In the picture above, you can see the hand cranked wheel that in a real version would enable the gun to be raised or lowered manually. In this kit version, this is assembled on a spindle along with a toothed wheel that fits into the grooves on the arc in the weapon support so the wheel goes round as the gun is raised and lowered. This part of the model was the most difficult to assemble as I had put the undercoat on, which affected the tolerances slightly too much for an ideal fit.
This kit is an all-plastic model on the same scale as the individual soldiers (There's a Warhammer 40k Epic version as well to allow for serious huge wars to be fought). As such, you probably won't see too many of these beasts on the table tops. Even though there are weapons with greater destructive powers the Basilisk is one of the few that can support the troops in direct and indirect fire modes. The main weapon is a long range artillery piece whose shell gives off a distinctive whine, leading in part to the platform's name. The Basilisk is based on the same hull design as the Imperial Guard's Chimera personnel carrier with the gun carriage in place of the Chimera's troop unit.
The model is painted in a couple of colours - the base is a solid colour of Graveyard Earth over all the model and then I smeared Catchecan Green over the various bits of the main body and smooth areas of the gun and its decking using one of the 'sponges' used in the Warhammer individual metal model kits (I knew keeping these would be useful :-)). I then touched up any other areas with a paint brush.
You may note that the completed kit does not have the forward gunner from the photograph of the hull. Getting the gunner to actually hold his machinegun convincingly proved impossible and it did not give sufficient clearance to the main gun if you wanted to lower it near to horizontal. This proved rather difficult to get rid at this stage but fortunately, the damage was relatively limited...
Additional bits of kit were added from those supplied in the kit and painted as seemed appropriate.