Hello there, skinless ones. Welcome back to Hammer the Backlog, the weekly mini painting, productivity and accountability blog. You join me towards the end of quarter 1 of year 5, with a project already in the can with three weeks to go. What will I do with the three weeks I have left? Only one way to find out…
SCORECARD
Happy to report that for the last week of the Dark Eldar project, everything is in the green. It was a lovely, relaxing chilled out week of painting one childhood favourite model. Now, I know that normally when I type something like that it’s a facetious lead in to talking about how things went wrong, but not this week.
In all honesty I probably put about 10 hours in Drazhar, master of blades. But he was pretty easy going as really, all he is is a slightly differently styled Incubi. So if I could do 5 in a week, it was easy to do 1, even with addeding, say, on average one to two more highlight or shadow layers compared to a normal model.
With that said, the Dark Eldar project, as it stood when it was shoved into a box in the late 90s, is now finished and looking smashing.
Do you remember a few weeks ago when I made a list of what would be needed to turn this from a random collection into a proper army? Well I posted the army on reddit last week and a user offered me their similarly abandoned Dark Eldar models from their own collection, which when you look at the photo, looks like they read my list and put all the stuff in a box.
I have NEVER been more tempted to un-hammer the backlog, let me tell you that!
THIS WEEK’S MODEL
This week’s model is Drazhar, Master of Blades. And possibly the first, fallen Phoenix Lord of the Striking Scorpions?
He is a great model. Different enough to the rest of the Incubi to be obviously an ancient special character, while still keep most of the design language.
I painted him basically exactly the same way, while taking a little bit more time blending up the highlights on the white, black and metallic sections.
I had ideas of using him in my games as an Incubi master, but to hell with it. Why not just include him as a special character and really make that Lord’s retinue a scary unit? He’s not really that special, just packing three very strong, power weapon attacks.
WHAT’S NEXT?
Well the Dark Eldar are done, and I’ve successfully (for now) resisted the temptation to get any more. So what do I do with the remaining three weeks of quarter 1? That’s almost long enough for a mini project, or a decent chunk of bits and bobs.
I’d rather not paint up anything that would be better suited to being on a tray for a quarterly target. Having said that, I do have some ambition to do something a bit different with my upcoming Death Guard, and I have a whole second set of Death Guard models that aren’t on this year’s tray? Maybe I could paint up a couple of Plague Marines or Terminiatores to get the scheme nailed down before the quarter kicks off?
The other options are to paint up my last remaining grail knight for my bretonnian collection. I was super excited to get the brand new in box set of three grail knights all the way back in year one, so it probably really is his time?
I also have a handful of second edition Chaos Marines for my Iron Warriors that would be nice to get ticked off the list. Or go completely wild and paint up a rank of 3rd edition monopose High Elf spearmen? That could be super fun.
What about my recently added box of Palanite Enforcers? That’s 10 models that could be painted up over two weeks that would be really exciting? But would it be stealing from my potential future “Space Weirdos” tray?
Lookit, what a nice predicament to have!
HAMMER THE FRONTLOG
Jim is back with his first 1,000 points of Custodes fully done and ready to kick my Death Guard’s ass next quarter.
By the time this is live, I would be surprised if he hasn’t also finished the last five Custodian Guard from the combat patrol box set.
Jim and I have half an idea to work on a small battlefield / display table for his Custodes and my Death Guard to fight over. Currently the concept is a mostly ruined dark grey and purple industrial setting, which is being slowly infected by some sort of Nurgle goo.
Neither of us have any experience doing this, so it might still be a bit of a pipe dream for the moment.
Well, thanks for reading all of that. I will be back in exactly a week with some painted models, which may or may not have been chosen from the ones I mentioned above.
Best of eggs!
Hammer the Backlog 
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