Bleaseworld

As you may recall I have gone exclusively digital when it comes to wargames magazines, having been a WS&S PDF reader for some time, falling under Henry Hyde's spell when he took over MW and recently switching to digital for WI.

The latter is really making full use of the possibilities offered by the digital format, with photo slideshows within articles, 360 rotating views as well as video. Great stuff but  WI326 (December 2014) has now gone further with sound!

The Rules Showcase with Simon Miller's new Ancients rules includes a short video interview (alongside the article text) with the man himself, which is really interesting as much more can be covered by the spoken word than the written one.

Less cool was the battle sound effects that burst into life with the Ligny article which scared the life out of SWMBO as I was quietly reading my e-magazine when the Napoleonic Wars erupted from my iPad whilst she was watching Eastenders!

Obviously early days with WI testing what they can do with the opportunities offered digitally, but hopefully they rein in some of the out of the box thinking or soon it'll be "my magazine is singing to me!" :-)

I spotted the "last" White Dwarf today at Tesco's, I had been tempted to buy it as some kind of momento but leafing through it decided it was the usual crap so left it on the shelf. I came home to find my copy of Wargames Illustrated 316 had arrived including details of their new "dynamic" electronic edition.

Now I am a convert to electronic magazines, not only do they save space, but you can "carry" them with you wherever you go on your e-reader as well as enlarge the photos to see detail you cannot in the paper copy.

WI is my last paper subscription and I had intended to convert this when it runs out following their recent announcement of an e-copy, I already subscribe to the electronic editions of Miniature Wargames and Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy.

Today, Wargames Illustrated pushed the envelope making the electronic copy superior to the paper one, not just a copy of the paper edition. They call it "dynamic content" which means that they are using the possibilities offered by the electronic medium that paper cannot do. Examples include "swipeable" photo galleries behind a photo, video, expanded paragraphs and the ability to rotate photos of painted figures through 360 degrees as well as the slightly more common embedded hyperlinks.

I downloaded the free trial issue (about 20 pages from issue 316) and was so impressed I signed up to an electronic sub then and there! There are a few things that are not perfect, you can't rotate video into landscape on the iPad, the embedded photogalleries cannot be enlarged and not all the URL's (in ads) are converted to hyperlinks (this last point is surprising as it requires minimal work), but overall I was impressed and quire excited about the possibilities (any chance of animated maps?!).

WI have also released some (non-dynamic) period compilations of articles (drawn from the Battlefront era) that whilst I have in my paper magazine collection (somewhere), are useful to have to hand and represent decent value at a couple of quid. It would have been great if they too had been dynamic but they are still good to have...

It's a couple of months now since Henry Hyde took over the reins at Miniature Wargames, combined it with his baby Battlegames and gave the whole thing a spruced up look.

Despite loving Battlegames when Henry published it I did not subscribe to it when Atlantic took over publishing for one simple reason - they didn't sell the electronic version as a downloadable PDF.

In fact the situation was even worse than that.

To read your electronic issue you had to download an app for your iPad (this would mean my old issues would be in iBooks, the newer ones in the Newsstand - it might seem a bit anal, but is it too much to ask that the e-mags are in the same place?). However the killer was that if you stopped your subscription you lost your magazines! In essence you were merely "renting" the magazines from Atlantic for the period of your subscription and whilst this allowed you to access a couple of years of back issues of both Miniature Wargames and Battlegames, you didn't actually own anything. Atlantic Publishing are not unique in this approach but I think it sucks.

So whilst I wanted to support Henry and the new Miniature Wargames, and despite the nice things people were saying about it, I was not prepared to "rent" an e-magazine and due to space/SWMBO considerations I could not buy the paper copy. My view was if Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy can sell you a PDF to download and keep, why couldn't Atlantic?

Well now you can. The app is still around and to access the back catalogue you need it (I would like to see the few Battlegames I have not got sold as downloadable PDF's but at least I can now read them) but at long last you can also download complete PDF's of the new Miniature Wargames onto your computer to keep. Hurrah!

So having now subscribed, what is it like?

First impressions are very good. I always enjoyed the old school Battle/Practical Wargamer feel of Battlegames, and Henry has built on this combining the charm of Battlegames with a more state of the art look akin to Wargames Illustrated but if anything better thought out.

The emphasis is on gaming rather than plain historical articles with a wargames paragraph tacked on and there is some interesting stuff in there that will be able to cross periods. Fantasy and SF get treated as a regular period as it should (hurrah!) and the standard of eye candy is very good indeed (with some excellent photos). My only criticism, and I'm not sure it really is even that, is the number of columnist pieces. I enjoyed all the opinion pieces but I am not sure whether four an issue is too many, perhaps they should alternate each month. Time will tell I suppose...

Overall, I am really happy with the new Miniature Wargames and glad to have finally subscribed now I can download and keep my PDF's!!!

Groscar