Hello dear reader, welcome back to week 11 of Hammer the Backlog, the Warhammer painting and productivity blog to end all others. You will excuse the hyperbole, I hope, as this week is pretty exciting and spirits are indeed high! Let us start, as per every other week, with a look at the productivity and accountability side of things.
SCORECARD
Another week all in the green! Huzzah! With each quarter having 13 weeks, that means we are only two weeks away from a complete clean sweep of the first quarter. There are a couple of things to discuss this week too!
First of all, as you will see in the photos below, we completed our first quarterly target. Personally speaking, and I hope not to get too effusive here, I am absolutely thrilled by this. When 16 year old me bought this set in 1998, this is exactly what he thought he would achieve in an afternoon or two. How naive I was. Little did I know it would take 40 year old me three months! I think this might be my proudest ever painting achievement.
Where does this leave us now, with two weeks left in the first quarter? Do we rush on to the next major project and write off the left over two weeks? Bloody hell, no! I have earned a bit of respite, I hope. Let me explain by going back to the EoS system from the first blog post. I am using the website Instant Agency Tools to organise this whole project. It is great, and it is free. And it is working perfectly for what I need to keep Hammer the Backlog on track. However, it is not an officially licensed EoS project and therefore can’t use some of the helpful terminology. In particular, our two quarterly ‘Targets’ were called ‘Key Priorities’ by the website. If we were using an official site, they would have been called ‘Rocks’. The rock imagery is key here, as the idea is filling a big giant vase. If you are trying to fill a container with stones, the first thing you do is put your biggest rocks in. Then you can put all of the smaller stones and pebbles in, letting gravity do the work of filling them in around the rocks. If you had put all of the small stuff in first, you might not have had space to get the rocks in.
Essentially what I am trying to say is that having completed the first rock, “Get Bretonnians fully painted, photographed and online”, it leaves us with two weeks to play around with getting smaller stuff done. Bits and Bobs, if you will. Or Riterts and Roberts, to be more formal. So that is what to expect next week, a random selection of stuff too small to be part of a main project.
On a tiny side note, I decided that there was no need to paint up a black sand photo base. They are very readily available in my local hobby shop and cheaper to buy than the materials that it would take to make them. If I decide I need one, I’ll pop in and buy it.
THIS WEEK’S MODELS
There was a fun symmetry in finishing off the Bretonnian project with the last five bowmen, the exact opposite of the five I started with in week one. Once again they are in the majority yellow, black and red colour scheme of their landlord.
One interesting thing about these particular models is that painting their eyes seems like a complete waste of time. I have painstakingly painted their dumb little squinty eyes on every one, but there is something about their expressions (and their hats) that makes that effort almost invisible. If you were painting these up in future and wanted to save a bit of time and energy, that would be something you could drop.
I experimented a little bit by doing a pair of them without any yellow. I don’t love the look when they are on their own, but mixed in among the semi uniformed rabble, I think it works out.
THIS QUARTER’S MODELS
So here they are, the complete set of Bretonnians from the Warhammer Fantasy Battles 5th Edition boxed set, painted to a standard I am happy with. It only took 22 years.
I’ll just say that photographing them wasn’t as easy as taking pictures of single units, mention that I would like to add some more trees and other scenery and then shut up and let the pictures do the talking.
I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. I’m hoping to get some better light this week and treat everyone to glamour shots in next week’s blog.
Barring any surprises in the next couple of weeks, that will be the last we see of Bretonnians on Hammer the Backlog. If you have been following along so far as a Bretonnian fan, I hope you might stick around for the other projects.
SOCIAL MEDIAS
We whizzed past 700 followers on Instagram this week, hitting about 770 as of posting this update. Would it be hubris to say that 1000 followers would be a nice little achievement to end the quarter with? There are two weeks left, it just might be doable. You might have noticed on the “Key Priorities” that there were no target numbers for either Instagram followers or blog views mentioned. This, again, was for a very specific reason. I have 100% control over what is put out on social media, how often I post and the quality of the photography etc. I cannot control how people react, so therefore there will never be numerical targets for that kind of thing.
Related note, the blog got its 1000th viewer this week!
Thanks everyone, you’re good eggs! See you next week for some Riterts and Roberts.
Hammer the Backlog 
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