Hello and welcome back to Hammer the Backlog, the weekly mini painting, productivity and accountability blog. It’s been a pretty tough week for me in real life this week, so motivation hit an all time slump, just in time to sync up with the fact that I allowed myself two weeks to finish five models without going off track! Co-incidence? Causation? Prescience? We’ll never know!
SCORECARD
Alright, look, there’s green in the scorecard and it’s only week two. I know, suboptimal. But lookit, I did plan on taking two weeks to paint these five Ork Nobs, so despite the fact that I might have painted less this week than in any week since I started Hammering the Backlog, I am not technically off track?
So what went wrong? I’m not entirely sure to be honest. It’s been a tough couple of weeks in real life, work is a little high pressure at the moment, I’m running a lot (although I didn’t this week) and I even managed to lock myself out of the laboratoire one of my painting evenings. Maybe life just got in the way this week?
Or maybe knowing that I had a little leeway made me take my foot of the gas, if you will pardon the Americanism?
THIS WEEK’S MODELS
I think these five Ork Nobs in this sorry state are the most unfinished models I’ve ever posted for a Hammer the Backlog Thursday update?
Part of the reason was that there was a decent amount of clean up and mold line removal today on models I am totally unfamiliar with. I know exactly where the moldlines can show up on a space marine or a bretonnian archer, but it was a real hunt on these guys. I even managed to miss some.
The other delay was a funny one. As summer is giving way to winter, drying time for glues and contrast paints and washes are back on the list of things I have to consider and work around! Nevermind finding a decent moment to spray!
THE RED HAIRED STEP CHILD
So, painting my Demon Prince a few weeks ago inspired me to drag out my old 5th Edition 40k Chaos Space Marine army and take a look at them. Since they were pretty much my only “complete” army from the pre-Hammer the Backlog years, they kind of occupy a different space in my head.
But why? I’m currently working on two armies (the orks and the blood ravens) from the exact same era, with plenty of gusto. So I whipped them out on the table for a couple of photos.
The army is:
The absolutely classic Chaos Marine lord. I still have the White Dwarf issue from when this guy was released, which means in my head he is “new”. (New = came out since I started buying White Dwarf. Old= came out before I started)
Two squads of chaos marines. One is a standard squad, the other is a squad with the mark and banner of Khorne. I think at this stage all chaos marines come with a bolter, CCW and a bolt pistol as standard. The Khorne guys even got a rhino.
A squad of 8 Khorne Berzerkers. I think these guys came out in the second ever issue of White Dwarf I read (therefore they are new) and I rushed out and bought them and painted them up as Black Legion, since back in those days mixed forces were very much possible (and encouraged.)
A squad of bikers. Pretty standard models I think, but melta guns in plastic were pretty hard to come by back then, if I remember correctly. The most unique thing about these models is the bases. At this stage bikers still either came without bases, or with rectangular cavalry bases. I made these lozenge shaped based by cutting a circle base in half and sticking both ends to a square base.
A squad of plague marines. Again, brand new when I bought them. They were basically drybrushed and dipped in either Devlan Mud or Agrax Earthshade. Probably Devlan mud. It felt revolutionary at the time to finish a unit in a couple of hours.
The terminators were the last finished models, I think. They were actually built to match the blood angels terminators to use them as a squad in space hulk, so they can pop off their round bases.
Taking these out and playing around with them has been a little more nostalgic than I thought. And hey, I have a Blood Ravens army from the same time, the rule book and both codexes. Time for a battle report?
I should probably finish these Nobs first!
Thanks for reading all of that, see you next week for some more painted orks!
Best of eg
Hammer the Backlog 
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