Welcome back to the final instalment of Hammer the Backlog Quarter 2, where this week we learned the real value of rocks and the absolute dread of a corrupted SD card. Please do read on for a rollercoaster of emotions.
SCORECARD
A little bit of red in the ledger this week, with only two models painted, and even that was just barely. The Chaos warrior is not actually finished as I am typing this, such is the chaos of this week. Quite fitting, I suppose?
So what went wrong? Well, first of all, I am getting a new floor and table in the dining room. The dining room happens to be the closest thing I have to a permanent painting setup (for now at least). The dining room table was given to me by friends as a temporary replacement seven years ago and I just never got around to replacing it. It has been on three legs for the last three months! Overall, this work is a good thing and possibly the start of a very exciting project for Hammer the Backlog, but it did slow down production majorly this week.
Secondly, with the first two rocks of the quarter finished, there was only one left. Launch Youtube channel, with Quarter one review and Quarter two review videos online. I filmed the video last weekend, took the SD card home, and started the import process when, disaster! The SD card failed and lost its formatting. I managed to save about 30% of the footage, meaning an entire evening spent going back into the studio to refilm. Awful stuff all together. My lovely lady friend could see me furiously trying to finish painting the Chaos Warrior, trying to update instagram, messaging people on social media, and trying to pack my training bag, so that I could rush off to get the video filmed and said:
“You look like you have too many tabs open in your brain”.
And she was right! And that is one of the things that this whole “operating system” is supposed to solve. Of all the things I was doing, getting the Youtube video done was the Rock, the only one that was a key priority for the quarter. So instead of suffering from decision paralysis, I put everything down and headed off to get the rock finished. If I got the other things done later, I could look at them as a bonus!
So, at the end of it all, all three rocks are complete, making this another 100% quarter.
THIS WEEK’S MODELS (BITS AND BOBS)
As I said above, production almost ground to a halt this week, but I did manage to get some stuff painted.
The first thing that caught my attention was this old Barrow Wight from Mithril Miniatures. Mithril Miniatures is an Irish company based in Macroom, Co. Cork. They have a small mini producing factory/shop/ museum that I visited years ago on holiday in the west. My lovely lady friend refused to leave without getting me a souvenir, so she grabbed me a Lord of the Rings Barrow Wight. Mithril Miniatures have had the rights to produce LotR minis since the 80’s. I assume they are limited to the books, with GW having the rights to the films.
Anyway, since he is a ghost, and it is Bits and Bobs week, I decided to try a little experiment on this fella. Call it by whatever name you like, I have never tried ‘underpainting’ before. So for this fella I based him with a Chaos Black Spray, then gave him a top down spray of Mechanicus Standard Grey. I followed that with a much lighter top down spray of Grey Seer, which is a greyish blue off-white. The final step was a drybrush highlight of pure white. Then, when all of that was dry, I gave him a single, heavy coat of Space Wolves Grey Contrast.
Overall, he came out a little darker than I was aiming for, but it was very nice to get a model that has languished in the backlog for a decade or more painted up to a nice standard in about 20 minutes. Will it replace my normal painting method? No way, but for things like ghosts and spirits I think it works.
Also, the first Lord of the Rings model on Hammer the Backlog! I have a small force of Gondor that will be a quarterly target at some stage over the next five years, so I based him how I imagine I will base them.
The second model I managed to get done this week was this little Chaos Warrior. His slotta base says 1989, making him easily the oldest mini I’ve painted for Hammer the Backlog. I think he came from the bottom of a drawer of abandoned projects from a customer in Games Workshop Dublin who wanted them to be given away and painted? His shield, if he even came with a bespoke shield at all, was not with him, so he borrowed one from my set of plastic 5th edition Chaos Warriors.
He is definitely a fun little fella. I think that he is either supposed to be wearing a ram’s fleece or a skinned beastman. I thought that the head looked a little skaven-y, so I decided to interpret it as a Grey Seer. John-Phillip the Rat-Slayer. Nothing on him is particularly chaotic to my eye, so I decided to Khorne his shield up a bit. His shield is now my favourite bit. Red and brass juxtaposed against the dark iron and black armour is really eye catching. I’m quite looking forward to getting the 5th edition Chaos boys painted now.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Well, first of all, the next quarterly review should be up and linked below. See if you can spot the original footage and the reshoots!
Secondly, and right on track, Hammer the Backlog passed 2,000 followers. I actually took my eye off the counter at about 1,970 and didn’t notice the count whizzing past and reaching 2,002. A great success.
It looks like 1,000 new followers per quarter is quite achievable! The big worry, of course, is that in the next quarter I am moving out of the warm and loving embrace of retro Warhammer Fantasy Battles and into the terrifying shark tank of Warhammer 40k and adjacent products. There are a lot more people posting Traitor Guardsmen and Black Legion on instagram than there are painting 5th edition Saurus Warriors! But of course, that is where the rocks take us. The goal of Hammer the Backlog is to get all of my stuff painted, not to follow trends on social media.
On a slightly related note, I’ve been talking with fellow oldhammer fanatic and redditor @harmopdenakker about maybe getting a hammer the backlog style challenge up and running on the Warhammer Fantasy Reddit. When I set out to do this thing, the thought of even one person being inspired enough to apply it to their own backlog seemed far off and unlikely. The thought of a little community holding each other accountable and productive fills me with a terrible amount of nerdy joy. I will, of course, keep you updated.
Thanks for reading this far. You’ll excuse me now while I go finish this damned video and get everything photographed.
See you next week for the start of quarter 3 (which I might rename to quarter 1 actually, to get those quarters lined up) and get started on the first 5 points of models.
Thanks for reading. You, personally, are a good egg.
Hammer the Backlog 
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