Welcome back to the final Hammer the Backlog update for the calendar year 2022, where this week we leave the green green grass of retro Warhammer Fantasy behind for the time being and apply the Hammer the Backlog accountability and productivity methodology to the grim far future of Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress.
Since Hammer the Backlog runs on an annual cycle of June to June, I have resisted the temptation to make this entry a year in review retrospective. That will be coming on the 16th of June 2023.
Let’s get started with a look at the scorecard.
SCORECARD
Despite Christmas and all of its delightful distractions and surprises, another full week in the green. I did try to give myself a bit of an easier week this week, whether it worked out that way or not remains to be seen.
The biggest productivity news of the week was the completion of the first of the quarter’s targets. With the help of my lovely lady friend I managed to:
Create 90’s Style Box Art for Imperialis Miniatures Mercenary Swordsmen.
The idea of this little set is that if these miniatures had come out in 1996 along with the games, the troops would have been a mono-pose, plastic multipack with the command group of the leader, banner bearer and musician available separately as a metal blister pack. If you have any familiarity with how GW sold models in the nineties you don’t need me to explain this any further.
In the end, and with the creator’s permission, I decided not to make them look like they were official Games Workshop Warhammer figures, but maybe a comparable line that was released at the same time.
THIS WEEK’S MODELS
Even though I gave myself 10 points on the scorecard this week for finishing the three models, it is a bit of a cheat. However, we did establish back when I was painting the Green Knight that models only count when they are completely finished. What the hell am I talking about? Let me explain a little bit.
I started Rein and Raus and UR-025 a few weeks after I got the Blackstone Fortress set in 2018/2019. I managed to get the base colours down, being particularly happy with the light, 1950’s appliance style blue on the robot, before the variety of details, textures and colours on each of them hammered me into a decision paralysis that I never recovered from, leaving them unfinished. What colour should I paint this 2mm apple? Red? Green? Red with a green patch? Yellow, like a Golden Delicious? Is it a Granny Smith? What colour is bread 38,000 years in the future? Bread coloured? Is that Snakebite Leather? A fuck it, I’ll just play videogames instead.
There is a world of difference between the 90’s models I have been painting recently and these hyper detailed modern sculpts, which I really struggled with this week. In the end I did have to force myself to make a decision a couple of times and just run with it. They might not have turned out quite to the ‘Eavy Metal standard I imagined when I first saw this box set, but perfect is the enemy of done, as they say. Another great victory for having a blog to keep me accountable and on target.
So even though they are 10 HtB points worth of models, half the work was already done, meaning I only did 5 HtB points worth of painting this week.
Another thing that is going to crop up over the next few weeks is that I have quite a few of the hostile miniatures painted but not based yet. I will be basing them in batches when I have a little more time and will add them here. I’m going to get so many points!
Let’s finish this section with a fun little group photo of all of the completed explorers together.
UH-OH!
Well, now we have a problem.
My lovely lady friend got me a 3D printer for Christmas. I have, as you know if you have been reading since the start, a fascination for this technology. Especially since even the most basic of 3D printers is incredibly capable of doing 90’s style big chunky sculpts an unbelievable amount of justice.
I have already printed out a unit of Fabelzel’s beautiful Chaos Dwarfs with no effort in adjusting calibration settings or any of that stuff. I’m sure you can get your 3D prints so sharp you can cut yourself on them, but I can’t cut myself on my 90’s models anyway, so there is no need to worry when that’s the style you’re into!
Probably my favourite boxed set in GW history was the Elf side of The Island of Blood. For reference it contained:
High Elf Prince on Griffon
Mage
5 Ellyrian Reavers
10 Lothern Seaguard
10 Swordmasters of Hoeth
I just love how this looks, 2 decent blocks of infantry, a small block of cavalry, an independent character and a lord on a mounted monster. It was a decent start to an army in 8th edition, but to my eye it was already a perfect 5th edition army in a box.
I would love to replicate this with Chaos Dwarfs:
Sorcerer Lord on Lamassu (15 Hammer the Backlog points)
Bull Centaur Hero (5 Hammer the Backlog points)
5 Hobgoblin Wolf Rider Archers (15 Hammer the Backlog points)
10 Chaos Dwarfs (10 Hammer the Backlog points)
10 Chaos Dwarf Blunderbusses (10 Hammer the Backlog points)
I could probably put this together completely from Fabelzel’s sculpts with only a couple of repeated models, just like the High Elves. The big question, however, is how it works with Hammer the Backlog. The lot I have just described is a lovely quarter’s worth of models, but it’s not like I don’t have a Backlog to clear. At the earliest, I could include them in next year’s targets. Maybe next year could be Chaos Dwarfs vs High Elves for fantasy and Dark Vengeance for 40k?
Anyway, I don’t have an answer yet, other than I am currently thinking about what having unlimited access to almost free models means for people with an already large backlog.
Well, thanks for reading this far, you are good eggs!
See you next week for my first ever painted Kroot!
Hammer the Backlog 
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