WW2 USMC Fliers

 Well... since I finished up the USMC Forward Observers/Forward Air Controllers... (and I was coveting the P-51 Mustang that Orion recently built for her Americans!) 

I decided I needed to pick up an American aircraft I could paint up as a Marine flier. I picked up a Corsair because I know it was used in large numbers by the Marines and it was used as a fighter-bomber... Though I was just reading that this role came a little later in 1944... AFTER the Marine Raider battalions ceased to be! 

Ah, well... 

All games are fictional playing pretend!  

Will I be building this up and painting it right away!? Probably not... This week my brain has decided I should really work on Fallschirmjägers!? Probably once I'm done a small batch of those, I'll get back to working on tanks for the desert war!  

WW2 USMC War Dogs and Handlers

I finished up the two USMC War Dog and Handler teams last night...

USMC War Dogs and Handlers

Will I ever even use these? I have no idea... 

In the Marine Raiders audiobook I listened to earlier this year, they did mention the dog teams being VERY handy at rooting out Japanese Snipers. That's what these do as well - spot a hidden enemy unit at 24" rather than at 12"... but the hidden units rules are such weaksauce... I don't know if I'll bother... 

I guess If I set up a scenario with better hidden units rules! 

This is the current Marine Raider force.

I can't really think of anything else I need to add to this...

More pictures of the USMC Raider Force and their Bolt Action force list can be found on the Gallery Page:

WW2 - USMC Raiders (PTO)

WW2 - Assorted Far East Support

Over the last few weeks I have acquired... a few more things... despite really wanting to AVOID acquiring MOAR STUFF!? 

Orion was ordering her Hungarian army from two different places, so I piggy-backed on those orders and picked up a few things... 

(And... there are a few of my OWN orders arriving this week!?) 

First, some USMC Forward Observers... I have a pair of miniatures I'm currently using as Observers... but... these were inexpensive and there were other things i could use those minis for... so... These came from 401 Games in Toronto. 

Next were two Anti-Tank Rifle Teams - one for the Chindits (in case they ever face a Japanese Tank!) and the other for the Japanese (in case they ever face an American tank!). These came directly from Warlord Games! 

I finished painting these all up over the long weekend!? 

USMC Forward Observer Team...  

Or... If I'm using them as Forward Air Controllers (because USA forces get those sweet, sweet, extra air attacks!) I guess, technically, they're probably US Air Force personnel (or US Navy...? If the planes are flying off of a carrier) that have been attached to the raiders...? (or did the USMC have their OWN air wing...?!) 

Now I need to pick up some American aircraft for them to call in... 

I also finished up the Chindit and Imperial Japanese Army Anti-Tank Rifle Teams! 

I'm not entirely sure how useful these will ever be...?

I guess I do have a Japanese Chi-Ha tank... so... 

Mind you... The Boyes Anti-Tank Rifle only has a penetration value of +2... and a Chi-Ha has a Damage Value of 8+... so on the front armour, assuming the anto-tank rifle hit the tank, they would need to roll a 6 (on a d6) just to do superficial damage... And any any opponent is definitely going to try and blow these up as a priority target (as the force has very little other anti-tank capability...) 

Similarly, I expect the Japanese anti-tank rifle similarly be of little use... 

Perhaps even LESS useful... as their main opponent is Orion's Americans... and she's got a Sherman! The anti-tank rifle cannot do a thing against frontal armour... 

This, along with the assortment of fantasy figures painted last week, I'm just ahead of the number of miniatures I've purchased... so... there's that... I'd like to get a bit DEEPER into the black, though!! 

WW2 - USMC Raiders

 The little battle in Burma against the Japanese inspired my to push through and finish up the last of the raiders I currently have... 

All the new raiders! This includes the box of Merril's Marauders and the USMC Support Group - both from Warlord Games. 

Merril's Marauders - again, as with the previous Raider Squad box, included MORE Thompson submachine-guns than are technically allowed in a USMC squad... and there is so separate listing for Raider Squads!?

In the Empires in Flames book for 2nd(?) edition, there is a listing for Marine raiders that DOES allow the NCO + 3 others to be armed with a submachine-gun, so.... maybe in the Armies of the United States coming out later this year...? But do I want to spend $50 just to know yeah, Raiders can take four instead of three...!? 

ALL THE RAIDERS!! 

Here's what the force (so far!) will look like in Bolt Action. 

