Bolt Action: Imperial Japanese Army - Type 2 Ka-Mi

So it's been quite some time since I showed something of my Japanese army, and even though there has been mostly napoleonics miniatures on my painting table for the last year, I've painted a small number of miniatures even to my IJA force. First I'm going to show of what I think is the coolest tank of WWII, the Type 2 Ka-Mi amphibious tank.
This little thing was produced for the Japanese navy to accompany their marines, or Special Naval Landing Forces as they was called, on amphibious landings to provide some armored support. Something that had shown to be a necessity after a few more or less successful attempts at landing from the seas. The navy took the light Type 95 Ha-Go tank as the base and fitted pontoons on it, made it waterproof and added rudders and propellers. This made for a fairly seaworthy tank, but it was mostly hand built, complicated to do and well, built a few years too late. Less than 200 was built and they never got to do what they was built for as the Japanese was on the defense when it showed up in active service.

But it's a cool tank and as I envision me having some Special Navy Landing Forces in the future I needed a cool tank to cruse into shore with them.

As of Painting I based the colors from the tanks page on Tanks Encyclopedia and used some weathering powders on it as well, but my thought was to make it appear as it had just surfaced and gotten just a little ways in from the shore.
I also have the waterline version that Warlord makes, but this I haven’t painted yet. But it will make a great addition to my force as soon as I have a sea to put it in...

That’s all for now, I hope to get back soon with some more pacific action.

Battle Report: Bolt Action - Somewhare in Europe, August 1944

About a week ago we got together to play a game of Bolt Action, for my part it was quite a long time since I last played, and most of the rules was rather foggy...

But anyway, we got together and I brought US marines and I faced of some German grenadiers, the armies were roughly:

US

• 3 squads of 7 with 1 or 2 BARs and some SMGs
• 1 M4 Sherman 75mm
• 1 M8 Greyhound
• 3 MMG teams
• 1 Medium mortar
• 1 Sniper
• 1 Flame thrower team
• Officer and a medic team

All troops were regulars and a veteran Sherman.

German

• 4 Grenadier squads with loads of LMGs
• 1 Medium mortar with spotter
• 1 StuG
• 1 Sniper
• 1 Panzerschreck
• Officer team

Everything but the StuG was veterans, the StuG was regular.

We played the maximum attrition mission. I left the Greyhound and flamer in outflank reserve and the Germans left most squads and tank in reserve, with one squad outflanking.
The table was beautifully set up by our game master that was mostly there to look, drink beer and hand out dice.

The first turn started quite uneventful as the Americans poured into the table as there was almost no Germans that was to enter, only our snipers go any targets, the German could not hit a thing while mine hit the one squad that entered the table, but could only manage a pin on them. My Sherman threw a few shots over at the mortar spotter that was deployed from the start, but could not hit anything.

During turn two a bit more happened, firstly the StuG made its presence known and bombed one of the US squads, killing a few of them and piling on quite a few pin markers, and in the center most of my army that could, fired on the first squad that had entered the table, killing of over half of it and pinning them good. Other than that there was some general advancement on the US side and some ranging rounds fired by the mortar.

Turn three came around and now the outflanking troops started to arrive, first some more grenadiers arrived in the German back field, and they punished one of the US squads that got to far up the right flank, killing of over half of them. The StuG continued to fire on the poor marines and they kept their heads low, still losing men and getting more pins. My Sherman tried to knock it out, but could not hit it. In answer to that the panzerschreck arrived but they weren’t able to hit the Sherman either. The German sniper started to earn his pay and knocked out a MMG team.
In the center one squad and the medic advanced and took aim at the house on the German side. Now this was filled with a German squad that was intent on making life hard for the Americans. But good shooting left the squad severely reduced.

On turn four the luck ran out for the StuG, and a 75mm shell from the Sherman hit the fuel tank and set the whole tank on fire, the crew that was not instantly cooked, bailed out. On the left side, my mortar found its target and blew the sniper up, and arriving from outflanking was my flamethrower that burned the German mortar to a crisp. Some more scattered firefight did happen over the board, but nothing that went to the German favor. So here we called it for the Americans.

Bolt Action: US Marine Corps - M5A1 Stuart

It's time for some more armoured action from my Bolt Action Marines, here I have a M5A1 Stuart light tank, used a bit by the marines in the pacific theatre.

The Stuart in it's different configurations was used almost from all the pacific campaigns, from 1941 and the Philippines and forward, but later in the war most was replaced by M4 Sherman tanks instead

I wanted it to look dirty, run down and rather unkindly handled by the jungle, and still have some camouflage on it. I found this general camo from some pictures I found, and so I went over it and dirtied it up as best as I could

Just because I had the transfers, I also named the tank as Marines was well known to do, this little one is called The Bomb, perhaps not the most fitting name, but gives some humour to one such small tank.

Bolt Action: US Marine Corps - M3 Half-track

In a continuation of armour for the marines I know have a Half-track, this is one of the earlier Warlord models, so it's all in metal and resin. And for me I'm glad that they switched it out for a plastic one, for this wasn't a fun model to put together. Lots of flash to remove and more than a few parts that didn't fit that well together.

But together it went and I magnetized the MMGs so that I can present it with the right amount of guns.

As far as painting goes I perhaps went a bit overboard with the weathering, but I wanted it to look like it had been thrown into the jungle and been used there with minimal support as fits some marines stuck on an island.

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!