It has been about a month since I started my games with the 750 point United States Marine list and its been interesting my first six games with them resulted in 4 draws and 2 wins. One of the wins was against the infamous Bonnar and that felt good I have been on the end of the beat stick end of his army many times. What I learned is that the close combat potential of the force is excellent but It needs to timed correctly. The two units with the shotgun and the Thompson’s can put out a tremendous amount of fire and they can survive the incoming fire as well.
As promised I have built the remainder of the 1000 point force, well the force I have planned not the one that was listed on the side of the box. I had made this decision that I was not going to expand the force larger than this level but that has fallen apart, more on that later. We have been plying games that range from between 750 and 1000 points with the tournament that the lads from Home Guard Radio are going to being 1000 points. The extra 250 points will be made up of the following units:
Veteran 37mm Light Anti Tank Gun
Veteran 30 cal weapons team x 2
Veteran Medic + Guard
Guard for the Vet Lt.
The plan is that each of these units will fulfil a specific role within the army giving the force some much lacking punch. The Anti tank gun will provide the main anti armour unit in the army, well at least the more reliable of the three units. Crazy Larry and the Bazooka team is a little to unreliable since he is only 24” range and suffers the -1 for shaped charge, this tends to mean that he is mostly hitting on 5+ due to the movement penalty that he is almost guaranteed to acquire. The benefit of the light AT gun is that it is able to moved by the gunners if needs be. Repositioning the AT guns is obviously not ideal as I sacrifice a turn of shooting to reposition but I hope that Crazy Larry can cover the repositioning of the gun if I have to reposition.
The two 30 cal teams will be deployed alongside the anti tank gun to provide a solid back line of fire support to protect the anti tank team who are going to spend most of their time at the back of the table. Between the 30 cal’s and the At gun they will able to hopefully control 50% of the board.
To add to the units already mentioned I have added a bodyguard to the Lieutenant and the Medic in the case of the medic it will give the unit some more survivability and for the LT it will allow him to charge small units with a degree of success.
Having played a total of 8 games with the 1000 points army I have found that my use of the Bar squads to support the SMG squads as they assault is working well I just need ot become more aggressive with my advancing and not hold back to much.
Now anyone who has read anything on here before or has listened to Home Guard Radio will know that I have a small obsession with tanks, this time however I was determined that I was not going to go all tank mental like I did with my Panzer Lehr force with its multiple Tiger’s and Tank Destroyers. I mentioned earlier that I had picked up one of the new Warlord plastic 75mm Sherman kits since it was looking at me from the shelf and I couldn’t resist.
I built the kit in a very traditional way and I have since decided that I need to converted the tank into something special. The Marine army came with one of the armoured half tracks and I have managed to get it base coated but im in no rush to finish it off.
The only unit that I haven’t spoken about yet is the Air Observer, I was a little sceptical at first about the reliability of this unit however with 8 games down and only one rookie pilot attack run that cost me the Lieutenant and pinned the majority of my force.
So there we have it my 1000 point army as it stands I have a vague idea of where I want the army to go, I have ordered some new shiny things to add to the force these include a M24 Chafee and an M18 Hellcat.
More to follow later as I try to paint the whole lot by September 13th…..oh my
