Guest Blog: How Project Reaver Helped Harry Stop Worrying and Hammer the Backlog

Hi gang! As a special treat this week we have Hammer the Backlog’s second ever full guest post! Give him a bit of support here:

https://www.instagram.com/harry_paintsminis/

Now! Over to the man himself! Take it from here Harry:

I have been in and out of the hobby since 2008/2009. Initially drawn in through school friends and the shiny new (at the time) Assault on Black Reach boxset. I love the hobbying side of Warhammer. I find painting very therapeutic and painting these little toy soldiers has helped me through some rough times. I will hold my hands up and admit I am massive hobby butterfly. I have a terrible track record of jumping from project to project before it is fully complete. I love a good eBay rescue or starting a project based off a Black library novel I have just read – Helsreach is entirely responsible for why I have amassed a large collection of Orks and Armageddon Steel Legion. Recently I moved house and the process of boxing up my pile of shame made me realise I had to do something. All the half-finished projects were taking up space and I really needed to pull my finger out and just finish some of them. I started looking on YouTube for how other people were tackling their piles of shame. Most of the results were 24-hour painting challenges or their equivalent. Whilst an interesting idea, they were not for me. I then stumbled on the Hammer The Backlog channel and Mick’s year three planning video. I was intrigued by the strategy so did a bit more digging. Watching him pump out quality paintjobs at a consistent pace sold me completely so I decided to give it a go. I started by spending an evening going through my pile of shame and cataloguing it all onto an Excel spreadsheet. Using some conditional formatting, I have a great little tick sheet which I am using to track both my quarterly targets and my entire pile of shame.

I have decided to call my project “Project Reaver”. The name felt quite apt as painting my pile of shame will be a bit of a titanic undertaking, but also one of my ultimate hobby goals is to one day own a Forge World Reaver Titan. I have been awestruck by that model since I was a kid so I thought it would be the perfect goal. If I clear my pile of shame, I can go out and buy myself the Reaver. 

I have found Mick’s strategy of breaking down larger collections into boxset-sized chunks an imaginative way to create a quarter’s target. In quarter two I repaired and painted up the Imperial Chainbreaker Lance boxset in the resplendent colours of House Taranis. I never bought this boxset, so I made the contents with the models I own and started painting.

It is such a great feeling to see these models standing with pride in my display case rather than broken and neglected in a dusty box at the bottom of the cupboard.

I will be taking this boxset strategy into quarter four where I will be painting up some Sons of Horus. I will be basing that quarter’s project off the Legiones Astartes Battle Group boxset. This boxset contains thirty Tactical Marines, a Land Raider and a Deredeo Dreadnought. However, I’ll be treating this as a guideline. For example, I don’t own a Deredeo so I will be painting a Leviathan instead. A Dreadnought is a Dreadnought at the end of the day so why would I go out and buy a Deredeo when there is a reasonable substitute sitting in my pile of shame! In quarter two I got my test scheme sorted so when quarter four comes around, I can hit the ground running.

Alongside my own pile of shame, I have also done some painting projects for my friends – because I thought it would be a sensible idea to tackle my friends’ piles of shame as well as my own. All jokes aside I am grateful they have asked me to paint models for them. It has enabled me to paint such a wide variety of models I might have not bought myself. My inner hobby butterfly loves this as the experience of building and painting new armies is what I truly love about this hobby!

So far this year I have painted up an Ork Stompa for one of my friend’s sons and added some reinforcements to one of my other friend’s Blood Angels. The Commander Dante I converted is probably my favourite model I painted this year, with a close second going to the Stompa.

This year has been my most productive year hobbying. The quarter-based approach has worked great for me so far. I have started to make some noticeable dents in my pile of shame, whilst also balancing work, exams and general life commitments. I even managed to paint some of my first Lord of The Rings models this year! It’s an amazing feeling to finally get those projects I had planned all those years ago realised.

I have dedicated a shelf in my display cabinet for the projects I have completed this year which has been a huge motivator to keep pushing even when it feels like there’s no end to the edge highlights! Project Reaver is going to be a marathon rather than a sprint – The evening cataloguing my pile was eye-opening to say the least… However, I feel confident that by using this strategy I can clear through the mountain of models at a reasonable pace and my goal of owning a Reaver Titan will be achieved!