This week marks the one year anniversary of this blog. It has been so very much more successful than what I could have ever imagined. When I released my first post, I was thrilled with the couple hundred views it got. Now one year, and over 50,000 views later, I’m more than a bit amazed at how well the blog has done.

So far, we’ve reached over 80 countries with the 43 posts that we have put out. We published just a hair under 75,000 words, which is practically a novel. Our most popular post to date is the The Ultimate Negative Play Experience with over 2,750 views, in which I discussed how poor sportsmanship can effect the game. It’s been a great year.

I would be remiss if I didn’t take the time to thank the two people who are largely responsible for that success, Emily Rastl and Matt Cary.

Emily’s love of both X-Wing and grammar has elevated the quality of the blog content well above anything I could have hoped to achieve on my own, and her tech knowledge has been invaluable to this computer-illiterate construction worker. She doesn’t author her own posts very often, but when she does it inexplicably becomes a contentious discussion. What?! Women also like to play X-Wing, but can feel a bit awkward? Scandalous!

My more common co-author for the blog, Matt, lends some much needed legitimacy to the things we say. Because he, unlike me, is actually good at this game, and isn’t a complete scrub. Since the beginning of Second Edition he has been hard at work making a name for himself in the X-Wing community. After winning the Gold Squadron Classic, the Murray, Kentucky Hyperspace Trial, and placing second at Gencon, he is starting to become a household name in the X-Wing community. In addition to writing his own posts, editing mine, and winning things, he is also responsible for all of the wonderful memes and images that get included in our posts, including the swanky, new Midwest Scrub logo.

So a big thank you to both of you, for the work you put into this blog and for your friendship.

I’m grateful to the X-Wing community for fostering such an amazing atmosphere of camaraderie and competitive friendship. It’s wonderful to walk into a tournament hall six hours from your home and be greeted by friends that you met over an X-Wing mat at a different tournament in a different part of the country, and feel instantly like you belong. It’s a wonderfully weird feeling of coming home in a place you’ve never been, and that sense of community has kept me playing this game through times I certainly would have quit otherwise.

Of course, I also want to say thank you to everyone who has taken the time out of their days to actually read the content we put out, and especially those who make an additional effort to comment, up-vote, like, etc. It’s much appreciated. And, let’s be honest, there wouldn’t be much point to all this if it weren’t for you, now would there be? We hope to bring you content not just to entertain, but also inform (and occasionally rant). If you would like us to address any topic in the future, drop us a line: we welcome any and all suggestions!

If you are in the St. Louis area or coming to visit, reach out to Arch Alliance X-Wing on Facebook to find out where we are playing on any given night.

For more Arch Alliance content check out:

Our YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Biophysical’s Starfighter Mafia blog.

And for info on tournaments and events around the St. Louis area, check out the blog’s Facebook page and click on the events tab.