1. Anniversary of the Castellan

One year ago, I published my very first post on this blog and shared it via Facebook in various groups. I wanna take this opportunity to do a retrospective of my work here on the blog and my hobby work in general. I will share my progress, some statistics and hopefully many more interesting things =)

Hobby Achievements

First I wanna write about the achievements and experiences I made this year in the hobby.

Painting & Tinkering

After my first set of brushes reached the point where I had to admit that I could no longer achieve acceptable results (outside of using them to put a black base coat on miniatures), I followed a recommendation and bought a three items set from Army Painter. A medium, a detail and a dry brush piece. And well - the quality of your tools do matter xD I do not think I would have been able to paint my mounted Elendil and Isildur with comparable success without them. I also actually only started dry brushing since I have the new brush =)

I first tapped into the usage of Milliput, when I worked on the Necromancer. Being a massive metal miniature, I had to deal with some open space between the pieces. So far I had backed away from using something like Milliput but there was no away around it now. And it worked out great. It was super easy to use and fill the gaps. And no one will ever see the parts where its Milliput or where its metal ;)

After that I also learned that a small piece of Milliput, is a great improvement of stability if it is put together with super glue, between two parts that should stick together - something that greatly improved my handling of metal miniatures, which are often a bit of a pain to glue.

And finally, I attempted something I would have never imagined to ever do when I started the hobby - doing a conversion. I wrote already about my self-made Numenor Captain and I can only say again how smoothly it went with switching heads and forming connections + a mantle with Milliput =)

Collecting

Two projects got finished but as everybody probably can relate, there is always a next one ;)

Numenor

Ah the army the was the topic of around half of my blog posts^^ I can proudly say that I finished my collection of it. 2nd hand market, alternative models and even a conversion, contributed. 

I am able to field a proud force 825 points worth of Numenoreans, including all heroes mounted and with their equipment.

It was a long way but I learned a lot from it. From painting my first batch of old original warriors to painting detailed mounted heroes and doing a conversion, everything was present.

The army is a blast to play and nice view on the battlefield.

Rise of the Necromancer LL

The army that was the second most often topic of my blog^^ A lucky 2nd hand buy and original metal miniatures (before they became more expensive) make up this army. 

The Nazgul are mostly great models but I like the Necromancer and Castellans actually even more.

This army can be a lot of fun to play. But sadly due to the limited number of models you can play at once, I cannot field it as often as I want.

Khand

Since my one evil army is all-hero, I often found myself in the situation of only being able to bring one army to tournaments (good and no evil). Playing a faction a lot makes you better with it. But even a Numenor fan boy wants to play something else and have variety in the playing experience.

So I looked for a "normal" evil army. Orcs of any kind are not my taste and Umbar or Haradrim do not have the style I like playing myself. On the other hand, I also wanted to play something with more mobility.

Finally Khand catched my eye. I already adored the miniatures since some time and the idea of a fully mounted army was intriguing. It also passed the check mark to be something that not everyone plays and had several special features like good light cavalry and chariots.

But even though I also very much like metal miniatures, it was also the reason why I quickly realized I would never be able to field a full Khand force - at least not with only original GW models. I did some calculations and variations with how the force could be made but it always amounted to roughly 450 € for something over 500 Points... That is just crazy.

Nonetheless I bought every original miniature (except the infantry) once, after I heard that GW would increase prices in March. I really like their design and style and even if I may never field a big army of them,  I still wanted to own and paint them.

I made plans after finding out that there are a lot of alternative models available. But thankfully I played them multiple times in the TTS and disposed of further plans. More on that in another section ;)

So I still have to assemble and paint a Khandish king on chariot, a normal charioteer and two riders. Most probably they will be used as a ally contingent in the following army...

Easterlings

The second evil army I became interested in. I suppose I do not have to explain that they look awesome. They are more elite than Orcs but not as squishy as Numenor. They have interesting mechanics (pike block, various heroes) and the last expansion gave them the love to make them a big topic in the community. 

Of course, that also meant that the 2nd hand market became hot for them and it was really hard finding a good deal. 

The only luck I had was an assembled Kataphract box, with two broken swords. Since I am now confident in fixing such small things, I bought it. And by doing this, already covered the mobility for my new army.

In the production pipeline is already a 3d print job for an alternative Dragon Emperor and a bunch of Black Dragons. I should have more than enough to do in the Christmas holidays ;)

Community

I took a deep dive into the MESBG community and came to know a lot of passionate and nice people =)

Joining the Würfelorden

After messaging a lot with MichaelM via Facebook and having my blog for around three months, I was offered to join the famous Würfelorden! An offer I happily accepted =D

The Würfelorden is one of the biggest and most active content creators in the German MESBG community and also one of the very few sources of tournaments in Austria. 

I joined several events and am really happy to having found a group of like-minded people.

