Am I dangerous, because I am honest? Or is this just another weekly update for Hammer the Backlog, the Warhammer mini painting, accountability and procrastination blog? Wait, did I say procrastination just there? I meant productivity. No procrastination here! Without further ado, let’s take a look at this week’s scorecard, courtesy of the now back online Instant Agency Tools.
SCORECARD
Well, would you look at that? Despite all of the procrastination and doubt, the scorecard isn’t looking terribly unhealthy.
Three weeks into painting the reaver knights means that I have spent 10 Hammer the Backlog points worth of effort for still a grand total of 0 finished models. That puts a lot of red in the ledger even though it feels quite productive. Not having any fresh new models to show off on Instagram or Facebook is the knock on effect of this.
I am quite pleased with the progress this week, with the five horses complete to a standard I am happy with, although, since the riders are integrated in these 2010 models I can’t just leave them off for the moment and show the finished horses on social media channels. My extrinsic motivation!
Regular contributor and commenter MG made a few interesting points on the Hammer the Backlog scoring system in the comments last week that I think are very interesting. For the sake of the readers who don’t read the comments, here is the bit that was particularly relevant to this week’s challenge.
“I think doubling the points you assign to models from 2000-2015 era is more than fair, and I would consider at least an extra couple of points per unit/lord (if not an outright tripling of points) for models post-2015. If you finish earlier, you can always do bonus stuff. But if you struggle to complete the models in the assigned time, it can be disheartening and may risk a burnout. It’s good to push yourself a bit (and you do/will get faster with continual practice over time), but it’s also supposed to be fun and enjoyable – so upping difficulty from easy to normal is okay, but there’s no need to play on hard or nightmare if you don’t enjoy the experience!”
It’s a very interesting suggestion, to which there is not a “right” answer. It does feel crazy that five highly detailed, intricate, modern Swordmasters get the same amount of effort as five monopose plastic skinks from 1996. Look at the difference!
But maybe I was going too easy on myself with the skinks? Maybe skinks, skellys and goblins etc should be ½ a point rather than a full point? It was already odd painting a skink for one point and a saurus warrior, with at least 4 times the surface area, as one point.
“In the end, I find that I like both new and older models just as much when they’re all finished. This leads me to start to not look forward to newer kits as much as the older ones, because in the back of my mind I know there’s double the work for the “same” reward at the end.”
On the other hand, if I were to give, say, each Lothern Sea guard a 3 point allowance, it would have taken me six weeks to finish the ten sea guard, and more or less an entire year to paint the elves from Island of Blood. This feels like an even surer way to kill my motivation completely!
Look, there isn’t an answer for this largely academic problem, but I am sweating a little bit looking at that Deathwatch Overkill box set for the next two quarters!
THIS WEEK’S MODELS
This week’s models are once again, the five reaver knights’ horses. I find it a little bit unfair that “light” cavalry like these end up taking more time to paint than heavy cavalry like Knight of the Realm, due to the fact that you have a fully grown adult horse to paint, as well as any armour or other details including reins and whatever those dangly flag bits are.
One of the major contributing factors to slow progress on these was that I have been intimidated by painting dapples ever since I was painting WW2 Italian planes as a literal child. So I really wasn’t confident in painting dapples on these precious babies. But, since I decided that they were 15 HtB points rather than 10 last week, that gave me the breathing room to try dappling by lightly glazing very thinned down light grey paint in multiple layers.
I went for a slightly different style of dapple on each horse, varying the pattern and the lightness. In the end I am happy with the set as a coherent whole, but this one is my favourite dapple.
On top of the painting of the horses, each horse also has about as much armour as a high elf spearman, so there were plenty of panels and scales to paint to keep me occupied.
The official art depicts these guys with a predominantly blue and pink colour scheme, but I decided to stay on brand and do a predominately white and blue scheme, with just a hint of pink to be added next week on the rider’s feathers.
WHAT’S NEXT?
So, with 8 weeks down and Christmas rapidly approaching, what’s next for this quarter? Obviously next week will be five points of HtB effort spent on the riders themselves. These MFers are just as detailed as the sea guard, maybe even a bit more, so it is not going to be plain sailing exactly.
Then we have two things left to do, the Prince himself on his big birdcat, and the Bretonnians for the battle report. I think if I’ve to get this battle report done, the week after next week will have to be focussed on getting the Bretonnians painted, then onto the prince!
Thanks for reading this far, see you next week for some actually finished models!
Best eggs!
Hammer the Backlog 
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