From MilesR: Teeny-Tiny Hell in the Pacific (330 Points, so far.....)

 My "Big Project" for 2023 might better be described as a "Big/Little Project" as I am entering to world of 3mm WW2 mini's.  3mm mini's have been used up at the club a number of times and were featured in our Invasion of Malta episode.  I really liked the command scope and wanted to give it a try.  As all of the clubs 3mm games were in the European theater, I decided to be different and try the Pacific.  Oh and lets do an invasion.  And on top of that, lets play it out as a campaign and make up a ruleset to go with it.  Nothing like dialing up the complexity for ones first foray into a scale.  I have never been accused of being all that bright.

As with any complex project, its best to break it down into stages and the first step was the mini's.  All of these are 3mm scale mini's from the Pico Armor range and I very much highly recommend them.  Painting is dead simple - base prime, paint your main color and then wash.  Basing is a little more complex - especially with infantry as its very easy to break them and at this scale is almost impossible to repair.

First up is the US 1st Marine Division, with each base representing a company.  The 1st Marine consisted of 3 Regiments - the 1st, 5th and 7th Marines.  Each Regiment had 3 Infantry battalions 

A battalion consists of 3 infantry companies mounted on 15x40mm bases, 1 heavy weapons company on a 20x20mm base and 1 Battalion HQ on a 15mm circle

Each Regiments HQ is mounted on a 20 mm circle and they had a 37mm AT gun battery.  There should also be 1 battery of 75mm pack howitzers, which I'm told are in the post

The divisional assets for the 1st include an artillery battalion (the 11th), an attached tank Battalion equipped with M4 Shermans.  There will also be some engineers added to the mix.  Oh those other 9 bases of infantry in the back - those will form one of the 2 regiments from the 81st Infantry Division who were deployed during the campaign.

Each of the bases has a magnetized name plate so I can affix the unit designation as well as use magnetic map pins to track accumulated losses.  

In the back are 5 bases each of LVT's and LVT4's - there need to be a lot more LVT's!  Those are in the post too!

When one does dabble in 3mm WW2, it's pretty easy to buy more than one really needs for the project at hand - so I built up some ancillary US units

A little armor support, in the form of 2 M4 Sherman Battalions, a Stuart battalion, some M-10's and some M3 Lees plus transports.

Opposing the US is a Japanese Infantry division.  Actually at Peleliu they only field half of these forces but I wanted to build out a full division.  There are 3 infantry regiments and then a bunch of division support assets.  There are 10 "extra" infantry companies for a post Peleliu project that can not be named... yet.

As with the American forces - I built up some "extra Japanese troops - Chi-Ha and Ha-Go tank battalions plus some Type-(7 mini tanks).

As this was a project that was started last year with a handful of test bases, I'm going to be cheeky and submit this as part of the "Under Construction" studio tour.

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Minion interlude to discuss scoring: The scale of this project is amazing. Having seen the Salerno table you ran at Historicon last year, the table size, terrain and masses of bases are hugely impressive spectacle, and your dedication to accuracy for the project as a whole is laudable. And to top it off, your ruleset is both slick to play and great fun. 

We had to recalibrate the scoring matrix for Miles' post, as the scoring conventions for 3mm figures are less mature as a less often seen scale. Examples have tended to be for premodern eras, with a large base representing a mass of troops in formation. For these moderns with fewer models (about 10 on a base representing a company) we've taken a starting point of half the rate for 3mm, so 0.25 for infantry and half a point for each vehicle. 

There are around 775 infantry and 225 vehicles, the mathemagical algorithm outputting 306.5 points, which I'll round up to 310 and apply the Studio bonus for a tidy 330 on Miles' tally. 

And whoa on your accompanying terrain project (below), looks hugely impressive, really looking forward to that coming together. Sadly I don't think I'll see it in person. 

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Some of you maybe wondering what the heck is that cork board in the background.  I usually don't provide in process shots but the terrain portion of this project will take a while.

When one proposes to do a game of the Peleliu campaign, one does need a model of the Island of Peleliu so that's what I'm building.  The scale is 1" equals 100 yards and the total board will be 10x4 feet. Here's a shot of the rough layout and with most of the mountains blocked in:

As you can see A LOT of work remains to be done but the basic outline is in place

Here's a view of the initial US landing beaches (next to the scissors) and how close the airfield was to the beachheads.

The Umurbrogol Mountains are blocked in.  I'm trying to be as faithful as possible to the actual terrain but it is crazy complex and I think I'll get it 80% right.  There is a lot of shaping and sculpting wotk to do.  Depending on my work schedule this could take 3-4 more weeks.

 

The North end of the island - once I finish these 4 boards, I'll slide the over and build the 5th which has the tip of Peleliu and Ngesebus Island which was connected to Peleliu by a wooden causeway and had another airfield.