2012 - a DTP Year in Review

It is certainly that time of year, that time when all the coolest blogs are going through the process of writing and posting Year in Review posts. Just like those cool blogs I am also jumping in. I figured releasing this post on January 2nd when people are back at work is not a bad plan since it should grab a couple extra readers who are board with work already this year! With no further ado, Happy New Year and welcome to 2013! Lets take a look at what 2012 was like hobby wise and blog wise for the Dead Tau Project.

Goals?
January 2012 saw a long list of comparing 2011 to 2010, and then had a list of goals. I recapped my 2010 goals and went through my success and failure for the year. Then I set some new goals for 2012:

• Gaming -I wanted to keep my games at the same level as 2011, and I would say I greatly succeeded. I am regularly made it out to my Tuesday gaming nights and took my total games played (147) in 2011 up to an astounding total of 173 in 2012.
• Game Systems - I did not really set any goals when it came to Game Systems, but more predictions. I actually failed with my predictions here if I am honest. I predicted that Malifaux would be me primary game which it certainly was, but then I went on. I predicted Hordes to become my back-up game along with 40K, and a complete drop of Warhammer Fantasy. In 2012 I played exactly 0 games of Hordes or 40K. In fact, all of my miniature gaming in 2012 was Malifaux.
• Painting/Assembly - This goal is a psuedo success and partial failure. I had the goal of becoming more consistent with my hobby by completing 2 models every month. I did become more consistent in my hobbying, but did not complete 2 models a month. March and August actually saw 0 progress in completion of any hobbying but the graph comparisons will show much more consistent hobby time than 2011.
• Tournaments - Well, I failed in my goals here. This is an interesting failure overall, as I am not sure how to measure this overall. So, I did not win any local or small tournaments with Guild at the beginning of the year. My first tournament was in March in NYC, where I came in third (I think) with Guild, going 2/1 for the day. My second local tournament was not until May, where I came in second to local Mike and I played Neverborn. When it came to Adepticon, I opted to help run a significant portion of the events and then over-slept and missed my qualifying tournament so did not play. Then at Gencon I volunteered to run Puppet Wars for the Wyrd folk, and was the primary TO for the final's. I played in one Gencon tournament which I won, but surrendered my qualification to the finals in order to TO the event.

Goals are funny things. I failed to win the tournaments I aimed to do well in at the start of 2012, but ended up in a fairly prominent position of being the head TO for a number of those events. Is there some type of trade-off there I am missing? I am not sure. I also failed to accurately predict the complete drop in a couple of game systems, but that certainly does not make me feel like I missed out at all. Hrm, something to think about.

Comparison 2011 to 2012: The Blog
I increased my overall number of posts on the blog to 53 over a post count of 45 in 2011. Not bad overall, although I think I need to post more consistently and more often. I feel like the length of my individual posts has increased, along with an overall increase in game reports. On the other hand, I have moved from smaller hobby updates to photo-series over the span of a week for my hobbying. 2012 was a tough year personally for me, which impacted my blogging a great deal.

Looking at Google Analytics I see a down-trend in blog visits. Overall every month of 2011 with the exception of February and July had more visitors per month than 2012. From a raw number standpoint, I dropped from an annual 30,146 visitors in 2011 to an annual 23,336 visitors in 2012. Even with that, I never dropped below 1,500 visitors to the blog in a single month, which is ok with me.

On the content side, the blog has moved entirely to covering Malifaux. This mirrors my game playing and hobby time exactly, as the other games have dropped off the radar as well. 

Comparison 2011 to 2012: The Hobby
 I guess its good for any new readers to define what I intend when I say "The Hobby" for these types of posts. The Hobby is my building and painting of miniatures for playing the table top miniature wargames I am playing. I track my hobby progress year to year through a point system that I originally adopted back in January of 2010. A year later I updated my ability to track my hobby through the adoption of the Google Doc's Hobby spreadsheet I copied from Rushputin (great Gw Focused blog and excellent painter).

