Brood Brother Basilisk - No Chamber of Secrets Required!

About a year and a half ago I finished up an Armageddon Pattern Basilisk for my Death Korps of Krieg force (which isn't done yet, but I'm hoping to get back to it next year). It was one of the models that got me back into Warhammer 40K, and is an absolutely amazing kit. If you haven't built one and you have reasonably good model building skills, I still recommend it. That was the last Basilisk I'd done, though. I'd build a few of the plastic ones many ages ago and had done some minor conversion work, but I hadn't touched a new all-plastic Basilisk in years. That changed a couple of weeks ago. My son and I went down to Guardian Games, which had just re-opened in social-distancing mode, and each picked up something new for our armies. He picked up a new Hammerhead, and I snagged a Basilisk.

When I opened the current kit, I was a little surprised to see that the main gun and fighting compartment are the same frame of parts as the vintage kit, but the base vehicle is the new Chimera kit which includes the hull and tracks on a single frame. This creates at least one "wierdness" in the kit - you don't actually have a Heavy Bolter on either sprue to use as the hull mounted weapon. Not a problem, I'd recently picked up a few new Hellhound kits (foreshadowing) which I fully intend to use Heavy Flamers or Meltas in the hull gun position, so I was able to "borrow" one for this particular kit.

There's another issue with the current incarnation of the kit as well. If you build it as directed, there is going to be a large gap between the flat bottom plate used on the normal Chimera kit and the crew platform of the Basilisk. You need to instead use the angled rear plate and the beams with angled connectors. This looks much better, but even at that there is still a bit of a gap underneath the very rear of the gun carriage. I covered it with a bit of styrene and decided I'd add a fuel drum underneath, just because. I also added mesh to the air vents on the sides of the vehicle and photo-etched rifling to the gun barrel. The crew is from the vehicle accessory sprues - with suitable Genestealer Cult heads and other gubbins.

I'd initially had a little trouble painting this one, and actually had to perform a Simple Green strip for the first time in years - so this is technically the second paint job. Even the second paint job was a bit more "monochromatic" than I'd hoped, as a lot of the pre-shading didn't show through. I went back and rather than just going straight into chipping and rust washes, I added some filters of white and yellow ochre oils. This started giving me the variation I was looking for, and I was really happy how it came out. I even added an ammo box from the Sector Imperialis Objectives set.

I had originally intended to put the open ammunition box on the crew platform, and then I went and did a rust wash on the platform I loved so much, I wanted to keep it visible. Therefore the platform is manned by two cultists and the ammunition comes along for the ride. Decals on this one are once again a mix of Scumb4g Kustoms and The Mighty Brush, with my own home-made decals on the side scrolls. This one was yet again a ton of fun to put together, and I'm really happy with the final result. Now to find some hordes of enemies to introduce to long-range indirect firepower!