More Japanese Reinforcements

It actually seems a little to odd to be painting 20mm WW2 models that aren't going on eBay, but these chaps are for my own collection for once, gasp!


I became conscious in my first game that the Pacific supplement of Battlefield Evolution made larger demands of infantry numbers than the basic European lists. In my first two games I've had to run super elite Naval Landing Parties to make my 45 or so old models adequate.


To resolve this I picked up a pack of the Waterloo 1815 set of Japanese infantry - clearly manufactured by the people who make Caesar miniatures in China, same level of sculpting and everything - to make up the numbers.


From these I could add command elements and additional riflemen to each section, as well as adding a combat engineer squad (with flamethrower) and another Heavy machine gun team.


The models themselves are a mixed bunch, most are very nice and the Caesar sliding block moulding technique allows for some nice poses. However I do have gripes too.


The machine gun is over-scale and aiming very high, it's a nice pose spoiled, in general about 50% of the poses have over sized or poorly realised weapons. The worst pose is undoubtedly the 'Knee Mortar' so badly executed (he'd be lucky if any bomb he launched didn't land on the ground five feet from him, so high is he aiming) that I didn't even bother with it.


They is the mandatory figure with the rising sun banner too, but this is atrocious and really, who needs four of them? Fortunately it could be salvaged as a lunge mine, by chopping the flag off and adding some plastic tube to make the shaped charge.


Now I'm ready to undertake a proper Banzai charge, with well over 70 Japanese.


Only need to add some anti-aircraft fire and I'm sorted now...