There's A New Dwarf In Town (Same As The Old Dwarf)...

The new White Dwarf (left) and a recent old White Dwarf

Games Workshop launched its new-look White Dwarf magazine today and, let's be honest, it's still a glorified sales catalogue - albeit a shiny one full of wargamer porn.

The page size is slightly smaller, but the page count has increased from 120 in issue 392 (August 2012) to 152 in this new, October cover-dated, issue (numbering appears to have been abandoned).

However, the cover price has also jumped from £4.50 to £5.50 - pretty much in line with Games Workshop's ludicrous across-the-board pricing structure (but more on that later).

The first 50 pages of this month's issue are devoted to advertising new releases (including licensed games and novels), with each release mainly getting a page or two to itself.

The most noticeable change to the interior of the magazine is its layout, which is going a bit "National Geographic meets fashion brochure" - with even more, and even larger, pictures than in previous issues but less text and more white space.

Otherwise, it's pretty much same old, same old - as you might have expected. No shocking new developments, no role-playing coverage.

As we were coming in to Tunbridge Wells anyway to visit my mum, I managed to persuade Rachel to let me indulge my geeky nature by making a side-trip to the town's Games Workshop store to pick up this new issue and look for some figures.

This was the first time I'd been in a GW shop for over a year and while little had changed by way of clientèle (including the requisite befuddled mother looking for Magic The Gathering cards) or lay-out, I was shocked by the prices of their miniatures.

Now, I've always known GW wasn't cheap and I'd seen adverts for their Finecast line in recent WD issues I'd flicked through in WH Smiths', but just assumed they were a prestige line for special figures. Hells no, GW has replaced all its metal figures with this insanely expensive resin ones - average price is around £8 or £9 a figure!

Did everyone else know this? Did I miss a memo?

I'd been looking for some metal Lord Of The Rings goblin characters and when I expressed my dismay at the lack of metal (and the cost of the resin figures) to the counter-monkey he spouted some corporate spiel about how the Finecast were actually the same price as the metal if you took into account recent tax increases... or some nonsense.

What you can't argue with is that £9 for a half-inch high figure of a dwarf is a preposterous amount of money.

Even within a GW store you can see how bonkers this is - with a boxed set of really nice scenery (The Ruins Of Osgiliath) at £18 being the same price as a blister pack containing two dwarven leaders.

Are young gamers that brainwashed that they don't realise there are plenty of other figure manufacturers out there making figures just as good for a fraction of the price?

I had such high hopes of filling out my small hobbit army (and RPG figures in general) with new releases from GW's forthcoming line of miniatures for The Hobbit, but if they're going to be £9 a halfling then I shall have to look elsewhere.