pages at the back of each issue showing the parts of each new release to encourage conversions). Slowly however, White Dwarf shifted further and further away from the modeling and background centric focus, replacing the cool conversions and background stories with more advertisements. And eventually I stopped the subscription entirely. As many of you know, this scheme of releasing a monthly issue of White Dwarf was heavily modified over a year ago. Instead of releasing a single magazine, they shifted to releasing two magazines, a small weekly White Dwarf issue, and a larger monthly issue called Visions. While the smaller White Dwarf has been somewhat successful, having a good mix of both gaming and hobby content (including the rules for new releases), the larger picture-centered Visions has not received much attention or praise (I only purchased an issue or two). This month (May 2015) marks the release of a newly formatted Visions, with an increase in the size of the printed pages, back to the size of a standard magazine. I decided now would be a good time to give the magazine another chance and give my thoughts about it. Also, the cover of the magazine showed a battleline of Adeptus Mechanicus Skitarii, promising lots of high quality and detailed pictures of the new model range released by Games Workshop.