Machine Gun platoon: painting and basing!

The Japanese Machine Gun platoon is by far my favorite infantry/gun Japanese platoon. It is made of a small base command team and four medium bases with a heavy machine gun (HMG), a machine gunner, an ammo guy and a rifle man each. 

For the painting, I followed my standard described in an older post. I used some new colors: for the machine gun, a base coat of Dark Gunmetal highlighted with Oily Steel; base coat of Hammered Copper highlighted with Copper for the bullets. 

It is a shame that all the Gunners and ammo carriers have the same pose, but then I tried to base them in different positions. Since the HMG's are more stationary units than the regular infantry, I decided to add to the bases some sandbags. I followed the example on how to make sandbags in this Rust and the City post. Three rows of bags is enough to give a realistic look.

Green stuff sandbags added to the base.

Full HMG platoon with sandbags.

The painting scheme for the sandbags is: Black primer, Military Khaki base coat, Worn Canvas highlight and Battlefield Brown dry brush.

Platoon Command team with painted sandbags.

HMG team with NCO and painted sandbags.

There is a hole in the bags barrier to allow the rifleman to shoot.

After painting the sandbags, I added sand and grass as described in an older post. Since some of the bases had a lot of empty space, before adding the grass I decided to add either some spare sandbags or wood logs. I used real wood sticks found in the garden, and glued them to the sand with Super Glue. 

Base with sand and wood logs.

Finally after adding the grass, I added one final detail: HMG rounds on the ground. I followed this awesome video by Modeldads. Added small pieces of thin wire, painted with Hammered Copper and Copper. Last step is a layer of varnish to protect the model.

The final look is quite awesome :)

Finished HMG team with rounds on the ground.

HMG team with wooden logs.

HMG team with spare sandbags. 

Banzai!