RAPID FIRE! ....................

 

Painting Plastic Figures III

Revell Marines and Pegasus part 2!


The Revell US Marines set is one of the better examples of readily available 1/72 nd scale plastic figures. As I am slowly (very slowly!) drifting towards a build-up of forces for the Pacific Theatre I bought a box after reading about them on the Plastic Figure Review site. For those who've missed the first article in this series you can find the PFR at www.plasticsoldierreview.com/links.html with a full review of the Revell Marines. The poses are great: well animated and realistic and very suitable for troops fighting their way across a beach. The set, a little frustratingly, lacks heavy weapons such as machine guns, mortars and bazookas, but in all other respects it's ideal for building up the bulk of a Rapid Fire Marine battalion. In fact, like Revell's British infantry, one box will provide most of the non specialist figures you need for this size of unit.

I used these figures to create a Marine boat team of 12 figures, which at the time of the Saipan landings in 1943 included (scaled down) 1 x flamethrower and 1 x Bazooka. The flamethrower is included in the Revell set, the bazooka isn't and I'll explain how I got around that later.


I decided my Marines would be painted in the ‘wash and line' bright and bold style, so they'd stand out on the table rather than be over flattering in super close-ups. After the usual warm water and detergent (a drop of washing up liquid) wash and drying I trimmed off the flash and then glued each figure on one of my heavily re-used plywood painting bases. A coat of gloss varnish was then allowed to thoroughly dry, followed by a spray coat of white car primer and (when dry) a dry brush of white acrylic to make raised sections ultra light to get the best effect from the colour wash.


Uniform colours, like those of military vehicles, are always a matter of personal preference. After researching the official shades and allowing for weathering, washing and ‘weenyness' (the smaller the scale the lighter the colour!) the painter is faced with coming up with an interpretation they feel happy with.

For the Marines I decided on a light, but dullish green shade for their tropical uniforms, with buff webbing and the characteristic camouflaged helmet colours in a yellowy buff with green and brown blotches. The painting method has been described in the previous articles so I won't repeat it here.

Once the basic colours were done I experimented with dark green ink lining in. I'm not sure this was successful, but it was less stark than black and even for this ‘better at a distance', painting method black on such light colours can look a little overpowering. It's worth noting that with some plastic figures the lining in can help define detail as the moulding process can often soften the line between say webbing and uniform.



There are enough figures in the box to create 11 of the 12 man ‘Rapid Fire!' boat team carried by an LCVP ‘Higgins boat' or amphibious LVT or ‘Alligator' tractor. Like their counterparts who landed on Omaha and Utah beaches a year later the teams included additional support weapons and the flamethrower is provided by the figure(x 3) in the Revell set.



These fearsome weapons were used extensively in the Pacific due to the need to clear fanatical (and extremely brave) Japanese troops from the bunkers, caves and holes they continued to occupy despite overwhelming odds. The Bazookas had a similar role. Not really necessary to combat the sparse and thinly armoured Japanese tanks they were primarily used to blast strong points and tunnel mouths. See rules 8.103 - 8.109 (flamethrowers) and 8.101 (Bazookas) for how to use them in games.

I cheated and provided the Bazooka figure from the now discontinued and very rare Esci US Infantry set of hard plastic figures. However, I'm confident that – like the rest of the Esci range – this and the other figure sets will be re-released by Italeria before too long.


So there we have it, a plastic figure set with good poses that provide the bulk of figures need for a boat team and battalion of US Marines. Heavy weapons are, admittedly, a bit of a problem. I'm part way through painting the 30 cal MMG team provided in the old Esci hard plastic US Infantry set, but the easiest source of other heavy weapons and their crews is the Italeria (ex Esci) soft plastic US Infantry set, albeit with a few compromises to make regarding uniform and equipment details.

Pegasus update

Having promised last time to update you on my progress with the Pegasus SS infantry I'm afraid it's been pretty slow, due to other painting tasks having priority. However, I have got as far as basic uniform colours and as you can see from the shots below, the brilliantly sculpted deep folds in the Pegasus figures' uniforms lend themselves very well to the ‘wash' method of painting. I'm not anticipating a great deal of lining in being necessary for these figures.



Of course, apart from the faces and equipment, the next challenge is the camouflage pattern on the smocks. I'll show you how I got on in part 4.

Richard Marsh