I Think I'm Building Japanese, I Really Think So

So I've been pretty darn busy the last couple of nights. As mentioned a couple of days ago I really needed to make a concentrated effort on my Japanese in the upcoming weeks ahead of the Bolt Action Welsh Open in October. So Wednesday I went on a production line and built all 40 Japanese troops in one night! Granted I was still up gluing pieces at 1am but at least the four ten man squads have been built now! 

My main aim is to get the troops built and painted first and then focus on the weapon teams and guns that I’ll be using in my list afterwards. Last night I primed the first ten men and set upon getting the Japanese colour scheme nailed down. I first tried using the Vallejo Japanese Uniform colour but it’s a horrible yellow colour that looked awful and was a pain to get a consistent coat across the model. I know quite a few people playing Japanese first tried this colour, mainly because of the name but every single one has sworn off it and I can see why.

First Squad Primed

I then tried Vallejo Middlestone and it looked great, more of a greeny yellow this colour will be the full uniform colour of my troops. Browns for the boots, rifle and boxes with a Khaki colour for the bags and pouches. I wasn’t too sure on the colour of the helmet but settled on the German Camo dark green. I then did a full Agrax Earthshade wash before drybrushing Middlestone back over the uniform to bring back up the colour of the uniform. 

It’s a pretty quick scheme but I need something like that for all 40 men. I might try some highlighting if I’ve got the time but my main course of action is get the army tabletop ready and then see exactly how much time 

I have to get everything else sorted. I know what I want to do for the bases too, I want to represent the long grass that a lot of the pacific fighting was fought in. I’ve ordered some 1.2cm long golden grass tufts that should cover halfway up the legs to give this look. If it doesn’t work I’ve got another supplier where you can have a custom length. Hopefully this will add a lot more to the models but I’m going to test one out over the weekend and see what it looks like.

Still trying to sort out my 500pt list for the league game against Jim on Sunday too, I might just use my usual list that is troop heavy but I’m having ideas of adding a Zis-3 Gun so I can use it for any potential armoured cars or as a howitzer on troops. It may be picked ahead of the MMG as I’ve yet to really have much success with that. Keep you all informed on what I go with.

Hopefully another update over the weekend, time depending, on the basing of the Japanese and the list I’m choosing for the Bolt Action League game.

Cheers,

Chalmers