Third year anniversary

With these turbulent times, it is sometimes difficult to keep track of time. Just a few days ago, I realised that January was already approaching its end, which means that the blog turns 3 years old today! It is hard to imagine that I have already been publishing articles and committing so much time to the blog for 3 years now. So I wanted to take a brief moment and reflect on the blog’s progress over these 3 years, and thank you all for your continuous support over the years.

I did not think that I would still be working on the blog this intensly 3 years after publication of the first articles. But support for the blog has never been better, and just in the past month, my view records are shattering, averaging around 1000 views per day. This is all because of the great community that is sticking with the game and the new players that discover the game. I really enjoy seeing the new posts pop up every now and then of new players who just found out that this game exists and want to get involved with it. I hope that this blog will help them in their journeys.

This past year has been a weird one for me personally, like it has been for so many others. But I am glad to see that the blog is doing well and that I am even taking on extra projects aside from the blog. I recently started to record some more of my online games and post them on Youtube. The responses there have been amazing, and I am glad to see that we have over 50 subscribers there already. I am not going to dedicate a ton of time to Youtube, as the blog will be the primary source of content, but it is nice to have a place to store all my videos.

The other projects also include the new loot that I am creating. Unlike previous years, I am going to be making this loot in cooperation with some other community members, including my Valar-level supporters on Patreon. We are working on creating a notebook for the game that allows you to track your games, campaigns, collection, and much more. We will still need some time in order to finish this, but we hope to roll it out to those supporting the blog and its content before the summer. This will allow people to compare their statistics with the rest of the community. I am not certain if there would be a market for me selling the notebook online to those that would miss out. The safest thing to do would be to support through Patreon, in case I end up not selling them.

Speaking of Patreon, the support there has really improved over the last few years. We have had a few supporters enter at higher tiers (we now have 4/15 Valar), and many more people come in at the Guardian and Master tier. With their support, I have been able to support the many platforms of the blog, and it gives me some funds to play around with in case I have another great idea for the blog and its content.

A massive thank-you also goes out to the people in the community that are helping out with continuing products for the game now that the hiatus has begun. The AleP project is coming around nicely, and many other people are also working in smaller groups to make more content for the game. This includes Nightmare modes for quests that haven’t gotten it, or more new quests for people to face. I hope these projects get the support they need and have enough playtesters to finish tweaking the scenarios before rolling it out to the community. I don’t plan on covering fan-made content just yet on the blog but might do that once revisions on all regular and NM content have been completed.

The other content creators for the game have also been a big help this past year. Most of them have pushed out a lot of new videos, podcast episodes, decklists, and articles that have kept me entertained and have inspired me with new article ideas. All of these creators deserve the loving community that is supporting them, and I hope that the support won’t go away now that official content has ceased for an unknown amount of time. Every day I see more new players enter the Discord or Facebook groups, asking for help, and it is great to see that there are many people who pick up these new players and guide them through the maze of content with this game. These new players continue to give me hope for some reprints of early content so that many people can start their collection without having to start at weird points like the Haradrim cycle.

The support of the blog has been amazing, and I think I would have stopped a long time ago if the reception of my articles wasn’t as positive as it has been. This community has been a great pillar for my mental health this past year, and I hope that I have contributed to the stability in your lives as well with regular content. There is a lot more on its way, as we have more than 6 articles in the pipeline for the next few months already! I hope you stick around and know that you are appreciated! Thank you all so much; hang in there, and I hope to play some more games with you all in the next year!