Bolt Action USMC 1000pts army

I don’t have a list in mind yet, but I knew that I would want a Buffalo because they are an iconic vehicle of that theatre of war. I remember seeing them in movies and my dad telling me what it was called. I remember seeing one at Bovington Tank Museum and being impressed by it. The Warlord Games store has been out of stock on this resin kit for months, but thankfully Entoyment in Poole still had one. FLGS to the rescue online. I could have picked up a Rubicon version from various sellers, but I have never made one of their kits and didn’t want any scale issues with my exclusively Warlord Games collection of vehicles so far.

I used the Colours of War guide on American vehicles for my colour choice. Will fill in exactly what those were in an update later.

I wanted to try out a paint scheme so I started with this metal .30 Cal team.

Deathguard green primer with Athonian Camoshade wash was the idea. I think it looks fine.

I searched back through an old messenger conversation with a sadly departed friend and they said they had used a Vallejo Green Grey for their USMC or occasionally a Vallejo Russian Uniform green. I didn’t mix the paint well enough, or it’s just old and split in some way, because when I used my Green Grey as a trial on the trousers it came out glossy. I mixed it with some Deathguard green and that blended it and took the worst of the gloss away.

Used Iraqi Sand for the vest of the loader, but think the shirt should be more white.

I used Cryptek Armourshade Gloss on the gun over the Deathguard green and think it looked good, but I used a Leadbelcher Armourshade mix as as a highlight because when ai have seen these guns their either black or shiny metal coloured and wouldn’t be much rust on them even in the tropical humidity.

I think I will return to this later. Add some stubble. Add a tattoo maybe. Add some eyes. The pics make them look fairly sunburnt as a happy accident but will check them again and see if a Barbarian Flesh highlight is in order.

I have the rough plan on what to build and the points cost involved with my own spreadsheet.

I even started to get thinking about specific poses I was interested in.

The assembly guide in the box has some great looking poses that I think I will be following in some cases. I have plenty of leftover Japanese sprues with the all important rolled up sleeves that hopefully will give me some variety of posing is required.

91 Points VET – 2nd Lieutenant with 2 men (one will be a metal mini looking at a map from the support set) – Wanted this officer to be a veteran because I wanted to give him an acquired Japanese sword attached to his pack and his pose will have a pointing arm, hopefully in the great suggested officer pose on the assembly guide.

118 Points REG – Squad 1 – 10 man unit (all poses are crouching apart from 2 of the 3 BARs in this squad being prone) – Wanted this unit to have the max of 3 BARs and wanted the unit to be set in low poses so that the prone BARs don’t look out of place.

1x SMG, 3x BAR, 6x Rifles

163 Points VET – Squad 2 – 12 man unit (will all have two water bottles, rifles will have bayonetes where possible and a machete or two at their hips.) Wanted this team to have the max of 3 shotguns just because they’re cool and don’t get into many other Bolt Action forces (1 will be a metal guy from the support team above). I wanted this team to be pretty physical to potentially stand up to a hand to hand fight with the Japanese if required. I have an idea that I want the NCO to be a prone model, waving men forward with a liberated Japanese pistol in hand and his other hand with a Tommy gun. I hope I can make it look like he’s getting out of his low sand rise of poor cover and taking his men forward.

2x SMG, 3x Shotguns, 7 Rifles (2 pistols)

111 Points REG – Squad 3 – 10 man squad (all have a grenade on them somewhere, I have spare grenades on other kits I can call upon, one or two will be throwing grenades.) – Wanted this team to have the anti-tank grenade option so it gives me another chance to take armour on incase of calamity and my bazooka and tank don’t live up to their billing.

2x SMG, 1x BAR, 7 rifles (anti tank grenades)

60 Points REG – MMG team – painted up already.

60 Points REG – Bazooka team – 2x metal minis from the support pack.

67 Points VET – Sniper team – 1x metal mini from the support pack and 1x prone plastic guy pointing.

50 Points REG – Flamethrower team – 1x metal mini from the support pack and 1x prone plastic mini. I will be hopefully pose him with a hand on his helmet and holding a shotgun close.

