Hello there! Thanks for coming back to week 12 of Hammer the Backlog, the Warhammer painting, accountability and productivity blog that has jokes that only I find funny. It has been a relatively laid back week of backlog hammering this week, what with the two main quarterly rocks in the bag! Not that I haven’t done a bit of painting, we still have the scorecard target of five Hammer the Backlog points worth of models to get done per week. Having this target will stop this week and next week from being completely rudderless as I spend most of my hobby energy getting things ready for the second quarter.
SCORECARD
Another full week in the green on the scorecard. One more week for a complete quarterly clean sweep! I am a little bit tempted to slack off on something next week, just to add a bit of tonal variety to the images. I think one block of red would add a bit of visual interest.
Anyway, as I mentioned earlier (and last week), having the quarterly rocks finished has given me a couple of weeks to get some bits and bobs done. Let’s take a look at them now.
BITS
As the quarter has come to an end I have indeed found my eye wandering to other projects and possibilities. The people behind the EoS operating system that I have been informally using in this project do say that it is human nature for interest and attention to start waning after about 90 days, hence the quarter by quarter approach. My wandering eye made having the time and space to do these few little dudes great fun. A palate cleanser, if you will.
These two 4th edition menopause plastic dwarfs are, in a large way, responsible for Hammer the Backlog. When I wanted to start painting my Bretonian archers from week one, I grabbed two of these to use as a colour test. As you can see, they are wearing practically the same outfits as the archers from week one, and painted in the same colours. I enjoyed painting them so much that I decided to jump in and commit to getting a whole project done. Of course, since they were just a colour test they were never finished, or even intended to be part of a unit. Since I had the time and energy this week, I decided to finish them. Now I have big plans for their six remaining box mates.
This wood elf archer, henceforth known as Bits, has a similar story. Since I will most likely be starting the 5th edition lizardmen next week, I grabbed a model from the pile of shame to practise somes greens and tans and other natural colours. Unlike the dwarfs, he won’t have to wait 12 weeks to get finished, I pretty much finished him in one sitting. I had always been intimidated by the greens and natural colours of wood elves, but I think this guy turned out pretty sharp. The urge has now struck to get his box mates finished too!
BOBS
You’ve met Bits, this is Bob. Bob is a 3d printed miniature, my first ever. He was designed by an incredible digital sculptor called Fabelzel and printed by 3dForg3dcom. It was my first time working with 3d printed resin, and it was very interesting. I really could see the layer lines on the model when I got him. My brain was telling me that they would be invisible when he was primed and painted, but I really wasn’t sure. In the end I think he looks pretty damned good! 3D printing is only going to get better too!
The material was a little bit tricky to work with as a beginner. It is quite brittle, so breaks a good deal easier than plastic and isn’t as easy to repair, but the level of crisp detail it can hold is lovely. Although I am tempted by an army of these, the blog is called Hammer the Backlog, not Endlessly Expand the Backlog.
He was an absolute joy to paint however. The details took contrast paints so well and the mix of hard edges on the scale mail and organic shapes on the bull body kept everything fun and interesting. If you would like to see more of these, painted even better, check out Styggosaurus on Instagram. I have shamelessly stolen his colour scheme here. As Bob is about as big as a horse, I only counted him as 2 HtB points, not the usual 3 for cavalry models.
QUARTER ONE COSTS
Since you have read this far, you might be interested in seeing how much this quarter has cost me so far? Again, because I am running this whole thing like a small business, I have put in both a profit section and a cost section. The profit section, I am sorry to inform you, will likely remain at or around the €0 mark for the duration of the blog.
As you can see, everything in this quarter has cost me €377.57. Some of those things were big one-off expenses like the carry case. Some really could be spread over the course of a year, like the website hosting, and others are supplies, which will be recurring.
Quarter two should be cheaper, right?
This takes me to one of the main points that this blog was founded on. Mini painting and collecting is an expensive hobby! Even with very, very few minis bought over the course of three months, the guts of 400 euro spent is a lot. I will be trying to bring costs down, as the whole point of this blog is to enjoy what we already have. We are all sitting on hundreds, if not thousands, of euros of unpainted models, it is time to start dipping into that big plastic savings account.
SOCIAL MEDIA
There is not much to report on social media this week as we creep ever closer to finishing the quarter with 1000 instagram followers, hitting 900 at or around the time of publishing of this post.
Having said that, the blog itself is continuing to grow, as illustrated very nicely by this incredibly satisfying chart!
Thanks for reading this far, see you next week for a little bit more random stuff before we move on to the next big project.
You’re good eggs!
Hammer the Backlog 
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