For my birthday last year my brother gifted me a box of Leagues of Votann Hearthkyn. With my next birthday approaching I knew I had to get these Hearthkyn to the table sooner rather than later. The trouble is I didn’t have a colour scheme in mind, which is honestly most of the reason that this box has stayed on the shelf so long. For most other things that I paint, I either already collect them so I know what the colour scheme is or if they’re a boardgame miniature they will typically have some accompanying art I can approximate. 

But I don’t (or didn’t rather) collect Leagues of Votann, so I didn’t have a starting point. I had a flick through the official colour schemes but nothing really jumped out to me. I knew I wanted to have yellow be the main armour colour, as I had tested yellow armour on a Zombicide Miniature fairly recently but I didn’t have any thoughts beyond that. I hoped that by starting this project that inspiration would strike along the way. So I opened the box and pulled the sprues out to start putting my space dwarves together. 

First mistake. 

Assembly

Look at this insanity. 

I had no idea where to start. Why does a squad of ten short guys need three sprues?! The instructions didn’t offer much in the way of assistance in telling just what these weapons were either. I had to message my brother and ask him to send me some pictures of his Leagues of Votann Codex showing the weapon weapon options for Hearthkyn. It turns out that each Hearthkyn can be equipped with either an Autoch-pattern bolter or an ion blaster, and one in ten can take one of four special weapons. Up to three can be equipped with either a medi-pack, or a comms array, or scanner. And for the Theyn the options are even more insane! They can be modelled with their bolter like the rest of the squad, or they can take a pistol and close combat weapon. They have three pistols and three close combat weapons each to choose from. And then! And then they have the choice of three Armour Crests to wear. Every single one of these options is present on the sprues. 

In the end I kept things pretty simple and gave most of them bolters. For the special weapon I chose the HYLas Auto Rifle based on nothing more than it looked fun. And I gave one of them a Multiwave Comms Array, no idea what it does in game but it looks pretty cool. For the Theyn I kept things pretty basic with a bolt pistol and plasma sword, before picking the wolf crest. 

My second mistake was in putting these together in an assembly line. So I clipped out and assembled all the bodies and legs before going back to pick out the arm/weapon options. But it turns out the arms are paired with a specific body, on account of some of them having a cut out on the elbow to accommodate the pouches on the belt. So some of my dwarves are missing elbows where I have put the arms on the wrong torso. Nevertheless, I got them all assembled in the end, leaving them separate from the base to make painting easier and because I had other plans for the bases. I primed them with Colour Forge Standard Grey and I was ready to start painting.

Painting

I knew I wanted to paint the armour yellow so I started by giving the model a reverse-zenithal with Vallejo Game Air Squid Pink. I then tidied up with Two Thin Coats Dungeon Stone on areas like the cloth voidsuit and the weapons before picking out the faces with Cadian Fleshtone. In hindsight I should have kept the heads separate, mistake number three it would seem. From there I gave the models a zenithal highlight with Liquitex Titanium White acrylic ink. 

I had used Iyanden Yellow for my test above but I had since acquired a pot of Imperial Fist which is supposed to be fantastic for yellow armour. Before committing to batch painting them all at once however, I picked one hapless fellow to be my test model. My one good idea so far. I applied a thin coat of Imperial Fist to the armour panels, I thought it looked alright. A bit bright perhaps. Unperturbed, I moved on, giving the weapons and leather details a coat of Black Templar. My little pot of Basilicanum Grey was looking a little low so rather than wait and get a new pot (or Army Painter Speedpaint equivalent) I decided that Army Painter Dark Tone, the wash, would be an acceptable substitute. I had envisioned a grey undersuit, and as I had primed it grey all I needed to do was give it a wash to bring out the texture right? The result was this monstrosity:

By the Ancestors, what was I thinking? Let’s call this mistakes four through six inclusive. The yellow is a bit too bright and has too much of a green tint to it, most likely as Standard Grey (aka Mechanicus Standard Grey) is a little bit green. The undersuit and its wash just doesn’t work at all with the yellow, the drab grey is just drowned by the overbright yellow. Mistakes were made and I needed to start again. 