140 Points REG – LVT4 Amtrac Buffalo – Transport Slot – 2 MMGs (full arch) – Open Top

140 Points REG – M8 Scott GMC – Tank Slot – 1x HMG in the turret, 1x Light Howitzer

10 Bolt Action dice in the bag

1000 pts total.

Happy with these metal minis. Just need to keep motivated and get back to painting these.

I looked at the Vallejo USMC paint set on the Warlord Games website. In the description they outline what colours should be used where on the model. They suggested Brown Violet on the uncovered helmets, bazookas and webbing?? I used that colour on the tank and the thrower, but had reservations about using it on the webbing.

In most people’s paint jobs online and even the box art etc the Brown Violet is way too green for the webbing in my opinion, but I didn’t want it to be just a Zandri Dust colour either. I mixed a little Brown Violet with some Zandri Dust (about 1 to 4 mix) and used just Zandri Dust on it’s own as a highlight after.

I used Vallejo Mahogany Brown for the shoes and the knife sleeve and pistol holster, but realised this was a bit bright, washed it down with Agrax Earthshade and added some Vallejo Flat Brown to dull some bits down.

I used a touch of Zandri Dust in with a Deathguard Green for the highlight on the uniform high points and layed on a touch heavy on ankles of the trousers and on the knees.

Deathguard Green primer undercoat again. Athonian Camoshade wash, aiming at uniform but not being careful early on. Highlight of Zandri Dust and Deathguard Greenmix (about 1 to 4, ZD to DG). Touches of drybrushed on Zandri Dust as dust and dirt.

I loaded a lot of the back of the base with off cuts of metal puddle basing from the models to give it a bit of balance, with the pose being a low run forward. The suggestion on the website is the head facing forward aiming the shotgun, but I kinda accidently slipped it into the pose, as though shouting something back to friends, appealed to me and seems to work.

I overdid the skin, not waiting for a coat to dry before trying a highlight, and it dried with a kind of a crack down his cheek from near his right eye. So… battle damage. Used some Blood for the Blood God citadel paint to cover that up and give him some grit and grimdark character in the bargain.

I chose the Vallejo Flat Brown again for much of the brown and I’m happy with that, but might flip back to the Mahogany Brown occasionally for a highlight during the project.

I get mixed feelings with prone minis. I decided to make most of them first to get these out of the way. Prone minis can look odd in a standard unit but they can be fun to base and work well in some support teams.

I’m planning to have one infantry unit with plenty of kneeling and prone minis together and using other prone minis in support teams etc.

Even with the assembly guide / instructions i still seem to struggle to make good choices or fit things well on prone minis, but I will try to disguise any problems with some interesting basing.

Wish me luck.

When you struggle to get motivation to paint… Paint what you enjoyed building.

This guy makes use of a spare helmet on the sprue, a Japanese water bottle he has acquired on his travels and a head I probably won’t be using on many of my other minis. Mainly because the helmets with the covers look the best. I thought carrying a spare grenade in his helmet gives this mini something out of the ordinary and marks the unit out as the ones with the anti-tank grenade option.

The cap is painted with steel legion drab and highlighted with Zandri Dust and a touch of Morghast Bone.

I usually just use any riflemen to support my officer in other armies I have, but was happy to make these two as permanent support for him.

The guy with the map and sat on a stone is from the metal support minis I bought. He came with an option for the map arm or a water bottle arm and a head to match. So I used the water bottle arm and head on a crouching plastic mini and it looked really good. The sitting mini has an empty bottle pouch on his belt so it looks like he has given his bottle to his squad mate as he reads the map.

As I said during my list building entry I wanted my officer to have a war trophy. Obviously doesn’t effect the game stats but I like the narrative of a veteran lieutenant this adds.

USMC flamethrower and now with his support. My prone guy following in the man with thrower’s gory chared path.

The basing is a bit grim, with the hand of a burnt Jap soldier reaching up between chared sandbags, but I think it paints a picture and establishes him as his support. I wanted a prone guy to go with the metal mini thrower mini. Partly to show that these teams were a bullet magnet on the approach to fixed defensive positions because of the fear that came with this ugly mode of death.

