Digital Subscriptions and Grumpy old men

God I feel old.....

I do try to do some product reviews along the theory that "I wish someone would  have mentioned this before."  Of late, I have been lamenting my two Digital Subscriptions for wargames magazines.  First the background:  I have a sizable collection of MWAN, WI's, Couriers and other magazines stretching back into the 80's.  I made the mistake of trading off all my old White Dwarfs (Issues 50-200+) back in 1998, so I tend to horde my magazines as I never know what direction my interests will take, or what pictures I want to see again.  My desire to reduce the "crap pile" tends to work against this.  Over the year I have been mostly collecting my rules in PDF format and have scanned in many of my Favorites (Spearhead, Modern Spearhead, Battleground WWII) so I can keep them accessible.  I was interested, therefore when Wargames, Soldiers and Strategies offered a digital subscription along with Battlegames.  My timing on these seems to have been terrible.

I discovered WSS digital option when I saw they were going to do an issue focusing on the 1809 Campaign.   Perfect!  Sign me up.... so I did....  and was told that since I signed up two days after the release of that issue of the magazine I wouldn't get that issue.  Wait?! Isn't it just a PDF you are going to email me?  Response: 'Yes, but that isn't how our subscription system works.'    Flash forward one year, and I transferring PDFs over to my new Nexus 7 (we loves the precious!).  I discovered that I couldn't find all of my back issues of WSS.  No problem, I saved the emails with the links.....  Turns out all of the links are set to only target the most recent copy.  I email WSS about it, three weeks.. no response.   I am going to let this subscription die.

Battlegames.  I love Battlegames, it is like a colorful MWAN.  I was paying $10 a copy when I could find it at Matrix Games in Tacoma, WA.  I enjoy listening to Henry Hyde on View from the Veranda and frequent his website.  I will buy his book, if he ever gets around to finishing it.....  So I got a digital subscription....a few weeks before he announced the first "death of battlegames"  ...crap.

I was happy then, when Atlantic Publishing allowed him to continue the good fight.  I was less than thrilled to see my PDFs replaced with a subscription to Exact Editions.  This gave me access to all of the back issues, but also meant that I would lose access to all of it at the end of the year, and I couldn't keep the files.

Henry is now taking over Miniature Wargamer, a magazine that I basically stopped buying because it seemed a horrible compromise between the content of Battlegames and eye candy of Wargames Illustrated. I am interested to see how he can recover this magazine, but I am hesitant to even try a digital subscription again if I can't just get the PDFs.

Not meant to be a rant, so much as a "here's what to expect" if you are thinking about digital subs.  For me, I find that they may be useful for the "read and discard" mindset, but us packrats just need to stick to paper.