Painting 2: Electric Bugaloo

As I had thus far used thin coats of paint, I didn’t particularly feel the need to strip the paint off the models. What I did need however, was a plan. It was clear that going in guns blazing was a bad idea. So I scoured the internet for yellow Votann ideas, and I eventually came across this post from the Tale of Painters. The warm yellow of the armour and brown leather nicely offset the cooler green of the undersuit. And I loved the sky blue accent colour on the lenses and screens. So I now knew what I was aiming for, I just needed a plan to get me there. I was reasonably sure I could approximate Garfy’s colour scheme with contrast and speedpaints, so I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.

The main issue with the armour was that Imperial Fist did not look good over a grey basecoat. So the first step was to basecoat the armour completely with Vallejo Squid Pink, not just keeping it in the shadows. I then went back and tidied up the undersuit, leathers, and heads with Two Thin Coats Dungeon Stone and the faces were then painted with Cadian Fleshtone. With that done I could once again give the models a zenithal highlight with Liquitex Titanium White acrylic ink. 

It was with a fair amount of trepidation that I applied a layer of Imperial Fist to the now pink armour. I shouldn’t have worried, because it looked gorgeous. The difference was night and day and instantly justified starting the models again. With increased confidence I then applied a layer of Militarum Green to the voidsuit and Garaghak’s Sewer to the leather details such as the gloves and belt. Lastly for the contrast paints I gave the hair a coat of either Wyldwood or Black Templar.

From there I pivoted to some opaque paints for the remaining details. For starters the skin tones were looking a little monochrome, even for clones, so I painted one of them with Vallejo Dark Fleshtone. Next was the metallics, so I painted the working parts and magazines of the bolters, visors, and harness clips with Scale75 Thrash Metal. The shells of the bolters and the decorative elements of the Theyn I painted with Scale75 Old Copper.

Before moving on I needed to take care of the Theyn’s plasma sword. I started with a basecoat of pure white, I then added Pylar Glacier and Talassar Blue at the same time, letting them mix along the length of the blade. I then dipped a bit of sponge in some Vallejo Night Blue and dabbed most of it off on a paper towel before gently tapping it along the edge of the blade. Lastly, I ran a line of Titanium White around the centre of the blade to give the impression that’s where it is hottest. Overall the effect didn’t look too bad, but there was certainly room for improvement if I tried it again at some point.  

Washes and Highlights

Moving onto the washes I gave the faces a coat of Reikland Fleshshade and the bronze details on the Theyn a wash of Army Painter Strong Tone. For the silver details and bolt shells, I washed them with Army Painter Dark Tone. I also used Dark Tone to do a couple of recess shades on the armour. Thankfully there weren’t many that I needed to do, mainly on the backpacks and the few models that had their torso exposed. However, on each model I did run a line of Dark Tone around the screens on the wrists. I could then go in with some Temple Guard Blue to paint the screens, the lights on the chest and the cable on the Theyn’s plasma sword. 

At this point I would normally call the models done and move onto the bases but this time something compelled me to do some highlighting. So I thinned down some Vallejo Pale Sand and carefully edge highlighted the armour. Much to my annoyance it looked really good, which meant I would have to do it on all of them. I then highlighted the voidsuit with Death Guard Green but this didn’t have quite enough contrast so I switched to Ionrach Skin which looked much better. Usually for leather I give it scratchy highlights with Skrag Brown but on this occasion I decided to give Vallejo Khaki a go. It didn’t look quite as good as Skrag Brown in my opinion but it didn’t look terrible. And isn’t that what matters?

Decals

Before I could call these models complete I wanted to try a couple of decals. Which meant I needed to pick which subfaction, or League, they belonged to. My colour scheme didn’t match any of the official ones so it was mainly about which League symbol matched my colour scheme the best. The Urani-Surtr Regulates were tempting as the green symbol would match the voidsuit. In the end I decided on the Trans-Hyperian Alliance as the black glyph worked best on the yellow-orange armour. Additionally, something about their reputation as explorers and traders appealed to me. 

