Dan's Pacific War Marines

by Dan

I’ve always liked the idea amphibious assaults troops storming ashore and fighting for the enemies positions, although this normally results in large casualties for both sides.

Flicking through Gung-Ho, I was looking for something that would encompass both the amphibious nature and the gung-ho nature of the USMC but at the same time give my army a chance to make it to shore with a minimum amount of loss.

Gung–Ho allows you to take either an Amtank or a Sherman based list. The problem with the Shermans is that I will be able to get 3 in a 1500 point list, with nothing else to support them, so Amtank and Amtracks it is.

One thing you’ll notice is that both these new books run a duel points system one for Pacific and one for Late war, giving you the ability to run Marine Shermans in late war. This is a pretty cool system as I have a lot of spare M4A3s and doing olive drab over and over again can get tedious. Having something for late war comps as well as the Pacific really appeals to me.

Let’s move onto the list itself:

Pacific War - 1500 points
Marine Tank Company
Fearless Veteran

HQ (190 points)
2 x LVT(A)1 37mm

Marine Amphibian Tank Platoon (205 points)
3 x LVT(A)4 75mm

Marine Amphibian Tank Platoon (285 points)
3 x LVT(A)1 37mm

Marine Rifle Platoon (275 points) 
(with Amtracs)

Marine Artillery Battery (340 points)
4 x M2A1 105mm Howitzers

Marine Rocket Battery (200 points)
6x 4.5in Mk 7 rocket launchers with extra crew

TOTAL: 1495 Points

Looking at how things go I may downgrade the 105mm howitzers to the 75mm pack howitzers or change the Rocket Battery out for a flight of F4U Corsairs with the Napalm upgrade, which I’ve used to great success in my Arab Israeli games.

The 37mm gun on the Amtanks might seem small but the low armour values in the Pacific make it ideal for seeking out Japanese armoured support and the canister rounds make red mist of closing infantry units. The 75mm are my shovels they’re going gun team hunting with a 3+ firepower. They should make short work of dug in gun teams.

The Marine Rifle platoon (at Fearless Veteran) is my main assaulting element or my objective holder if I’m defending. Everything is bristling with machine-guns so it’s a very mobile force. The howitzers serve a dual purpose of artillery and smoke screens although they may be limited if the Japanese use Night Attack. I plan on testing to see if my theory holds up.

Moving on to the Marine Rocket Battery, this is my area saturation system with the additional crew It's able to cover a large area with a lot of firepower and once that’s completed it can relocate to avoid the fire in the sky rule (hopefully). This is a small army by any counts, but I wanted to see how it goes. As I said before if I was going to a late war tournament I’d swap the LVTs out for Shermans.

I can’t wait to have this painted up ready to smash Greg!