Nashorns Galore

Battlefront's offering,
assembled and painted many years ago

I've been taking advantage of Zachary Kavulich's prolific 3d modelling labour to print some mid- to late-war German tank destroyers.

The Nashorn (pronounced naas-horn), or Rhinoceros, was first called Hornisse, or Hornet. It mounted a honking great PaK 43 88mmL71 anti-tank gun in a fairly lightly armoured superstructure on a Pz.IV hull, and could penetrate the frontal armour of any Allied tank of the war up to 1,000 metres away.

I've printed it in two formats: first, as originally released by Zachary, as a single-piece model, and then in four pieces: hull, superstructure and gun, and left and right running gear.

The multi-part print required much less in the way of supports, gave me better definition in the tracks, made cleanup a lot easier, and dropped the print time from about 14 hours to about 10. Sure, it required post-printing assembly, but that was easy-peasy, and a small price to pay for overall better results.

Now, I don't actually have a pressing need for Nashorns, and I'm very unlikely to need three on the table at once even if and when I get around to wargaming the Italian campaign, but I don't see that as a valid reason not to have some.

One-piece print

Multi-piece print