Hello, and happy new year to you all! Unless you follow the lunar years, in which case it’s in a few weeks time. I hope you all had a great break, and can muster up some optimism for the coming year.
I had a fortnight of sleeping late, eating Christmas cake, and drinking whisky.
Good times.
War! Huh! What is it good for?
Website visits it seems. On the 23rd of December I published an article I’d been working on for a while. It looks at the ethics and morals of enjoying wargames, and has some input from David Thompson (Undaunted, War Chest), Volko Ruhnke (Cuba Libre), and it did well. It did very well.
Before it was published, my most-read article (according to the janky Wordpress plugin I use) is my review of Hallertau, which was published in March 2021. That currently sits at just over 5.6K reads. In the two weeks since my wargame article went live, it’s had nearly 22K reads.
As someone who is used to getting ~100-130 visitors per day, to see it going over 3000 for days in a row was frankly ridiculous, but made me very happy. On the down side, it means I’ve got new standards to try to meet. It’s a nice problem to have though.
If you’re curious and want to read it for yourself, you can do exactly that, by clicking here ? Is it okay to enjoy wargames?
Thank you for reading What did I just punch?. This post is public so feel free to share it.
Improvements
2023 is set to be a year of improvements for me. On a personal level, there are a few things I have vowed to sort out this year, but as far as Punchboard goes, there’s lots I want to make happen.
I want to keep improving my writing and to strive towards making my reviews sound like it’s me talking, which is something I fall short on far more often than I’d like. I’m going to be more regular with my reviews, and get back to doing more previews for smaller publishers on who I want to shine my (admittedly, small) light.
I’m aiming to get to more conventions than any year previous so I get to spend time with my extended family of game nerds, and I want to give back more. There’s a FLGS a few miles from me which is opening a games café this year, so I’m going to help them out by donating lots of my seldom-played collection.
And to you guys, my readers, my friends. I’m going to run giveaways as often as possible. I need to increase my membership to make that happen, but that’s something I’m going to drive towards too.
Best of 2022
And to wrap up this first newsletter of 2023, I’ve just got time to point you towards something, and ask you a question.
Firstly, here’s my Top Games of 2022 post. Not everything on that list was published in 2022, and not all of it would fall into, my favourite games. Each game on there is there for a reason though.
Secondly, what were your top games of 2022?
Thanks for sticking with me folks, here’s a to a great 2023!
Adam