From JohnM: USMC Platoon Pacific 1942-43 (192 points)

These troops were finished a couple of weeks ago, but the tufts to decorate the bases just arrived. This is about half of the troops needed for my Chain of Command USMC platoon for a Guadalcanal campaign. Most of the troops are from Warmodelling, but I supplemented the support teams with troops from the PSC US Heavy Weapons Box.

Squad 1: made up of a JL, a BAR and 7 riflemen.

Last year I put a lot of work in researching the WWII Pacific theatre (I knew absolutely nothing about this aside from reading Norman Mailer's Naked and the Dead many years ago as well as watching the The Pacific mini-series). My main goal was to put together a CoC Army List for the type D USMC organization. A Type E organization list already existed but this was quite different that what was used in the 1942-43.

Squad 2: ditto, in 1942 most men and officers carried the M1903, by the latter part of 1942, the  M1 became available.

I game WWII in 1/72, and in metals there is not a whole lot of choice aside from Eureka and Warmodelling. There are a 2-3 other companies who make metal figures but they all looked like grunting chimpanzees to me. I had bought a couple of boxes of Waterloo 1812 plastic figures, and they were quite nice but I really am not keen to use soft plastic. Lovely slender sculpts though and they have figures for both the USMC and the Japanese. I can recommend them if you want plastics.

I had used Warmodelling for my Winter War Finns, they are nice sculpts but the casting was quite poor. I had been assured that when Battlemodels took over that the all casts were going to be re-done. Unfortunately they were not and the models suffer from the same problem with especially poor faces and a lot of flash that is almost impossible to remove.

M2, 50 cal HMG, one of the few guns with AP ability. The gun is from PSC as well as the most of the team.

Anyway, I went ahead and painted them up and they look OK. I am still missing rifle, BAR and raider squads and these are on the way from Eureka Miniatures. These are much nicer figures, my Japanese Platoon which is next up on the painting table is made up of both Eureka and Warmodelling, the Eureka Japanese are quite nice and I am sure that their USMC figures will be equal in quality.

M1917, 30 cal MMG, the USMC support teams had big crews.

Each group is described in the captions and I did enjoy putting together the force.

Bazooka Team

M1919, 30 cal LMG with a 3 man crew.

Flamethrower Team

Forward Observer

Five man 60 mm Mortar team.

For those who are interested here is the list I developed for CoC, it has got big Rich's stamp of approval. You can download a pdf here and read about it's development here.

Well, more US Marines for today! It's great to see the Pacific Theatre of WW2 drawing more attention and interest all the time, and I'm sure these fine figures will make for a great force in Chain of Command (an awesome set of rules).  You've done some excellent work here John, between the camo and the groundwork, I can sense the heat, humidity and bugs of the Pacific...and considering the weather outside my house right now, you have no idea how nice that seems!

I sympathize with your experience on the Warmodelling products - very, very unreliable quality and some abominable castings.  It's disappointing the commitment to redo the molds has apparently not been followed up. But good to see there are other options out there, and you have made good use of the US figures from Plastic Soldier Company. Thank you also for sharing this info on the Pacific for Chain of Command, I'm sure there are many folks who will appreciate it.

These lads will net you 192 points.  We are looking forward to seeing their Japanese opponents soon!