Olive & Drab ~ U.S. Infantry Re-basing

The latest of my re-basing projects is finished. This time it's United States Infantry. These took me quite a while because I didn't really have many of them painted up for Chain of Command, so I needed to do a fair bit of painting to get them up to speed for O Group. The painted figures I had on hand amounted to a platoon with a section of assault pioneer/engineer, as well as heavy weapons. For some reason I had plenty of heavy weapons. 

Most of these miniatures are AB Figures with a few Simon's Soldiers in the mix. I also had a couple of sections of plastic Italeri/Esci that I started off with several years ago. I wasn't going to use these for the platoons but not because they're plastic (they are pretty nice figures) but because I didn't quite get the colour of their jacket right. When I did the metal figures I used a better colour (it's Vallejo but I don't know what it's called - I wrote "US Jacket" on the bottle so I wouldn't forget).

Despite how the photo's look, in the flesh the bases are quite sandy/gritty and not as green as they appear. This is because I wanted these guys to fit into the Mediterranean/Tunisian theatres more so than NW Europe. Unfortunately, my photographic skills are not very good so I pretty much have to go with what the camera gives me. (Photoshop manipulation can only go so far!)

I like the inclusion of pioneers/engineers. They have 4 bases so that a player can field them as demolition, mine clearance or add a flame thrower for an assault platoon. If you look you'll find that one of the plastic Italeri figures snuck into the the platoon.

The battalion commander demanded a close up. I like FOO base. I'm not sure if this is what these figures are actually supposed to represent but it's what I used them for.

The plastic figures I mentioned above were not left out. I used some of them to make patrol markers. As such they have a different role in a game of O Group so it doesn't really matter if they don't quite fit with the other figures. They still look okay and these bases look better than a flat featureless disc. 

So that's it for the US Infantry. As usual, I don't bother with much detail or things such as unit insignia. Whilst that sort of stuff looks good and I can only admire those folks who take the effort to include those details, I just don't see the point. When they're on the table nobody is going to take notice of such detail. For me a good all-round paint job that looks the part and reasonably decent bases are all that's needed.

P.S.

One other thing about my Americans: I don't have very many vehicles or armour to support them. My main focus has always been Commonwealth/German. Although I have both USSR and US which should both have massive amounts of war-making materiel, I pretty much have bugger all for both of them. What I have for both armies is stored all together in a single plastic box (which is only half full!).