Quarter 3 Week 4 Update: Knights in White Satin

Welcome back to Hammer the Backlog, the weekly mini painting, productivity and accountability blog. No early January slump around these parts, powering through the dark days and early nights with more early 2000s empire models. What about you? Painting or slumping?

SCORECARD

Another green sweep for 2026. Nothing in particular to report this week. I usually count mounted knights as 3 Hammer the Backlog points each, and even though these guys are a little simpler than a Bretonnian Knight with full heraldry, or any post 2010 knight with literally 1 million detailed bits, I did spend a tiny bit more time on the heraldry for the musician, so it worked out nicely.

THIS WEEK’S MODELS

The Reiksguard nights are in an interesting position of being the absolute most elite and prestigious knights in the empire in the lore and setting, while being the most basic and common knights you will ever see on the table. I guess that’s the result of having a very nice kit that was one of the first great multipart plastics?

I painted this week’s paint more or less exactly the same as last week’s, once again enjoying the soft shadows and metallic sheen that using oil panel lining gave me on the very bright and shiny armour.

I suppose one of the reasons that the Reiksguard are so ubiquitous is that the colour scheme really is very sharp. White, black, silver, red and brown with a tiny splash of green here and there. Gorgeous. And the shields, which I assume came with the kit as standard, look really nice and sharp.

I did take the colour schemes for the shields and the musician’s mini banner thingy more or less directly from my beloved uniforms and heraldry book, as per protocol.

Not a lot else to report on this week, other than the fact that having the iconic Reiksguard will really turn my random collection of units into a proper 5th edition style empire army, from back before the studio army picked a province to come from and had consistent uniforms.

The banner was fun to paint, but it was very much a one and done job. I feel like I could make it a good bit sharper and cleaner by treating the current version as basically a sketch to build on, but the process must be followed, so the first draft is also the final product!

Well gang, I don’t think there is much else to report this week! I hope to see you next week for the final two knights, and the third completed unit in my empire army.

Best eggs!