USMC RAIDERS

Rifle Platoon

Platoon commander 39 pts (Veteran) + 2 men @13 = 65 pts

Forward Observer 90 pts (Veteran) + 2 men @11 = 112 pts

Medic 30 pts (Veteran) + 2 men @11 = 52 pts

Marine Squad 1 NCO and 6 men 91pts (veteran) + 2 men @13, + 3 SMG @4, + 3 BAR @6, + 9 Stubborn @1 = 156 

Marine Squad 1 NCO and 6 men 91pts (veteran) + 2 men @13, + 3 SMG @4, + 2 BAR @6, + 1 Shotguns @3, + 9 Stubborn @1 = 153 

Marine Squad 1 NCO and 6 men 91pts (veteran) + 2 men @13, + 3 SMG @4, + 2 BAR @6, + 9 Stubborn @1 = 150

Weapons Platoon

Platoon commander 39 pts (Veteran) + 2 men @13 = 65

Medium Machine-Gun Team 65 pts (Veteran) = 65

Medium Mortar Team 56 pts (Veteran) = 56

Total: 874

I’d need to add 126 points worth of stuff to make a 1000 point force… 

I’d need another 376 points to to make it a 1250 point force!? 

If I had limitless time and resources, I’d probably can the Weapons Platoon and add a SECOND Platoon of Raiders… But that’s not about to happen any time soon!

Warlord does have a USMC Weapons Teams box that includes a Sniper Team and a Bazooka team… (the box also includes a Flame-Thrower team… but as far as I can tell, I’d need to have an ENGINEERING PLATOON to field any of those!?) a veteran Sniper Team and Bazooka Team would add 145 points… 

I guess I could (should?) also consider adding anti-tank grenades to one or more squads and making them TANK HUNTERS, that could eat up some points. 

I have a Gallery Page for the USMC Raiders, where you can see MORE pictures of the individual squads and elements of the force:

WW2 - USMC Raiders (PTO) 

WW2 - Corpsmans and Casualties.

(Sounds like a role-playing game from the early 80s!?) 

Not entirely newly painted... I did just repaint the uniforms of most of these though. As the only marines I have that I'll likely ever make use of are the USMC raiders, I figured the casualty figures I have should probably get repainted to reflect the Frog Skin camouflage they're wearing, rather than the light olive drab they'd previously been painted wearing!

The Navy Corpsmen attached to the raiders I repainted a few of them, thinking that, as attachments, they may not necessarily have had the same uniform...? 

All the Corpsmen and Casualties 

The Naval Corpsmen

The Marine Raider Casualties!

I have the Gurkhas on the workbench this weekend, expect to see those painted, shortly.

I also got in a SECOND game of Bolt Action wtih Orion this week - we replayed the previous scenario, but in reverse - the Vichy trying to take the Oasis and High Points from the Americans! 

WW2 - US Marine Corps Raiders

A few more soldiers of the Second World War rolling off the workbench this week! 

An assortment of USMC Raiders from Warlord games. 

These are joining a few raiders I already had (from Brigade Games, I think..?) 

These new ones took WAY TOO LONG to paint!? I painted and repainted them ALL a few times as I just wasn't happy with the frog skin camouflage... It STILL doesn't QUITE match the previously painted ones (which were probably painted between 10-15 years ago!? with paints I made no notes about and likely no longer have!?) 

I made notes this time!!

Just in case I buy more of them... 

Which would be silly... 

I have enough, now that I could organize these into an understrength platoon with a command team of three and three squads of eight... there are a CrAzY number of Thompson submachine-guns and B.A.R.s... I was wondering if I'd need to find some actual RIFLEmen to make something remotely historical... but according to the first edition rules for Marines - which doesn't have a listing for Marine Raiders, specifically - an early war squad can have 5-8 men and up to THREE submachine-guns and TWO BAR!? 

In mid-late war the squads can have up to 12 men and THREE men can have BARs and three men can have SHOTGUNS?!

When my book arrives I'll figure out how many points this is for Bolt Action. 

I have a handful of regular USMC (like, one infantry infantry squad and a four medics and four casualties) and I might just repaint their uniforms in the Frog Skin camouflage to look a little more the rest of these. There's no point in having ONE  squad of regular infantry, is there...? (Unless I was going to use them for Embassy guard duty in some pulp adventure game..?) 

An Odd Assortment

 An assortment of sundry items rolling off my paint desk this week... (or arriving in the mail!) 

This is some of the stuff I've been painting that I've finished up this week. 

