Hello there. Welcome back to Hammer the Backlog, the weekly mini painting, accountability and productivity blog. When I say mini painting, it’s pretty much almost all Warhammer. You join me today as we approach the end of another quarter, with 3 full weeks left to go in quarter 3 of year 4. Year bloody 4, can you imagine!
Let’s take a look at the weekly score card, project progress, this week’s models, and anything else that catches my eye or fancy.
SCORECARD
My lovely lady wife has been away this week. Without her to look after, feed and clothe, I have had plenty of time to get models painted. That left me with a fairly leisurely week to get the last 5 of the Fireloques of Ferlangen done.
Nothing else to report this week! Haha, that was quick!
THIS WEEK’S MODELS
So five more handgunners painted up in the white and black colour scheme of Ostland. They were a little easier to paint up than last week’s models, with the template for the colour schemes and style established.
Because of their distinctly non-uniformed appearance I found it much easier to paint on the base coats on every model first, getting their contrast and shades done as a batch.
Then I took them each individually and painted them to finish, rather than batch painting them. I think this works well since there is relatively little of each colour on them, so doing “the black parts” on one model could be 30 minutes, and on the next model it could be 5 minutes, not lending itself well to batch painting.
I didn’t do any more harlequin checks this week, as they are mostly rear rankers, the musician aside.
I am very pleased with how these look as a unit. They really benefit from the second rank pushed in behind them with their guns striking through to make them look like the original artwork. They are the unit that I’ve painted that have most benefited from a second rank that I’ve ever seen.
I love how they look like they are in the middle of a desperate “fire-at-will” battle, rather than the structured ranks of the early stage of a battle.
SCALE CREEP
Look, you might call me a creep, but I have always been obsessed with scale. And these Empire lads are way out of whack. I was playing with some of my toys last week trying to decide which army would have the honour of matching up against my empire army in photos when it is done, and I pulled out my classic metal Dogs of War.
The scale difference between a fully upright, more of less 28mm infantry model from the 90s, and a crouched over plastic from ten years later is fascinating. I’ve always heard that GW models were in Heroic scale i.e big heads, big hands, big weapons, chunky details, but the difference between these two models for the normal human from the same game is wild.
A NEW BLOG
On of the most fun aspects of Hammer the Backlog is when other frustrated mini painters and hoarders are inspired by the project, or the system, to give it a go themselves.
The latest is the fantastic substack (whatever the heck that is) Mike’s Mini Models. Go give him a follow and really pile on that accountability pressure!
https://substack.com/home/post/p-188358890
SOCIAL MEDIA CREEP
I used to talk about the social media side of things a lot more on the blog, I think. But I certainly haven’t been recently, with the actual painting and a little bit of playing taking up most of my time.
But there have been some interesting changes on the Instagram side of things the last few weeks. Since the end of the first, 40k heavy, part of the year and the beginning of the Middlehammer posts, two three interesting things have happened.
First of all, average views have gone waaaay down. During the Ork era, posts were getting between 10 and 70k views. I guess 40k just is that much bigger. In the empire era, posts are getting 2 to 6k views. We’re talking in the region of 10 to 15% of what they were before.
BUT, the interesting thing is the likes haven’t gone down. A 40k post with 32k views might get between 800 and 1,000 likes. About a 3% like ratio.
A fantasy post with 6K views gets the same number of likes. About 15% That’s five times better!
I think this has helped Instagram to hone in on people who might be interested in what I’m doing, because follower count has been going up faster than ever.
Anyway, that’s enough of that.
See you next week for Von Klump’s Buccaneers!
Best eggs
Hammer the Backlog 
Leave a comment