Well, well, well. Wellity, wellity, wellity. If it isn’t another Quarter 1, Week 1 update for Hammer the Backlog, the weekly mini painting, productivity and accountability blog. The fourth such! Looks like this effort to get all of my 30 years of collected tabletop minis painted has more staying power than even I thought when I started it.
Since this may be the first blog update for many people jumping on board for year four, each week I take a look at my weekly scorecard, the progress on the quarterly project, the painted models and then any issues or opportunities that have presented themselves.
Sometimes I might even throw in a paint scheme recipe, mostly to help myself remember! LETS. GET. TO IT.
SCORECARD
Lean and mean and in the green. Just like we like it.
I got plenty of painting done this week too, as usual with week one of a new year, high on the energy and excitement of starting new projects that I’ve been eyeing jealously for the last few months.
But before we go too deep down any rabbit holes, let’s take a look at this quarter’s two new targets, make sure they line up with our annual goals and make sure that they are SMART.
Since I had the annual planning and first quarter target setting session last week, I already know what this quarter’s targets are going to be.
- 2008 Blood Ravens painted, photographed and online
- Instant Agency Tools replaced
Both targets have the completion date of Thursday 11th of September 2025.
Remembering that all of our targets must be SMART:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Timebound
Let’s take a look at the targets!
Specific – A little like previous quarters, the Assault on Black Reach Space Marines did not make up an entire quarter’s worth of painting time, so I’ve added a few contemporary bits and pieces to them. From AoBR we have a force commander (5 points), 10 tactical marines (10 points), 5 terminators (10 points) and a dreadnought (5 points). And to make up a tray I have pulled in a librarian ebay rescue (5 points), five scouts from the conquest set (5 points) and an abandoned predator tank from my old Choas Marine army (15 points).
Achievable – 55 Hammer the Backlog Points (History shows I can do 65 in a quarter!)
Relevant – It’s a blog about painting models!
Timebound – by the 11th of September 2025
Looks pretty smart to me! The observant among you will notice that I have set a target of only 55, while being capable of 65. At roughly 5 points a week, allowing for a 2 week holiday that would be 13 weeks, giving me time to get everything done. And if I don’t think I can get them done, that would take the Achievable out of SMART. Not very SMRT, is it?
The second target, or meta target if you prefer, is to replace Instant Agency Tools. Poor old IAT has been the workhorse of this blog and project for the last three years, but it is sunsetting on July 13th. I don’t have a plan for this at the moment, so I haven’t really been able to scope it out.
There are a few considerations that I would like.
- Must be free for the public to use. I want blog readers to be able to sign up and use whatever I use for free.
- I don’t mind spening a little to get something up and running, or even if I have to pay a little maintenance.
- Needs to have all of the features needed to manage my projects.
- Would be nice if it could be Hammer the Backlog branded.
Anyone know any web devs who might be able to give me some guidance?
This quarterly target ties into the annual target of “Hammer the Backlog System Created.”
THIS WEEK’S MODEL
I’ve made no secret how much I love the Dawn of War games. Both Dawn of War (the original) and Dawn of War 2, the slightly more RPGy sequel. Such a shame they never made a third game. Such a shame. So doing a Blood Raven army has always been there in the back of my mind as something that I would like to do.
I originally bought Assault on Black Reach with the intention of merging them with Dark Vengeance and having a Dark Angels army. But that urge has passed and been replaced with blood (ravens) lust. And what better army to make Blood Raven than a collection of models released between 2004 and 2008? The peak Dawn of War years.
While this model almost certainly wasn’t intended to represent Gabriel Angelos, Captain of the 3rd Company of the Blood Ravens, both he and it are pretty typical of the standard image of the grizzled marine commander from that period.
Blood Ravens in the game had a tendency to pick out the special characters by giving them a lot more gold on their armour and shoulder pads than the rest of the army, so I’ve gone with a black cloak, gold chest plate and white hair to scream Blood Ravens commander. Let’s call him Abriel Gangelos.
I hummed and hawed about the red for ages before getting down to painting. I was torn between a period accurate, brighter, almost Blood Angels colour scheme and the much more modern darker burgundy that the GW studio have been painting them with in recent years. In the end I went for quite a dark base, up into the yellow spectrum for highlights. Retro modern. I hope. It remains to be seen how it will look on models with much more red armour visible.
He’s the steps, more for me than anyone else!
Mechanicus Standard Grey Basecoat
Flesh Tearers Red Contrast
Evil Sunz Scarlet Zenithal Glaze
Wild Riders Red Edge Highlight
Tau Light Ochre Fine Edge Highlight
I went for a neutral, kinda brownish grey for the cloth, with the skaven triad of Eshin, Stormvermin, Administratum grey.
For the hard blacks like armour and bolter cases it’s Mechanicus Standard Grey, Dawnstone, Administratum. You can barely see the difference in these two blacks, the tightness of the highlights is more important than the colour values.
And for the small amount of rubberised blacks, it’s the classic Thunderhawk Blue, Fenrisian Grey.
I do have a set of Blood Ravens transfers that I’m going to use on the rank and file, but I freehanded this one instead of trying to cut a tiny transfer to match the visible area.
The last thing I have to say this week, I promise, is that I am doing this quarter a little bit backwards. In every previous quarter I have started with the rank and file and done the commanders at the end. I suppose the logic of this was to get plenty of practice in before I got the the centre piece models. And, growing up with GW articles in White Dwarfs, that was always how they did it.
But, for me, it was actually leading to a bit of burn out. I have usually been pretty much ready to wrap up a project by the time I got to what should have been the most exciting models. Well, no more! I’ve done the commander this week and the Librarian is already in the Biostrip for next week!
YEAR 4 PLANNING
By the time you are reading this the Year 4 Planning Video should be already up and ready for your perusal.
Last week’s year 3 review was incredibly successful for a Hammer the Backlog video, get over 13.5 thousand views in its first week, beating the previous best video performance by a factor of 3, and the channel average by 4.5!
It would be crazy to think this week’s video will do anything like the same numbers, but if you could give it a watch it would be much appreciated.
Best eggs!
Hammer the Backlog 
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