The Dark City's 3rd anniversary & forum awards

Lords and ladies, masters and mistresses, welcome.

The Dark City once again celebrated an anniversary on May 14th, our third.  Throughout the 2nd half of 2013 and into 2014, our membership grew at a steady, although slightly slower pace, from 2,440 to 3,260, clearly solidifying our place in the online 40K community.  We continue to welcome anyone and everyone who embraces Dark Eldar, from wily vets to complete novices, and even a few who cling to the lesser races but secretly covet our swift and deadly, and dead sexy, spikey eldar.

Among this past year’s usurpers were a noticeable number of veteran players of the True Kin, who helped further deepen the level of knowledge and experience in all forum conversations.  A major addition to the forum has been Egorey’s thread A TDC Blog: tactics , unit analysis, batreps, observations, which in slightly less than a year is second only to ESE’s An "Evil?" project log as the most viewed and the most replied-in thread in Commorragh.  Although not exclusively DE-related, the unit- and list-analysis across the entire 40K spectrum that is done daily by our Duck of Death riffing with Ligolski, Mushkilla, Psycheer, Count Adhemar, Vasara, Unorthodoxy, Brom, Its Rumble, and many, many others is always informative and entertaining.

We were also joined in the Project Logs in Lower Commorragh’s dark and dingy workshops by Herbert West and Khain mor, both of whom need a moving van to transport their raiding forces to games.  Both of them are not only copious collectors, but excellent painters as well.  It just takes them a little longer than most to get through their armies!

Another new talent we welcomed last year was Spellcheck2001, who followed in the footsteps of notable archons such as Sorrowshard and Speedfreek in the creation of an army that keeps everyone spellbound as it unfolds on the workbench.  Spellcheck’s phenomenal painting is equalled by his imagination and conversion skills, and his Harlequin Carnival- La Danse Macabre will be simply amazing when it is complete.  If he can ever stop adding to it!

Thor665 ran the first Secrets of the Hidden Library - Fiction Competition one year ago, to tremendous applause, and is currently in the midst of a follow-up edition which looks to be an even bigger success given the amazing writing community here.  Hopefully it will remain a regular fixture on the forum, along with Facelessabsalom’s Haemonculi’s Challenge, a modelling competition.  With GW rumoured to be releasing some new covenly treats (and plastic-flavoured, too) in the very near future, plus a new codex and more new models for Dark Eldar later in the year, there should be plenty of new fodder for both competitions to thrive on.

Thor665 also created the Title Troupe, a mechanism whereby worthy denizens can be nominated for a custom title which is then voted on by their peers.

And perhaps the most unusual event of the past year was our cultural exchange with the AdvancedTau Tactica (ATT) forum.  Sensei Mushkilla started the ball rolling by posting views-from-the-other-side on ATT, which resulted in him being asked to act in an ‘advisory’ manner on their mod team.  In return, we invited and welcomed Por'El Lyi'ot and Che Gue'vesa into our inner sanctum, and they were quite taken in by the inner beauty of Commorragh’s spires.

The Dark City continues to be a friendly and respectful community that all everyone appreciates tremendously.  This is our hobby, our entertainment and our release, it should be enjoyable and we all strive to keep it that way, successfully.   Helping us along the way was founding member and architect Baron Tordeck, returning from hiatus and making an immediate impact, and the new mods Wanderingblade, TLRonin, Korazell, Vasara, Psycheer, Ligolski and Spellcheck2001.

And last year’s favourite moderator, Lady Malys, stepped down after some obviously greatly appreciated service to concentrate on slicing and dicing her way into this year’s Best Overall Member category.  With great success, I might add!

To help celebrate The Dark City’s third anniversary, we have again completed a public nomination and voting process for our Dark City Forum Awards.  Obviously, there are many denizens deserving of recognition, not least all of the runners up in each category, but the individuals listed below were singled out by you, the forum members, for their hard work and dedication to their fellow True Kin.

And so, here are the winners, as voted by forum members of the 2014 Dark City Forum Awards – in some extremely tight races this year!  In addition to the badges and signature banners they will receive to display in their posts, each winner will receive a pair of dice – one of each colour – from this year’s special dice order:

Best Work of Fluff– Cavash, for Murder Cult and Meeting the Oracle, his two most recent pieces.

Best Quote – Thor665, for The Most Interesting Archon in the World quote and picture, based on everyone’s favourite Mexican beer commercial.  Stay thirsty, my friends!

