Welcome back, fellow Michaels Stipe, to Hammer the Backlog, the mostly warhammer mini painting accountability and productivity blog in which a lifelong collector of tabletop gaming miniatures finally forces himself to sit down and paint the damn things. What’s the frequency? Well, the blog is weekly, but the project itself is divided into years and then further in quarets. Roughly 90 days of focus on a single project (or couple of smaller projects. And it just so happens that you join me on the last week of quarter 3 of year three.
Let’s take a look at the weekly scorecard, then this week’s painted models, and finally a wrap up of the quarter as a whole.
SCORECARD
This week turned out to be a completely uneventful week in real life, which after the dramatics of last week and with a space marine sergeant, servo skull, teleport homer, halberdier, musician and freehand banner to paint, was much needed!
Thankfully, I got everything done in time! This was one of the less stressful end of quarters in quite a while to be honest. Although I spent a lot of time working on the banner this week, the space marine was pretty straight forward to paint and I pretty much got him done start to finish in two and a half evenings, including working on the servo skull and teleport homer at the same time.
With all 11 Marines from Deathwatch Overkill painted, the company of honour finished off and the Bretonnian men-at-arms from www.merlinsminiatures.co.uk finished a few weeks back, that is a clear sweep for rocks achieved for quarter 3 of year 3.
This biggest disruption to Hammer the Backlog this week was that I finally bit the bullet and got a new phone. I’ve been using my trusty Samsung S20 to take every photo for the last 3 years of HtB, but with a cracked screen and broken charger port I finally had to bite the bullet and get an upgrade.
The s24 takes great pictures, but I was very nervous about having to relearn everything, or some things not looking as good. Luckily, the camera on the new phone is definitely an upgrade. In fact, kinda too much! The 40k photos look much sharper and clearer, but the fantasy photo lose some of the 90s potato camera charm!
THIS WEEK’S MODELS
Seven Hammer the Backlog points is probably a little stingy for the sheer amount of plastic I covered with pigment this week.
First of all, I got the musician and the final halberdier painted up for the company of honour. Nothing much to report on these two particularly. I think the musician uses most parts straight from the greatswords kit. It’s possible that only the head is a transplant from elsewhere.
The bigger job was the banner. I was inspired by old mate Deets from Anvil of Doom who did a lovely little freehand tutorial video. Usually I would start with blocking out in the colours I am going to use, but Deets used contrast wyldwood to block out the whole shape before painting over it. This gives a very nice graphic finish which I was happy to use.
I’m pretty pleased with the final result. It looks plenty like the illustration from the book, while stll fitting in with my own style.
The back of the banner turned out pretty nice too, if I do say so myself. Although the cross and quartered pattern ended up taking almost as much time as the freehand skellington, I’m still glad I did that instead of trying to match both sides.
I still go back and forth about whether or not I really like thesis conversions. Since I did them in 2008(!) they are nearly 17 years old! Crazy to think. I think the command rank works pretty well and matches the artwork nearly exactly, but I’m still not convinced by the greatsword bodies with the monkey heads and plain arms from the state troopers kits. I think they look a little stiff, busy and some of their faces are hideous.
They look especially discordant on the tabletop across from the gorgeous, simple, coherent Perry brothers Bretonnian men-at-arms. But sure look, I finished off 2008 Mick’s dream unit so I am shiny happy people.
For Sci-Fi this week may I present Ortan Cassius, Ultramarines Chaplain. I need not have been as worried about painting him as I was. He turned out to be one of the most straight forward models to paint from Deathwatch Overkill, being as he is basically a black armoured space marine with a shaved head and a silver arm.
No new techniques or colour schemes were harmed in the production of this model.
I knocked out the servo skull and teleport homer while I was at it.
After all I said and done, I think Cassius Ortan might be my favourite of the bunch. He has a real presence and heft to him, with a classic style one foot forward man-or-action pose that screams early 2000’s Juan Diaz to me. Just think of the classic Huron Blackheart model to see what I mean.
Don’t Killteam Cassius look great together, especially with a new phone that can keep them all in focus in a single photo!
THIS QUARTER’S MODELS
As per Hammer the Backlog tradition, let me leave you this week a small gallery of this quarter’s progress. Thank you all for following along with me, as ever. I’m off into the recording studio this weekend to film the Quarter 3 review and quarter 4 planning video.
What could next quarter’s rocks be? I feel a terrifying shadow in the warp.
Thanks for reading all of these ramblings, best eggs!
Hammer the Backlog 
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