Bolt Action: US Marine Corps - Infantry squad

To add to my number of units I painted up another ordinary squad of just 8 men, one BAR and a NCO with a Thompson. Nothing fancy, nothing special, just a few bodies to put on the table.

The only thing to note if any are that I have slated this to be an early war squad, with just one BAR and not two and a lot of other special equipment and weapons that Bolt Actions gives the later squads. The only thing that bothers me a bit is that the American book for Bolt Actions gives the maximum squad size of the early squads to eight men, when they operated in squads of nine. This is just a minor thing, but I'm going to paint up a few more riflemen so that I can give them all the extra man.

But there isn't that much else, so keep calm and carry on!

Bolt Action: US Marine Corps - USMC Raiders

From the elite formations of the marines, comes the elite formation of USMC Raiders. Two battalions was formed during the early parts of WWII and they fought with distinction during the island hopping campaign in numerous operations.

From the beginning they was formed to conduct special amphibious light infantry warfare, particularly in landing in rubber boats and operating behind enemy lines.
They did however cause some resentment in the USMC and this led to their disbandment in the middle of 44.

For Bolt Action they have an entry in the Empire in Flames book, where they are given the option to operate in small units armed to the teeth. To give them something extra when I paint them I gave them more and different camo than my other marines, giving them a distinct look from my other units.

In my other units I only use camo on their helmets, and only the "brown" one, here I used the "green" one as well, giving them all this on their helmets, if they had any. And then using the camo patterns all over them. Still keeping them in the same lines as all the others. Modeling wise I gave them all "special" weapons as well, just for the fun of it. I haven't used the shotgun so far, so I gave three of them this, and another three with SMGs.

If I don't use them as the Raiders in games, I might use them to represent veterans or just mix them into squads to give them some more fun guns.

That's all for this round, I still have more to show you as soon as work permits me to pen some more words down.

Bolt Action: US Marine Corps - M8 Greyhound

So after I finished of my previous Sherman, I got going on a M8 Greyhound. This is the now older resin model, and not the new spiffy plastic that came out a few months ago, but it's a fairly nice model non the less.

As I understand it the marines had a few M8s to help them out during some of the island hopping campaign, it wasn't the most used thing ever, mostly because that it got stuck in the mud as soon as the jungle got hold of it, so it was mostly restricted to roads of better quality when used. And as a primarily reconnaissance vehicle that's not really what you want from them.

It was armed with a 37 mm gun and a coaxial medium machine gun as well as a heavy machine gun in the ring on the turret, giving it quite a lot of power for such a light vehicle.

I used a fairly standard green color to this one, omitting the camouflage that may or may not have been used, but I did go a bit bananas with the weathering powders once again, but the end result I think is a quite nice little car, ready to take on some Japanese forces

Bolt Action: US Marine Corps - New blood

After having been away from the painting of my WWII forces, I've gotten some work done on them again. We have been playing a bit more Bolt Action around here so I needed some more miniatures to my force.

The first thing I got completed is a brand new, dirty Sherman tank!

I built it according to the instructions but decided to try some camouflage on it, since the Marines often did just that.
Besides that I just tried a bunch of things to make it look rugged and a bit run down. Just as I want my WWII stuff to look.

I got hold of some more weathering powders from Vallejo that i used quite a lot of to get that dirty look. I'm quite pleased or how it turned out.

The HMG on top of the tank is magnetized, so that I can leave it off the times when I don't need it. 

For the next one I'll have to get some stowage as well.

I have some more things waiting to get a few lines written here, I hop to get some more up this week. 

Until next time, game responsibly!