Bolt Action Japanese 1000pts army

Once I finished my 20mm gun and had nothing left in my pile of shame related to Japanese Bolt Action, I decided to call this done. (I will get that last bit of trouser and elbow I spotted on the gunner after photos were taken, but after that I am done…)

I may revisit this in the new normal once I actually get to play this list out. If some extra minis are bought and painted I may share my findings and explain my purchase, but until then thank you for the comments and likes. It all helps chip away at the dark side of lockdown.

Happy Hobbying.

Didn’t enjoy building this.

This metal model was Ok to clean up and prepare but the instructions were very inexact. You were required to attach the two recoil legs at the rear to the central core… But you couldn’t really do that without gluing the cross beam that connects the legs at the same time. This wouldn’t have been that awkward, but to up the difficulty the central core of the gun platform is not resting on the floor so everything had to be supported underneath, at hopefully the right height, for everything to marry up. Even with activator spray this proved tough.

There was also the fun of getting the arm cranking a wheel on the gun to be correctly angled on the body of the gunner, whilst him needing to be sat on a seat that attached separately. I didn’t do a good job of this and needed to fill in a gap in the gunner’s left arm at the shoulder join point. It’s a bad fill job by me, but I have tried to photo from angles where it isn’t that obvious.

The base in the box wasn’t big enough for it to take the total footprint of the gun, so I improvised an extension with a 20×50 base and used glue plus the basing of big stones across the join to get it together.

For most of my other gun teams I just glue them to the base. If I need to show wounds I can just hang red loon bands around their heads so I know they are under strength. This time I figured I will have one removable mini and two permanent. The likelihood is that the enemy will either focus the gun immediately and destroy it, or they will ignore it and only shoot it as a last resort if nothing more threatening is in range. With that in mind I wasn’t interested in putting the extra basing consideration that it may have taken to get the last standing crewman to be separate as well.

Used the basic paint scheme. The Vallejo Japanese uniform colour for the shirts and trousers with Morghast Bone for the belts and webbing. Vallejo flat brown for canteens and the boots this time.

The gun was an experiment I am happy with. Deathguard Green base with a Cryptek Armourshade Gloss shade over the top. Came out a nice military hardware green brown.

I thought that my radio set effort was too small, but by cladding it with some card I think it looks OK.

The mic is made from a cut up  Oathmark Heavy Infantry Dwarf war horn.

I am using him as just a sniper spotter for now, but the radio makes it possible to make a FOO to call for artillery and air support in a future list.

Finally got back to this guy.

The scope looks good on the side. Glad I researched the scope and took a moment to set it in as historically accurate a spot as I could.

Had a ton of fun with the base.

I think I will go back to all the basing on the whole army and add a load of dying  grass.

The weird plant on the sniper’s left is made from metal shards from the sprue of another kit, plunged into blue tac, super glue covered to harden and set then primed and painted. It looks durable enough but I think I will be careful with it.

After i built my tank i started to look at my list again. No decisions fixed, but i knew for my three infantry units to become 4, which is my most likely change, i would need another NCO.

I opened the instructions for the build and got excited that i could have the upgunned variant of this tank as well as the standard version. Trouble was they shared key parts even in just the turrets. In reality there were only marginal changes to the Shinhoto tank from the original, Shinhoto basically translated as “new turret”. If I create a cupola for the Shinhoto turret i could probably field it on this chassis and get away with it gaming wise, but I only ever intended to field this as the standard variant. Just trying to stretch my hobby dollar as usual. ?

The decals really helped to lift the final look and i had lots of spare decals, but sadly the guide didn’t explain what any of the markings represented. Just… “stick this one here and that one there and ignore the unused decals.” It would have been a really nice touch but sadly missed.

I used some spare decals to improve the look of the self-propelled gun. The writing on the carriage side were meant to be on the body of the Shinhoto variant hull and I used a spare licence plate and rising sun flag symbol on the rear hatch. I generally love researching this sort of thing for accuracy, but knowing that my list is taking a dramatic departure from reality, with my FT17 etc. I didn’t feel the necessity to dig too deep.

Looked back at my self-propelled gun and realised i didn’t share how i painted it. Wasn’t helpful for me either, because i wanted the armour to look similar in camo etc.

The kit instructions had suggested colours in the back which helped.

