Return to Blogging

It's been awfully lonely and quiet around here lately. It similar to a ghost town in the western US with dust and tumble weeds blowing through the place. Checking out Google Analytics, it looks like there are about 15 of you who have stuck around and may have been chatting with the robot's who drift by from time to time.

Looking back it appears the last post was in October of 2014. 10 months is an eternity in the blog-o-sphere with no updates. Prior to that the updates were certainly slowing down and readership was dropping off. That slow decline in readership started during the Malifaux transition from Malifaux Classic to M2E, which paralleled my own slow decline on writing and posting to the blog. 2014 was a much slower posting year (15 posts total compared to 50+ in previous years) as I began shifting my gaming habits. I was keeping (somewhat) up on podcasting, but was really searching around for that next game that would grab me. This really cut into my enthusiasm for writing.

Understandably this post is most likely going to pass a bit unnoticed by any mass audience, but it's an important post. I'm back to blogging on a regular basis and at some point I'm confident new readers (and likely returning readers) will come here to read about my plans. I'm doing some things the same and I've updated some of my approach and view which will cause changes. In this case, changes are exciting not something to be scared of.

Over the next several weeks you'll see regular content start coming out. I spent time writing up a number of posts prior to kicking off the release of posts and scheduled those for regular release. This will assure that my return to blogging arrives with regular content you can count on reading and looking at. Unless there is a need to change the schedules, I'm aiming for Monday releases in the morning (US East Coast time). Initially I'll schedule a couple posts a week to get things back up and running and get some exposure and hopefully excitement out there. I also plan to come back with a bang this week, following this post with 2 more talking about what I've been playing while "gone".

So whats can you expect?

Over the past several months I've spread myself fairly wide across the interwebz, landing in a number of forums, boards, podcasts, and various other places on the net. Considering the wide variety of places I share my opinions, why return to building an active blog? DTP provides a centralized location for a couple activities that work better in a blog format. These overlap other areas (especially forums) a bit, but provide a different venue on the blog which I appreciate. I aim to provide some quick reference for readers to understand the context of future posts, partly via labels and partly via the leading picture on the post. There are six activities that I aim to use my blog to share:

The Soapbox

I have always used the DTP as my gaming soapbox to post articles that express my opinions regarding issues, happenings, and events in the war gaming hobby. I plan to continue this, and invite readers to comment in support or in an effort to enlighten me to contrary views. These types of posts should always be taken with a gain of salt and the understanding that I am expressing my own personal opinion on a subject.

The Pictures

Blogs are a great place to share pictures of models, especially for those who are in the miniature wargaming hobby. I believe all gamers like to see pictures of other people models, sometimes for reference, sometimes for inspiration, and other times to simply enjoy a painted model. I have posted series of pictures of my painted models in the past, and will return to that in future posts.

Painting Posts

Painting posts are something new I plan to try out. I expect these will not be the most frequent articles, but periodically I see a place for them. These are articles I plan to write ABOUT painting. This includes new techniques I am trying to learn, discussion of my painting experience, and very rarely a tutorial or reference to a tutorial on something I am painting.

Reviews

Previously I posted my reviews of games, models, and books and will continue doing so moving forward. The review posts have been some of my most popular posts, along with some of the most popular segments on the Gamers Lounge podcast. This is also the category I will use for any sneak peaks and advance leaks I am able to share with the community.

Tactics & Game Reports

Game Reports and Battle Reports are easily the second most popular type of post on the DTP. These take some work to put together but are fun to post. I don't get many comments, but these seem to draw a lot of eyes. I'm going to keep this up, specifically for tabletop miniature games, although if I can figure out how to get good game reports on typical board games I'll try that as well. Additionally I'm going to use this type of post to discuss tactics for different games. This will mostly be tactics discussion for miniature games, but occasionally I can see discussing tactics in board games as well.

Rambling 

I can see you scratching your head in confusion trying to figure out the difference between my rambling and my soapbox posts. It's pretty simple, I occasionally like to write up a quick article that is more of a though exercise than it is a strong opinion or view on a current tabletop war-gaming event or issue. These posts are general glimpses into my very crowded head, at least the gamer side of my thoughts. These should rarely be taken seriously and taken for what they are... a general ramble.