Realm of Chaos 80s: One Year Old!

Its been twelve months, 150 posts (not including this one), 925 published comments, 108,000 page views and 168 followers...

And we are only a year old!

That deems some sort of announcement and an outpouring of 'thank yous' to you, the readers, of this blog. After all, writing is only worth the reading and in blogging (as in many things), content its king and I do hope that I have provided one or two interesting articles and posts over the last year and that you'll be following the goings on here at Realm of Chaos 80s for another twelve months.

SO THANK YOU!

I thought this would be an apt moment to have a little overview of the past year and share with you my TOP 10 favourite posts that I have published. After all, the blog is fairly sizable now and I get emails from people from time to time who have just found a nugget amongst the dross that they hadn't spotted before.

So here they are, my favourites.

10: Completed Nurgle Warband

I chose this post to begin with because I feel that this little Warband (to be seen at Oldhammer Day) represents my finest painting to date. I spent a long, long time on these pustule ridden beauties during a difficult time in my young family's life. They helped in their way, as absorbing, life long pastimes do. I posted images of these to the incredibly talented Andy Craig when he asked about my own painting, which was a strange feeling indeed. 

9: The Grand Plan

This crazy idea, inspired by the birth of my son, is still ongoing. Will I ever achieve it? I do hope so, but I really do need to get my bum in gear and get on with the Khorne and Slaanesh mortal armies (and their daemonic equivalents) this year.

8: Warhammer novels: a history of GW books

One of the first histories that I researched and wrote. I have been fascinated by early Warhammer literature (and that is what it is, certianly when it is compared to the hackery they publish today) since I read Konrad back in 1989-90. I spent some time collecting the original first editions during the 2000s and still have most of them around somewhere. We even managed to track down some lost stories. 

7: Miniature Wishlists

This post got other writers and collectors thinking. Which has become a growing interest of mine. I feel that the success of Oldhammer Scene (or whatever you want to call it) is totally due to the quality writing and content that giants such as Zhu, Thantsants, Gaj, Treps, Coop, Steve Casey... et al have been producing over the last 18 months or so. We inspire and inform each other. Long should this continue. 

6: Warhammer Rocks: A history of Warhammer Records

I loved doing this one. It was a proper history job too. Starting with the WD archive, then the internet and Youtube. I still listen to Bolt Thrower's Realm of Chaos now. Its hard to imagine modern GW inspiring the works of big metal bands today, isn't it? But back in the '80s, Hawkwind, Sabbat and even Brian May were inspired by the art and background to create music. 

5: Arcane Armorials: Old School Shield Painting

As many of you know I am a big fan of freehand shield designs. Classic issues are laden with incredible examples and I feel that shield and banner designs have faded in their importance as the years have go by. Perhaps because they are very hard to well and have no commercial properties to exploit. Here, I tried to share my experience, limited as it was, into painting skulls and things as well as looking at the original Arcane Armorials. 

4: The Malignacy of Malal

A major piece of research work, inspired by my conversations with Tony Ackland. There is stuff much still to tell, but that will have to wait. This piece was picked up by other forums, particularly Strike to Stun, and discussed away from our nostalgic community. A few sculptors have also emailed me to inform us that work has started on creating models from the concept pictures. Purely for private pleasure, of course. The most successful piece of 'proper' writing I have done. 

3: An interview with Andy Craig

Working with Andy was great fun. He's a great guy with a passionate enthusiasm for Old School GW. We had a great conversation over some time and it was a really rewarding experience. He felt that his contribution to GW had long been forgotten, so it was pleasing to put that right. Again, other forums picked this interview up (and the other excellent interview that Tony Hough did for us) which created discussion outside of our community. Promotion to our cause is a very good thing, even indirectly. 

2: An interview with Tony Ackland

This was a dream come true. Unpublished RoC art from the pensmith who originally drew it. This post very quickly established itself as one of the most popular things on the blog with thousands of page views since publication early last month. It also had a life of its own (and directly inspired the Malal piece) and spread across the net quite quickly. 

1: An interview with Rick Priestley

Another dream come true. And Mr Priestley was a real old pro. Within 24 hours of asking him, I had sent out and got back an engaging interview with a gaming legend. Of course, the famous quote was unleashed upon us which caused much discussion on many, many other blogs and forums and was even added to sigs up and down the interweb.

"The modern [Games Workshop Design] studio isn’t a studio in the same way; it isn’t a collection of artists and creatives sharing ideas and driving each other on. It’s become the promotions department of a toy company – things move on!"

Now wasn't that a scoop! You heard it here first Oldhammerers!

I hope you forgive the blowing of my own trumpet but I felt I could get away with a shameless piece of self promotion just this once, so don't be too hard on me.

Well, have you any comments about the direction of this blog? Have I missed something that you really, really enjoyed and found valuable? What would you want to see more of, or less of?

 A blog is only as good as its readers after all.

PS: I have something very special in the works. Something that links with both the celebration of the first birthday of this blog AND the Slaves to Darkness 25th anniversary articles. But you'll have to wait a short while longer until I share that with you. If you think the revelations of Rick Priestley were Oldhammer shattering, you just wait and see what is in store for you here at Realm of Chaos 80s...

Until then,

Enjoy.

Orlygg.