Quarter 2 Week 1 Update: The Last Italian

Welcome back to Hammer the Backlog, the weekly Wargaming mini painting, accountability and productivity blog, where this week we are getting a start on quarter 2 of year 3 of the project. As with every other time, a new quarter brings new quarterly rocks. 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 fabulous readers, as a blog.

SCORECARD

Good, good. Another quarter with the scorecard in the green! I feel a little bit guilty about counting this guy as the full five points of painting effort, as, in all honesty, I’ve been painting him in the background over the last two weeks. But, with two heavy weeks of video production to get done, that was all I had time for!

The coming quarter is the pre-christmas quarter. The days start getting longer and the nights get cooler and I usually find it much easier to sit down at the painting desk and get things done. In the last two years this was the quarter that I did my Lizardmen army and my Chaos Dwarf army, two of my absolute favourite projects! I have high hopes for this coming quarter to be an absolute banger!

NEW TARGETS

Since I had the first quarter review and second quarter target setting session last weekend, I already know what this quarter’s targets are going to be.

Island of Blood High Elves Painted, Photographed and Online
Wrath of Tlaxtlan Follow Up Battle Report Played, Filmed, Edited and Uploaded.

Both targets have the completion date of Thursday 19th December 2024!

Remembering that all of our targets must be SMART:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant

Timebound

Let’s take a look at the targets!

Specific – High Elves from the Island of Blood set, 27 plastic models

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 19th of December 2024

If this ain’t your first around the Hammer the Backlog block, you’ll notice that this is a pretty achievable number of models to paint in a quarter. However, unlike previous quarters the secondary target includes some painting, probably about 15 points worth. It’s going to be a to-the-wire, hardcore painting quarter with minimal distractions.

THIS WEEK’S MODEL

Speaking of minimal distractions! This week’s model was not part of any of the rocks, and I both a) had to get him finished and b) haven’t decided on a basing scheme for my high elves yet.

This guy is the classic Lorenzo Lupo model that Emiel sent me a few weeks ago. I really liked the scheme that the original owner had painted it in, and decided to more or less strip it and repaint it in the exact same scheme (or close enough) to a slightly higher standard.

He’s a gorgeous model that was great fun to paint and is 100% totally and completely the last Dogs of War model that I own!

I have to say, I quite enjoyed painting this guy, normal man that he is. If I ever did a historical army, I think it would be roman legions.

SO AWKWARD

As with every other quarter since the first one, I also made a short video reviewing quarter 1 and planning for quarter two. Please give it a look if you have a few minutes to spare. There is a real risk of “So Awkward” becoming the catch phrase of the entire YouTube side of this project.

Well look, that’s it from me for one more week. I’m off now to try to figure out what basing scheme I am going to use for my high elves!

Thanks for reading this, you’re the best eggs!

Lee Handsome

September 19, 2024

Quarter 2, Updates, Year 3

Dogs of War, games-workshop, miniatures, painting, Pile of Shame, Quarter 2, Scorecard, warhammer, warhammer-40k, Year 3

One response to “Quarter 2 Week 1 Update: The Last Italian”

MG

September 22, 2024 at 12:52 am

Good video, and good update. I think the new quarter’s goals look quite fun and interesting, and having a fourth WHFB army to pitch against the DoW, Lizardmen, and Bretonians is a great idea. For your Brets, you may want to consider a spellcaster in some guise, as Slaan are very powerful and magic is strong in 5E!

The Slaan is of course missing his back banners, although I assumed you left them off as an artistic choice…! Ah well.

If you need a bit of help making some decent but low-effort Lizardmen terrain, you might want to track down a copy of White Dwarf 223 from 1998, as there was a nice “how to” for Lizardmen terrain like pools, jungles, etc., in there.

Well done again on the DoW army completion. It’s a stellar achevement, and the DoW did have some of the trickiest models of that era to build and paint. Since you didn’t do the Dark Vengeance battle report, maybe a DoW vs High Elves battle report could be something to consider in the future instead…?

Finally, Dark Vengeance was the starter for 6E/7E 40k, with 7E being the very last iteration of that version of the ruleset that started in 3E. Partly because it was the starter for two consecutive editions, and partly because the 6E/7E editions were simply not much fun to play any more, and I think that’s why the wider response for the set and a battle report using it was milder than you might have hoped for. However, the ruleset was generally decent enough over it’s 5-edition lifespan, and I feel it peaked at late 4E/early 5E. If you ever decide to have a game with them, it might be more fun to use them in one of those editions’ rulesets instead (and as they were popular editions too, you might find the public reponse more enthusiastic if you decide to film the game).

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