Hello Dev Patels and welcome back to week 12 of the second quarter of Hammer the Backlog, the weekly miniature painting and accountability blog, that this week is all about that sweet, sweet target-hitting! Let’s start things off, as they did in Arthurerian times, with a look at this week’s productivity scorecard.
SCORECARD
Not only another clean sweep this week, but the completion of the Green Knight adds ten full Hammer the Backlog points, making up for the complete lack of finished models a few weeks back. Isn’t it nice to be back on track?
I also had a few more instagram and Reddit posts this week than usual, what with having a complete project to show off! More on that later.
The most exciting thing from the productivity perspective this week was that I managed to knock off the second of this quarter’s rocks ‘Get Green Knight painted to display standard, photographed and online’, even if it took a couple of stretches to get there! That’s two out of three down, with a week to go!
Let’s take a look at this week’s painting.
THIS WEEK’S MODEL
So all of my painting time this week was taken up with finishing off the Green Knight, so kindly gifted to me by Andy from Mediocre Hobbies about 3 months ago. It was a week of highs and lows!
First of all, this poor boy was in rough condition! As I mentioned when I was painting his horse, he is a finecast model from the period that GW were yet to really figure out mass-produced, non-toxic resin. His overall shape and fit wasn’t bad, but it seems that the eternal symbol of Bretonnian Knights, the fleur de lis, is the absolute worst shape to try to capture in finecast resin. Not a single fleur on this guy, and that includes on his sword hilt, the edging of his tunic, his chest, his banner poles and so on, was complete. It was beyond my very limited green stuff skills to fix them all, so I decided to ‘mask’ the issues by not overly highlighting them.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, this means he doesn’t look quite as crisp and detailed as I would have liked. Secondly, and this one was entirely my own fault, the very kind Facebook friend who was going to send me the shield didn’t manage to get in touch with me on time to get the original shield to me before the end of the quarter. So, I made one. It’s a little bit rough and the freehand isn’t the best I’ve ever done, but it will do the job. I will probably replace it when the original arrives a couple of days after the quarter ends!
The overall idea I had with him was to have lighter green and slightly fewer swirls on him as I went up, so that his silhouette would stand out a bit against the busier horse, while still using the same colours and techniques.
Something I have noticed in the last few weeks is that a lot of modern painters leave off his banner poles and banners. I don’t know why, I think they are my favourite bits.
It feels great to finish off a model that was sitting in someone’s storage for years, deal with any perfections and be able to proudly place him with my tiny, but growing, Bretonnian army.
THIS QUARTER’S MODELS
Ah gang, would you look at this! As I said last week, I managed to get a little bit of time and some nicer light over the weekend to get some pictures of the full Warhammer Fantasy Battles 5th edition box set! A very proud moment for the blog, as you can hopefully well imagine.
This single image sums up what I wanted to achieve with the blog. Not only did it turn out better than I had ever hoped, the social media reaction to it was incredibly inspiring and will really push me on with the next few quarters! Thanks everyone, you are great eggs.
TARGETS AND GROWTH
I suppose it could have been predicted, but the excitement of finishing the first big project last week, including posting it to various social media channels and getting some shares meant that the blog saw unprecedented growth this month. So much for slow and steady. Graph fans, hold on to your hats:
SPREADING THE VIRUS
My most excellent friend, and person who is largely responsible for all of this, Dr. Coach Jim ‘Jamie’ McInerney, is the proud owner of the Gloomhaven board game. A more terrifying and densely packed box of miniatures and board game components you would be hard pressed to find. Since I have all of these paints and brushes and shit, it has somewhat fallen to me to get our player characters painted up. Since they are not mine, I haven’t been counting these fellas as part of the backlog.
Anyway, Dr. Coach Jim has been harassing me to get this project back underway and get our next character, the Spellweaver, painted up. Little did he know I would turn it around on him and trick him into doing it!
I have said it before on the blog and I will say it again many times, contrast paints are the ultimate beginner friendly teaching paints. Dr. Coach Jim managed to paint the Spellweaver to this very nice tabletop standard in less than two hours, having painted only the barest handful of models in the past.
Maybe even more importantly, we got his eldest daughter hooked! Regular Hammer the Backloggers will recognise popular blog character “Finubar the Seafarer, but the sea is made of Alcohol”. Well, the next step on his journey was being painted by a very eager 5 year old with an eye for vibrant colour schemes.
He goes by Daniel Bonjella Daisy now.
ANY OTHER BUSINESS?
At 1,950 or so followers at the time of writing and with a week to go, it seems certain that Hammer the Backlog will reach 2,000 followers by the end of the quarter at this stage. What is measured, improves, as they say.
Next week will be mostly focussed on getting the next Youtube update filmed and edited as well as getting models prepped and points costs organised for the next quarter.
I do also hope to get a couple of bits and bobs painted, including the last two Wood Elves from the monopose box set, if I can find them.
Hope to see you all back here next week for the last update of quarter 2!
Cheers,
You are all good eggs.
Hammer the Backlog 
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