(There is a bunch of other stuff... but I'll deal with that in another post!) 

This group can be broken down into roughly three groups... 

The first is nine British Soldiers from the Second World War. While I was snooping through drawers of WW2 stuff - looking for things I might use in a future FiveCore skirmish campaign, if found these in one of the Canadian drawers... and they were the only unpainted miniatures in the drawer and, honestly, I do NOT need MORE Canadians, so I thought I'd quickly knock them out as regular Tommies for use as extras in any smaller skirmish or role-playing game... 

When we started the Fourteen Men in the Solomons campaign, we generated the force using Five Men in Normandy - which includes tables for people your squad knows in the area... and one of those rolled for the squad was members of another military unit... and we'd wondered about maybe some Australians or New Zealanders with indigenous troops that might get along better with the African Americans of the 93rd Division troops... 

I had imagined that Australian and New Zealand forces might be like Canadian forces in the second world war and just incorporated them in the regular army units... instead they were more like the US - where they were allowed to serve it seems it was generally in separate units. There was a whole battalion of Maoris that served... but they apparently served in Europe!? 

I did read somewhere that many served in the Coast Watchers... so I imagined these two as Coast Watchers stationed on New Galloway. 

Also, while listening to an audiobook about the Marine Raiders they mentioned marines having to go on missions to rescue Coast Watchers that the Japanese had figured out the location of and were moving in to capture or kill! 

After my first game of FiveCore Pulp Adventure, I decided I might spend the little cach gained to hire two more followers. I'd initially rolled "Guards" but wasn't sure what a "guard" should look like... then I rolled a "Ex-Military" and "Hired Gun"... and then I figures all three of those could pretty much look the same!? so I went looking in the bins of THINGS TO PAINT and found a few spare military types that weren't needed for any units and painted them up... but painted some of the clothes a little different. The idea being they're civilians now, so can wear whatever they want, but maybe are comfortable and familiar with the equipment they used in the military - which is why they're wearing the webbing they'd have used and carrying the same rifles they'd used?

Not something that rolled off my workbench... but something that just landed on it!

Because I was planning to pick up the Aeldari Codex and have been thinking about playing more Age of Sigmar (using the Ravaged Coast campaign) and both of those suggest using a 60"x44" playing area, and was concerned about the potential upcoming trade war (as most of those available in North America are sourced from the United States) I got looking around for one of those and on place I'd been considering buying from had a BUNCH of deeply discounted Bolt Action miniatures (like, less than half the current suggested retail!?)... so, even though I ended up ordering the mats from a completely different seller... I bought a few packs of the discounted Bolt Action miniatures!? There were MORE that I was considering getting, but I had to draw the line somewhere!?

I got these Marine Raiders because A) I just finished listening to an audiobook about the Marines Raiders (which I'd gotten months ago and only picked up because there was a two for one sale and there was one book in the sale that I was going to buy anyway... and they only other book that looked remotely interesting was the Marine Raider book... I wasn't sure if I'd ever get around to listening to it, but it was free so...), B) We started playing a game set in the Pacific Theatre of Operations and maybe some marine raiders could show up as allied supporting troops... or C) I have a small force of Marine Raiders already, and I thought I could add these to the force and start my own SOLO campaign that could be also be fighting elsewhere on our fictional island of New Galloway, and occasionally bump into/team up with the troops in the other campaign...?

I also bought some Italians... but I'll deal with them in the next post which is ALL ITALIANS!? 

WW2 American Forces

Okay, so I didn't trade away ALL of my WW2 US forces... 

I did keep about a squad or two of each of US Regular Army Infantry and US Paratroopers for the European Theatre of Operations and Marines for the Pacific Theatre of Operations - Just in case I ever wanted to play Five Men in Normandy/Five Mean at Kursk with them or a similar skirmish game, or needed them for a role-playing game (like Call of Cthulhu?). Most of these were already painted

The small handful of paratroopers I kept were not painted... and we in a box of stuff being based or re-based and having seen pictures of the miniatures Orion was cranking out, I started feeling like maybe I should just quickly paint these up and be DONE with them... So that's what I did on Saturday. 

Part way through painting the paratroopers, I realized one was not a paratrooper but a regular army infantryman. So I went to the storage drawer to see how I'd painted those and realized there were three other unpainted regular army infantrymen, so I brought them out to paint as well. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the exact colour I used to paint them... it is entirely possible I was still using craft paints at the time and the paint is long gone... 

