Island Hopping – USMC

Martin back with our final look at the new release book this time up its probably the internets most anticipated release and that icon of the movies many of us have grown up with the US Marine Corps in the Pacific. Island hopping, beach assualts, and so much more comes to mind. But what are they like in our favourite war game?

The marines have their own section in the new book, prefaced by a great background and history section coupled with some really informative maps showing the scale of the conflict. The marines time line covers the battles from the Solomon Islands in early 1942 through to the Marshall Islands in February 1944. For each offensive action the USMC would deploy as needed to meet its objectives making the marines a Force that needs a flexible organisation and Battlefront achieve this pretty well enabling you to tailor your force to almost any type of situation. So, lets have a look at what we get in the Force organisation chart.

The marines form one half of the overall US Force chart with 3 Formations available two basic tank companies one of Shermans and one of Stuarts, each with and HQ and 3 Tank Platoons. The highlights here are that marine tankers are Fearless but more importantly in game teerms they are Trained, making them superiour to their army equivalents for a minimal points uplift. The downside to marine tank Formations is that they lack the integral Recce and Artillery support of their US Army equivalents meaning you will need to bolster them with Support units making these quite fragile Formations. But this fits well with my earlier comments about a flexible force concept rather than a large organisation. Maybe the tanks are best utilised as simple Formation Support platoons for backing up a Marine Rifle Company.

The Marine Rifle Company is a mighty beast of a Formation containing everything the marines could need. You can field upto 3 Marine Rifle Platoons which can contain up to a massive 16 teams making them the largest American Infantry platoons in the game. You get plenty of M1 Garand and BAR Teams for assaulting as well as a Bazooka, a 60mm mortar team, two M1919 LMG teams, an M1917 HMG team and a Flame Thrower Team. Meaning your platoon can put out some serious fire power but, its not cheap at 20 points for a fully equipped platoon. Choosing how to optimally configure your Rifle platoons is going to be a subject of much debate amongst players and again fits well with the flexible doctrine.

You then get all the usual supporting options HMG’s, Mortars and 37mm Anti-tank guns eqipped with infantry shredding cannister ammunition. The last two options are the Marine Scout Platton of just 4 teams but they are rather good, and when backed up with the War Dogs Command Card may be a good choice for a Spearhead unit (there are others) in an Attack orientated Force, able to deny sneaky Japanese Infantry Ambush units deploying so they can Charge from Concealment on your advancing units. Unlike Most Scouts these Guys will definately stay in the fight and hit as hard in Assault as any other Marines.

The other unit is more a flavour options but provide the marines with the M3 based 75mm SPM, its only a platoon of 2 but as a tank destroyer vs Japanese tanks these are going to be highly effective particularly in defence as an Ambush platoon option, and with 4 MG shots they will trouble infantry units as well.

Support

Looking at the Support section we get a whole host of Marine flaour units here which are mainly pretty good, we get an alternative to the Marine Scouts with a Divisional Recon Platoon which is much bigger at up to 7 teams and has the added bonus of the Observer Rule. We then get the Marine Engineer Assault Section a mix of Flamethrower and M1 Garand & BAR teams (up to 7 split 3 Flamethrower / 4 Garand & BAR teams). Then we get the Naval Construction Platoon (Seabees) these are equipped with the older Springfield Rifle making them slow firing which may be a drawback and you can get a Formation of these through the Command Cards. These are a great flavour unit but I struggle to see why you would take them for any other reason.

Next up is an AA Option in the 20mm Twin mark 4 AA Platoon, they lack a gun shield but with RoF 4 and AT 6 these will shred aircraft and Japanese tanks, saving on a 3+ as well! Lastly we get the artillery options of the lighter 75mm pack howitzer or the larger 105mm cannon, given both of these save on a 4+ the 105mm is probably a better option with its gunshield for just 1 point extra per 2 guns.

Command Cards

The Maines get a good selection of cards covering all the usual bases as well as providing extra Formation choices, a couple of I have mentioned already and the third I’ll point out is the Marine Paratroop Comapny with Marines equipped with the Johnson Machine Gun making them RoF 3/2 but at the expense of loosing the integral LMG and HMG teams an interesting trade off and maybe worth a look at.

List Building

Now, normally I’d talk about list construction but you will have to wait a short while for that as I will be building and painting the USMC as part of out Tale of 3 Gamers series which will kick off with our next article. Until then happy hobbying and see you soon, Martin.