Hello wonderful reader, welcome back to the Warhammer mini painting, productivity and accountability blog formerly (and currently) known as Hammer the Backlog. The rapidly approaching end of the first year of the project means that progress is being made, palms are sweating and rocks are getting ticked off at a rate of knots. Some great mixed metaphors in that last string of gibberish, I think you will agree. Every week I have a weekly production meeting, where I use a piece of software called Instant Agency Tools to go through the week’s progress, make sure everything is on track, deal with any issues that pop up and set the next weeks’ goals. Let’s start this week, as always, with a look at the scorecard.
SCORECARD
A week of greens again. Fitting, since it was Death Guard and bloated dead pox walkers that got painted! Once again, the two Plague Marines were actually mostly painted last year, before I started Hammer the Backlog, so all they really got was a few very minor touch-ups and their bases painted. However, as Jim says, finished is finished.
With No Respite finished that makes two out of five of the rocks for this quarter complete, with three left to go.
I’m still hoping to get the Zoat from Deadly Alliance finished in one week, hopefully week 10, and both of the Guardian Drones from Ascension finished in the following week, week 11. That would then leave me with two weeks to get my Lizardmen command group finished and leave room for one other mini project.
I would also love to have a little bit of free time since the end of year 1 review video and target setting for year 2 are going to be two separate Youtube videos, which will need to be filmed, edited and uploaded. I really am staring down the barrel of being up to my neck in it. So more mixed metaphors there, for the mixed metaphor lovers.
THIS WEEK’S MODELS
This week’s models are the remaining three gross, ugly, slimy pox walker boys. Was it a coincidence that these three appealed to me a lot less than the first three? Was it because I grabbed the three best ones for the first week? Or just a slip in motivation on the second group?
Regardless, I ended up not enjoying these guys quite as much as the last batch and struggling to go the extra mile to make them as good as they could be. I do like the chubby one with the orange pants though. I like how he brings a splash of colour and a hint of his previous life to the group.
The one with the mask and the globbely gloop is my least favourite. The horrid rictus faces are my favourite things about these fellas, and he is lacking one. He also has my least favourite model feature, painting none solids. I’m not a fan of painting smoke, fire, liquids, lights, mirrors or gloops.
I painted the three plague marines as a group more than a year ago. They were painted to a slightly standard than most of Hammer the Backlog, but I think I’ve gotten better enough at painting over the last year of constantly having a paintbrush in my hand that it is hard to tell.
SOCIAL MEDIA SLOWDOWN
As I predicted a few months back, the Blackstone Fortress era of Hammer the Backlog has been much, much less popular on the social medias than the Warhammer Fantasy Era. In fact, this quarter has been the slowest growth of the whole project, with only a couple of hundred new Instagram followers and the Youtube channel practically grinding to a halt.
Although growing social media was never the point of this blog, I have been thinking that I will try to push across the line to 3,000 followers on instagram by the end of the quarter. Finishing off some lizardmen, some high elves and a couple of battle scenes with my new papercraft houses might just get there!
WORKING ON THE BUILDINGS
Work on the buildings was an interesting combination of success and utter failure this week.
The success lay in getting most of the insulation finished and battened to the walls.
The utter failure was spending nearly 90 minutes trying to figure out how to cut a hole in the ceiling to get into the attic space, only to cause more damage than I needed to and not actually get in! You live and learn.
The garage project is coming along very nicely. Jim and Shane are due to come over and help me finish off the insulation around the tricky spots tomorrow evening, then it is on to the home stretch!
Well, thank you very much for reading this far. It must be because you are such a good egg. See you next week!
Hammer the Backlog 
Leave a Reply