The transfer sheet also has some glyph decals that can be added to the sides of the bolters and ion blasters. Unfortunately for me they only come in white or gold, neither of which would show up particularly well on a yellow background. 

To get things started I gave each shoulder pad a coat of gloss varnish, to make it easier to apply the decal and also to protect the paint from the solvents I would shortly be using. Once the varnish had cured properly I cut out the Trans-Hyperian Alliance glyph and the number 1 decals, and soaked them in a bit of water. While they were soaking I painted a layer of MicroSet onto the shoulder pads, this weak solvent would soften the decal and make it easier to conform to the curves of the shoulder pad. I then carefully slide the decal off the backing paper and onto the model, using a paint brush to gently nudge it into the correct position. With that done I used a paper towel to wick away any excess liquid and let it air dry. Once it was dry I then carefully painted a layer of MicroSol over the decals, being very careful not to accidentally move the decal while brushing the MicroSol one. MicroSol is a slightly stronger solvent than MicroSet and here I was using it to blend the edges of the decal in with the model. I let the MicroSol work its magic for a few minutes and then gently pressed the decal with the damp paper towel, again making sure not to inadvertently move it out of position. Again I let this air dry and once I was happy that I could no longer see the edge of the decal on the model, I sealed it down with a layer of matt varnish. 

Bases

At long last we come to the bases. Although truth be told I did the bases in parallel with the models. I have always wanted to do lava bases and this was the perfect excuse. First things first I needed to acquire some cork tiles. Which is oddly hard to do? A lot of Youtubers seem to be able to pull cork sheets from out of nowhere and all I can find is sticky-back cork tiles. In the end that’s what I got, some 5mm thick self-adhesive cork tiles. I figured if the adhesive is strong enough to stick to a wall it should suffice for a model’s base. So I tore chunks off the tiles and used the adhesive to stick them down to the bases. To make them a little more natural looking, I applied a thin layer of Vallejo Red Oxide texture paste to the top of them. Once that was dry I primed the bases black. 

The primer couldn’t quite reach all the nooks and crannies in the cork so I ended up giving the bases a once over with some Army Painter Matt Black just to make sure they had a solid colour on them. To make sure the lava would be nice and vibrant I used the airbrush to basecoat in some Liquitex Titanium White acrylic ink (really pulling its weight in this article!) around the edges of the bases. There was a bit of overspill up the edges of the cork tiles but that wasn’t an issue as the next step was to go over these inner areas with Archive-X AX-025 1975 Caboose Red leaving the outer edges of the base white. Caboose Red is a super vibrant and bright red that I have used previously for my X-Wing, perfect for the red glow of lava. I followed up by airbrushing Archive-X AX-022 1975 Reefer Yellow around the areas I had left white. In these white areas it became a vibrant yellow and where it spilled over onto the red it became a rich orange. I then tidied up the top of the cork with Army Painter Matt Black before giving it a drybrush of Two Thin Coats Dungeon Stone. 

I planned to use one of the Citadel crackle paints and I had heard that putting down a layer of PVA glue can increase the size of the cracks. And so I globbed a nice thick layer over the lava. Once that was dry I globbed down an equally thick layer of Mordant Earth texture paint. I can’t say that the PVA layer helped all that much but once I tidied up the rims with black the bases looked awesome. All that was left to do was to use my pin vice to drill a hole in the foot of the Hearthkyn and glue in a short brass rod, I could then poke this rod into the cork with a glob of superglue to ensure a solid bond. 

Final thoughts

I considered omitting my initial attempt but making mistakes is part of the process, and it’s how we grow as hobbyists. I also wanted to show that it’s okay to give up on a paint scheme if it’s not working. I suppose it only comes with experience knowing when a paint scheme can’t be saved and when it can be fixed. 

Overall I’m actually really pleased with how these turned out. There’s some room for improvement as always, the Temple Guard Blue areas could probably do with a highlight for example. And the cracks in the bases could have turned out a little better. Maybe I’ll try that hairdryer trick on my next batch of bases. I could see myself picking up some more Leagues of Votann kits. I would even be tempted to do another squad of Heartkyn with a different weapon load out.