White Dwarf Weekly #20 – Mek Gunz & Shokk Attack Gun

I’ve seen people remark how Games Workshop’s current release for Warhammer 40K Orks seems slow. It certainly feels a bit like a shift to a lower gear after some of the crazy weeks we had in the past. To be honest, I like it a bit slower. The current pace is still breakneck madness compared to the “really old” GW of … say … 2012 or so.

Admittedly, the slower release really shows in the Weekly White Dwarf. With 3 weeks of only a single release (2 this week), the Ork-issues of the Dwarf feel like they are really scraping the bottom of the barrel to fill the pages with Ork-stuff.

---

#1 – Big Mek Gunz

Aside from the new plastic Shokk Attack Gun, this week’s “big” release is the Mek Gun; an Ork artillery piece with a wide variety of weapons.

Reading about it in the White Dwarf was actually quite fun. The weapon options are all suitably “orky”. Still, the Mek Gunz really are a luxury release even in a luxury hobby.

• £28,- for a single artillery piece, likely to come in under 50 pts in the game. Ouch!! That’s how we get £229^.50 “bundles” with just 11 Orks in them these days.

• 4 (large, miniature-wise) weapon options, but only one “trukk” on the sprue? This kit is going to bring “wasted bits” to a whole new level. Of course, an Ork-army can always use extra bits. However, with plenty of spare weapons on other releases, such as the Morkanaut, it would seem that spare “trukks”/”chassis” would’ve been far more useful.

• Not all options included? The new Mek Gun seems to come with options for the (i) bubblechukka, (ii) kustom mega-cannon, (iii) smasha gun and the (iv) traktor kannon. Looking at the rules, there also seems to be the default (a) kannon, (b) lobba and (c) zzap gun, which don’t seem to be included in this kit. Is there an old miniature for these?

---

#2 – Librarium & More

An (estimated) 90% of this issue is dedicated to “shooty Orks”, or Orks in general. There are articles on why Ork shooting is great, a fluff-article on famous Waaagh! (which was actually quite fun to read), an Ork paint-splatter and more.

Outside this, there is the new “Warhammer 40.000″ Librarium, a collection of – quote – “the nine most recent Codexes (…), along with a copy of Warhammer 40.000: The Rules. Apparently these are in a smaller (A5?) format.

The biggest question (for me), do these codexes incorporate the 7th Edition FAQs?

I somehow doubt it.

---

#3 – Thoughts?

Overall, I enjoy the slightly less frantic pace of releases. One (or two) kits a week is still a lot, to be honest.

I am not sure if GW is planning to speed things up again after the summer. Currently however, the Weekly White Dwarf feels stretched to fill its pages with the slower 1-kit-per-week-release.

To be honest, I don’t think it would be a problem, if they’d included more “general” articles, kit-bashes, showcases, hobby articles, etc.. unrelated to the release of the week. Not that I believe this will happen.

Z.