Martin here with my first look at building and collecting a USMC Force for our Tale of 3 Gamers series. First up I must thank Battlefront for kindly supplying me with one of the awesome new USMC army box sets from which I will be developing my 100-point Force.

What’s in the box?

So, let’s start with having a look through what’s in the box. According to the back it’s a US Marine Rifle Formation consisting of a Marine Rifle HQ, 2 Marine Rifle platoons with all the upgrade teams, a 37mm Anti-tank Platoon, a 75mm SPM Tank Hunter Platoon and from the Support section a Marine Stuart Platoon of 4 tanks. Plus an A5 Rule Book, unit cards, some great USMC dice and a set of USMC tokens. What it doesn’t mention is the full beans marine platoons are in fact made up from three packs, the riflemen (USB12), the support weapons with a Bazooka, a Flame Thrower, 2x M1919 LMG’s and 60mm mortar (USB13) and you get a whole M1917 HMG platoon of 4 teams (USB14), as well as quite a number of extra marines based on the assembly guide, as the packing follows the v3 set up of including the BAR as an extra figure, this gives you quite a few extra marine models over the two blisters in the box which is an unmentioned bonus I shall make use of later.

Depending on how you assign out the HMG’s you have between 71 and 74 points based on the book and 73 to 76 under Dynamic Points which is a great place to start as it is nearly all the things I will want. My only minor grumble is that there are no transfers included for the vehicles.

Dynamic Points

The impact of Dynamic Points (DP) is minimal for the Marines with only the Sherman and Stuart being affected, the former go down the later up. This is inline with what we saw in December/January for all the existing Forces. This makes little difference to the Starter Army I am using but if you are considering building a Marine Sherman Formation as your core Force then it will help a lot.

Gaming the box

So how does the box shape up in gaming terms? I have 2 reliable infantry platoons with lots of firepower and good assault capabilities, I have two 1 gun mortars which aren’t ideal but give me some template weapons. I have more than enough defensive anti-tank capability to face the Japanese starter, the Stuarts can either support an infantry attack or be used like mobile pill boxes to provide strong points when defending.

Overall, the box build has two weak points no Spearhead option and more critically no Smoke capability – not even in direct fire. Both issues I will need to address in expanding the Force to my 100 point target.

An Alternative Configuration

Now I’m a reasonably cost aware gamer and my first act on finishing my analysis of the way Battlefront assembled the box was to have a look at how else I could configure this collection of teams, to maybe get more out of it. Clearly, I have more M1917 HMGs so can add an extra platoon of 2 teams or, instead of attaching them to the Rifle platoons concentrate them as a 4 team platoon. I prefer the tactical flexibility of spreading them around and am prepared to pay the small 1 point tax for this additional flexibility and run the risk of my small HMG platoon running off at some point in the game. This allows me to be more agressibve in defence as I can cover more table with HMG fire.

The other idea I have is to drop the Marine Rifle platoons down to the 7 Rifle team versions (you get 10), this frees up enough teams to form either a 4 team Marine Scout Platoon, or a 5 team Divisional Reconnaissance Platoon for the loss of a bit of staying power in Assault. However, I mentioned earlier there are some extra marines in the rifle platoons and this are just enough to make the Marine Scout plaoon out of these with a bit of careful selection to build a command team. Either of these options provides one of the two missing features my Force need, Spearhead. I am going with the Formation option as a starter as I also want to upgrade these with the War Dogs Command Card which offers me a great modelling opportunity (possibly needing less actual marine models as well) and adds protection from Ambushes when the Marines are attacking which will be handy. You can simply give this Command Card to the Marine Rifle Platoons as well which is handy but doesn’t solve my Spearhead problem.

To address my other weakness, Smoke I will have to get shopping. The Marines have two basic options either the in Formation 81mm mortar platoon or one of the Support artillery options. Normally mortars would be the go-to option, and they are a cheap Formation platoon but for facing the Japanese their lack of defensive fire capability could be more of a hinderance than normal. My favoured option is to add a gun troop. The better choice, in my opinion, are the 105mm guns. The fact they have a gun shield makes them a superior choice to the 75mm Howitzer particularly if you aren’t dug in or need to move forward to blast bunkers. They have a better Bombardment rating for both AT and FP and provide some additional higher end AT capability if needed, being Brutal makes them handy when facing Japanese defensive lists with HMG and Gun Nest Teams.

With these I have covered all my requirements in a list. To use up my remaining points I have two options either add some more Infantry (do I want to paint more just now?) Or add to my tank strength.

Marine Tanks

Shermans look a powerful option versus the Japanese, but I can only get 3 at most which is limiting in what they can do and I have to drop the Stuarts. My other option being add more Stuarts giving me a second Formation. The lack of intermixing of the Marine tank types does limit the value of the tank Formations overall. As a side note the Marine Sherman is a superiour tank to its US Army equivalent thanks to being Fearless coupled with its Deadly rating in Assault, the only downside is the platoons are limited to 4 tanks.

Thanks to the Command Card Flame Tanks, swapping the Hull MG for a Flame Thrower (useful against Nests) I can actually squeeze in up to 9 Stuarts into the list depending on which points version I am playing with and this allows me to field them as a second Formation which is never a bad thing to have. So this is what I am going to do as my starting build plus it offers another opportubity to create some unique models for my collection.

This leaves my final list looking like this:

Closing thoughts

In an open environment under DP the Shermans look attractive I can get a full platoon of 4 for the same cost as the Stuarts. This will need a bit of play testing, my feeling is versus the Japanese the Stuarts are the way to go but against anything else then the Shermans look a better choice overall. Unlike the Japanese and to a lesser extent British and Commonwealth as a USMC player you have to make choices about what to include.

So that’s my opening thoughts on what’s in the box and how I am looking to expand it as the new models are released across the next few months – that just leaves me to now to get on with painting.

Martin