Painting the chared wood was fun. Just painting it black in places looked wrong, so I added dabs of grey. I hope it looks like when a plank cracks in the heat of a bonfire and creates almost a grid of ash grey bark-like squares with a pitch black between the segments.

NCO waving his men forward with a liberated Japanese pistol. (Saw the darned silver paint on his palm after the photo shoot. Will rectify. lol.)

The pose is just about what I was looking for. I will use a couple of crouching minis in the squad so he is not the only mini low to the ground.

There’s been some fun comments on Facebook that it looks like he’s throwing the gun at someone or that he has panicked and thinks he’s throwing a grenade.

Metal sniper from the support pack with a plastic sprue head. (The studio models from the website store had him wearing a forage cap, so it was surprising that a forage cap metal head wasn’t provided.)

The prone spotter has binoculars and a pistol and is pointing something out for the sniper to consider.

Not sure if the little bits of sponge foliage are a problem because they aren’t as life like as the Tufts.

USMC. Prone BAR fellas.
One has a nasty cut to his left cheek. Not sure why. Just felt after painting the beard that the damage would look good.
Using the Japanese prone arms on the wounded guy didn’t fit with the BAR but it did give me an interesting pose.

This squad will be mostly crouching guys to keep these guys from looking too out of place in the squad.

I shared this online. Facebook. And got a historical point of view, along with a lot of very positive comments too. It turns out, that the bipods were not easy clip-on, clip-off in style. This is not something you would quickly assemble in the field. I appreciated the comments and try to err on the historical side rather than strictly rule of cool and Hollywood.

A mistake leading to narrative… I can work with that.

Have you seen the opening of Saving Private Ryan? The opening horror where a guy loses his arm, but picks it up and runs confused and shocked to find a medic to help him with the slight problem he has?
This is less graphic but comes from that shocked headspace.
American kit is reliable, but when thrown through the air in a mortar blast the only thing broken was his bipod. Probably a fault in the metal because it’s snapped at an odd point at the top of the loop. Now what?

“Will the sergeant kill me if I don’t come back with this?
Can I reattach it? (No, but he’s in a panic)
How damaged is this? Will it fire? How am I not injured?”

Then his training kicks in.
“Sergeant said get to that ridge. I’ll do that and worry about the rest when I get there.”
Semper Fi.
?

My NCO calls a halt. (Technically this is a “freeze” signal I was told after posting on Facepage).

I liked this pose. The sprues have been great for the type of variety I like for my bolt action armies.

The amount of riflemen in these armies is always daunting from a quest for variety point of view, but I think it will all look OK in the end

Built all my crouching riflemen. Will try to get through them a couple of models a day.

Had to look at a M1 Garand and a US carbine again to remember which parts are wood and which are metal.

Happy with the paint jobs, basing on theme, on to the next 4.

Happy with this guy. Didn’t go the extra mile with eyes this time. With the squint it seems a little unimportant. The helmet beneath the netting is Vallejo Brown Violet green. But the photos don’t show a lot of difference between that and the uniform Deathguard Green. I think the Athonian Camoshade being used as the wash for both areas caused that, but in person it does look slightly more obvious.

The team is coming together. Only two crouching riflemen to go and the team will be ready. Took a team shot so far, minus the prone BAR guys that are tucked away in the toolbox storage I intend to keep this army in.

It was an interesting pose in the end. I wanted to use this carbine arm with the pouch strapped to the stock of the rifle, but wasn’t sure what right arm to use. I chose a hand set to pull a trigger, but pushed down into his lap and with his  his shoulders set so far forward it just looks like he’s committing to a huge yell to get someone’s attention. I only realised that there are no webbing straps on this mini once the backpack was on and the glue was dry. Seeing as I am not playing people that will cry about such things I painted a couple of straps as a nod to a correction, but wasn’t going to muck about with slivers of greenstuff etc.

School boy error. Bayonet on the pack and the hip. Another body with no webbing but I put in a back pack. I was just trying out bits from the sprue and got careless. I will try to be more accurate with my builds on the next squad.