Hello and welcome back to week 4 of a very Dawn of War heavy quarter of Hammer the Backlog, the weekly warhammer mini painting, productivity and accountability blog. Let’s not be coy here, nostalgia is a big part of the attraction of Hammer the Backlog for a lot of you, but who in their right mind even thought we would be waxing nostalgic about 2004-2008? Not me, certainly! Let’s take a look, as we always do, at this week’s scorecard, progress update, issues list and this week’s models. For the Emperor!
SCORECARD
It is, I believe, the last week of Instant Agency Tools access. So let’s send the old girl off with a final week in the green.
This week of backlog hammering was both uneventful and straightforward, while still being a lot of work, and pretty tight on the deadline.
Common or garden Space Marines, of the tactical variety, are pretty much the upper limit of what I can get away with calling one point on the hammer the backlog system, something I think I already knew from doing Dark Angels tacticals a year or more ago.
I know Space Marines can probably be speed painted more efficiently, but a big part of Hammer the Backlog is getting them painted to a standard I am happy with. These older tactical marines may not be swamped in detail like more modern models, but they do have a large amount of panels and edges that demand sharp highlights, so they take time.
Also! My god has GW’s plastic injection technology has come along a lot in the last 20 years. Between filling in gaps, sanding down misaligned parts and scraping mold lines, it was a full 90 minute session for these five before a single molecule of paint touched them. At least with the scout squad last week, 2015 Mick had already done that suffering!
As it’s the last week of Instant Agency Tools, and a possible replacement is still very much in the works, next week I think we will be treated to the horrors of my temporary Google Drive replacement. Regular readers will know my eye for style is pretty atrocious, so brace yourselves.
THIS WEEK’S MODELS
I’m going to do something a little bit non-standard here and copy paste what I wrote when I painted my first squad of Dark Angels, in an effort to prove that time is indeed a flat circle.
They were quite a bit more fun to paint than I thought they were going to be. I was dreading painting the armour, trying to get a smooth contrast coat and then all of that edge highlighting. It was a lot of work in the end and at times it felt like I was making no progress whatsoever. But! The cool thing about these guys is that once all that green red is done, the model is pretty much done too. Unlike with chaos marines they are not covered in trim and gribbly bits. Only a few touches of other colours to get them done.
I guess this is a combat squad now. Four normal marines and a special heavy weapon. That leaves 3 normal marines, a heavy special weapon and a sergeant for next week.
See what I mean! The only differences this week were that the models are a half generation older. So more mold line cleanup, and being early days monoposes, a little bit of imagination required for painting some of the lumps that are supposed to be elbow pads, pipes and cables.
Here is the red recipe, for interested parties.
| Undercoat | Mechanicus Standard Grey |
| Contrast | Flesh Tearers Red |
| Glaze | Evil Suns Scarlet (The Best Paint) |
| Heavy Glaze | Evil Suns Scarlet (As I said, the best paint) |
| Thick Edge Highlight | EVIL SUNS SCARLET!!! |
| Fine Edge Highlight | Wildrider Red |
| Dot Highlight | Tau Light Ochre |
Rather than jumping directly into the second half of the tactical squad next week, I’m pretty heavily considering making a start on the dreadnought. Then I can finish the remaining 5 tacticals and not drive myself mad with edge highlighting before I even start the terminators.
As a tiny by-the-by, I’ve left off the squad marking decals from these boys for the moment. I think they will be squad 6 of the third company, but I haven’t decided yet whether to go for roman or arabic numerals. I might do all of the squad and unit markings at the end of the project.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. Isn’t that….a Dark Angels backpack? No! It was a gift. From a……battle brother. No further questions.
With two characters and two small squads, they already look like a 2nd edition army! When the tactical squad is finished and the dreadnought added, they’ll look like an early third edition army!
TOO MANY WORDS
I had the thought this week of checking how much I’ve written for Hammer the Backlog. Luckily, I keep every blog update as a draft on a single file on google drive, and that file is now 143,000 words long!
That’s nearly two standard novels long! Or one Brandon Sanderson book!
That’s enough out of me for another week, I’m off to lie in the shade for a while.
See you soon, best eggs!
Hammer the Backlog 
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