Bolt Action Japanese 1000pts army

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. ?

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.

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.