I was going to quote Scott of the Antarctic as the opener for this week’s blog, to represent the level of hardship and toll that painting these five models in a week had taken on me. But then I read the damned dairy and that felt a bit extreme to be honest. So instead, welcome back to Hammer the Backlog, the weekly miniature painting blog, where this week hitting the weekly targets was a little bit tougher than usual, but not a life and death struggle!
SCORECARD
It looks like Instant Agency Tools is still on the blink, so another week of sad faces and hand made tables. Sorry to all of the graphics enjoyers out there!
| Hold ups due to missing supplies | 0 |
| Instagram Posts | 5 |
| Facebook/Reddit Posts | 5 |
| Models Finished | 5 |
| Blog Post | 1 |
The good news (for me) is that it is an easy copy and paste job from last week, as once again all is in the green! Lovely.
I’m starting to sound a little bit like a broken record, but I really do feel like I could have counted the banner bearer this week as 3 points. With his enormous banner and his flighty annoying Yellow/Gold trim and runes, he took nearly as much time as another figure or two. Or at least another normal figure or two. Probably not another seaguard, since they already take bloody ages!
The feedback on last week’s batch of Sea Guard was pretty damned positive, which helped a lot on keeping me motivated on this lot to be honest. They were pretty much universally praised across social media including reddit, instagram and facebook. They got over 1250 likes on facebook! I didn’t even know there were that many people still on facebook!
Since I learned that I am highly motivated by external factors, this supercharged me this week and I got a lot done before the weekend ended. That left me to spend the weekday evenings on details and lunch breaks on gross motor work, like bases and re establishing whites.
I have enjoyed painting these guys a lot more than I thought I would, but I am also glad to see the back of them! I need a palate cleanser from intricate rank and file next week. I’m not sure at the moment what I’m going to start on next, but would a Bretonnian bowmen command group and a knight be out of the question?
THIS WEEK’S MODELS
The front rankers of the Lothern Sea guard are done and dusted and the unit complete. As I said, a long journey, but it feels worth it.
Something I’ve really noticed while painting these is how challenging the Dogs of War were to paint well. Sure, these are borderline over-detailed, but the detail is so crisp and the high elves have such a striking visual identity that the end results are great. Looking back at my Dogs of War from last year, by comparison a lot of the colour schemes feel quite muddy and undersaturated. I have always had a soft spot for bright High elves though.
One choice I went with was to have the unit champion have a blue plume to match the rest of the army, rather than a sea green or sea blue plume to match the rest of the unit. I think this choice makes him fit in slightly less well in the unit, especially since he has his shield tilted away from the viewer most of the time, but will hopefully help tie the army together better in the end.
You know what I would really, really love? If there was an STL out there that uses this exact design philosophy and style, strips away the sea and fish motifs and replaces the bow on the back with a sword and scabbard on the hips to make high elf spearmen that match this athletic and level of detail. The poor, short stocky, tiny headed, chimp handed models from late 5th edition/ early 6th edition cannot be made to look good standing next to these.
NEW ARRIVALS
Look who arrived today! Imagine getting 1996 metal models new in blister for 23 euro. The times we live in! I haven’t been able to find a Bretonnian bowmen command on eBay for less than €23 per figure, let alone €23 in total. They even have a fun little paper banner included in more or less the right colours for my army, although I might have to overpaint it a little to make it work!
That’s it for me this week. See you next week for some painted models, but definitely not more elf rank and file.
Best eggs!
Hammer the Backlog 
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