NEWLY PAINTED STUFF 

There are 12 paratroopers and 4 regular army infantry in the lot... 

So this is ALL the World War Two US Forces I currently have...

Regular US Army Infantry - European Theatre of Operations

I had a lot more than I thought - pretty much an understrength platoon; three squads of 7-8 infantry, a platoon commander and radio operator, a bazooka team, a sniper and... Oddball... 

Oddball, Kelly, and Big Joe

US Army Paratroopers - European Theatre of Operations

I have a much smaller force of Paratroopers, less than a full squad really - perfect size for a Five Men in Normandy Patrol, though! 

US Marine Corps - Pacific Theatre of Operations

I have a weird mix of Marines for the Pacific Theatre of Operations... 

There's one squad of regular Marine Infantry... A spare guy with a Thompson SMG... John Wayne... four Corpsmen... four casualties... Fourteen Marine Raiders... and a Jeep with a .50 Caliber Heavy Machine-Gun mounted on it!? 

Again, a great little force for very small scale skirmishes or showing up in a role-playing game. 

1st Special Service Force  - European Theatre of Operations

I also have a small unit of troopers from the 1st Special Service Force... which was a mix of troops from the US and Canada. I got really excited when they first game out and bought all the first packs... I'd hoped to build it up to a complete force for Bolt Action... but then they never made any with the Johnson Light Machine-Guns... so these lack squad support weapons. 

The Bazooka and Mortar and .30 Calibre Machine-Gun teams are all converted paratrooper miniatures. 

STILL TO DO!?

I got really excited thinking the entire force would be DONE with this little batch completed and the others all traded away... then I found a few more things; four injured paratroopers, a second jeep with a USMC crew, and a Sgt. Rock figure I have (that I wanted to add ammo belts to - because I do seem to recall from the comics, the ALWAYS had na ammo belts slung over each of his shoulders!) 

Will I ever add to this collection?! Well... I'll Never say Never! But I have no strong desire to do so at the moment. I might get to rebasing some or all at some point. Because I have Oddball, Sgt. Kelly and Big Joe, I thought it might be fun to get a Sherman tank and model it like Oddball's with giant speakers and an barrel extension - just for funsies. Or maybe get a second Oddball figure and put him in the turret of a Tiger Tank...? 

USMC Jeep

...and now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

When I returned from Vancouver the middle of last week – not only did I have a few treasures I brought home with me – but I also discovered, to my delight, that the order I had placed with Brigade Games in February had finally arrived! It was a bit of a wait  - they were waiting for a re-stock from Company B who, in turn were waiting for a restock of some parts… anyway… it finally arrived...

I ordered a pair of Jeeps with Rat Patrol crew (mounted and dismpounted), and some Japanese on bicycles, some WW2 British, and another pair of jeeps for these WW2 USMC crews I’d picked up a few years back from North Star Figures when they were blowing out a bunch of their Brigade Games stock…

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):

USMC Jeep from Brigade Games/Company B.

I’m not really sure what they’ll be used as…? Jeep recce team? Company Commander?

Here it is with a few of my other WW2 US Marines. 

As I mentioned I have another team like this and then the Rat Patrol…I think I’d like to pick up a couple of their SAS/LRDG jeeps at some point. I was thinking about putting together an SAS Jeep patrol/raiding squadron and, just to have some uniqueness to the different teams, I thought I might order jeeps and crews from different manufacturers…? I know Company B, Warlord Games, and Dixon Miniatures make them (Warlord games has two variants, Company B comes with different heads…) are there any others out there? How wildly different could their Jeeps be…?

Oh, dang… I just realized Perry Minatures has added an SAS jeep to their WW2 Desert Line-up…

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Ummmmmm…? I’m not really sure… so much stuff polluting my workbench… it’s really time for a clean-up…. 

MORE World War Two USMC Medics and Casualties

I’m not sure what possessed me to paint these either. Likely because the were acquired recently (as in this year) and have been floating around the painting areas getting prepped and based and primed and gooped… and  looked simple enough and… well… just got painted… Unfortunately, other than the four medics and four casualties I now have, I only have a single squad of leathernecks painted… a Regular rifle squad, and two more squads of Marine Corps raiders.

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):

These jarheads are from The Assault Group. Some of the assault group stuff leaves something to be desired, but their WW2 marines are first class!



The Casualties.

The Medics.

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Um… Some Great War British Officers…?