Ciao and welcome back to Hammer the Backlog, the weekly Warhammer mini painting, accountability and productivity blog, which this quarter is focussed on the Dogs of War from Warhammer 5th edition. The arch poisoner of Pavona herself, Lucrezzia Belladonna, appears to have snuck into my pantry this week and almost struck me down with a shocking case of food poisoning. Luckily my tremendous constitution (Toughness 5) meant that I managed to brush it off and still make some progress this week.
Let’s start this week, as we do every week, with a look at the scorecard.
SCORECARD
Another week in the green for the scorecard this week, marred only by the ever reddening second rock for the quarter which is falling further and further off track each week. This will need to be resolved, and fast, if I am going to keep my clean sweep of never missing a rock!
Luckily this weekend is a bank holiday in Ireland, so I should be able to grab him at some stage, moisten up his eyeballs and stick him down at a table in front of a couple of fistfulls of fully painted lizardmen. We should still be able to pull this one out of the bag, but there is very much no more time for delay!
THIS WEEK’S MODEL
This week’s model is an oldy but a goody. One of my first ever fully painted models, the generic mercenary general was part of the very first wave of Dogs of War models, a classic fully metal model on a plastic empire horse. My original painting effort was not horrible for a teenager who was just learning to paint in 1998, who probably painted him in a single session.
However, nostalgia could not save him from the stripping bath. I got a new stripping product this week, Biostrip 20. It looks and feels very similar to the Diall paint stripper I have been using for the last few weeks. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was actually the same stuff. Unfortunately, I put him in the gunk before I got sick, and left him there for nearly a week. I thought for sure that his plastic horse would suffer, but it came out not only undamaged, but also pretty much completely scott free.
I painted him up pretty much exactly the same way as the rest of the models I’ve been painting over the last few months, with greens, reds, blacks and browns.
The only exception to my usual painting style was the gold armour. In honour of the era that these came from, I dug out some of my classic paints. First, he got two thin coats of Retributor Armour to establish a nice solid base coat. Then, and this is the exciting part, I gave him an all over coat of Chestnut Ink. This gives the armour a very glossy, incredibly intense red, which I then spent ages slowly layering Retributor back over.
I highlighted up in the normal way, gradually adding Stormhost Silver. Finally, to add some extreme 90’s contrast I pin washed some brown ink into the deepest recesses of the armour. This process was great fun, and a nice homage to how these were painted originally.
I also gave his trim a leopard print effect, to tie the upcoming Leopard Company into the rest of the force.
I was never a big fan of this model over the years. I always mocked him by saying he was the closest that GW ever came to releasing a “Generic Men on Horse” model, but he has grown on my nicely over the course of this week.
FOOD POISONING
Since I had a nasty dose of food poisoning this week, this one model is pretty much the only Hammer the Backlog thing I did this week! There should be a hell of a lot more going on next week with:
Assembling and painting my paint racks
2 Pizarro’s Lost Legion Pikemen
3 Leopard Company Pikemen
A battle to play
A video to record!
Wish me luck, I’m sure I’ll need it!
Thanks for sticking around and reading this far, you must be a good egg!
Hammer the Backlog 
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