Merry Christmas one and all! Welcome back to Hammer the Backlog, the weekly mini painting, productivity and accountability blog that publishes every Thursday evening, come hell or high water. Or Christmas. Lookit, the fact that it’s the biggest cultural celebration of the year, and that I just finished up work yesterday, is no excuse for a slowdown in productivity!
SCORECARD
All the green of a Christmas tree!
Nothing major to report on the productivity front this week. Getting last week’s models finished a day early let me get this week’s models started a day early, therefore leaving actual Christmas day free for festivities.
With 5 more Swords of Ulric painted, the first little unit of the quarter is done.
With next week being the weird neverending period between Christmas and new years, I’m slightly torn on planning. Will I have plenty of time to get two relatively simple Reiksguard knights painted, or am I better off focusing on the single figure of the Reiksguard captain?
THIS WEEK’S MODELS
This week’s gang are the second (rear? final?) rank of the Swords of Ulric famous regiment. Picking these up this week, I could see some of the decision making that happened back when I kitbashed them in 2010 ish.
They are much closer to standard empire state troops than the front rank, with the exception of the one kind of piratey looking fella who looks like he was mostly made from the free company / mordheim sprue. It suppose without the art to guide me, and safe in the knowledge that these guys would be rear rankers, 2010 Mick spent less time worrying about making each of them a unique character and went a little more “out of the box”.
The heads on the state trooper kit really are terrible. The much older Mordhiem / free company kit has much better, crisper heads with nicer detail, even if they are a touch too large. And then the “better” modern kits like the archers and the pistoleers etc make the weird monkey faced state trooper kits look really bad.
I see why 2010 Mick spent a fortune (at the time, probably would feel pretty reasonable now) making sure that his rank and file were mostly not made up from the basic state troopers kit. I can’t believe it is still the current kit!
It’s such a shame there is still not a good way to build a proper empire unit like Von Kraksburg Guard from an off the shelf kit. The art is clearly the greatswords kit, with halberds.
Well lookit gang, being Christmas and all, a slightly shorter update this week.
See you next week for some winter Knights.
Best eggs.
Hammer the Backlog 
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