5 Marines walk into a bar.

 And the bartender says; we don't serve your kind here, and I say, hey, if I want to drink watered-down whisky and play with my miniatures you have no right to stop me. 


So I started playing around with the Huey in DCS, it's an evil machine that wants to murder you any time it has the chance. But it's a fun ship that really requires that you fly it all times.

Here I fly a Huey as we take out a Russian base.

And here I do my first landing on a firgate. 

Ah, but don't worry I'm not here to bore you with just video games videos. 

Since I flew the Huey a lot, I got into the Nam mood, even if the game doesn't really have any Vietnam assets. (you have some Vietnam era aircraft like Huey and MiG21) but you don't have Vietnam-era infantry, ground vehicles. So you can't do a hot LZ landing under fire from NVA etc. 

But a Huey is a Huey, so I pulled out some Nam stuff.

I painted 5 marines

This means my Marine force is 20 strong.

I only have 5 grunts left to paint, and maybe an M60, as well as a 60mm mortar team.

If I manage to paint the last 5 marines, I'm out and I need to order more to finish the platoon. So hopefully I'll feel like doing the last 9 man NVA Squad and its two HQ figures. I also have the figures to do 3 support options, a separate RPG team, a.30cal MMG and a nice big 12.7mm HMG.

Just a quick trip to NAM

As has happened before, sometimes you just see some figures you have to have.
This time it was Vietnam US Marines from Empress.
I ordered 12 just as a test taste, and they tasted good.

I ordered a Vietnam paint set from AK, that I really like too.
The first two got 6 or 7 shades for green, I think it looks very good, I tried to simplify the two others with just 4 layers but feel the contrasts became too big. The uniforms could be even lighter, But I feel they get very light OD if you continue to lighten it.  I'll definitely order more to complete the platoon Since they are on single bases, I can use both Chain of command Vietnam rules or bolt action Vietnam rules.

 The figures are very nice, 

Light up the tree line!

Mini Marines 2

 More small marines! This base is "advancing! Again trying to make "peleliu"  bases with coral upcrops ect.

Mini Marines

 So I wanted to paint some 15mm again, but needed an excuse, so since I base my 28mm for skirmish gaming, I thought 15mm would be great for blitzkreig commander. These are peter pig, great figures, tho not a fan of the faces. So first mission is to build a platoon, Thats 3 squads and HQ squad.

Given the standard rule of the smaller figures lighter color, I use the same colors for the 28mm, but dropping the darkest shade of brown violet, instead the shade is not russian uniform, with mid color beeing green grey, and the stone grey beeing the lightest. So less of the dark and more of the stone grey(that I use just a tiny bit of on the 28mm) Also the rifles get two shades of wood, instead of 3, the metal is gunmetal color instead of black, to make the barrles more visible.

The faces get 3 colors instead of 5, other then that it's the same, boots get 2 colors, as in the 28mm, same with webbing ect.

 I like these, they look alot like the 28mm only smaller.

 I decided to do rather big bases, showing them abit spread out. I did the bases kinda like pelulu, lots of stone/coral, with some rocks and very little vegetation.

 I'll try and do a theme on each base, here they are all fireing/giving cover in the next they will be moving.

The Pacific

 So did some more painting, five more plastic marines, and a 3 man M1917A1.

I did a few changes from the first 3, mostly the helmet cover got some diffrent colors I think look more like the real thing. I'm still slightly in love with the marine color I use now. And I really like the 2nd louie I did.












BAR Gunner,

 This is the second louie I was talking about

 One of the reasons I like him is that the carbine turned out so great. I think one of the biggest advantages of plastic WW2, is that the guns look, well like guns, in metal the guns are either so mangeld you kinda can see what type of gun it is, or it's so big an chunky, they look almost like space marine guns. But the plastic guns, are not only great looking but also more or less the right proportions.

 M1917A1,

 I also really like the "pointer" man, I think he has great highlights.

Ah but I got more for you today, I also cracked open the box of japanese.

I found a nice triad for them, Tan brown, vallejo japanese uniform and coat d arms japanese unifom.













