Fleshhounds.

One of my favourite Daemons of the original Realm of Chaos – Slaves to Darkness series, and a series of models that I still think have never been usurped by later revisions. Some elements of these original models have been bettered in other ranges of course, and their odd front-and-rear-torso assembly didn’t always work out that great, but they’re still miles better than the later lizard-headed and scaled models that GW released (and seem to keep on releasing as Flesh Hounds. No Juan Diaz-style Daemonette revisions for the hounds, nor any well done return to the original concept like the plastic Bloodletters have had. We’ll see what happens with them in the future, but for now, these are the definitive Flesh Hound models.

Flesh Hounds of Khorne

This was the first unit I photographed with my new (homemade) light box. Some of the highlighting in the photos seems a lot more high contrast than is on the models in hand. I think the solution to that will be to learn how to use a better camera down the line. Not something I have time for right now, unfortunately. So something for the future. Perhaps next summer break?

The second foursome of Original Fleshhounds.

With the exception of the one model, painted in 1989, the rest of these were painted sometime between 1996 and 2006. I know that’s a pretty huge range, but it’s the best I’ve got. I know they weren’t painted while I was living in one place, and they were painted before I moved into another place, two moves later. 2014 gave them a clean-up from the dust, some touch-ups and restoration. And maybe a bit later, some use!

Flesh Hound of Khorne. My original 1989 model with pretty much his original 1989 paintjob.

I originally had only one fleshhound. This guy. He’s been rebased and had some minor touch-ups over the years (mostly from chips) but it’s at least 90% original still.

Skull-headed Flesh Hound of Khorne.

It was many years after I got and painted my singular hound that I managed to get any more. Probably a decade, really. This one was a figure that I always really liked. The skull-headed model. From the days before skulls seemed to be quite so prevalent in GW’s models.

Plague-headed Flesh Hound of Khorne.

Not my favourite of the models. The plagued head never really did anything for me, but I’m still quite happy to have another of the original variations in my collection.

Bloodletter-headed Flesh Hound of Khorne.

A simple conversion that I’d always envisioned. I was trading some old, rare RT-era models (Space Zoats, etc) to get a few more fleshhounds with this guy, and had mentioned what I hoped to do with another of the models. When it came time to make the trade a few days later and he bought the models around, he’d very nicely taken the original head off the Flesh hound to keep for himself and added the half-bloodletter (that was also part of the original agreement). I was a bit too easygoing (and young) back then around Christmas 1995/Jan 1996, so I don’t recall if I challenged him on it. Really though, the pettiness of it still sticks in my craw. Fat neckbearded motherfucker in his 40’s living with his mum’s house somewhere in Keilor.

Two-headed Flesh Hound of Khorne

One consequence of my having assembled my set of 8 hounds over several years is that I also purchased incomplete models with a view to converting them to “fullness”. This is one such model, who I recapitated with a pair of twin head(s) off one of the original Chaos Hounds.

Scorpion-tailed Flesh Hound of Khorne.

Another model that was damaged when I got it. This hound had his tail broken. I replaced it with a scorpion tail. This tail either came from a later-era Chaos Hound, or from that terrible all-metal multipart chaos spawn kit that GW came out with which was mostly just useful as a source of tentacles and things.

Uncornverted Flesh Hound of Khorne.

This one has the same head as my original model. As can be seen across these models, I painted them all to be individuals rather than as a unit. I still like to individualise a lot of my models these days, but I tone it down a little bit. All of my old-school Ogres and Trolls and such will still be individualised, but, say, the grunts in a block of Elven Infantry? Nope, sorry.

Shouty-headed Flesh Hound of Khorne.

This one came glued together with something like araldite. (2-part resin epoxy). Rather than breaking it apart and using something a little more sane, I just painted it instead, resulting in a pretty awful mid-section transition. While I could strip and break down the model and start again, it’s not a favourite head sculpt or anything, and it’s good enough for the table. He’s a middle-back-rank figure if ever there was one. Note the garish green ruff. mmmmm… individuality. Not something I’d go with if I were to paint it today, but on the model it still kinda works. Kinda.

Flesh Hounds Ranked up in 2×4.

I guess at some stage I’ll have to figure out how to use these in the Abyssals force in Kings of War. Due to only having eight models (the sacred number of Khorne) and not wanting to change the number in this unit, even if I’m ever lucky enough to get hold of more of them, I’ll probably have to create a custom multibase-tray for them, as the KoW unit will probably work in multiples of 5 beasts or cavalry or whatever these end up getting proxied for.

A line formation of Flesh Hounds.