Quarter 3, Week 9 Update: Don’t Talk to Me or My Sons Ever Again

Hello ladies and gentlemen and others, and welcome back to a very big week of Hammer the Backlog, the weekly warhammer miniature painting, accountability and productivity blog. This week, with four weeks left to go in the quarter, we managed to tick off three of the four main targets. Let’s start, as we so often do, with a look at the Scorecard.

SCORECARD

Another week fully in the green! Huzzah! Not only that, but two more quarterly rocks ticked off.

Get Dreaded Ambull painted, photographed and online.

Get Blackstone Fortress painted, photographed and online.

That’s three out of four for the quarter so far. Very nice indeed. I must say that getting the core set of Blackstone Fortress nearly slipped me by in how exciting it was. I’ve mentioned a few times that I have been in the midst of my first ever grown up health concern, and between that and the little bit of house keeping that I had to do to finish off everyone’s bases, I kind of let completing the box set be an anticlimax. Well, no more! Take a look at these pictures of the second fully complete box set of the first year of Hammer the Backlog. May it ever shine as a tribute to accountability and productivity.

It really is a joy to have this set finished. When GW started teasing the set in, I think, late 2018 I had never been more excited about a board game. There is just something about the weird fringes of the Warhammer 40k universe that really speaks to me. Weird aliens, rogue traders, an AI of all things! Add in the chance to go dungeon crawling and hunting for archeotech in the depths of an ancient and inscrutable space station? They had me at hello.

Not only was I super excited to get it as a Christmas present from my lovely lady friend, but it is also far and away the GW game that I have spent the most time actually playing. Me and the Blackstone Fortress Bois^tm don’t get together all that often to play, so we are currently in the middle of the No Respite expansion. At the rate we are playing, and with half of No Respite, Deadly Alliance and Ascension all left to finish, I will actually get the full collection painted before we finish the game. Those last few games with a 100% painted set are going to be very special. For the Blackstone Fortress Bois^tm. We are really cool.

THIS WEEK’S MODELS

This week’s models are the Dreaded Ambull (we call her Phillipa) and her two sons. I have awarded myself 12 points this week, 2 for the grubs and 10 for Phillipa herself, but thankfully I didn’t actually have to do 12 points worth of painting. 

I had made some progress on the Ambull before I last packed Blackstone Fortress away, which gave me a very nice head start and meant that I didn’t have to think too much about colour selections. Having said that, I did realise I had a big gap in my paint collection in the Pink/Purple range and had to make a trip to the local GW to get some paints.

Phillipa and her babies were an absolute joy to paint. After a few weeks of Pyskers, Beastmen and Traitors all in basically the same drab colours, it was super fun to do some very high contrast blues and purples.

Even the grubs, which I thought were going to be a nightmare, turned out to be fun to do. I just base coated them with Wraithbone, gave them one thick coat of Aggaros dunes and then highlighted twice with Ushabti Bone and Pallid Wych Flesh. Great. Stuff. Altogether.

I honestly don’t remember how I painted the flesh. I think I did it in 2019 and didn’t write anything down. Another lesson there, write down your recipes, no matter how confident you are that they are stuck in your memory. I will say that it seems the main colour was Temple Guard Blue with Blue Horror highlights.

PHOTOGRAPHY WOES

I’ve really struggled over the last few weeks with photographing Blackstone Fortress. 

With fantasy, I really think I’ve got a good handle on it. As an example, here are two photos of the same unit. 

This first photo is in the early 90’s style, which was most common between 4th and early 5th edition Warhammer Fantasy Battles. Pretty much front on, toxic green bases, toxic green ‘table’ and blue gradient background.

The second photo is much more 5th edition / 6th edition. The sand base is gone, replaced with a flocked mat, there is scenery in the photo and since it is taken from a higher angle, there is no sky background.

On the other hand, I cannot put my thumb on an iconic look for modern minis. It’s probably because GW pretty much never posts un-photoshopped pictures of modern minis, but it really makes it challenging for analog heads like me. Oh dearest of readers, please do not hesitate to leave a comment down below if you have any ideas for the best way to photograph modern minis.

In all and anyways, that’s enough from me for another week. I will hopefully see you back here in seven days for the complete Traitor Command set, and all of the quarterly rocks completed with three weeks to spare.

Thanks for reading this far, you are all the very best of eggs.