Hello there fellow accountability, productivity and warhammer mini painting enjoyers. Welcome back to week 6 of Quarter 4 (2023/2024) of Hammer the Backlog. No new finished models to show you this week, but that’s not as bad a thing as it seems. Join me for a look at this week’s scorecard, a look at the work in progress and my new found Kill Team obsession.
SCORECARD
Well, the obvious thing this week is that we have a big, red zero in the models finished column. That is not to say that I slacked off this week, I very much didn’t, but the unit of Ravenwing bikers, being very large complex models, are definitely a 10 pointer, and I got about half of them done this week. So I did 5 points worth of painting, but just got nothing finished.
When I finish them next week (week 7), that gives me four weeks left in the quarter with only 3 character models left to paint. It also means I will have a week without painting commitments to get the yearly planning session written up and filmed for the Youtube channel.
So all things considered, the big red zero isn’t as bad as it seems!
THIS WEEK’S MODELS
So this week’s models are three half-painted Ravenwing bikers from Dark Vengeance. Look, listen, i’ll be honest , they are probably a touch less than half painted. But, as always, have a good excuse. A lot of the work this week was in getting the models repaired and based. These three suffered the most from the Dark Vengeance set for the last 12 years of storage. The sergeant with this chainsword poking out is particularly unsuited to being stored in a foam carry case. It’s like he was designed to break. Anyway, half an evening of glueing, filling and mouldline scraping got everyone back to where I needed them to be.
The next big challenge with these guys was bases. I tried my level best to get some official biker bases for them, but in the end they were wither out of stock, or GW just doesn’t make mechanical looking bases for the old lozenge style biker bases. So 3d printing to the rescue again! I found these on cults 3d for free!
In the end I printed 4 of these bases, 3 for the ravenwing bikers and one for the White Scar biker in the Deathwatch Overkill set, who has been baseless for about 7 years! What a nice thing to be able to tick off with 3d printing.
I’m going for the standard black recipe with these lads.
| Base | Mechanicus Standard Grey |
| Contrast | Black Templar |
| Edge Highlight | Thunderhawk Blue |
| Fine Edge Highlight | Fenresian Grey |
| Dot Highlight | Blue Horror |
KILL TEAM
My dream armies for both Warhammer and Warhammer 40k have always been quite small, probably due to the fact that I first saw them in the olden days of the early 90s when armies were much smaller. Back when a tactical squad, a scout squad, 5 terminators, a captain and a dreadnought was a whole army to be proud of.
More recent games, especially GW games have tended towards much bigger armies, obviously. There is something spectacular about 4 units of 20 knights or the realm crusading across the table, but it just doesn’t stir the same emotions in me as 3 units of 6 does.
The long and short of this pontificating is that Kill Team feels like it suits my sensibilities more. A game with between 6 and 20 models per side? I could have multiple, painted kill teams and never get bored!
With that in mind, I started trying to figure out what existing models I have that are already kill teams. I bought these Necron warriors back about 8 years ago with the intention of them being a kill team, but they are not a kill team yet, they need five more models, either Immortals, Flayed Ones or Deathmarks I think.
So I think, despite all of my painted 40k models, I currently have 2 fully painted kill teams. They might not be optimal, or current meta, but as far as I can tell they are legal!
Well, that’s it for me for this week. See you next week for three finished bikers.
Hammer the Backlog 
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