Snow Marpat on my Marines!

There are few uniforms as distinctive as the USMC's MARPAT (MARine PATtern, based off of the Canadian Army's CADPAT). It was such a departure from the old Woodland Camo pattern used by the US armed forces for decades before.

I had to paint up a USMC Quick Reaction Force for a Ghengis Con scenario.  It's an arctic scenario, so how do Marines fight in the snow? A little research later, I can tell you the answer is: Snow Marpat!

And one of the best places to do research is a website called Camopedia.org.  Its a camouflage specific website and they have patterns from all over the world and also into history.

Breaking out my Peter Pig 15mm moderns, I found a squad that would work for me.  It turned out I needed to do a little research on my USMC TO&E.

I decided on snow marpat uniforms, coyote gear, woodland marpat helmet covers, and white snow boots.

Here's the final result:

Defiance Games Kickstarter: Watch out, my Marines are getting a big firepower boost!!!

Defiance Games is running a kickstarter campaign that is funding a pretty substantial expansion of their Alien War showings.

It includes:

• more Marines, (females this time, thus making the UAMC a coed force!) 

• German Mechs (These will be great support for my Panzergrenadiers I picked up last year, see below:) 

• and the above Hardsuit power armor for the marines.

Having purchased a few different items in their list of products, this will help my games I can run for Tacticon 2014 in Denver, CO. I bought in at the $65 level because of all the stretch goal items I was going to get.  I am excited to buy for this type of figure, it seems like there would be more of these around, but there aren't. I also think the price is pretty good, especially compared to the DUST! minis.

 If you are interested, you can find them here until Oct 9th, 5:30pm EDT.

Defiance games Marines Review (part 2: Assembly)

Well, since 2014 is the year of the sci-fi, I am gearing up for those conventions with builds of the various figures I accumulated recently. In preparation for next year, many of my purchases this year were sci-fi. 

As I mentioned in an earlier post, defiance games was on my pre-x-mas list last year.  I started to assemble them this week, and there are some pros and cons to these guys. Let's start with the good:

These guys are about 32mm foot to top of head:

They went together easily. The legs were one piece and I glued them directly to a base (I used a washer as it was not as artificially tall as the standard 28mm base, will blend into the tabletop terrain better, and offers a bit of heft to the model.).  

Next came the torsos. They fit together quite smoothly.

I had a choice to make, which guns to include....most of my guys were riflemen, 

 

With a few heavies thrown in for good measure.

But as you can see, there is one drawback:

I have three leg sets, six different head selections, five gun choices, four left arms....but only TWO torsos! What the heck? That grouping makes no sense! I had "almost enough" to make one more marine per sprue x  11 sprues, so I could have had 11 more guys per box? I should have casted an extra 11 in resin. 

(I may still buy another box and do that. It seems a huge waste of extra parts, I am kicking myself for building all of the guys now!)

So here is a finished marine:

I did mix up the guns a bit, and used all "closed face" helmets. (What can I say, I like the uniform look.) There were other head choices: open helmets

Or no helmet at all:

The only kit included were backpacks, (only one per sprue, I'm using them for radios) ammo pouches, (two per sprue) 

and small pouches (three pouches per sprue, I mounted them on the men's arms).

Overall the fit was good, guys went together quickly using testor's glue (in the black, sloped bottle) and they look cool.

Now for the cons:

First there was a lot of flash on the arms, as you can see in these pics:

There were considerable mold lines, which depending on where they were located on arms and legs, difficult to remove...

After priming them with Armory white primer, they are ready to be painted, however, I have to come up with a camo scheme first.

Next up, painting in Part 3!