Primed in Army Painter Desert Yellow. The guide suggested Vallejo Flat Brown .984, which i own, plus Vallejo Camo Olive Green which I don’t. For the green parts  I chose Luftwafe Camo Green .823 and Olive Yellow .893 instead.

For the commander uniform i used Death Guard Green with Camoshade wash.

Realised that I actually have a picture of me staring down the barrel of an FT17 for comic effect at Bovington Tank Museum.

I think I can afford to go darker on the green of the tank’s paint if i want to. ?

1000 pts painted.

2nd Lieutenant (Vet.) w/ 2 men – 91 pts

IJA (Reg.) Infantry Squad – NCO & 6 men +8 men (LMG and SMG) – 173 pts

IJA (Reg.) Grenadier Infantry Squad – NCO & 4 men +13 men (SMG, 3 Light Mortars) – 243 pts

IJA (Vet.) Infantry Squad – NCO & 4 men +5 men (LMG and SMG) – 127 pts

MMG Team (Vet.) – 65 pts

Suicide lunge mine (Ireg. x1 Reg. x1) – 1 man units – 34 pts

Sniper (Vet.) w/ spotter – 65 pts

FT17 Tankette (Vet.) – MMG only – One-Man Turret/ Slow / 7+ armour – 42 pts

Type 4 Ho-Ro – Heavy Howitzer – Open-topped/ 7+ armour – 155 pts

10 Dice

995 Points.

Took advantage of the recent sale to get a pdf of the Pacific expansion i was interested in.

I also bought a chi-ha tank kit on ebay cheaply.

Photo shoot of the army as a whole later.

Already looking at an alternative list with smaller squads to make the army more maneuverable and a Chi-Ha Tank to take away the bespoke FT17 element.

Those huge units in the current list, will be easy to see, easy to hit, probably easy to pin and then a big chunk of my force won’t be effective for turns at a time.

I will play my original list just because the maxed out size of the units seems to be the thematic way that the list builder encourages you to follow and my army will look fairly cool on the table i think. If the light mortars start hitting things and pinning things there’s a chance i can get some fire power onto the enemy and make the big units’ dice count really punishing.

I still have a handful of unmade minis, so i will make some extra bits and pieces to allow me to swap bits in and out.

Fun pose. Made from the running pose body, but standing on the back foot. Looks like he’s either jumped off of something or he’s stumbling on the charge.

Scrap of metal backed paper made in to a rudimentary sling. Tie up at the back could be better, but fun use of the left arm meant for prone LMG mini options.

I have been told that on some of the expansion list builders you can have multiple snipers in Japanese lists which seems thematic to me.

So with a bonus sprue i unearthed i am looking to make another sniper. This time i have looked on YouTube for inspiration and found out about the type 97 rifle. It was basically the standard Japanese rifle with a detachable side-mounted scope.

As i said before there is no sniper rifle on the sprue so i have turned to one of my British weapons sprues for a scope.

Joined an Isolation Challenge Facebook page. Paint or hobby once a day and post.

Have used this ounce of pressure to keep building and painting the riflemen and it has kept up the momentum. Up to Day 9 without missing any days, so it seems to be working. ?

https://www.facebook.com/groups/212698999957432/

It has become a little tiresome painting the same scheme over and over, but i have tried to vary the poses to keep myself engaged.

I now have a bugler for each unit. ?

Hastily grabbing his slung rifle and bayonet as he tries to catch up.

Also started painting some of the riflemen’s trousers Vallejo Green Brown, for variety and because I have seen someone on Facebook using this paint as the primary colour for their Japanese army and it looked good.

And chipping away at the rifles required for the last squad of infantry. ?

Got a unit finished!

Plus started using a tool box from Lidl for my army. Even takes the armour easily. Only issue is the MMG team won’t fit. Have to keep flat, but otherwise should be an adequate transport.

Also finished more rifles. ?

Really enjoyed this guy.
Gave him a very different knife / bayonet (strictly against regulations) – points for what war / army it comes from. (or even which sprue.)
Bit of base work with the hatchet buried in a stump.
Happy with the face and general look of this guy. ?

Managed to get an eye painted on this one. A lot of the heads in the box have glasses or squinting and shouting, but when i painted this guy the eye hadn’t accepted the wash very well. So the eye was marginally open and looked glaringly obvious he had no pupil. Had to do it and glad I did.

I tried to make a radio set. Clipped from sprue and painted up…. And realised it was at least a third too small because their hands are too big for it. ?