My plan to clear the backlog, finishing the Skeleton Chariots and a dive into the Tomb Kings

Greetings friends, and welcome back to The CollardHammer Special! In last week’s post, I introduced the blog, talked about some of my ongoing projects and gave an update on some recent hobby action. This week I have mostly been painting and building by way of hobby progress, so this post is likely to be less wordy and more visual than last week. I’ve already found that making content to write this blog has helped me find motivation to get painting done over the course of the week. It has also helped me to formulate a plan for getting through all the hobby I want to get done. This week, I am also going to do more of a deep dive into the Tomb Kings of Khemri project – how it’s developing, what I want it to do on the tabletop and why I’ve made those decisions.

Returning to my plan for getting all the hobby work in my objectives done, I am using an app called Trello to break the work down into small chunks. The goal is to complete one each of these chunks every week. Presently, my Trello board looks like this:

My Trello board for the immediate future - lots is built, but not much undercoated for painting.

One thing to note is that it appears the main blocker to progression is actually getting things undercoated. This is generally a pretty quick process, but for my Tomb Kings at least, I do a significant amount of basing before priming. Additionally, the weather has not been good for priming with a rattlecan and having primed minis dry inside is quite unpleasant given the small space in our flat.   

I tried to use Trello to clear some of my backlog in the earlier part of last year. Although it worked for a month or so, I think I made a number of errors in setting my goals and the pace of work required. Specifically, I set myself the target of clearing whole infantry squads over the course of a week, followed by a few characters or vehicles over a weekend. I also set deadlines very far in advance of getting started. I managed to keep up the pace of this schedule for a little while, but the results were not of a high standard, I found the looming targets quite stressful, and it took away my free time to do pretty much anything else. Essentially, it felt like I was just crunching through models with no sense of joy or excitement, and for nothing other than an arbitrary deadline. This time (particularly with having started a real job), my targets are much more modest and flexible. I am also only going to pick the project I want to work on at the start of every week, rather than setting them all long in advance.

With that in mind, this week has been all about painting 2 Skeleton Chariots for my Tomb Kings. I polished these off without too much stress by Saturday afternoon and with multiple nights off painting this week. I am happy with the standard of painting and pleased with the overall results, which is a marked improvement over my similar effort last year.

The chariot standard bearer

I wrote about this last week, but one of my favourite things about this project is the dichotomy between the bright blues, reds, pinks and gold on these minis and the dulled, corroded and aged effects on the bronze, bone and wood. The idea here is to capture one of my favourite aspects of the Tomb Kings’ lore: the grand, opulent empire of the past, tragically decayed and lashing out at perceived interlopers. I love these kinds of juxtapositions because it gives you so much creative room to play with. This is also the reason I found Flesh Eater Courts so appealing for Age of Sigmar, although my paint scheme for that project leans much more into the dirty, bloody and messy textures compared to the Tomb Kings.

The master charioteer. 

This brings us nicely on to the Tomb Kings project as a whole. Having sat down and read the Arcane Journal, the theme of the Royal Host army of infamy really jumped out to me as something I’d like to try out. Although you lose access to some of the really awesome stuff the faction gets as a whole (the Casket of Souls and Sepulchral Stalkers were particularly appealing), the focus on elite infantry and on the Tomb Kings themselves really outweighed this for me. My 1250-point list consists of a heavily souped-up Tomb King on the dragon, the chariots from above, 2 large royal host infantry cohorts and a royal host cavalry cohort, supported by a Liche Priest. The idea is that between magic items and spells, all of the units can put out a surprising turn of speed. The infantry cohorts pull double duty as anvil units and ranged support, meaning the plan is to jail the opponent in skeleton hell, while the dragon, chariots and horseman act as a hammer, attacking flanks and rears wherever possible. To bring this up to 2k, I already have more supporting characters on my desk to paint and some Ushabti to act as a slower, counter-charge response unit. I would also like to add some tomb guard chariots, given that they’re heavily on theme and would make a very fun hobby project, and naturally also some on-foot tomb guard too.

The full unit of chariots, completed.

That wraps up everything I wanted to say for this week! Once again, thank you for taking the time to read my ramblings. This seems to already be helping me to accomplish my goals for the year and share more work. Next week, I am planning on doing some work on a different project, likely to be painting up one of the groups of Terror Marines for my Night Lords. Until then, I hope you have a fun and productive week of your own hobby!

Ben