All,
Got another force finished. This one took a bit; wheres most of the others were a simple re-basing job, this was a total repaint AND re-base job. Previously they were painted as 82nd Airborne, with the khaki-colored uniform (like the individually-based guys in my 'All-Americans' battle reports), but I wanted a more generic looking US force, so I re-did these in Olive Drab. The vast majority of them are from Pendraken's D-Day Paras range, though there are also 'regular' US Army infantry, Ardennes Paras, and US Marines mixed in as well (mostly a function of the fact I had them spare and needed to fill the spaces created when I pillaged this force for my 'All-Americans' project. Let's get to some pics.
The whole force: 2 Bn/Co CO stands, 4 Co/Plt Cmdr stands, 1 FO stand, 11 PC/Squad Ldr stands, 18 rifle stands, 4 engineer stands, 7 MG stands, 6 bazooka stands, 3 81mm mortar stands, 4 60mm mortar stands, three 57mm ATG stands, and 2 75mm pack howitzer stands.
A couple rifle stands.
Another couple rifle stands. On the left you can see my patented and beloved leader stripes, in this case the horizontal stripe of an NCO (officers had vertical stripes).
A couple engineer stands. I put a bazooka on each engineer stand, and the flamethrowers are the fellas taking a knee.
A couple bazooka stands. The D-Day Paras bazookas don't have assistants, like the German PzSchrecks do. I didn't know that when I bought them, and so I had a whole bunch of bazooka guys running around. Hence the 'two on one base' look.
Couple 81mm mortars, found in the Weapons Company at the infantry battalion level.
Couple 60mm mortars, found in the Weapons Platoon at the infantry company level, or one each in airborne rifle platoons (which did not have weapons platoons, though sometimes enterprising airborne company commanders were known to centralize all the 60mm mortars in the company under him.
Couple M1919 air-cooled .30 cal. MGs.
Two of the 57mm anti-tank guns. The guns are from Takara/World of Tanks.
The 75mm pack howitzers. Yes, the crews look cheesy because I didn't have anymore crewmen and used spare riflemen.
The two CO stands. The CO has the vertical stripe, while the SgtMaj/1st Sgt (depending on whether I'm playing it as a battalion or company) has the horizontal stripe.
Two of the company/platoon command stands.
The Forward Observer stand, with both these guys coming from the Ardennes Para FO pack.
The reverse of the FO team.
Single-based leaders, to serve as Plt or Squad Ldrs, though squad leaders should be NCOs and have the horizontal stripe. Can't get everything right, it's not my way...
Now, if you've seen my battle reports you see I use a lot of Takara/World of Tanks vehicles, which are significantly larger than the Pendraken and Minifigs vehicles (Takara is 1/144, Pendraken 1/150, and Minifigs 1/160, so shouldn't be significantly different in size, but they are). So, to my eye, it often looks kinda strange; the Takara vehicles look alright next to the based infantry, but the unbased Pendraken and Minifigs vehicles look pretty small. So, I tried up a test base, and I really like it, so guess what I'm doing?
Here's a look at a couple M10 Wolverines.
Couple Pendraken M7 Priests. If the vehicles look a bit chalky/white/gray, it's because I had a bad experience with my matt spray. I found a remedy online, which told me to spray them with gloss varnish, then spray them again with matt. Believe it or not, I did; what you don't know is, this is 100% better than they were, they were almost completely white! So, not perfect, but it works for me.
A look at the M10 with some infantry. Looks a lot better than the vehicle being unbased, though I'm still not going to base the Takara tanks. I hope it doesn't look too odd with based and unbased vehicles next to each other on the table, but it's gotta look better than it did, with the 'giant' Takara Shermans next to the 'tiny' Pendraken M10s. Someday I'm going to replace the Takara with Pendraken, for two reasons: 1) so I can have more (right now I only have six Shermans, six T-34s, three SU-122s, two Tigers, three Panthers, and six Pz Mk IIIs, and unless Takara starts making more, that's all I can ever get); and 2) get stuff I couldn't get (Pz Mk IVs, Shermans with 76mm guns, etc...). I love the Takara stuff, not least because it's pre-painted, but now it's limiting me in volume and choice.
Obviously not American stuff.... I liked my new basing spree so much that I decided to go back and do my late-war German Pak-40s...
and my Russian 76mm guns. I like'em a lot better now, and don't know why I didn't do it before (except actually I do; now that the 57mm ATGs and PaK-40s are based like this, they no longer work with my individually based Americans and Germans for 'All Americans').
Well, I now have all WWII stuff currently in my possession ready for the table. Right now I'm looking at scenarios so that I can get some stuff going on on the table this weekend.
V/R,
Jack
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