For a little while now Games Workshop have been offering a free miniature in store, as part of their Miniature of the Month promotion. This month they’ve upped their game though, and going forward not only will they be giving out a free mini, but it will be a brand new model from one of the months new releases. This month’s model of the month is a Leagues of Votann Hearthkyn Warrior, from the new Leagues of Votann Army Set.
We each headed to our local Warhammer store to build and take home a model each, and within a short amount of time we all managed to fully paint our first Hearthkyn Warrior.
Arron (AKA @ajb_minis)
The concept for my scheme started off as a bit of a joke, but evolved into something I actually quite like in it’s own right.
Quite a few models in the Votann lean into a mining theme, and there were some jokes when the Hekaton Land Fortress was revealed about it looking like a garbage truck. The idea of the Votann being workers made me wonder how easy it would be to paint a model in hi-vis colours, as if their armour is the natural progression of a hi-vis jacket.
Obviously such an in-your-face yellow/green torso required a pretty bright paint, which the Tesseract Glow technical paint ended up being ideal for (plus a few highlights to push it even brighter). Add in a white undershirt and some dark leg armour and this Hearthkyn Warrior is definitely meeting the health and safety code.
Ben (AKA @manyotterminis)
I have wanted to do a NASA space suit on a model for so SO long. Pre Leagues of Votann I was thinking I would have to get a space marine or something, maybe a Tau fire warrior, but I never found a model that got me excited enough to try it out. This model of the month couldn’t be more perfect.
I originally planned to do the orange space suit that astronauts wear, I think, on the space station, but then a Warhammer Community article came out where most of the paint schemes were orange. There’s nothing wrong with similar paint schemes but it made me doubt if my model would look like a spacesuit, or a more traditional orange Votann. So I pivoted to the moon landing space suit, which frankly the model is far better suited to.
I sculped the base out of Milliput and the texture on the ‘flat’ areas was a bit of a surprise, I think due to how incredibly wet I got my Milliput by mistake (it was less of a clay and more the consistency of Citadel texture paints, but a little thicker). The base of the paint was laid out by a 3 part black, grey, and white zenithal prime, with the white being only on the front of the model. Then I built up layers and layers of pure white over the front facing volumes.
The free hand on the shoulders was incredibly satisfying and ended up being a really important step in transforming a black and white model into a white model in colour. Finally I strengthened the shadows on the base with Dreadful Visage contrast paint and some of the shadows on the model with Black Legion contrast paint.
Kristian (AKA @kregory03)
In my continued crusade to never highlight I experimented with trying contrast paints over a metallic undercoat, in this case Leadbelcher, and the results aren’t terrible. The newer, much more pigment rich paints like Sigvald Burgundy mask the basecoat nearly entirely, while the older, thinner contrast like Black Templar allow for some of the glitter to still show through; proving that you can achieve quite a bit with just one coat.
As opposed to my amazing friends and colleagues above, I wanted to find a scheme that would be quick and painless to mass produce, on the off chance I wanted to start an army of Kin. I, and my wallet, am afraid I might have succeeded. I’ll admit I didn’t have a plan for the base going into it, but Martian Ironcrust just popped nicely compared to the blacks and burgundy of the model itself.
I am much happier with this model in person than the photo would suggest, bright lights and white backgrounds aren’t forgiving to contrast paints, and I’m sorely tempted to pick up the new army box while I can and try this scheme on vehicles and characters too.
Matt (AKA @howes_the_painting)
Since the Leagues of Votann were announced I’ve been getting progressively more and more tempted to add them to my never-decreasing backlog. When the opportunity to paint one of these little guys came up I knew I needed to do a paint job that I wouldn’t want to replicate across an entire army.
And thus, Luzz Brightyear was born!
As a fan of small plastic toys I thought it would be a bit of fun to paint one of the most famous small plastic toys of all time, and some of the new contrast paints made it all the easier! Over a base of Grey Seer I applied an all over shade of Apothecary White, followed by Striking Scorpion Green and Leviathan Purple to create the iconic look.
I will be back with a more serious paint job next month… Unless I can find a way to give one of the cursed city models a certain woody quality 🤔
Niall (AKA @nb_minis)
I’m notorious among the team at HoD for never finishing a project. From half finished units to ignoring bases (or base rims) it’s become a bit of an in-joke. So when I approached this mini of the month I had three goals; to play around with some of the new contrast paints, test out actually using the colour triad to plan a scheme (you can learn about this over on our Instagram page), and to come up with a scheme that was simple, effective and able to be quickly painted on a whole unit of Kin.
I knew I wanted to use the new Aeldari Emerald contrast, because it’s just an insanely beautiful colour. Then, using a simple colour wheel app I found the complementary triad would include yellow and purple. This was great news, because it meant I could also try out the Imperial Fist yellow contrast as well, which I’d heard was great to work with.
I started off with a grey seer base, and then went with Shyish Purple for the material areas. Initially I worried this was too much coverage and was going to make the Kin feel too dark, but as soon as I started colouring the armour in with Aeldari Emerald it became a brilliant background colour that provided a dark base whilst still giving that deep purple contrast. Imperial fist yellow was indeed a wonderful paint to use and really made the gun and belt attachments pop. I finished off with some Stormhost Silver metallic details, and some red, blue and green gemstones.
For the base I went with a snow theme as I felt the lighter colours set off the bright armour and weapon well. I used a Space Wolves Grey contrast to start, added some texture with Valhallan Blizzard and finished off with a rough highlight of Fenrisian Grey across the base and snow for an icy effect.
I’d say in general I’m about 85% happy with the model – I know there’s some areas that need tidying up, and some highlights on the armour and a wash over the gun would have added to the quality. But I hit all my objectives; used the new paints, planned my scheme more intentionally and it was certainly a quick enough paint job that I could batch paint a unit very easily.
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