Question about Miniature Wargames magazine

[Rhoderic]

I subscribed to Miniature Wargames with Battlegames for a short while not long ago. At that point being a digital subscriber gave me online access to all the back issues (at least from as far back as the merger of the two magazines, I don’t recall whether it went further back than that). Lately I’ve been interested in taking up a digital subscription of MW again – nothing to do with the recent controversies surrounding the magazine, mind – but I’ve been assuming that doing so would once again let me browse all the back issues. Looking at the new webstore page for the magazine subscription I can’t find any mention of back issues being part of the deal anymore.

Did they change this? Are the back issues (pre-issue 400) available digitally in any way anymore?

[Mike]

I think your best bet would be to ask here:

E-MAIL

[Rhoderic]

Hmm, seems my previous subscription was via Exact Editions and the magazine isn’t with them anymore.

It’s aggravating to not be able to get hold of miniatures wargaming content because it was published in a magazine and the publisher doesn’t want back issues to be available digitally. I know they need to protect themselves from pirating, but it’s aggravating all the same.

[Rhoderic]

Well, here’s another negative aspect of “new MW” that I only realised just now: They’ve gone the same route as Wargames Illustrated with their digital edition. It can apparently only be read on a tablet or a phone, not a PC.

Does anyone know if there’s any practical way to circumvent this? Like, a “tablet emulator” that works in Windows, or something such?

If not, I have little recourse but to simply walk away from MW. I’m not interested in trying to read a magazine on a phone, and I’m not paying bloody £5 postage on top of the £4.50 price of the print-edition issues.

[Rhoderic]

Just a little update, in case anyone is interested (probably not): I don’t know if I missed this the last time around or if it’s a new addition since then, but apparently there is a digital version that can be read on a PC after all. It’s at Pocketmags and for some reason I was able to buy the last three issues (September, October and November, the only ones that are available) for €1 each. As with the old digital issues from Exact Editions you don’t get them as PDF files to save on your computer – you have to access them via your browser – but if you’re prepared to go through the hassle you can save them on your computer by printing each page or each spread separately to PDF. It’s not ideal, but at least €3 isn’t much of a sacrifice for 3 issues, and given that I’ve explicitly bought these issues (as opposed to buying a subscription that only gives me access to issues for a limited time period, which is what I had to do with Exact Editions) they should (reasonably) remain available to me for good… unless Pocketmags goes tits-up, I suppose.

[Author]

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