Quarter 4, Week 8 Update: A Pox on Both Your Houses!

Welcome to the 8th Weekly update of the 4th quarter of the first year of Hammer the Backlog, the weekly Warhammer mini painting, productivity and accountability blog that I use to keep myself on track and on target, despite everything that life can do to throw me off!

This week was a study of having to adapt and compromise on targets based on contact with the enemy, and using the concept of rocks to pick where the focus goes.

Let’s take a look, as we always do, at this week’s scorecard before we move on to the nitty gritty of the week.

SCORECARD

Another week fully in the green, mostly thanks to the power of cheating! Hooray for cheating! Ok, let me explain a little bit. As recently as last week I said, in my hubris, that I planned to get the six poxwalkers from No Respite finished in one week, leaving me with a luxurious 3 weeks at the end of the quarter to work on side projects. The best laid plans of mice and men, as they say, gang aft agley, an’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain.

A heavy week of work on the buildings meant that despite my best efforts I would not be able to get the full set of six pox walkers painted to a standard I was happy with. Rather than letting depression and defeatism slip in, I consulted my crystal ball to decide what to do. And by crystal ball I mean my Key Priorities list, as seen below.

So, with No Respite and finishing the workspace both Key Priorities, neither of them can be let slip. So where’s the wiggle room? Ah yes, those luxurious couple of spare weeks at the end. By splitting the pox walkers across two weeks, I still had time to get them painted to a standard I was happy with, despite spending most of my free time on the buildings.

The victim here would have been the scorecard, which would have only had three models completed this week and would therefore have been in the red. However! As I decided a few weeks back, any and all finished models count to the scorecard number, so I plucked out one of the very nearly finished plague marines, did up his base and counted him as two models. In the end, healthy progress on the Key Priorities and the Scorecard and no decision paralysis. A win all round!

I have also decided this week that, going forward, anything larger or more complicated that a tactical space marine will count as two models. So Terminators, Primaris, recent Chaos Marines etc, will all be two points each. I think this is pretty fair, otherwise a terminator sergeant gets the same amount of time dedicated to painting him as the 14th skink in a unit of 30.

Would it really be fair to count these 2 models as the same amount of work?

THIS WEEK’S MODELS

This week’s models are the first three pox walkers and the heavy weapon plague marine from No Respite. These really are fabulously detailed models that take contrast paint like almost no other models. In particular the pox walkers feel like they were designed to sell contrast paints, and it seems unlikely to be a coincidence that they were released around the same time.

I tried to use a variety of different skin tones on the models by using different contrast flesh colours mixed with different ratios of Volupus pink. This means that I don’t really have a recipe, as such, which will make duplicating these guys in future quite hard! But, when you have an unwashed mass of gross sickly bois, I suppose it makes sense that none of them would be exactly the same.

These models do take the contrast paint so beautifully that it almost felt like a waste of time highlighting them up after the base coat. No matter which base colour I used, I highlighted up through Kislev Flesh, Flayed One Flesh and Pallid Wych Flesh. This had the effect of tying them all together quite nicely, even if their base colours started off very differently. I ended up creating one who is a sickly jaundiced yellow tone, one who has a nice summer glow and one who looks like a newborn baby. A great creepy combination.

There is also a certain family resemblance to some of these guys. They really do look like me, if slightly more horrifying. Slightly!

I’m chomping at the bit to get the other three done next week.

WORKING ON THE BUILDINGS

It was a heavy week of working on the buildings this week, with lots of progress to show and lots of sunburn accumulated in doing it.

It was no easy feat slabbing the two interior walls of the garage entirely on my own, but in the end through dedication, strength and brainpower, I did manage it. Here is a picture of me with my World’s Greatest Handman mug as proof that I did it entirely on my own with the sweat of my own brow.

To be honest, it is something of a blur, and if you asked me to describe how exactly I managed to get it done so neatly with no previous experience whatsoever, I would struggle to explain it. So please, don’t ask.

Ignore Jim and Shane in the back of that previous photo. Also ignore Shane in this photo, he is an optical illusion.

With only five weeks left to go in the quarter and the warm boarding, attic insulation and installation of the shelving and desk left to go, this is going to be the closest quarter yet with regards to hitting the Key Priority. Another weekend of work is planned for this weekend to make sure everything gets done on time.

COOL STUFF

One of my favourite current projects on the web is the wonderful @edpaintsminis on Instagram and Youtube. Just like my 5th Edition Fantasy starter set, he spent a few weeks rescuing and painting up a second edition Warhammer 40k box set and is now making video battle reports of the introduction box battles. I’ve already watched it 3 times, you should too.

Warhammer 40,000 2nd Edition Campaign Battle Report: Mission One

Well, thanks for reading this far, see you next week for more dirty plague boys and work on the buildings.

Good eggs!