Clearing the Backlog, Part 6 – Batch Painting and The Problem with Painting Queues…

It's been a while since my last blog post, for a variety of reasons, chief of which has been things being somewhat busy in real life, the scourge of any hobby-related activity!

Fortunately, I've still been productive and have continued my slog through the pile of unpainted plastic, metal and resin that forms my pile of shame. Fortunately, I've both had and have a number of tournaments on the horizon, perfect motivation for getting some paint on models. 

But getting back to one of the topics for this post – the problem with painting queues. When you have a large collection of unpainted miniatures like I have, one of the problems you will often encounter is trying to decide exactly which models to paint. And my painting queue doesn’t just contain models from the Middle Earth SBG – it's got models from other game systems in it too. 

As mentioned in my burnout post however, tackling models from another system can be a good way of avoiding painting fatigue, and are also a good way of trying out certain techniques, especially if the model is a larger scale than SBG – for example, I painted up some models from the Star Wars Legion miniatures game, which being in a slightly larger scale help you work on your highlighting skills – being larger, they may need an extra highlight that could be left off an SBG miniature – these Rebel Troopers and Luke Skywalker ended up looking great.

As I’ve often said on this blog, tournaments can also be a good way of selecting which models to paint – for example, I recently attended the Middle Earth Team Championships at Warhammer World, and agreed to take the new Assault on Lothlorien Legendary Legion. Checking through what I needed against what I already had painted, I realised I only needed to paint three models – Muzghur, leader of the legion, an orc captain and an orc banner bearer – a nice and easy set of models to work my way through. The orc captain model I worked on comes in a blister with another captain, so I painted both at the same time – one to take part in the assault, and the other to lead my orcs on the Pelennor Fields. 

For the banner, I decided to have a go at some freehand, reasoning that with it being an orc banner, I wouldn’t have to worry too much about neatness – I daubed a red eye of Sauron on the banner, tidied up a few edges that I thought were too rough, and I had a banner for the legion!

With that done, I had two more events to look forward to in October – Lord of the Imps, a 900 point tournament in Lincoln, and The Battle of Unnumbered Tears, a 1000 point event held up in Sutton-in Ashfield, near Nottingham. 

I couldn’t realistically paint up 1,900 points worth of models for both events (maybe for another event in the far future, but not when they're within two weeks of each other!), so I decided to stick with the same army for both events. I've played around with various forces of good that would have fought together on the Pelennor Fields for several events in the past, so this time I decided to focus on the evil side of things for a change – a host of orcs and Easterlings! The problem? I didn’t have anywhere near enough models painted, and only had around a month to get through them all. 

Fortunately, a solution was at hand – batch painting. A straightforward technique where you paint a stage of your paint job on every single model, one by one. So, for example, you paint all the metal areas, then all the cloth areas, then the skin, and so on until they're all finished. To save time with the Morannon Orcs, I also used a coloured spray primer (GW Leadbelcher in this case) to speed things up even more – after a wash and a drybrush, all the metallic areas were done. 

I also stuck to a limited colour pallet of reds and browns for all the cloth areas, adding a little bit of variety to the skintones – by using these simple techniques, I bashed out over 30 Morannons, several captains, a banner bearer and Gothmog in a little over two weeks! Gothmog got a little bit of extra attention (being a hero, I wanted him to stand out a bit more) – fortunately his different skintone and extra details make it easier to make him stand out.

To break up the monotony of batch painting, I turned my attention to the leader of my forces – The Witch-King of Angmar! This was a really easy model to paint up, and by just taking time and picking out all the highlights carefully, he was ready to lead Mordor's armies into battle!

Next up was Amdur, Lord of Blades and his Easterlings. Again, I did things in stages, focusing on the gold and red parts first (these being the most prominent parts of the models), before picking out the smaller details such as the black cloth and skin. The new red GW paints came in very handy here, as I was able to create different shades for the different cloths on the model, giving Amdur different coloured robes and cloak, adding that little bit of extra depth to the model. I have always believed it's worth doing a little bit of extra work on a hero model, as it really helps them stand out from the regular rank and file troops. 

So, with all these models now painted, my total number of models painted for the year has now passed over 200 models! As mentioned before, there is still a way to go in terms of getting everything in the backlog painted, but I like to think I've passed a huge milestone psychologically by getting 200 models done in a single year, and that of course only goes up to the end of September – there's still three months left to get through some more models! 

