Hi there! Welcome back to the end of quarter 3 of the second year of Hammer the Backlog. If you are new around here, Hammer the Backlog is my attempt to get my 25+ years worth of collected (hoarded?) Warhammer minis painted, photographed and online. As someone who actually games with tabletop minis very infrequently, I have discovered that getting things painted, photographed and online gives me a sense of completion and finality with my models. So each week I use productivity and accountability methods, including target setting, SMART goals and weekly scorecards, to keep myself on track. Since this is the last week of a quarter, this update will be in two parts. First, let’s take a look at this week’s work, then we’ll have a look at the quarter as a whole.
SCORECARD
Another week in the green! 8 Hammer the Backlog’s worth of models painted, all social media commitments met and no hold ups! As usual with these end of quarter updates, I am writing this on the assumption that the Chaos Lord and chosen who are currently sitting at about 75% done will be done by the time I post this tomorrow!
The biggest thing this week is that I managed to catch up on the Blood Bowl video target and get the game played on Saturday, the video filmed on Monday, voice over recorded on Tuesday, edited and Wednesday and uploaded on Thursday. So in essence I squeezed about six week’s worth of achievable, relaxed targets into one frantic week!
But it does allow me to post this! Look at all of those satisfying “completes”.
It might have been another skin of the teeth quarter, but I did it!
BLOOD BOWL
The Blood Bowl video and match report took up a good chunk of this week. I played the game on Saturday evening with my perennial rival and nemesis Jim. We have played a game or two of Blood Bowl before over the last two decades, but we always leave so much space between games that we are basically learning it from scratch every time.
We definitely get some rules wrong, that’s for sure.
As we were playing we were furiously taking pictures after every move and making notes in the hopes of making a detailed match report. But, in the end, I realised that no amount of notes would make a match report actually filmable. Unlike say a battle report, the game of Blood Bowl swings on very precise positioning and sequencing of moves. The match report would either have to be two hours, or in a totally different format.
In the end I went with the different format, making a video that is more of an introduction and a taste of 4th edition Blood Bowl than a full on match.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Jim is much more methodical and focussed in tabletop games than I am. In rulessets that are fairly predictable that means he wins 99% of the time. But Blood Bowl, with its wild swings in turnovers and unpredictability, is actually a game where I have a chance. Our practice game ended after 2 hours with a 1-1 draw.
The video will be live by the time you are reading this, give it a watch please!
THIS WEEK’S MODELS
With all of the running about to get the Blood Bowl video done, you might be surprised to learn that I did actually paint some models too this week! The joys of a long weekend!
This week’s models are the last of the Chaos Chosen, the one with the power axe and bone armour, and the Chaos Lord.
The bone armour guy actually took longer to paint than the lord, surprisingly. The large flowing red cloak looks like a lot of work, but it also hides half of his detailed black armour and that damnable gold trim!
For the cloak I went with the usual rich red recipe of:
| Base | Mechanicus Standard Grey |
| Contrast | Flesh Tearers Red |
| Glaze | Mephiston Red |
| Edge | Mephiston Red |
| Glaze | Evil Sunz Scarlet |
| Edge | Evil Sunz Scarlet |
| Edge | Wild Rider Red |
| Fine Edge | Fire Dragon Bright |
| Dot | Lugganath Orange |
Otherwise both of them were painted up exactly like the rest of their squad.
END OF THE QUARTER
So, overall a very successful 13 weeks this quarter. Before we move on and look at the nitty gritty, how about a quick gallery of all of the models finished this quarter?
With the Blood Bowl set done, that is a major target of the year ticked off and another boxed set finished!
That leaves me with 12 weeks left in quarter 4 and only the Dark Angels side of Dark Vengeance left to go. Things are looking pretty peachy for year 2 overall!
In terms of social media growth it was also a decent quarter, although once again no surprises that in a quarter more focussed on slightly modern sci fi models the growth was nowhere near as high as it was in the retro fantasy quarter! Currently over 4.2k on Instagram and about 1.2k on Youtube! Not bad at all!
I think my favourite thing about this quarter was the Old Realm forge dwarfs. It was great fun printing and painting them and the kickstarter was a well deserved massive success for Simone. He raised something like 1200% of his goal. My only regret is that I didn’t have the time to paint any more of them!
Well, thank you for sticking around and reading this, and hopefully for watching the Blood Bowl video. See you here in exactly one week for the start of quarter 4 and the quarter 3 review video!
Great eggs!
Hammer the Backlog 
Leave a comment