Welcome back to Hammer the Backlog, the weekly Warhammer mini painting, accountability and productivity blog, where this week we are getting a start on quarter 3 of year 2 of the project! As with every other time, a new quarter brings new rocks, targets that are set at the start of the quarter that I must adhere to.
Hammer the Backlog is all about me using the methodology of running a small to medium size business to keep myself productive and accountable. That basically breaks down into three main parts. Firstly, I have a weekly scorecard which keeps track of the health of the project. Green means things are going well, red shows what things might be slipping.
The second thing is the Rocks themselves. I usually have between 2 and 4 Rocks per quarter. The rocks are set in stone, be all and end all targets for the quarter. If nothing else happens in the quarter, but I get the rocks done, then the quarter is a success. I have to be very careful to make sure, therefore, that the rocks are SMART every quarter.
The final thing is the weekly meeting. The weekly meeting is where I check in on the scorecard, check the progress on the rocks, deal with any problems that have popped up, and then write the whole thing out and present it to you, the beautiful readers, as a blog.
SCORECARD
Not a wonder look for the start of a quarter, what with red in the models painted section. But, please don’t worry for me too much. With the 5 Deathwing terminators representing ten Hammer the Backlog points (5 Hammer the Backlog points being equivalent to one week’s worth of effort) I couldn’t physically break the middle model in two to get 5 this week and 5 next week. So one of the weeks needed to be 4 and the other 6. And with a very long bank holiday weekend coming up, it felt much more natural to do two this week and three next week. And to include the unit leader in the week with more time.
Other than that little issue, everything else is in the green for the first week of the quarter.
With that all explained, let’s move on to having a look at the final set of new targets for the year.
NEW TARGETS
Since I had the second quarter review and third quarter target setting session last weekend, I already know what this quarter’s targets are going to be.
- Get Dark Angels of Dark Vengeance army painted, photographed and online.
- Get Annual Review video, filmed, edited and online.
Both targets have the completion date of Thursday 13th June 2024!
Remembering that all of our targets must be SMART:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Timebound
Let’s take a look at the targets!
Specific – 10 Space Marines (10 Points) 5 Terminators (10 Points) 3 Bikers (10 Points) Chaplain (5 Points), Librarian (5 Points) and Company Master (5 Points)..
Measurable – photographed and online
Achievable – 45 Hammer the Backlog Points (History shows I can do 65 in a quarter!)
Relevant – It’s a blog about painting models!
Timebound – by the 13th of June 2024
THIS WEEK’S MODELS
So this week’s models are the first two Terminators from the 2012 Dark Vengeance starter set. I picked this set up when it came out in 2012, considering myself, as I did at the time, a Chaos Space Marines collector. Little did I know that the models represented the first step in the change of style of Chaos Marines and I quickly lost interest in painting them.
So off to the cupboard of shame they went. These particular models came back briefly the year contrast paints came out. I really wanted to try out the new wraithbone spray and skeleton horde paints. So what better models to try them out on than some long abandoned and neglected Deathwing?
I was happy enough with the results at the time, but obviously olden days Mick wasn’t going to carry on the project and actually finish these off! So back into the cupboard of shame they went for the second time.
With the base layers already down, painting these two didn’t take too long this week, which I was pretty grateful for, considering I had a video to shoot and edit too!
I loved in the Space Hulk re-release that each of the Blood Angels terminators had their own heraldry and colours that made them coherent, but also fairly unique, so I have started off this set with the intention of achieving something similar.
For that reason, one of these has a much brighter red on his gun and black fingers on his power fist. Next week’s models will all have something like this, maybe a black gun or a red first casing etc.
QUARTERLY REVIEW VIDEO
As with every other quarter since the first one, I also made a short video reviewing quarter three and planning for quarter four. Please give it a look if you have a few minutes to spare.
That is more or less it from me this week! Thanks for sticking around for another quarter of relentless progress, you’re good eggs!
Hammer the Backlog 
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