Quarter 3 Week 6 Update: (Nearly) Back on Track

Hi! Thanks for coming back to Hammer the Backlog, the weekly Warhammer mini painting, accountability and productivity blog. It’s been an incredibly busy couple of weeks at Hammer the Backlog central (aka: My house). So, as you saw last week, some reds started to creep into the weekly scorecard. That means it’s time to use this weekly meeting as a way to slow down and look at the progress, identify what is going wrong and find the solutions. Join me!

SCORECARD

Just as much red in the ledger this week as last week, so let’s start with a look at that. Shopping Mick’s little flub from a few weeks ago, assuming that I had the bases I needed when I didn’t, is still lingering. Luckily the bases arrived just this morning, so everything should be back on track in that regard next week. In fact, next week we should be getting somewhere between 10-15 models in the finished column, which will be nice.

The other red is the number of models finished. I finished (minus the bases) 2 more of the Chaos Cultists. But since I didn’t have bases, I put the rest of them on a temporary pause. So rather than half finishing things, I decided to finish a mini project and get my Old Realm Forge marksmen finished, including a hand painted banner bearer and musician. As per tradition, I counted the hand painted banner as another model, giving me three finished models this week. 

The other issue that has popped up this week is that, again due to how busy I have been in real life, I have fallen behind on the meta target of getting the Blood Bowl game played! I can’t film a match report if the match hasn’t been played! Me and Jim need to get this game played before the whole thing goes way off track and starts causing me stress.

THIS WEEK’S MODELS

So the first models that I painted this week were the last two dwarfs from my Old Realm Forge Marksmen. Two more fabulous models. Simone has designed a command group for the models I painted a few weeks back, adding a banner bearer and musician to the unit. He has files for a banner bearer with a sculpted banner and for a plain banner pole.

I decided to go for the plain pole (because I am secretly a masochist?) and hand cut and paint a banner. The switch from homemade, paper, painted banners to plastic banners with the details moulded on is, for me, the moment that signifies the switch from oldhammer to middlehammer. And I am very much going for an Oldhammer vibe on these guys.

But not just that! I decided that, since Old Realm Forge would be using these models in official art, I would paint my hand painted banner to look pretty much the same as the moulded option. I think I got pretty much there, although I still don’t think I am a great banner painter. I left the red field purposefully blank so that people who buy the models can imagine their own unit symbol there. Not because I am lazy.

The other models I painted, but didn’t officially finish, this week were two more of the Chaos cultists from Dark Vengeance. These were the last two of the models I started 10 years ago. They were already sprayed and had a couple of base colours painted, so it was an easy enough start.

I did bite the bullet and go back over and scrape off some of the mould lines that the more impatient Mick from 10 years ago ignored. That meant a little bit of repair work on the base coasts too, but nothing outside the pale.

I’m loving these guys now, and they provide a really different palette and feel from my bright, high contrast fantasy models.

Just these bases to paint up now!

PODCASTIN’

The popularity of the Hammer the Backlog Youtube channel and Instagram will never cease to surprise me. Both are still growing at a steady pace, faster than this blog is by a huge margin. One of the real surprises of this development is being seen as a peer, more or less, by some of my favourite creators and some of the absolute pillars of the community of our shared hobby niche. 

With all that said, I had the great pleasure of being a guest on this week’s episode of the venerable Crown of Command Podcast with Josh. Toumas Pirinen has been a guest on The Crown of Command! Dave Taylor! Dave Perry! Graham Davey! Gary Morley! What am I doing on there?

Anyway, it would be great if you could give it a listen and a five star rating!

That’s it from me for another week. See you in exactly seven days time for the next update!

Cheers, you are the best eggs.