So what does it look like comparing 2011 to 2012? Our 2011 Statistics for hobby month to month looked like this:

2011 Hobby Tracking by Month

While in 2012 we look like this:

2012 Hobby Tracking by Month

As you can see, 2011 was very inconsistent with my hobbying overall. There were drastic spikes and valleys month to month and thus I had the goal in 2012 to level that out. I was successful with a much more even graph for 2012, despite a couple spikes. I cannot really see any strong trends in the comparison, aside from April and November being a spike in activity both years.

Whats more interesting overall is the spread of my hobby across different Armies/Factions. In 2011 I still had a little bit of 40K in the mix, and only really did work on three factions.

Paining/Assembly per Army/Faction 2011

During 2012 non-Malifaux disappeared completely from my hobby and I spread out liberally in the different Malifaux factions overall. Guild and Neverborn were still heavy focus's, but Ten Thunders came on very strong considering they were only released at Gencon.

Painting/Assembly per Army/Faction 2012

Comparison 2011 to 2012: Game Playing
Game Playing in 2012 surpassed my 2011 game playing by a great deal. I ended up tracking a total of 173 games during 2012. All of these 173 were Malifaux games, and they are just the ones I tracked. I have given a couple demo games to my Daughter, who just started playing, and only 1 of these have been tracked. As she improves and we start actually playing I will begin tracking games against her as normal. I also took part in a number of Playtesting games for Wyrd Miniatures, none of which have been tracked. From a gaming point of view, with a focus on Malifaux, 2012 was a very successful year for me.

So, how did things look overall? Here are some interesting statistics before we get to the charts. Malifaux 2012 for me:

• 57 different opponents
• Only 2 opponents played more than 10 games:
• Mike Kelmelis - 21 total games (3/14/4)
• Tim Eck - 18 total games (8/8/2)
• Faced 38 different Masters (i.e. aZoraida different from Zoraida)
• Only 3 masters were faced more than 10 games:
• McMourning - 14 games (7/5/2)
• Zoraida - 12 games (6/6/0)
• Lilith - 11 games (6/5/0)
• Counting Ties as half wins, I have a 58.95% win percentage overall
• My largest number of games was played in July - 33 games
• My smallest number of games were April and December - 9 games each month

So, what do the charts show? Its worth taking note that I started tracking a great deal more information in 2012 than I did in 2011. This will provide a lot more to look at next year for comparison than this. We only had 2 comparison charts for 2011 to 2012, the first being overall performance (win/loss/draw) by Army/Faction:

Performance by Army/Faction 2011

You can see that 2011 still had a number of games being played with Dwarves and Eldar. Comparing to 2012:

Performance by Army/Faction 2012

We can see a marked improvement in my win/loss/draw playing as Guild. Neverborn stayed about the same, and its hard to tell overall with the Arcanists. I certainly played a whole lot more with the Arcanists during 2012, along with playing more overall. What I found most interesting is better shown in the next graph.

Game Percentage by Army/Faction 2011

Compared to 2012:

Game Percentage by Army/Faction 2012

 When looking at the comparison of total games played across the factions,  Arcanists and Neverborn games stayed fairly steady with the percentage of games played. Guild took a bit of a hit this year, but still accounted for the majority of games played by faction. Ten Thunders came on strong at the end of the year (19.1%)

2013: Whats Next?
So what are my goals for next year? Whats next? Honestly, I am not sure. 2012 was a tough year for me personally, with Work and Family being very challenging at the beginning of the year. The family challenges have smoothed over toward the end of the year, although I expect there will always be family challenges. On the bright side (with the family), my youngest daughter has begun to show a real interest in Malifaux and she loves Puppet Wars. That bodes really well for me, as I will be able to spend time with her AND get some more Malifaux games in. On the work side, this year will be interesting but I do not expect it will be in the same challenging manner as 2012. I am hoping for a smoother year, which may mean more travel but not as many headaches.

Overall, I don't think I am going to set any goals at this point. I feel like going into 2013, its better to play things a bit more casually and see how the year develops!

Happy New Year!