Hello and welcome back to Hammer the Backlog, the weekly productivity, accountability and painting overly elaborate patterns on tiny pants blog. I am Mick, the one who hammers the backlog. Why not join me for a weekly check in on the project progress, the models painted, and a discussion about whether it’s a good idea or not to paint intricate harlequin diamond patterns on the 8mm pant legs of rank and file troopers?
SCORECARD
Look at that. Another week fully in the green. After the fun of some 90’s metals last week, I wasn’t super excited to be getting back to 2000s plastics.Things were made even more daunting by the fact that the next two week’s models were based on the Fireloques of Ferlangen, from the Uniforms and Heraldry book.
Now, don’t get me wrong, this is a super cool looking unit. And 15-years-ago-Mick did a lot of the hard work of converting them to match the artwork. I think he did anyway. Since these are the only 7th edition empire state troops I’ve painted up, I have nothing to compare against. These may well be heavily converted. They may also be more or less straight out of the box. I certainly have no way of knowing.
In all and anyways, I sat myself down on Saturday afternoon and fairly trepedaciously started on the captain model. I was not sure how I was going to handle the multiple different shades of whites, the fact than no two models have the same colour leather, and the huge amounts of bits and bobs on each model.
Four hours into a single session, the captain was done. This is completely contrary to my normal flow, but it was nice to get one model nailed down to use as a basis for the confidence for the remaining models.
Nothing much else to report this week, other than we have a month left of this quarter and the Assault on Black Reach game is still not played! Uh-oh.
THIS WEEK’S MODELS
First of all, I painted these weirdly. I did the captain first from start to finish. Then did the two troopers with the patterned trousers next to about 90%. Then the last two with the stripy pants to about 90%. Then finished all of the details. Why? I think because the artwork that shows this unit shows them as being fairly distinctively non-uniformed. And what better way to do this than to forget what I’d done on each one?
Disappointly, despite being some of the nicest models I’ve painted in a while, they are an absolute arse pain to get a nice photo of. With them all pointing their guns off in different directions it is very hard to get a single photo showing everyone from their best angle, and also difficult to keep everything both in shot and in focus.
The distinguishing thing about this unit is obviously the black and white colour scheme and the harlequin diamonds on the pants.
Here is my quick tutorial on painting harlequin scheme on rank and file troops:
Don’t.
You’re welcome.
Joking aside, the combination of black templar contrast paint, corax white base and a decent brush makes patterns like this a lot more achievable than I ever used to think.
The other distinctive thing about these models is the three-tone colour scheme of black, white and another more different white. I initially went for a cream for the second white, based on wraithbone washed with skeleton horde. But this turned out too yellow rather than the kind of stony white of the art. So I washed over that again, giving the final colour, which turned out to be almost a 100% match for Karak Stone. Why do something in one step when you can do it in three?
The photos also, unfortunately, wash out the white highlights. Something I noticed with the red highlights too on the cannon a few weeks ago.
I think I might have a settings issue on my phone camera.
Anyway, here is the full army shot so far. Definitely looking the part now. And I’m pretty sure it is fully playable under 5th edition rules, should I decide to bash them against my Bretonnians or Lizardmen in the future!
Thanks for reading all of that, see you next week for some slightly less elaborate rear rankers!
Hammer the Backlog 
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