I like the unifom, it's not super colofull, but the redleather against the brown yellow uniform, really does stand out.

These were fun to paint, but I felt they could have dropped that one pose were the figure is running so fast it and with his body so far forward it looks like he is tripping over a stone. Also the figure head with the "cliche" round glasses was also unessesary.

FINNALY!

As regular readers of this blog will know, I've tried to get the Marine unifom color right. And finnaly I have done it. I orderd a box of plastic marines and plastic japanese, And also the color set for both from warlord. And I got the marine color, that od, almost od, yet not od thing.


The plastic figures are great, a billion times better then the warlord metal marines, that has lots of flash od pointed corner ect. These are much better, but they still have these very over the top faces.
But I did find too few cartridge belts, given most troops should use the garand or springfield, there should be more of the cartridge belts. Even with just 3 out of 5 figures here, the spur did run out of them. if I wanted to do all 5 or 6 with rifles, I would be missing alot of them. We do get a few bandoleres, and it was common for some soliders/marines to drop the belt and just load up with the bandoleres.
Also no desingnated carbine pouches.

Oh and my pet pewe the carbines have the bayonet lug, that was only used at the very very end at the war, MABYE a few marines did get it the last weeks at Okinawa, but more likely only by the time of ocupation in europe or Japan, did they show up in any number.

But this is commen, older movies like A bridge too far also had that damn bayonet lug, more updated movies like saving private ryan, band of brothers and pacific did have the propper ones.

But I'm happy with these, and very happy having found the right colors.

 Rilfe stocks came in varied colors, I did theise in bright redish wood, you also had mid wood and dark oak colors. The thompson got the dark oak color on the wood.  I also did the bases with black sand from Iwo Jima.

Marines Mark 2

 So I got in the Pacific mood, I only had 5 spear figures, I wanted to try a new color of marine dungeries.

The marine uniform is just hard. diffrent makers had difrent shades. and as they got worned some when light other dark ect. And to make it harder the original color is a strange sea green/grey green thing.
I tried so many colors, so some of these figures probebly got like 10 layers of uniform colors. Finnaly I got down to a mix of iron grey for shade, then green grey, and finnaly I had to mix green gray and sea grey in two diffrent mixes, first a semi light and finnaly a lighter one. It probebly won't fit all marine uniforms, but it does look alot like atleast some uniforms I've seen.

More Marines

 So did 4 more marines, I must say I like the marpat effect, at some distance of when lookig at small photoes, the look green yet not quite just green.

 Then when you look up close you get the brown and black to, I'm very satesfied with these the cammo does take some time, as there are sevral layers, and some times you get to much brown or black and have to go over them again, balansing out the colors.

 It's really quite cool, but hard, since you have to stop and take notes during the way, and you never know exactly when you got it, untill you got it. So it's not like painting regular uniforms, were you paint dark blue, lighter blue and lighter blue still, here you might go back and forth sevral times untill you get the right look.

 I got sevral more marines, in total I have 16 marines and 12 russians. One of the hardest things is to make generic bases, with horse and musket units you can never go wrong with bases with lots of grass, but with modern, modern figures that might be in forests, fields, or urban, it would be a pain in the ass to have 2 sets of figures, well 3, 1 woodland, 1 desert, 1 urban.

So thats just something I have to live with.

More Marines

Well I rewatched the Pacific now with my 1080p 50" plasma tv.
So that ment I got into painting my marines again, this is a small side project, I only need about 40 marines and 40-60 Japs(disclamer, I call them japs as it's propper ternonamigly for the period, I do not call japanese people japs in other sicunstances)

Now I had planed on doing all my marines in kaki, but it seems there was no standard for this, even Pacific shows random asortment of kaki and sage/faded olive uniforms even as late a Peleliu. For the green uniforms I used faded olive, with light brown ink to dirty it up.
I also did the web gear with a mix of propper olive drab and dark kaki, even a mix with in the same figure, mabye a olive belt and ammo pouches and kaki canteen cover ect.
Some marines got kaki shirts and green trousers ect. To make a real rag tag vetran marine look.