28mm Marine

28mm Marine Landing Force

So some people are asking me just how big is the scale of troops and equipment that I will be using for our WW2 Pacific Game (see link to the right on the site). So with that in mind (and just for a laugh) I tried to layout my 28mm USMC landing Force on a coffee table.  See  Tarawa blog link on the right.

I quickly found out my table was about half the size I needed so I did it in two sections hardware / support vehicles and then troops.

I also tried to keep troops in rows of ten to make counting them easier and to line up similar hardware / support vehicles!

I also made two quick videos to to get a feel for the scope of the USMC and linked them together.

Video link...     https://youtu.be/j_l5PiYoTkk      showing a short video of the table.

  

So this was what the hardware support vehicles look like on the table.

1st bottom row : 4 off Damaged Shermans, 5 off Shermans, 3 Stuarts, 2 off Sherman (M32 recovery tank)

2nd row: Damaged Shermans, Dinghy's, 4 off  LVT 2, 1 half track, Exploding LVT1

3rd row: 2 LVT1s in the water, 8 off LVT1 damage markers 

4th row: 8 LVT in the water, 3 LVT1's in shallow water, 2 LVT dame markers

5th Row 8 off LVT1's on land,  LVT damage marker , 2 off DUKW's

6th Row 3 off Higgins LCVP, 1 off Higgins LCVP casualty maker  

. 

                                         The volume now looks a little insane! LOL...somebody stop me!

                                                                          LVT 2's

The troops are mainly all on inserted bases to allow them the dismount. 

For realism we have sea versions, beach landing versions and land versions of most vehicles  - with damage markers as well.

Left: LVT1 on the land and (middle) the approaching equivalent in the sea. White numbers were very roughly marked on the original vehicles  at Tarawa -so I tried to keep it similar.

Swimming Sherman (the USMC did not use DD's nor Snorkel kits at Tarawa). I also did some wading Marines pulling dingys with kit inside them.

You can see the 5 Sherman tanks all have their own names as per the originals on Tarawa with the dancing elephant (Celina, Cherry,  Count etc.).

So onto the troops...approx. 500+ pieces

Top left: Marines, casualty markers

Middle: Heavy Weapons: mortars, HMG, Flamethrowers 

Bottom left: Beach wading Marines, sea casualty markers   

so there are about 120 "playable" troops plus heavy weapons

Is that John Wayne (AKA "Sgt. Stryker" from the "Sands of Iwo Jima" ) in the front of these guys? 

As you can tell the guys are fully loaded...

Below: view of this section from above

About 120 "on land" casualty markers for the game

120 "in the sea" casualty markers for the game

Below middle: Heavy weapons - mortars, HMG flamethrowers etc.

and then about another 120 playable sea wading marines (to get to the shore)

Here they come! 

As you can imagine we are going to need at least 2 or 3 players on each side of the gaming table 

and a quick play rule set!

So all I need to do now is to pack it all away... where's that foam tray!

As usual with our hobby once you start... well its hard to stop and you end up with a storage problem!