It’s Thursday, so welcome back to Hammer the Backlog, the weekly mini painting, productivity and accountability blog. We are still neck deep in an unseasonable heatwave, so what better way to celebrate that by going back and painting some models from the hot and wet 90s?
SCORECARD
All green on the scorecard this week with my Morathi archon conversion counting as 5 points as the centrepiece character for this quarter. She was easily done and dusted by Thursday evening due to being a relatively simple and enjoyable model to paint, with most (but not all, see later) decision making already done.
My “replacement” Incubi also arrived from eBay this week, but with him only getting here on Wednesday evening, all I managed was to get him built, cleaned, and primed before the Thursday deadline.
I think perhaps next week I will do the Incubi as 1 point and the Drachon as 4. That would be a nice, productive week I think.
This quarter’s project is really gathering steam now, with “only” the drachon, wyches and raider to finish. Would it be unconscionable to get another squad of warriors to round them out a little? And maybe a raider for the Archon?
Yes! It would be!
THIS WEEK’S MODEL
This Morathi figure comes from waaaay back in the mists of time. Back in the late 90s, socially awkward me rarely left the house and stayed in playing video games. After discovering that the world of Warhammer: Dark Omen was a real world tabletop game, I got a box of Chaos Warriors to try out. Or more accurately, my mother got them for me from the Art and Hobby shop in Nutgrove Shopping Centre when she was doing the big shop. I didn’t really go outside much, you see.
The most exciting thing about the plastic box set for me at the time, was the metal extra bits for the command models. There was something so enticing about the heavy white metal parts. In fact, I think I didn’t even want to paint them, just to stick them on the painted plastic and let the real metal show through.
You can imagine how excited I was to get a fully metal model. An awkward teen me asked The Mammy to get me a metal Warhammer model the next time she was in Nutgrove. I still at this point had no idea about armies or lists or lore or anything like that. And we were still in the pre-internet era at that stage (although only just) so I asked for literally any metal model. A cool one, if possible.
And Morathi is who I got. Did my mother pick me an evil busty sorceress on purpose? I highly doubt it, seeing as I was dealing with enough teenage hormones at the time and I imagine they all looked pretty indistinguishable to her.
I didn’t have the skills or techniques to paint her, or even an idea of what colours she would be, until years later (probably only one or two, but time flowed differently in the 90s), when I found myself in need of an Archon for my new Dark Eldar army. And who better for an anxious teen than a converted busty sorceress?
I never painted her, as with most of the Dark Eldar army, until I rediscovered her a few months ago prepping for year 5.
The only part of the model I’m not sure about is the bright red on the inside and trim of the robes. Should I have gone with a very dark green instead?
Anyway, my first ever character model, finally painted as I intended her to be 30 years ago.
HAMMER THE FRONTLOG
Jim has been hammering away at his frontlog at the same time that I am hammering away at my backlog. He’s got a decent head of steam up now, both literally (he is bald and it is very hot out) and figuratively (he has more than half painted five decently detailed large models in a week).
He has got worrying good at glazing and blending reds for some on their 4th to 8th models. The fucker.
I think it will be a box set of Custodes Wardens next for Jim, but I really have no idea what I’m talking about with any armies past about 2013.
Thanks for reading all that, see you next week for the Drachon and the last Incubi.
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