Quarter 4 Week 7 Update: Doctor Ravenwing, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Not Buy Darktide

Welcome back to Hammer the Backlog, the weekly warhammer mini painting, accountability and productivity blog. The motto around her is “Cost of living going up? Stop buying new minis, paint what you have!” You might wonder why I mention this up top? Well, keep reading and all will become clear.

SCORECARD

A fabulous week in the green again this week. With the three ravenwing bikers finished over 2 weeks I get to make up for last week’s big, fat zero with a lovely round 10 this week. There was still a lot to do on these models this week. I only truly got them finished this evening, even with the whole of last week spent on them too. It definitely wasn’t a case of lollygagging by spending a week on “finishing touches”.

Not much else to report on this week to be honest! I didn’t have newly finished models to post on Instagram this week, so I posted some of my older models in newly arranged Kill Teams, managing to keep up the overall consistency on the instagram account. 

Speaking of the instagram account, it has been stuck at around 4280 followers since I started Dark Vengeance. I have resigned myself to the fact that the instagram growth is 100% connected to retro fantasy! Luckily I still have years worth of unpainted fantasy models to get through.

THIS WEEK’S MODELS

So this week’s models are the three finished Ravenwing bikers from Dark Vengeance. I wasn’t super excited about painting more black after a couple of months of black legion, but I enjoyed painting these black more than I thought I would.

I think one of the reasons I preferred these is that they have larger, flatter, less detailed areas of black. Because I am using a “cool blue” black recipe for my highlights, in such tiny areas the Black Legion ended up looking a little bit like the blue legion. 

Even though these guys use the exact same scheme, the black base coat has more room to breathe, and contrasted against the white of their symbols and the bone on their chests, they look much more black. How much more black could they look? None. None more black.

Once again, some perfectly fine models were almost ruined this week by another bald headed flesh egg of a man. I don’t not like painting bald heads. It hits too close to home.

With these lads done, that is the heavy lifting for this quarter done. We have four weeks left to go, and only three character models left to paint for the complete set! There might even be time for some bits and bobs this quarter!

One thing I would like to do is add some transfers to my Dark Angels. Can I buy dark angels transfer sheets separately?

WHAT’S ALL THIS ABOUT DARKTIDE

So, I had a massive dose of FOMO this week. I haven’t been as tempted by a new Games Workshop product as I was by the Darktide Miniatures game in years. It is everything I find cool in a game. Co-operative, set in a hive city, grim dark operatives facing a tide (a darktide even) of zombies and traitors.

I didn’t even mind that most of the models in the set, I already own (and have painted up). I even didn’t mind that none of the models represent those characters from the actual video game all that well.

All of this was irrelevant and I sat down, determined to buy it for myself. 85 quid? That’s pretty steep, but hey, I have a job and no kids. Not out for another couple of weeks? No biggie, I can wait. When I get the set, I plan on painting the models up differently from the version I own, using the darker greys, reds and browns of the game to distinguish the models from the brighter Blackstone Fortress models I’ve already painted up.

Bloody hell, Games Workshop didn’t even bother painting the models up in new schemes. I guess I could just use my psyker, zealot and poxwalker from BSF instead of painting them up again? I could even sub in some of the BSF traitor guards to avoid painting them up?

Wait a minute, why am I looking for ways to avoid painting it and adding things to the pile of shame? I have been led astray by FOMO! Like every other unpainted set I have in my collection, I briefly thought this was the coolest thing in the world! SO rather than buy, not play it and store it away for years, why not recapture that exact same feeling for something already in my collection?

And, long story short, that is how Deathwatch Overkill became the current top of the list for next year’s targets!

Thanks for reading all this though! See you next week for the first Dark Angels character and hopefully some bits and bobs!

Best eggs!