First Year Retrospective

I’d like to wrap the first year anniversary celebration by taking a look back over the past year through some stats! I think it has been very interesting to see how the blog has grown both in content and readership. I’ve done some work to make sure these will only cover exactly one year. That is July 10th, 2021 when the blog went live (despite that I started working on it well before then) to July 10th, 2022.

Overall

Views	32,995
Visitors	14,436
Posts	169
Card Reviews	55
Written Playthroughs	69
Most Viewed Post	FAQ on Revised Core Set and New LOTR LCG Release Model (3,402 views)
Most Viewed Card Review	Tactics Glorfindel – Spoiler Review (451)
Most Viewed Card Review Excluding Spoiler Reviews	Brok Ironfist (271)
Most Viewed Written Playthrough	Core Campaign Escape from Dol Guldur 6 – March 1, 2022 (168)
Most Viewed Guide	New Player Buying Guide (1,306)

The most viewed posts generally were those most beneficial to new players. The announcement of the revised Core Set excited many people into trying out, or at least finding out more about the game. This is evidenced by the site traffic spiking in February and March with all the announcements and releases. I know also there were many questions and confusion regarding if the old deluxes and adventure packs were compatible. I initially wrote the FAQ because I was answering those questions often on reddit and wanted something I could just link to people. It consistently has been the top viewed post since it was published. I’m so glad many people are finding it and hope it helped answered their questions.

Month	Views	Visitors
Jul-21	818	382
Aug-21	1,018	547
Sep-21	1,440	740
Oct-21	1,686	917
Nov-21	740	359
Dec-21	1,671	783
Jan-22	2,022	985
Feb-22	6,263	2,635
Mar-22	7,185	2,626
Apr-22	3,840	1,782
May-22	2,923	1,242
Jun-22	2,357	1,088
Jul-22	972	350

Card Reviews

I reviewed a total of 38 cards in the first year. Not quite the 52 if I had done one every week. Early on, I was at about 1 review every 2 weeks. Then I hit my stride and really nailed down my process to match pace with the podcast. My average rating was 4, but 3 rings was my most common rating. As you can see below, my ratings skew pretty positively. There were a lot of good cards reviewed this past year! Perhaps this next year, we’ll review more cards that I don’t find as good and it will balance out a little. I don’t expect to average 5 and have a completely normal distribution because I think every card in the card pool has a use and doesn’t quite deserve a 10. There are 1 or 2 that are probably close to a ten for me, but time will tell.

Below I’ve broken down the reviews by sphere with the average ring rating for that sphere. I know Neutral is not a sphere, but you get the idea. I feel so bad about Leadership being my lowest rated sphere so far. I think much more highly of it than those 6 ratings indicate. I blame Brok’s 8 rings dragging down that average. I’m pleasantly surprised that Tactics cards on average I’ve rated better than Spirit despite I’ve rated 2 Spirit cards at 1 ring. Tactics does a have a couple more reviews than Spirit. Many of the Tactics cards I’ve rated 2 or 3 which is likely pushing it past Spirit for now.

Sphere	Reviews	Ring Rating Average
Leadership	6	5.2
Lore	11	4
Neutral	5	3.6
Spirit	7	3.86
Tactics	9	3.56
Grand Total	38	4

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the blog also featured reviews by other members of the community! We had 8 from Quetzal, Joe Hoffman, and stoneoferic.

Quetzal reviewed Fast Hitch and Ranger of Cardolan ring rating each at 4 and 3, respectively. Ranger of Cardolan’s review also has a very detailed background of Cardolan and the Arnorian kingdoms featured in Angmar Awakenged. A great read for players looking to dive into the lore behind that new campaign.

Joe, our resident Rohan fan, reviewed Spirit Theoden, Leadership Elfhelm, and Horseback Archer. His reviews there covered a Rohan glue card, a more multiplayer oriented strategy enabler, and a Core Set card that suffers from the change in overall cost curve of subsequent cards. Horseback Archer also sports the most complex ring rating determination on the blog thus far.

stoneoferic reviewd Blade of Gondolin working ahead of the podcast. He also stepped in to review the podcast’s choice of a holiday thematic card with Bombur hero. Then for our Core Set series of reviews, he reviewed Gleowine known as one of the best early card pool card draw cards and gaining a new relevance with Messenger of the King.

We also had 10 (17 if all of July 2022 included) from participants in the blog’s first contest.¹ People generally picked cards they really liked. In a few cases, card they really disliked. This is great because they wrote some fantastic reviews about cards they were passionate about. I’m glad to feature all of them here.

Playthroughs

Written playthroughs surpassed card reviews this year. It is just because I have so many written up with the play by plays starting in 2019. These made for ready fill ins when the review had to be postponed. Also I could easily publish more for this celebration month. I also continuously create new ones as I play my solo games. I’ve had to slow down this summer due to trips and family visits, but I still have plenty for the next year or two.

Scenarios and Cycles Covered

• Paths of Mirkwood campaign (includes Core Set and Dark of Mirkwood scenarios)
• Peril in Pelargir
• Into Ithilien
• Seige of Cair Andros
• Steward’s Fear
• Celebrimbor’s Secret
• Intruders in Chetwood
• The Ghost of Framsburg
• Mount Gundabad
• Fate of the Wilderland
• Vengeance of Mordor Cycle

The playthroughs covered a double different ends of the game because this last year I was nearing the end of the cycles. The playthroughs from when I started logging quests began with Against the Shadow. There were also detours to play the new exciting stuff like the Paths of Mirkwood campaign. Now I’ve been doing some testing prior to Angmar Awakened’s campaign being released. It’s a bit of jumping around, but I hope people find them useful to explore some different strategies especially as I try to diagnose deck problems after each game.

Thanks

Thank you everyone that has come here and read a news, card review, and/or playthrough post. I’ve really enjoyed working on everything here at the site. I’m glad so many keep coming back each week to read these and I really appreciate it. Also a big thank you to everyone else that has written for the blog here, Dave, Grant, Quetzal, Joe, stoneoferic, and all the great community members that kindly let me post the reviews they did for our first contest. You all are great and wonderful!

Footnotes

¹I know someone is looking at those numbers going hey how do you have 55 total card reviews when those 18 plus Matt’s 38 ring ratings is 56? Radaghast and his staff was a double review. I have 2 ring ratings in a single card review post.