Only 1996 hobbits break the mould. Welcome back to Hammer the Backlog, where I am in my second year of getting my backlog of unpainted, badly painted and broken warhammer miniatures painted up to an acceptable display standard using the tools of middle management; accountability, productivity and organisation. Every week I have targets to keep to, including weekly painting goals, and overall project goals per quarter. If you are new to Hammer the Backlog and would like to read from the start, please give this little linky here a click:
Otherwise, let’s get on with the second week of the second year and start by taking a look at the scorecard for this week.
SCORECARD
Another week, another green scorecard. Nothing big to report this week. Five 1996 hobbits painted to a decent standard that I am happy with and all other requirements achieved. There were some delays with getting started, meaning that the halflings didn’t get any paint on them until Sunday evening, but that was overcome with a little bit of extra time in the painting garage, aided by the fact that although they are quite detailed and are carrying quite a bit on their backs, at the end of the day, they are tiny. Smaller than a skink even. I won’t be making the same mistake this week, though, and putting unnecessary pressure on myself. I’ll be dragging this week’s models out of the spawning pool pretty much as soon as I finish writing this up, and getting the first coat of paint on them by Saturday at the latest.
THIS WEEK’S MODELS
So Lumpin Croop’s Fighting Cocks have the honour of being the first of the Dogs of War Models to get repainted for Hammer the Backlog. This is somewhat fitting as I’m pretty sure they were the last Dogs of War models I bought in 1998 ish before being enticed over to the seemingly greener pastures of Warhammer 40,000 and the edgy and dangerous Dark Eldar.
You can see how a teenager that thought the Dark Eldar were cool and exciting might have been put off by this little band of fantasy classics.
Let’s talk about original paint jobs for a minute. 1998 Mick put in some basic effort to get these “painted”, but judging by the complete lack of undercoat, half finished jobs and lack of basing, he clearly had lost all interest by the time he got to these. Stripping them was but the work of a moment.
Unusually, I don’t love GW’s original box art for these either. If they had come out 5 years earlier they would have been painted with red bows, multi coloured shirts and striped trousers, of that you can be absolutely sure. But the box art paint job for these little fellas is restrained and muted to the point of being almost flat and muddy looking by comparison. I think some of the Dogs or War models (in particular these and Pizarro’s Lost Legion) were the victims of early experimentation of moving towards a more realistic and gritty look for the box art.
I tried to avoid this by using the exact same techniques and paints that I have been using for my more graphic looking Bretonnians, with start highlights and slightly more saturated colours, as well as (I hope) slightly less muddy browns.
I also wanted to make their caps look like they came from a variety of european critters like foxes and badgers, and their feathers to look like they came from their namesakes, fighting cocks.
For their bases, I went with what I now consider my “5th Edition” basing scheme of more muted green and sand. Fourth edition models will still get the classic goblin green look, but GW were definitely moving away from pure goblin green bases by the time these were released.
SOCIAL MEDIA
In the meantime, the Youtube channel has had its best two weeks ever. What has surprised me most is that the video that I thought would be long and terribly boring, over 25 minutes of planning for year two with not a painted model in sight, has turned out to be the most popular video on the channel, being single handedly responsible for about 1 new subscriber an hour over the last week. It should hit about 300 by the time you are reading this. If you are one of those new subscribers who has now also found the blog: Thanks for coming!
Alrighty then, that’s enough from me for another week. I will catch you next week for the last five old metal short thieves.
Good eggs!
Hammer the Backlog 
Leave a comment