Hello and welcome to the first week of quarter 4 of year 4 (Really? Can you believe it?) of Hammer the Backlog, the weekly Warhammer mini painting, productivity and accountability blog where I try to use an operating system to turn 25 years of buyer’s remorse back into joy. Every year, at the start of the year, I find four baking trays worth of abandoned projects and try to rekindle the joy and excitement that I had when I first bought them.
Regular readers will know that by quarter 4, all of the choices are off the table, there is only one baking tray of unpainted models left to do to knock off the full year’s targets. Sounds easy, right!? What could possibly go wrong?
SCORECARD
Let’s start this week, as every week, with a look at the scorecard. All in the green. Once again, with a bit of filming and video editing to do,but no new schemes to work on, things are a bit tight. But with it being a national holiday in Ireland this week, I had a few days to get ahead of myself. So I got the prince on foot finished, the first rank of seaguard started, some scenery made, the end of quarter video edited and I even managed to find some time for a massive distraction!
NEW TARGETS
So with quarter 4 finally here, we have only one baking tray left to approach. Another tray of roughly (very roughly) 1,000 points of 8th edition high elves. With a lot of rank and file models to paint, and them all being modern, highly detailed, intricate little buggers, the one and only painting rock for quarter 4 is:
One tray of high elves painted, photographed and online.
But every quarter 4 brings with it an automatic rock too!
Year 4 Review and Year 5 Planning video online.
And finally, to hit all of the rocks of the year.
Hammer the Backlog System launched.
All of these rocks have the completion date of Thursday 11th of June 2026.
Remembering that all of our targets must be SMART:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Timebound
Let’s take a look at the targets.
Specific – Obviously I can’t paint my entire collection of High Elves. Just this selection:
| Week | Date | Models |
| 1 | 19/3 | Prince |
| 2 | 26/3 | 5 Seaguard |
| 3 | 2/4 | 5 Seaguard |
| 4 | 19/4 | 5 Shadow Warriors |
| 5 | 16/4 | 1 Dragon Prince, 2 Phoenix Guard |
| 6 | 23/4 | 1 Dragon Prince, 2 Phoenix Guard |
| 7 | 30/4 | 1 Dragon Prince, 2 Phoenix Guard |
| 8 | 7/5 | 1 Dragon Prince, 2 Phoenix Guard |
| 9 | 14/5 | 1 Dragon Prince, 2 Phoenix Guard |
| 10 | 21/5 | Bolt Thrower and Crew |
| 11 | 28/5 | Ponder nature |
| 12 | 4/6 | Smugness |
| 13 | 11/6 | Holiday |
Measurable – photographed and online
Achievable – 50 Hammer the Backlog Points (History shows I can do 65 in a quarter if I never miss a week!)
Relevant – It’s a blog about painting models!
Timebound – by the 11th of June 2026.
All looks pretty good to me!
THIS WEEK’S MODELS
This week’s model was a very fun project to finally tick off the list. Back when the Island of Blood set came out, this special metal model was released at more or less the same time, to represent the Prince from the box on foot. I suppose the intention was to use him in smaller games. Or if perhaps something nasty happened to the griffon? Like if he had to go and live on the farm, for example.
With that in mind, there were almost no decisions to be made this week, since he is more or less the same model that I painted more than a year ago, but on foot.
For the shield, I went with a mix of Sigval Burgundy and Flesh Tearers Red over a grey base. Looking at it now, I think I might have used a touch too much burgundy and too little red. But I’ve always struggled with wine colours, to be honest.
He is a massive chonker of a metal model, especially for an elf. Even compared to the other elves from the same box set, he is either a very very big boy, or maybe slightly out of scale.
The prince wasn’t the only thing I painted this week. Inspired by Andrew:
I printed out some high elf scenery, which I got from: https://www.yeggi.com/q/oldhammer+high+elves/.
Andrew was kind enough to share a paint recipe with me, which I didn’t actually follow, but used it as a basis for mine. I went with a wraithbone spray, with an all over watered down coverage of Skeleton Horde contrast. I used a thin wash of Wyldwood for the darkest shadows, and then gave it all a quick and dirty drybrush with wraithbone again. Then finally a slightly more focussed drybrush with White Scar. All in painting the obelisk took about 35 minutes.
BIG DISTRACTION
Bitten as I was by the 3D printing bug, I knew I had to print out and paint up one of these awesome reinterpretations of the old Armor Cast wave serpent by psyberpunk84.
As my poor old Anycubic 4k is starting to feel its age, and its print bed is not as big as modern printers, it was a bit of work to make everything fit and print well. But after a week of tries I got it done.
It took a bit of sanding and then a few blasts of Mr. Surfacer levelling primer to get everything looking smooth, but I got there in the end. I think this will be the last big project for my now aging Photon Mono 4k.
Luckily I have a friend who actually plays 2nd edition, so this will be getting painted up in his army’s colours and going off to its new home once it is done and photographed.
I told you I got a lot done this week!
QUARTER 3 REVIEW
By the time that you are reading this, the quarter three review will be on YouTube, give it a look if you have a minute!
Best eggs! See you in a week for 5 more sea guard.
Hammer the Backlog 
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