Happy Birthday to us…

Happy Birthday to us…

Happy Birthday Sprues & Breeewwssss!!

Happy Birthday to us!

That’s right folks, back on 15th April 2017 Sprues & Brews was born.

Early in 2017 Matt came up with the initial idea that we should turn our love of the hobby into a fun website, filled with projects that we were doing, chatting about the latest news and gossip from the worlds of Warhammer and other tabletop games that we enjoy.

And so after a few discussions, the concept of ‘Brews and Sprues’ was born, heavily influenced by the mighty sprues that create the minis we enjoy to build, paint and battle with alongside the pure enjoyment of a brew to accompany these tasks. Matt gave the name a tweak, threw around some ideas with Dave and a hobby beast was birthed!

This eventually led to Sprues & Brews and the launch of the website on the 15th April 2017.

Quickly spreading ourselves across the various social networks, we had no idea back then that now, two years on, we’d have a really active social community, a very busy website, a popular weekly podcast and an ever growing following on YouTube.

Did you know?

In 2017 Sprues & Brews had 17,215 views for the entire year. Fast forward a couple of years and we are hitting these heights almost on a weekly basis!

One of the first events we ever visited was the UK Games Expo, and it’s here that we came up with what has become something of a trademark for us!

We thought it would be fun to have a random question we could throw out at the end of an interview – Favourite Chaos God maybe? Nah, not enough fun responses. First game you played? Well it’s going to be Warhammer of some flavour isnt it! After some deliberation on the eve of the UK Games Expo, Matt messaged Dave and suggested “What’s your favourite sprue, and what’s your favourite brew?” which has managed to transcend from our YouTube interviews to becoming something of a tradition over on Warhammer Live whenever Matt is in the chat!

Later in our first year, in October to be precise, we launched our podcast (and fully introduced Jay to our team!). Whilst this was a slow burner to begin with, since September of 2018 we’ve put out a podcast (almost!) every week featuring the latest news, and later special features and Tale of Gamer updates. The podcast is also home to our ‘Top 3’, where each week we discuss a different Top 3, such as our top 3 favourite rules, units, projects and artwork. We also ask every week on social media for our community Top 3s, of which you folks never disappoint.

You can listen to the latest podcast below.

With the podcast getting more and more downloads each week, our next focus is to increase our offering over on our YouTube channel. We now, excitingly, have a partnership with GameMat.eu to help us gain this. Matt has invested a lot in his gaming room to further help the quality of our battle reports, and we are keen to ensure we are bringing you recorded games more and more frequently, along with unboxings and event coverage. We’ve had some fantastic feedback from the past couple of reports which we are using to further improve our future ones.

You can check out our latest battle report, where Jay’s Blood Angels take on Matt’s Chaos Daemons below.

Dave’s Birthday Message

It’s been a fantastic two years! I never dreamed the site would be in such a strong position in the space of two years.

As much as I enjoyed the hobby when the site was launched, it has further helped me to delve even further into the hobby. Never have I painted so much and rolled as many dice. 2 years ago I would not have gone anywhere near a tournament or wanted to be filmed playing a game for fear of forgetting something rules-wise, and yet now I have taken part at a tournament at Warhammer World, played live in front of hundreds on the Warhammer Live Twitch stream and filmed battle reports for YouTube.

The Warhammer hobby is in such a great place now, mainly because of the power of social media and the rise of ‘Warhammer Community’, and we are fortunate to be running this site as more and more people are getting involved.

We aren’t resting on our laurels however. We want to continue to grow, to give back to you guys the latest news, unboxings of the latest goodies, battle reports, fun podcasts, more event coverage, the works! Right now we are working with someone who shall for the time being remain nameless on updating our brand.

This is all possible thanks to you guys, the community. I can’t thank you all enough for bookmarking us, listening and watching us, as well as engaging with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. Your all super awesome, and I hope you’ll stay with us on this adventure!

Matt’s Birthday Message

Two years eh? It seems like only yesterday I was chatting to Dave about doing a Warhammer blog – Time certainly flies when you’re having fun!

I am absolutely blown away by how much support and love there has been out on Social Media. We put together the site for a bit of fun as a front-end for a YouTube channel with unboxings and interviews, and has grown to be a site we are proud of with a podcast we love recording and that you guys seem to be enjoying! And if you keep listening/watching we will keep making them!

I also want to say a massive thanks to all the Warhammer Community and Warhammer TV guys who have given us support, advice and awesome opportunities the last couple of years – when we started out it was a bucket list thing to end up on the Warhammer Live stream, to have now been on it 3 times in the last year is fairly mental! Thanks for all the likes and shares and putting up with our questions and pestering! I don’t think we would have been able to grow as much as we did without the awesome interaction with you guys!

I want to give a shout out to Element Games too, who with their affiliate links helps keep the website running without any ugly popup adds etc, something we are both keen to stay away from, Anyone who uses those links to buy from Element really does help support the website and it is very much appreciated! 

So what’s next then? Well, as Dave mentioned in the main article something I really want to focus on this year is battle reports, and with the new setup we should be able to get these out at a better quality and more often. We also want to keep up the momentum with the Podcast and make it a fun place to hang out and share our love of the hobby with you guys!

Thanks for joining us for the ride, and I hope we still entertain you for more years to come!

And finally…

Time to wrap up this birthday post. If you hadn’t guessed by now we are super thankful for your support these past two years, and we hope you’ll still be with us in the years to come. If you ever see us at Warhammer World or any other gaming events please feel free to stop us and say Hello!

Now pass us those D6s, and lets continue to roll those dice!

Kind Regards,

Dave, Matt and Jay
SpruesandBrews.com

Published by David Jennings

Born and raised in Crewe in Cheshire, Dave is a geek through and through. Enjoys designing and managing websites. View all posts by David Jennings