The road to Arc40k is paved with plans of epic armies… So follow along and get some insights from hobbyists who know what it takes to present a new army at a new arc40k - they’ve started the ArcArmy Challenge and so can you.
After Choosing the army, writing an army list and making some purchases to kick the building part of the project off, even making some bases... the next steps are theme and scheme!
So the theme has been developing in my head. I’ve read the background text in the front of the Codex to get an idea about what the Leagues of Votann are really about. 1
I’ve been in this hobby long enough to remember the original Squat models appearing in White Dwarf - and I wasn’t a fan back then.
Biker trikes from Mars just didn’t excite as much as insane Red Vampire Marines…
Times change and so has the background of the Leagues of Votann. A Clone race that values technology and thinking machines is something approaching Heresy… but I like the relationship the culture has developed with the Iron Kin,
I saw a great image come across my instagram feed by @eldar_crangon. Showing how they found other letters hiding in the Leagues of Votann transfer sheet.
Now I’ve cut and sliced transfers in the past to make a new image (I created a raven image for the shoulder pads of my Raven’s of Redemption for Arc40k in 2020.)
So I’m calling my army the Nahgrima Hegemony, which now has transfers secretly hidden on the Leagues of Votann transfers. I fell the Hegemony has a strong connection with processing resources and mining operations. Many Nahragrima’s spend their time out on the asteroid belts trying to earn a credit or two.
They believe that the Iron Kin are easier to create than Clone Kin, and that the more of them there are the more efficiently the Hegemony can work. So my faction is a little more mercenary and have no issues taking full advantage of the strength and endurance of the Iron Kin to increase profits and profitability.
That means when they muster a force they rely heavily upon the Iron Kin - more so than other factions - to bolster their forces.
Exploitation or a way to maximise opportunities? The result is, that be it defense, or attack, there are higher numbers of Iron Kin on hand than in other Leagues taking various roles across the battlefield.
So I plan to make my Specialist and Vehicle mounted weapons to be predominantly handed over to the Iron Kin. And in some smaller specialist units few Kyn make up the members of the team.
I like to think about my theme early on as it may or may not impact on how I build and arm my models as much as the army list. In this case the deployment of a larger number of Iron Kin saw me source more Heads.
Also, the bases reflect the asteroids that they are defending so they can get back to mining. And as things are developing I may need to design bigger one’s for My Vehicles…
So a theme with some substance but not fully fleshed out also allows me to work on deciding what scheme will suit them. There are images of some Mechanicum Robots I did a few years ago which were the start of an army that never got off the ground. But I luv the scheme. The main colours were Turquoise, Cream and Orange. The colours work together well - you can read more about how I chose them in the following article:
The trick was getting the proportions right and in some early test models I added other colours to accent and compliment those three colours. I wasn’t happy with the result as I felt it made the model too busy and a little too comical.
Now I’m always on the look out to see how other painters are approaching their projects and while doing these test miniatures I got to see Ninjon using multiple light source to paint a Kahl. It wasn’t in the same colours I was doing - but the idea of having glow from the lava mines on the asteroids, the cold blue reflections of deep space and then purples from gas clouds all playing on the miniature started to tick inside my head.
Being a relative new army with not a lot of figure options I knew conversions and awesome repositioning weren’t going to feature too greatly in this project. So I needed a wow factor - maybe OSLx4 was just the challenge I needed!.
(I can hear everyone screaming NOooooo! I did too! Stop don’t do it… But I chose the most difficult path and ignored all that to get cracking on a couple of test models…)
Actually I did just two test models. The first was a space marine. I sprayed him grey, then Mccragge Blue from one side and Mephiston Red from the other - Just like the Hearthkyn Warriors in the series of photos above. Then worked on blending blue and red with the turquoise to create the transitions from light effect to armour.
I liked how it looked and despite some sloppy brushwork on the orange to yellow highlights I’ve painted enough flames over the years to know that a bit of practice would put me in the groove.
So it was then on to one last spare Votann Herthkyn Warrior. So same process as the Space Marine except using the Orange and Cream on the shoulders and limiting the breadth of theOSL lighting impact - so I could push the armour to a brighter higher highlight.
When it came time to kick off the painting I chose the first unit of Hearthguard Warriors that I'd built. I also changed the process slightly. Rather than spray cans I used the airbrush. This gave me more control on applying the base coats. Plus I used Red from one side and Blue from the other at a low pointing up angle. Then from the top back I sprayed purple and Screamer Pink from high. This gave more of an all over transition of bright to dark.
Testing and trialing is over - I'm on to some doing. It's starting to come together!
In the next article I'll show off progress on my building of the army box and the next two units - I’ll push on to paint the first unit for the article after.
Until next time.
@HobbyCrusaider
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