Today, May 16th 2024, marks the one year anniversary of the Spent Glory webpage. I debuted this as a blog on WordPress back in 2023 with this post talking about why people should play Warhammer Underworlds and what makes it such a beautiful game. In the year since, the page has had 56,470 views with 24,833 unique visitors – hugely more successful than I could have anticipated when I went live with this project. Humor me while I go over the past year and pat myself on the back a bit while also giving thanks to all of you who have helped me improve, provided content to post, or even just popped in to read any of my 78 posts I’ve published in the past year (man, I talk a lot).

It all started when I was noticing pretty frequently on Facebook, Reddit, and Discord that new people were coming into the hobby with no great guidance on how to start, or what made the game different than Warcry, whether they could play with an older warband, what product to purchase, where to find players in their local area, or how to pick back up after taking time off from earlier seasons. People were occasionally helpful, but I wanted to make a more comprehensive resource for the more commonly asked questions – if for no reason other than to save myself time writing responses to these posts.

I had personally taken the lead in the Seattle area to help bring things back to the tabletop after the Covid pandemic shut down the Underworlds scene for my group. Seeing as I was just some guy and I managed to take us from no games in a year to a small group of 3-4 players in a given week at a scheduled meetup, I wrote this post to help others revitalize their own communities or build their own from scratch. Derek, a community Hero out of Alberta Canada, chipped in and penned this one to add to the discussion.

Seeing that many returning players were asking questions like “Can I still use my old Stormsire’s Cursebreakers” and the like, I wrote up this Returning Players’ Guide to let them know what rules changes have happened since they were last playing, and began the Can I use This Old Warband series to show that yes, you can use things from years past, and don’t let that stop you from diving back in! These have been very popular resources for people and I’m glad to have gotten as much positive feedback here as I have.

Returning players weren’t the only group I wanted to help, of course, and with the introduction of the Rivals and Nemesis formats we had started to see a real uptick in new players interested in joining the game. I wrote this New Players’ Guide which has been by far my most popular article, and shared the most times both by myself and by other people online out of anything I have written. I continue to update this to try and make it most useful to the new people who come along, and again, I am very happy with how well it has been received. Send it to people who are getting started in your area!

I also wanted to celebrate the people who were involved in the community and doing cool things rather than just helping to bring new people in. I launched the Monthly Web Highlights with this summary of things I found during the month of May 2023 and have very much enjoyed sharing people’s cool paintjobs, blog posts, and tournament success in the months since. More than once I have had people reach out to say they were inspired to paint their own warbands to match something they found inside one of those roundups! Please send me things you’ve done or things you’ve found and I’ll gladly add them to subsequent monthly roundups.

I had been noticing that people were posting ‘hey, does anybody play Underworlds in my area?’ and if they were lucky they would get a response. The idea of all these people unable to find somebody to play with bummed me out, so I created this Regional Underworlds Group Directory and have been adding groups when they op up ever since. Multiple times I have had people reach out to tell me they got new players thanks to the links there, so it sounds like it’s had some success! If you have a group you want added, let me know and I’ll toss you in there. If you need a group to play with, check it out and see if there’s something in reach for you.

I have personally always enjoyed competitive play and organized tournaments, even on a small scale store level, and hoped to encourage more people to attend local events even if they were newer and less confident in their skills. I started work on my Contender Series to guide people through the process of maximizing their chances, and eventually wrote a guide to Participating in Your First Tournament. I’m pleased to say that at least one person took the bait. Jesse, a newer player, made the decision to come to the Las Vegas Open this year in part due to that article and ended up finishing in second place in the Rivals clash.

In October of 2023, I joined forces with Saxthom (Thomas), a big presence on the discord servers who runs the Tucson Arizona scene, and Sleek’s Bowl (Mike), a great dude out of California who had his own blog. We launched the Underworlds Underground Podcast focusing on helping people get more involved with the game, and have had loads of fun since, publishing 8 (with a few more on the way) episodes and totaling 2,634 downloads thus far. Three hundred or so people listen to us ramble for two hours at a time, which is both terrifying and uplifting all at once. Mr Bowl and I then decided that we ought to combine forces further, and rolled his content onto the Spent Glory page so you can get us both with some one-stop shopping.

As a part of that podcast crew, I had the special privilege to witness arguably the greatest high-stakes Underworlds match of all time – The LVO Pink Slip. Underworlds Underground challenged What the Hex to a winner-takes-his-opponent’s-warband deathmatch and it was every bit as exciting as we could have hoped. Being in the room with that energy was great, commentating along with Davy and Skyler from What the Hex was tons of fun, and Alexx from Shadeglass Reflections did a great job running live recording, troubleshooting, and editing for the livestream and subsequent video post. There’s another Pink Slip that went down at the Alberta Classic, but I’m told it’s not time to spoil what happened there just yet…

Of course, I don’t want to be some holier-than-thou ‘content creator’ who talks all day and never shares his platform. I launched my Love Letters Series by asking people to talk about the warbands they love, even if they aren’t the greatest, by publishing this call for articles while also encouraging people to play those off-meta or ‘weaker’ options. I’m very happy to report a lot of interest in both people writing in about what they love, and readers happy to hear from others in the community ‘like them’. Send more love letters my way! Always happy to host reader submissions.

Last, and quite possibly least, over the past year I have also started up a series dedicated to “The Hobby” – I wanted to help encourage people to get involved in aspect of Warhammer Underworlds beyond simply playing games. There is so much to explore in this game that doesn’t get talked about all that often – modeling and painting your miniatures, as well as engaging in the lore and background of the characters and setting that I have come to adore.

I want to close by thanking you all for reading along, writing in, listening to my rambling on the podcast, and spending your glory over the past year. I’m humbled and honored to have as many of you on this ride with me as I have. Special thanks to Thomas and Mike for taking me onto their Best Coast podcast team, George (Kyros) for being a huge help when I was getting back into the game, Aman for encouraging me to keep the page moving, every Canadian for reinforcing the stereotype of being incredibly kind and welcoming, and the What the Hex guys for being such great friends throughout the process. I also owe a lot to my local guys for playing so many games with me over the year and being my support group: Andrew for creating the site logo, Josh for being the webpage designer (and making things look really nice), John and Brian for being solid competitors and better bros, and my wife Sara for cheering me on the whole way.

Here’s to another year of rolling supports and sharing laughs with you all. Don’t be scared to take the plunge if you’re considering making a webpage/Youtube channel/podcast of your own – I’m so glad that I did. This is the greatest community I could have hoped to be a part of.

• Fishmode/Other Mike/Dr. Fish