Mike Paints! - Marines WIP

with Mike

Work's been nuts and my son's started to get really big into tanks, so as you can imagine, I've been pretty busy with those let alone giving my Marines the proper effort they deserve. Oh well, it's time to own up to my work in progress!

I feel as though I've broken the back of this project, with my main combat platoons and some critical support platoons done-ish. I say "ish" because I'm deliberately avoiding basing until I've got most of the project moved up to that point and I can then do them all in one go to maintain consistency and theme. So what's done?

Combat Platoons & HQ
I did these first because they represented the largest total WIP hours and the essential building blocks for whatever force I'll be making. I chose two full-strength platoons of 9x stands each (10 with HQ) so that I could take a section from each and merge them into a third platoon if needed. I also modelled them with the spare BARs which actually ended me up with something like six spare riflemen figures per platoon to use elsewhere (a pretty cool bonus).

Mortar Platoons
The USMC mortar platoon blister comes with the figures to make 4x mortar teams equipped with with either 60mm or 81mm mortars. There are unique loaders for the two tpes of mortars, but they share the rest of the crew figures. So, I grabbed a few spare US Army 60mm crew and three spare medium bases and made all seven mortars up.

In the foreground is the 60mm mortars with USMC loaders and "army" crew. The 81s in the back have all new USMC crew sculpts. The mortars themselves are on popsicle sticks until basing is complete.

Dog Handlers
These were a fun pair of teams to have painted up. They are three figures to a base, which will help them stand out when combat attached to the rifle platoons.

Combat Engineers
The USMC Assault Engineer pack comes with enough teams to field either the Assault Section (with 2x Bazookas, 2x Flame throwers, and 2x pioneer teams) or the Marine Engineer Assault Section with is 4x Pioneer teams and 3x flame throwers. So I'd recommend buying two of these packs to max out on flame-throwers.

The flame-throwers are two figures per small base, a departure from standard FoW flame-thrower teams. Like with the Dog Handlers, this will help distinguish them once they are combat attached out. Similarly, I only placed 3 pioneer figs on the pioneer teams so that I could identify them quickly as well.

75mm SPG half-tracks
These are my favorites so far! I used the current MW 75mm GMC pack for these models, added some stowage from my bits box and installed a bunch of extra machine-guns.

M5A1 Stuarts
These are the bulk of my tank assets until I get my Satans and M4A2 Shermans painted up. That said, three of these are well over 600 points! Again, I just used the standard US M5A1 boxed set.

All told the above rings in at: 1945 points (PW).

Where to from here?
Machine-guns, 37mm anti-tank guns, a couple of Shermans, and my LVT transports!

Oh, and my F4U Corsair, which is my prize at the end of the project!