Clearing the Backlog (Aug-Sept '22)

 Hey all

It's been another skipped month, I'm afraid. But this means that I have plenty of newly painted stuff to unveil.

First off, in mid August, I was attending a local event. For this, I was using my Easterlings and so thought that I may as well finish off the few left in my painting pile. I had got these amongst a job lot of metal Easterlings, when bulking out my pike blocks.

Unfortunately, at some point the swords had snapped at the hilt and so I had to repair them. I did so by using a little green stuff to make a ribbon, tied around the blade to give it extra support as I glued it.

Next, I went to sort out the banner, it's a lovely model showing the quality of the old metals.

After banging out all the warriors, I just needed to do Brorgir for the event, my last Easterling hero to finish. He took me longer than I had expected, but was still finished with time to spare.

All that was left to have every Easterling model that I owned finished, was the remaining four Dragon Cult Acolytes, which I promptly got onto. They are some really characterful models and offer some interesting options on the board.

Now, that the Easterlings were all finished, I had to prepare for the Warhammer World Team Championships. For this, I was taking Thranduils Halls alongside a beary good ally...

I'm sorry, I won't do that again.

The first issue that I had, was that Grimbeorn's axehead had broken off, but by shortening it a little and creating a male/female joint on the head and into his fist. It made a great seal, sorting it out perfectly.

My next issue, was that despite having two weeks, in which I was on holiday leave for one, there was a small unexpected bump in the road. This small bump being my unwell son, so my week off was dedicated to looking after the little man.

With a little panic, I managed to bang out the man model during a few nap times.

Then with a good push during the evenings, after bedtimes were sorted, the bear form was also finished alongside. I tried a new approach of putting a little Ironbreaker into the eyes for the pupils, to give the reflective eye look.

To then add a little extra to the overall appearance, I also added some of my very old school, bitty, granulated flock to the logs and rocks to give them a mossy look, helped by the green wash that they had had.

With the Beorning finished, I just needed a handful of elves to be done, with a week to go. First, I decided to bang out the archer for a nice, easy start to get me into my stride. I matched my old colour scheme which was very green heavy.

Another issue came up around this time, as I realised that while I had equipped my Mirkwood Cavalry with shields, the models didn't come with them. I didn't have a lot of time so needed to wing it into new territory. 

Ordering some blue stuff from Element Games, as soon as it arrived, (well after the first episode of Rings of Power) I shot off to the post office one Friday morning and collected it. Quickly pressed two Mirkwood elf shields into it and the next day had my new green stuff shields made.

For anyone who hasn't tried blue stuff before, it is honestly much easier than I expected, Youtube is your friend for a quick How-to.

Three days later, now that the little man had recovered and was back at nursery when I had a day off, I managed to get them all sorted and was so pleased with the results.

This left just one task to be done for the Team Championships, to create a banner for my Palace Guard spear. This I did by simply taking some paper, cutting it to size and wrapping it around the shaft. I then painted it black for a basecoat, to avoid having to respray and repaint the entire model (I only had two days left). 

The idea that I had for the banner design was to base it off of the Mirkwood shields, filling in the background with a rich green. I put in the base layer of Steel Legion Drab, then added the details in Golden Griffon. Washing this in our favourite, Agrax Earthshade and then highlighting the design again with the Golden Griffon. This pleasantly surprised me as it only took a couple of hours and looked great!

For the rest of September, I had a lot of difficulty getting any time to paint in. But eventually, one Friday evening, I saw that the Battle Streams in Middle Earth channel was going live for Gamling week. And guess who had a Bannerless Gamling, sat in a box from an MTO 2/3yrs back, and no painting deadlines to meet?

This was my last bit of painting for the two months, but I was so pleased with how he came out. I may have to do a Warg Attack theme sometime, just to use him.

And with that, I finish August and September's painting logs. I don't think I have updated on totals for the year, so here is one. I am now sitting on 68 models for the year and have managed to bring my total of unpainted down to 379, significantly lower than at the start.

In October, I am painting some 3D printed Rhunish War Drakes for the Strider Cup and intend to also get my last two Mirkwood elves done. If there is still time, maybe also work on some Dwarves.