Best Strategist- Thor665 (in a very tight vote), who is always willing to help anyone with a question, regardless of its simplicity or complexity, and doe so with endless patience and respect.

Best Rules Interpreter - Count Adhemar, who supposedly has a real job but is always one of the most likely candidates to respond online to a new tactical or theoretical question, in a very welcoming and an easy-going manner.

Best Battle Report(s) – Panic Puppet (in a real nail-biter), for his consistently well-written and nicely detailed reports, that also include many pictures and entertaining storylines to match the tabletop action.

Best Painter– Evil Space Elves (in another super close vote), for his continued standout efforts in both his “An “Evil” project log?” and his Warhammer 30K project.  The volume of his output is as amazing as the quality.  ESE also steps up to the plate with friendly painting tips and suggestions to other forum members.

Best Conversion – Gherma (yet another incredibly close, neck-and-neck all the way vote), for an absolutely beautiful squad of Wracks/Covenish Incubi that he converted and painted for Devilish in the 2013 Secret Santa Raid.

Best Moderator– Gobsmakked. - A man who joined us the very first day we were live and quickly moved up the staff ranks with his hard work and dedication to the site, as well as being the driving force behind recruiting Archon Claus to join our ranks and conduct his annual Secret Santa Raid. His second time winning this award only goes to show the true testament of how great a staff member he is. I am proud to work with him for the continued glory of this wonderful site.

Best Overall Member – Lady Malys, a much-loved presence in all areas of the forum, in particular the roleplaying, fiction and art sections, as well as the ever-popular chatroom.  Malys is always entertaining and helpful, a kinder True Kin if ever there was one.


Congratulations to everyone who won, and to all nominees as well.  It was very difficult, and a shame really, to separate out some of the contenders this year, but this forum is a product of all its members, whether or not they were nominated, and  I am looking forward immensely to our fourth year as we reap the galaxy with a new codex in one hand and new models in the other.

Thank you very much.

Awesome well done to all the winners :)and to you Gobsmakked for your very well deserved best mod award

Congrats to all our winners this year.

Since he was too humble to say anything as to his own win I have taken the liberty to say a few words in the OP concerning Gobs' second win as best moderator.

I'm very proud to be the new "master homunculus" of the forum, and I wanna say thank you to all the people who liked my "flesh sculpture" and give me a vote.
That award will be for sure a stimulus to be more active on the forum. I'v got so many other works in progress or just still in my mind!

Congratulations to everybody who won. They were all well deserved.

Especially me.

Congratulations to all the winners and thank you to everyone who voted for me. The hostages will be released shortly.

Congratulations to everyone who won their well-deserved awards! Without a doubt you all help to make the Dark City what it is: a vibrant and welcoming community!

My thanks to everyone who nominated me! You honour me.


Your antidotes will arrive by Scourge shortly.

The last time I'd looked at both Quote and Strategist I was losing both, I guess thanks payment of promised bribes is in order.

I'd love to thank both Spellcheck2001 and Khain Mor for their AWESOME armies. Those types of project logs are what keep us all going.

For next month's Monthly Vow I plan to paint a couple of things to stomp on their gravespay tribute to them both.   

Khain Mor's army is a constant inspiration to me about how much bigger my DE collection could be

Congrats everyone! Your awards are well deserved, I'm honored to be mentioned as a new force in TDC and thank you for that...party time!

Thanks to everyone that voted, and congratulations to all the other winners I'm still surprised with mine, and would encourage anyone to check Skari's batreps if they have the time as his video reports are some of the best I've ever seen.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a realspace raid to prepare/document, and a trueborn who I can tell to remove his venom blade from a certain competitor's back....

*pulls out shades for Thor's new sig*

These banners are pretty sweet, big thanks to The Eye of Error for creating them once again.

Congrats to all of the winners, and all of the contenders - very well deserved! Thank you to everyone who voted for me, and to Baron for the kind words he added in on my behalf, this is a great online community and I really enjoy trying to help keep it that way. As do all of our excellent mod team.

I'm not sure that my recruitment of Claus was such a good thing, though, slacker's usually asleep somewhere while everyone else dodges the bullets and does all the looting and pillaging!

These awards are not really meant as a competition, but it was fun watching some extremely tight votes this year. I have to admit that I shutdown the polls after the midnight deadline on Sunday and then went to bed without looking too closely. I then had a couple of mild surprises when I finally checked yesterday morning, just because of the way I thought they had been trending beforehand.

OK, onwards - where's these new coven releases? It's been too long since we last slaked our thirst!

Congratulations award winners!

Lovely design on the banners.