With January 2020 started that means Dash28 has been around for a whole year, which honestly is astounding. It seems not too long ago that I was messaging a few community leaders, bouncing around the idea of a website, featuring articles and content coming out once a week. With 1 whole year behind us, I thought it was time for a good meander thru the year, and even some behind the scenes reveals :D.
Before I do that though, I want to give an aside. Dash28 is meant to be a forum for the community. We have had an influx of guest articles coming, which is just awesome. If you are interested in writing something for the site shoot us a message on facebook, or send an email to editor@dash28.org. If you have content you want to read, and aren’t seeing it, similarly send us messages with your requests. I can’t guarantee we will do it, but I can promise we will read and consider every request.
As many people know, I am a public librarian, which means I spend a LOT of time standing at book shelves, computers, helping the public, planning programs, advocating for literacy, and explaining to people of all ages that no I do not know what their email password is.
I also happen to have periods of time; lunch breaks, slow periods, like the day after Christmas (yes my library was open December 26th), or in between projects, where I can snatch 10 or so minutes to read quick articles online.
Sometimes these are book reviews, librarian focused articles, or movie reviews, but sometimes these are focused on my personal interests, the biggest of which is miniature wargaming. I found myself at least once a week visiting sites like TheWarhammerCommunity, and despite the content having next to nothing to do with the games I played, devouring the content. I would visit Kings of War blogs, but their posting tended to be sporadic, and tough to know quickly when new content was available.
So, the idea for Dash28 was born.
I figured if I wanted the site, others must too. A year later, our team has achieved something special. In one year, we had 150 different posts, an average of 12.5 articles a month, well exceeding my goal of one release a week! We also wrote 187,610 words, had 27,074 visitors, and 73,102 views over the course of the year.
One of the most exciting things for me this year was how interested the community was at getting involved. We had 10 guest articles, and some of those writers stuck around to become regular contributors. I was extremely happy to see the community embracing and helping create for the site! I said it earlier, but please reach out to us if you want to write something, and we can work together to see if it will work with the site.
It wouldn’t be a 1 year retrospective if I didn’t do an overview of our most successful articles of the year, so in reverse order, here are our top 10 viewed articles of the year! If you haven’t read these, I highly recommend it; honestly I highly suggest delving into the archives of all our content, as there is so much good stuff there!
10 – Kings of War 3rd Edition: Elf Army Review – Originally a guest article, it’s awesome to see Steve Hildrew’s first dive into the controversial changes to elves resound with the community.
9- Kings of War 3rd Edition Army Review: Undead – My excited love letter to the Undead, it seems one of the most popular armies of Second edition still has a solid group of generals in 3rd
8- Review of Contrasts Paints – The only hobby article that made the top 10 (i’ll have to try to fix that for next year), I still regularly see people asking how to best use these paints. If you are curious about Contrast check my article out.
7- Just the Tips: Alpha Strike – Alex “the Wonder” Chaves’s gift to the community, shedding light on his thought process on making and winning with an Alpha Strike list. All of the Just the Tips articles are perfect reads for anyone looking to learn or improve their Kings of War play.
6- Kings of War 3rd Edition: Orc Army Review – Brinton Williams’s examination of Orcs is indepth, insightful, and fun, this is a perfect intro for people trying to decide what army to start for 3rd, or generals returning and wanting to know what the edition changes.
5- Kings of War 3rd Edition: The Review – Another Brinton contribution, this was our first article posted for 3rd Ed’s release, and it does a great job examining the changes of the new edition.
4- State of Play: Exploring the Metagame in Kings of War – You all seriously loved Brinton, this was the first of a two part series that examined the metagame of Kings of War. Though statistics of Second Edition are no longer quite relevant, it is still a fascinating read.
3- Kings of War 3rd Edition: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Edition Change – Another, yup Brinton article, that perhaps should be re-shared online, trying to convince people to stop focusing/worrying about negative changes and instead look forward to the new!
2- State of Play: Further Delving the Darkest Depths of the Meta Game of Kings of War – And Brinton’s second Meta Game examination, basically similar to the last one, just updated.
1- In Memory of Lars the Giant Dwarf – Late in the year the community was rocked with the news of Lars’s untimely passing. This is the piece I am most proud of writing this year, and I was extremely happy that I was able to give a send off to a friend. Lars, we miss you buddy.
There are a few articles I also wanted to highlight, that didn’t quite make the top 10, but are still well worth a read, these are in no particular order:
All our fiction! If you like fluff and background we have a whole section of it!!!
Weekend Warrior: A Lady Wargamer – Ashley Mowat’s discussion of being a woman in wargaming is important and interesting. I feel like I am perpetually hearing people discuss how they try to get significant others and female friends into the game, but to no avail, and Ashley’s article takes a brave stand to voice some of the reasons that may be. I also love the tone Ashley has in pretty much everything she does :D.
Blasting Your Way to the Top – An article all on using Wind Blast, written by Greg Person; Windblast extraordinaire. With Windblast having remained largely the same this article is still very relevant to piloting this tricky spell.
Kings of War Siege – One of our earlier articles, so I think it went under the radar, Billy Smith’s battle report/review of the siege rules is fun and informative.
All About that (Multi)Base – People seem to always want to know how to make great multi-bases, well Billy Smith wrote an pair of articles detailing how to make simple but impressive multi-bases!
Why I Game: Ulyses Colon – Ulyses’s love letter to gaming can’t help but make every reader sit back and reflect warmly on their first gaming memories. If you haven’t read it, seriously give it a try. It’s short, concise, and a perfect look at gaming.
Right, well that is the first year of Dash28! I want to give a shout out to every single one of our writers, past and present, a thanks to Chris Fisher, who jumped on to help me edit (we have too much content coming out for me to look over everything), and of course the biggest thanks to our wizard behind the curtain, Mike Adkins, who made this site possible, and continues to support our efforts at every turn with his calm insight, suggestions, and technological savvy.
If I can leave all you readers with two requests, share our articles with your gaming friends, help spread the word of Dash28. More importantly, comment on the articles and postings with your thoughts and reactions. Writing content takes a lot of work and time, even 1-2 comments goes a long way to showing our writers that people are reading.
Happy 2020!
