Kitbash: Astra Militarum Hellhound

And here we are, the oft-mentioned, orphaned instalment of Project Chem-Dogs.

 

OK, lets have some fictional context. There tends to be an awful lot of war crimes in Warhammer 40,000, and flamethrowers are a frequent feature of that. These aren't actually banned in real life, at least according to a casual web search. But it is considered a crime to use them on civilians and such, while being generally considered inhumane. The Imperium doesn't have such a concern, while being a big fan of burning heretics, and so issues such things at the routine/squad level. Not that other factions aren't also fans; a flamer is a common part of the tactical toolkit, but the Imperium tends to produce flamethrower versions of every tank chassis it fields, of which the Hellhound is best known.

In many respects, this is a return to my orky habits, because it started as an ork project. I had a battered Chimera hull that needed a lot of work, but I also had some resin tracks going spare, so my initial plan was a Big Trakk, to form a trifecta with the other two. Of course, GW would retire the Forgeworld units, maybe I should have saved that Basilisk, so the plan was shelved. When I was working on Project Chem-Dogs though, I slowly realised that I could do a Hellhound from that hull. One rummage later, and I was good to go. The main challenge with the build was gap filling and the back end, with the promithum tanks being a mix of scratchbuilt bits with a resin backplate. Cable ties and EVA foam is grand for this sort of thing.

 

I tried something a bit more involved with the paint this time, basecoating the tracks and guns before masking, and then spraying it green. I actually ran out of my preferred green during this, tried a grass green, before settling on a can of Colour Forge Death Rattle Green. Once that was fixed, basecoating the flamers in black proved a good call, as it made them look a bit sooty. Brown for the tracks also worked quite well, and the waterslide transfers were almost tolerable to use. Weathering and mud paint then followed in my usual style.

The end result is still a touch more orky than I would like, but it came out well. I think I may be able to scratchbuild vehicles with slightly more refined looks going forwards. We’ll see.