Showcase: Leagues of Votann Hekaton Land Fortress

How big is Hekaton Landfortress? Why does it have a Tau gun on it’s roof? How do you paint clear canopies without getting paint on the glass? All this and more will be answered on today’s Leagues of Votann Hekaton Land Fortress showcase blog post.

Thanks Games Workshop for kindly sending me this model to paint up.

The above tweets are the size comparisons I made with some models from my other faction collections. As you can see the Hekaton’s “footprint” is similar to a Rhino but it’s over twice it’s height. So if you consider it’s mass, it’s pretty big. Size is also relative. Look at the Hekaton next to Primaris Lieutenant and it’s an ok size. Now look at the Kin to the right of the Hekaton Land Fortress and it looks absolutely humongous.

Whilst we’re comparing the Hekaton to the Rhino, the door hatches can open but aren’t hinged in anyway so you have to glue them. This isn’t a bad thing because there isn’t any sculpted interior detail in the transport capacity to see anyway.

It does have some incredible sculpted detail in the cockpit though. I love the little L-Cog buddy directly under the main cannon, he must be the main gunner. That canopy by the way is not easy to paint and I can see why a lot of people just paint over the glass completely (definitely quicker as you don’t have to paint the crew either). Why isn’t it easy to paint? Well, it’s not easy to prime. You could mask off the glass and undercoat it but do you want to risk the paint bleeding under the tape? I didn’t, so I just hand painted black paint on really carefully. The problem is, with no primer the paint repels, so it took numerous coats of carefully applied black to get it applied smoothly. Once on the silver layer was easy.

The Heavy Magna-rail cannon looks more like a Tau weapon than an actual Tau weapon, sp what’s the deal? Are the Tau supplying the Leagues with weaponry? Well, reading through the codex I found an interesting tidbit about how the Kin trade with other races and it was actually the Kin who taught the Tau about Ion technology. This makes sense as the Leagues of Votann have been around for Eons, Tau are a fledgling young race. you can also see shared ideas and designs with Imperial Archeotech like Volkites. I really like this design overlap and hints are shared histories and trade agreements. Whilst we’re talking tech and hardware, check out the back of the Hekaton above. It has bumpers and a trailer hitch! Squat Landtrain confirmed?

Painting the Hekaton was hard. I left canopies, crew, weapons, wheels and doors off separately and I sprayed the model black and then airbrushed it Leadbelcher. Then I washed it with Agrax Earthshade and Nuln Oil. Once dry a quick dry brush of leadbelcher then Runefang gave me my base upon which to work. I started by painting 3 or 4 coats of Averland Sunset on the armour and gun casings. Then glaze shading the armour with Seraphim Sepia wash. Then I glaze highlighted with Yriel Yellow. Chipping was applied with a sponge and Rhino Hide and it was edge highlighted with Dorn Yellow. I painted the Sagitaur the same time and this alone took a week. The second week of painting both vehicles was mainly painting the details and crew. I also had to come up with a logo, so I made a stylised G in a hexagon.

Overall, this was a pretty fun model to paint but it took a lot of work. I hope you enjoy my insights and the photos I took. It’s another one ticked off the list.