Welcome back to Hammer the Backlog, the weekly mini painting, productivity and accountability blog. Each week I take a look at the week’s scorecard to make sure that the overall Hammer the Backlog project is progressing nicely, then have a look at the progress on quarterly targets and any issues that have come up during the week. Then we take a look at this week’s models, social media progress and finally any other business.
You join me today on week 3 of the last quarter of the year. The final quarter is often the most interesting of the year. By its very nature, being the last quarter, it tends to be the project I was least excited about for the year, and my mind starts to wander to the excitement of four new projects for next year!
Will that happen this quarter? Read on to find out!
SCORECARD
Well, let’s start with the good news, the scorecard is fully in the green again this week. The painting workload was substantially lightened by the fact that these models were already undercoated from a previous life, as well as having their whites and metallics started. This did present some challenges, and will again next week, but let’s talk about that in the painting section.
The other good news this week is that, since the painting load was lighter, I managed to get the Assault on Black Reach Battle report fully edited and uploaded. Just in time for GW to reveal that the next edition of Warhammer 40k is coming and features Orks versus Blood Ravens Angels. That should help with engagement, right? The full video will be linked below, for your delectation and delight.
It’s not all good news, though. Remembering the two meta targets of the year:
Year 4 Review and Year 5 Planning video online.
Hammer the Backlog System launched.
“Planning” for the year four review is already underway. I’ve been sifting through the pile and comparing options and have narrowed it down to eight or nine trays worth of models, which is nice. Two trays are pretty much locked in already, meaning tough decisions to come for the remaining two.
And finally, we have started testing in earnest for the launch of the Hammer the Backlog system.
Wait, it was all good news!
THIS WEEK’S MODELS
Five rear rankers from the Phoenix Guard this week. For me, there has always been a bit of tension around units like this. The Phoenix Guard are the guards of the Shrine of Asuryan, right? So they should probably be pretty uniform, especially compared to citizen militia? And they might join a random prince’s army, but not really be part of it. It’s more like they are there on secondment. So it didn’t make a lot of sense for me to paint them in matching colours to the main body of my army, my archers, seaguard and reaver knights. So they won’t be getting blue and pink accents.
In fact, I decided I didn’t want them to have any blue at all, really. I like the old high elf schemes that used to be heavy on the greens and reds more than the newer High Elf schemes that really focus on the blues and golds.
The main colours of my army are white and silver. So I kept the white and silver for the armour and clothing. The highlight colours wanted to be phoenix, so I went for deep red cloaks and fiery red trim. The gold is important for sibling them out as elites, but I don’t love the official versions having gold scales, so I gave them a little more gold on their plate than the sea guard.
Although it was great to have these already with a start made on them, it wasn’t without its challenges. Firstly, the white. I used to undercoat black and paint up to white through a whole range of greys. This gave a nice, high contrast look, but it took aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaages and gave fairly inconsistent results. Since these were half done, a few thin coats of corax white over the whole thing were used to bring it all together. Will I be able to match this on the next batch, starting from a white undercoat? Only time will tell.
The metals are also not quite how I would paint modern metals. I’m not sure exactly how I did the silvers, but it should be easy enough to replicate. It looks like I did the golds with some specific, deep brown recess shades to up the contrast. I think I’ll be able to replicate that next week, but it will be extra work! Luckily, it’s another bank holiday weekend in Ireland!
ASSAULT ON YOUTUBE
Look!
Thanks for watching that!
You’re the best of eggs, not the worst of eggs.
Hammer the Backlog 
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