Thanks for coming back to week two of Hammer the Backlog, my potentially never ending effort to get all of the wargaming miniatures that I have hoarded over the years painted up to a pleasing standard.
As per protocol, let’s start with a look at this week’s scorecard. As with last week, we are fully in the green! If you are paying particular attention you might have noticed that I have adjusted one or two little things. One Instagram post a week is ridiculously little if we want people to see the blog and hopefully be inspired to start clearing their own backlog and take joy in the models they already have. That has been upped to a comfortable 3 a week.
Secondly, I corrected a couple of small typos. We are going for 5 man sized models (1 rank in WFB or half an average sized 40k unit) per week. I had set this to 4 last week by mistake.
THIS WEEK’S MODELS
That’s enough preamble, let’s get down to this week’s models. I read a very interesting article this week in which legendary painter Mike McVey said that when he started with Games Workshop he was hired to produce 5 fully painted models per day. Assuming a 7-8 hour work day, that works out to about the amount of hobby time I spend per week, so it looks like my 5-a-week target is about industry standard!
I made a bit of a boo-boo this week! Last week’s models were undercoated with Blood Angels Red contrast paint, this week’s are Flesh Tearers Red. A slight lapse in attention. I think you need a particularly keen eye to notice it once all of the highlights are on and the other colours are painted, especially when they are mixed in with the previous guys. If you can see the difference, which do you prefer? Extra special bonus points if you can see how I have technically avoided having any duplicates.
For future reference, more for myself than anything else, the recipe for the red is:
Wraithbone spray
Blood Angels Red (Contrast)
Evil Suns Scalet (Glaze)
Evil Suns Scarlet (Highlight)
Wild Rider Red (Edge Highlight)
Fire Dragon Bright (Extreme Edge Highlight)
They have the nice appearance now of an almost finished unit, although we have two more to go in this colour scheme. The hoarder in me is incredibly annoyed that the 5th edition starter set didn’t have command groups for the units, unlike later editions of Warhammer Fantasy Battles. I’m sure you can imagine the temptation to hop on eBay and order two sets of Bretonnian peasant archer command groups. But no! We are not here to add to the backlog, we are here to hammer it!
STAYING PRODUCTIVE
One of the reasons I’ve always struggled to Get Stuff DoneTM has been not having a permanent painting station. I have a lot of fingers in a lot of different hobby pies and so have never been able to justify a full time painting desk like some of those fancy YouTubers. I have also found that having a desk full of models results in me having 20 models 50% painted as my attention leaps around the place faster than my brush can keep up.
I managed to kill two birds with one stone this week by picking up this nifty little travel paint station from Frontier Wargaming. This is not sponsored content, I bought this with my own money for this project.
I can pack this up with the paints I need for this week’s discrete bundle of models, the brushes and tools I need and the models themselves and take it anywhere with me. In fact, it has been coming to work with me. No better way to hammer the backlog than a little bit of lunch break painting.
I hope to see you all next week for our first Knights and an introduction to the concept of The Issues List.
Cheers, you’re good eggs.
Hammer the Backlog 
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