Hello fellow rear-rankers. Welcome back to Hammer the Backlog, the weekly mini painting, productivity and accountability blog. As the end of year 4 of the Hammer the Backlog project looms large over the horizon (only two weeks left in year 4!), did I manage to recapture my mojo after painting 5 weeks of highly detailed, intricate Dragon Princes by painting a rank of highly detailed, intricate Sea Guard? Or did the house of cards finally come crashing down around me?
Let’s read on to find out.
SCORECARD
Nope, I did it. I honestly can’t remember if my life was this busy last year at the end of the Hammer the Backlog fiscal year, but real life and work kicked my ass again this week. As I type this I have a dehydration headache, my right elbow and shoulder hurt, I have blisters on the sole of my right foot, and my indigestion is starting to act up. Oh, and I’m sweating bullets. Irish people are not build for 25+ celsius, let me tell you.
I suppose the reason I am unloading on of these complaints upon you, the gentle reader, is to show you that despite all of that I still managed to get a rank of detailed models painted of to a standard I’m decently happy with. Not that there were any catastrophes this week, but a week like this a few years ago would have been a death knell for a painting project. And this week the thought of not finishing the models never even occurred to me until just now, when they are already finished.
So what’s left? Two weeks left in the quarter. One of those weeks will be dedicated to getting the final mini squad of five shadow warriors painted, photographed and posted online. The second week will be focussing on switching my progress over to the new Hammer the Backlog app, and then dragging hundreds of models around for a few days to make the Year 4 review video and the year 5 planning video.
Speaking of year 5, I think I’ve managed to narrow it down to about 8 potential trays worth of models.
THIS WEEK’S MODELS
This week’s rear rank of Sea Guard was brought to you by the fact that now, 20 models in, I can do my seaguard in about 60% of the time the first 5 took. I really owe past me a big pat on the back for taking the time to write out the process.
I think the blog entry with the painting stages for these models might be the most read page on this site, and it is mostly just me opening it every 10 minutes.
It’s very nice to have a big, chunky unit of these models. 20 is, in the version of Warhammer that exists mostly only in my head, a huge unit. Especially for an elite army like High Elves. Is this the biggest unit I’ve painted for Warhammer Fantasy? I’ve done more skinks and saurus warriors, I think, but they were across several units with different schemes.
These fellas look great in the classic five by four arrangement for maximum rank bonus in 5th edition fantasy.
They also look pretty snazzy in a ten by two arrangement, where every model can fire and fight in fifth edition through barely understood high elf nonsense.
They also look great as the main battle line unit in my elf army. Since GW never updated the line elf spearman kit to a standard I like, I guess these will always be centreline unit.
Although I do have a unit of 20 spear elves somewhere. Year 5 maybe? Or a dragon instead? Of some chariots? More Phoenix Guard? A unit of white lions? A skycutter? God, I bought a lot of elves in 2012!
MORE MINOR MILESTONES
Hammer the Backlog hit another small milestone this week with 7,000 followers on Instagram. I like looking back on the first few weeks of the blog when I was celebrating 20 followers, then a couple of hundred.
I’m in two minds how much a push for 10k would mean to me. At the end of the day, I always say, and I think I believe, that I would be doing this project if there were 3 followers on instagram. But 10k would be a nice round number. And it would give me something to celebrate for the potential “Hammer YOUR Backlog” prize for next year.
Anyway, thanks for reading all of that, see you next week for the final models of year 4!
Best eggs!
Hammer the Backlog 
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