Finding a home on Discord

I also joined an (if not the most) active MESBG Discord server where most of the best and active German speaking players are hanging around.

It is my go to for rule questions, list building discussions, painting advice and anything else connected with the hobby or LOTR.

It is very motivating to be able to always talk with fellow hobby colleagues and get advice =)

Playing

Last but not least, I also gained a lot of experience in playing the actual game ;)

Tabletop Simulator

Through the active Discord community I joined, I also came into contacted with the wonderful Tabletop Simulator. With it, I was able to gather a LOT of games I would have never been able to do, just in real life. 

You only need to buy the TTS and then download for free the models and maps for MESBG. 

I cannot understate how much I learned in the countless hours with many different people. Sometimes we stayed even an hour longer afterwards to discuss and tip off each other for the game =)

The TTS really improved my game experience and I don't to miss it anymore =D

Oh and it saved me a lot of money. Testing an army extensively before buying even a single miniature, is invaluable.

Tournaments

I was able to join two tournaments this year.

The first one was hosted by the Wulpertingers and was a "bigger" event with more people. 

The second one was hosted by the Würfelorden and I not only played but also participated in the preparation beforehand and on site.

Both were great and as already reported, I even managed to score a 4th place! =D

I love tournament days - meeting different people, having though matches and games of wits and sheer numbers, discussing afterwards, doing hobby talk, exchanging opinions... Simply great times^^

Blog

Now onto second big part of the anniversary - the very blog it is about^^ 

Dead horses

Lets get over with the this part - some ideas for posts did not really work out.

Updates about my hobby projects e.g. my journey with basing and how I setup and collected my Necromancer LL - did not quite catch the big interest of people. Then again my post about my Numenor heroes broke some records, so I am still planning to do such posts.

Other posts were started but not yet continued - my Obscurity post caught some interest but also a lot of people were quickly to point out, that I need more research + I also had new ideas and did not continue. Same goes for the "Small factions going big" series. But I can at least tell, that I have not forgotten about and I still see a future in them ;)

The only thing I am a bit sad about is the low feedback to my "Tales of the Past" series. Thanks to everyone who contacted me. There were just too few people to justify the work for the setup. Maybe I will give it another try to reach out.

Feedback

The sweet spot^^ I got really a LOT of positive and creative feedback both on FB and directly in the comments. 

I never imagined that my blog would ever get so much attention and that people would like my subjects and type of writing. 

How I write was actually a big reason why I hesitated so long before I started this blog. I tend to think sometimes overly complicated and felt like writing quite "dry" - a symptom of writing documentation and coding, I guess^^

All the more I was surprised when people told me that they like how I view and describe things and how my battle reports are done.

Thanks a lot to everyone who ever gave me praise or constructive feedback!

Connection with other blogs

I found the few other blogs about MESBG on the internet and even had good contacts with the authors.  Especially I wanna mention TMAT who answered me a lot of questions. We also referenced each other in several blogs posts.

I marked all the blogs I regularly read on the blog - go check them out ;)

Statistics

Ah what would be a look back onto the fading year, without some statistics and numbers? ;)

With this post, I reached a total of  56 posts on this blog.

I have 3 followers and gathered 51 comments.

Now to some images, directly from my statistics page of the blog.

The strongest time with the most views was this year January and October-November.

The most views are generated through my sharings on FB. 

With smaller numbers but still adding good contributions,  I generate views with my posts on the one-ring forum and my good fellows from TMAT.

Overwhelmingly most people read my blog via Chrome browser. Most do that on Android (meaning from their Smartphone) or Windows.

The most readers visit my blog from the USA. 

The next one however is already Germany (which is quite important to me since I do most blog posts twice to cover German and English as language).

From the proud UK, where our beloved system originates I too have 16 % readers.

Also important is that the fourth country is my home - Austria - makes me quite happy =)

Some final interesting facts:

• The post with the lowest view count is the german version of "My thoughts on the Fall of the Necromancer expansion" - 13 views
• The post that gathered for most of the year the highest view count was "Buy and Collect Numenor - My experiences" - 1020 views
• But the October post of "Visions of the Palantir - The next expansion for MESBG" quickly obliterated the record and currently sits at 1541 views
• The view count that surprised me the most was about my Numenor Captain conversion (the german version) - from one day to the other it suddenly jumped from around 150 views to over 900 (!)
• My average view count is 212.327

Conclusion

Now that I took a look back, I am still stunned by how much more this blog and the hobby succeeded for me.

I cannot overstate how much MESBG enriched my life.

The people I was fortunate to meet (both off- and online^^), the game experience I gathered, the beautiful armies I collected, I tournaments I attended.

I am grateful I found MESBG and after one year, my motivation did not go away by a single inch =)

Thanks again to all my readers and fellow hobbyists - I am looking forward to another great year!

The Castellan keeps his watch and happy hobbying until the next time =)