Hobby Champions: Jim Butler’s Japanese Force

You can’t keep a good man down – or Head of Sales & Marketing Jim Butler out of his hobby room. He’s back with another Bolt Action force, this time turning his hand to the new Japanese plastic kit. One of these days we’ll have to force him to do a battle report – and he can supply all the armies!

Having painted four Bolt Action armies all on snowy bases, by the time the end of 2025 rolled around I was feeling rather chilly and in need of something to warm me up. Getting hold of a copy of Armies of Japan was just the tonic – browsing the pages and pages of lush jungle terrain almost made me feel like I was on a Pacific island – hopefully not in the 1940s, though. Once I got hold of the new plastic sprues I was excited to see all the different options, including all the foliage that could be used for, amongst other things, decorating bases.

I followed my usual approach of grabbing a couple of sprues to put together to help me get inspiration. After assembling a couple of units using a variety of heads I went back to the Armies of Japan book and spotted the illustration on page 28 of an NCO in camo. With a base green uniform he looked like part of the Special Naval Landing Force and this gave me an idea to do an SNLF force that included a few veterans in camo. I set about creating an army list, and assembled the rest of the miniatures in line with this list.

All my officers and NCOs have the Shin Gunto sword option as part of their wargear – it’s one of the things that makes this army really stand out from other Bolt Action forces and gives them a real presence on the tabletop. My Rifle Platoon is built around a Veteran Platoon Commander leading two small Veteran infantry squads (which will benefit from the Iron Discipline rule) and two full strength Regular Squads. These should be pretty resilient to enemy fire and if I can get them into close combat the Fanatics special rule will give them a good chance to overwhelm their opponents. They are supported by a light mortar team, a lone sniper (too cool not to include) and two suicide anti-tank teams.

Adding a Heavy Weapons Platoon gave me another officer and two medium machine gun teams – the latter were another motivation for collecting this army, as for the first time you have heavy weapons on the infantry sprue. I also added three more light mortar teams (which get the special rule allowing them to fire at shorter range than normal). While Japanese armies have the ability to put mortars inside infantry squads, I decided to field the light mortar teams as individual units, taking advantage of the ability to add an extra man for +5 points regardless of veterancy, which makes them harder to eliminate, especially if I can get them into cover.

Once I’d put together my two ‘foot’ platoons I had just under 300 points left. I did consider getting some metal guns for an Artillery Platoon but I realised that the plastic Type 97 kit makes both the Chi-Ha and the Shinhoto Chi-Ha, which meant I could get a light howitzer and a medium AT gun into my force without breaking the bank, and once again had managed to make an all plastic army (there’s a nasty rumour going around the office that Jim’s deathly afraid of superglue – ed.). I painted them both with a base coat of Ochre Clay, though with the Chi-Ha I added a few drops of Sand Golem – I wanted the tanks to look slightly different, again to give the sense of an army that’s been campaigning in the field for a while. While in real life Japanese armour was always well behind Allied designs, in the game they are a cost effective way to get some armoured support into your force, and I really enjoyed putting the kits together.

The paint scheme for the infantry is pretty simple. The tunics and most trousers (and the helmets with webbing) are Army Green with a Military Shade wash. Where there was any pooling on the raised detail I re-highlighted with Army Green, but this wasn’t necessary on most models. The Veteran units I also gave the camouflage pattern I mentioned earlier – simply small patches of dark brown – using thinned Satchel Brown. 

The webbing is Ancient Stone with a Strong Tone wash – I also painted some of the trousers with this, to give the army a more ‘lived in’ feel. Historically the webbing was a little lighter in tone but I’m happy with the results – I’m going for a well weathered force so some variation in colours fits the theme. The helmets without webbing are Prairie Ochre, again with a Strong Tone wash.

Basing really brings Bolt Action armies to life – in this case I wanted a really organic feel to emphasise the character of the army. I used a mix of the foliage on the sprue, grass tufts of different tones and then a mix of flock and static grass. I like the variation in texture and tone, and it was very quick to do.

While I was arranging my army to get the wonderful Chris Bilewicz to photograph I counted up the models to make sure they were all there and got to 67 infantry. That confused me, how could I have an odd number when I’d used all the bodies from the frames I had? Then I realised of course one of them was a lone sniper and didn’t use a body. That’s one more bonus feature about this kit – you can squeeze out a couple of extra troops using the shell hole and trapdoor. And I still have lots of them left for my ever growing bits box – when I get round to it I’m going to use them to make some objective markers for a jungle themed terrain board.