Site review: miniwargaming.com

I have recently become a "miniwargaming vault member". What does that mean, and why should/shouldn't you do the same? Find out below.

The miniwargaming site (referred to from now on as MWG) is a massive repository of wargaming battle reports, as well as painting and terrain-making tutorials. It also features other videos, such as tactics and gameplay tutorials. Their videos are always high quality (and can be viewed in HD) - usually both the video itself and its content.
They also have a store, which used to sell miniatures, but no longer does. They still have some books and instructional DVDs.

The good parts

The site features a lot of free content. Besides the Banter Batrep (which I'm sure most 40k players have at least heard of), there are other battle report shows, including narrative campaigns (of which I'm a huge fan of). Of course, I'm only interested in Warhammer 40k/Fantasy, but there are other featured games, too. Some of their guys are into it for the fun; others are excellent at diving into rules. e.g. see this video where they detail how graviton weapons work.
Content that isn't free includes for example this marvelous painting show which I've found very useful.

The "meh" parts

Obviously, they need to make a living; so a lot of content is not free, but is accessed based on a payed subscription. This collection of videos is referred to as the "MWG Vault" (hence payed subscribers are referred to as "Vault Members"). This isn't bad per se; however, they are experts at goading you into becoming a vault member. For narrative campaigns, every second mission is in the vault. That means that you can only view half of it for free, and you will miss a lot of the storyline.

The bad parts

The nasty part is their subscription model. You can create a free trial account for 7 days, which you can switch off or continue with the payed subscription. However, instead of assuming that you will switch it off and ask you to confirm, they assume that you will continue and silently take the money from your account/paypal. Now, the sum itself isn't that large. If you are into wargaming and painting, it really pays off, as the videos improve your painting/modelling/gaming skills. I was just greatly annoyed by the gesture, and indeed I haven't visited their site in anger for a few days after that. Afterwards however, I needed a small painting tip, so I went and searched for it, found just the video that I needed, and so I was hooked - again.