Bolt Action WWII American Infantry for Chain of Command

Although they have not appeared in this blog any where I have a good sized WWII US Airborne force. I was working my way up to a platoons worth some time ago. I have become quite interested in Chain of Command from Too Fat Lardies while most of my gaming group is playing Bolt Action, I find it leaves me a little cold. Although, to be fair, anything that requires me to buy additional books just so I can play the game leaves me cold. While I haven't had a chance to play CoC yet, I like how the mechanics of the rules work, I have watched all the video demonstration/explanations that Too Fat Lardies put out. So while I search for my airborne forces (I think I know where they are) I thought working on just a straight US rifle platoon would be fun. I was a Total Escape Games last Saturday for the CMPA's monthly 2nd Saturday workshop. It was nice to be in a store where I could actually buy something that I wanted/needed and be able to support such a nice brick and mortar shop.

They had a good selection of the plastic Bolt Action infantry from Warlord Games so I decided to pick it up. I will need a second box though as I want to build a complete platoon at full strength and maybe a couple of extras to go with it (like a sniper team). My current thought is to have it play double duty and start as the core of troops I would need to build an armored rifle company. Now I know this American Infantry box has been out for a while now and plenty of people have built it but I definitely learned a few things while building these plastic miniatures that might come in handy to others that haven't dived into these kits yet.

I'll let the pictures do most of the talking but this is a good solid core set of miniatures for any American infantry platoon besides an airborne one. The airborne uniforms up through D-Day were substantially different issue. Here we have the standard American uniform that was in place from the invasion  of Tunisia up through the invasion of Normandy. While there aren't any instructions per say there is a sheet detailing the layout of the pieces on the sprues and what they are used for. As long as you pick pairs of arms that are designed to be used together along with the appropriate weapon you won't have any problems during assembly. I love the fact that these are actually scale models 1/56th! I think my Artizan Design Airborne troops will match up quite nicely with them. I do feel that they suffer a bit from huge head. Most of the heads just seem to be a scosch (that's a technical term I learned from my mom) to big. The one that feels like the right size is the one in the woolen cap instead of a helmet (although there is an empty helmet that will fit over it).

A few assembly hints: 
1) I found it easiest to glue the weapon into the right hand (and they are all right handed, no lefties in this box!) before gluing it to the body.
2) Glue the right arm with its weapon in place first and in the position you want it.
3) Add the left arm by positioning on the left shoulder first and then "swinging" it up so the open hand meets the rifle. Depending on the glue you used you should have time to pull this off. This lets you adjust everything before the glue sets solidly. Don't dawdle though!

Other than that things went pretty smoothly. I haven't dressed this group up in all its gear yet, this is just the basic build of adding the head, arms and weapon to the torso (5 different torsos, 4 standing and 1 kneeling). Oh and I used my favorite glue, Plastruct Plastic Weld, for the assembly.

That's a lot of plastic. 5 sprues of infantry and 3 sprues of weapons

It has almost everything! Garands, Springfields, Thompsons, Grease Guns, basically everything your regular infantry platoon might need.

This is the first guy I completed. A little slow on the first one, but things went quicker once I got into the assembly rhythym.

A WWII American Infantry Squad consisted of a section of 8 Riflemen armed with the Garand or the Springfield (mostly Garands though). Here are the first 4

And the second group of 4

The Rifle or maneuver section was supported by the BAR team; one gunner, one assistant gunner and an ammo carrier. They don't give you enough BAR ammo pouches though.

And here is the Squad leader armed with a Thompson SMG

And the group portrait. Didn't have a wide enough piece of matte board with me today! While I mounted everyone on the bases provided these are not the bases I'm going to be using. They will suffice until everyone is painted then I'll put them on the profile bases that I like.