Plastic Soldier Company 1/72 US infantry sets

Following on from my review of Plastic Soldier company's American Tanks, I had to get some infantry to support them, and thus acquired both their US infantry and US Infantry heavy weapon sets.

Amongst the myriad of 1/72 and 20mm sets you largely have a choice of soft plastic polythene figures along the lines of the old Airfix stuff, which whilst cheap tend to be a little soft and lacking in detail. Alternatively you can go with the metal ranges, and whilst these are stunning figures, especially the likes of AB Miniatures or SHQ, they do tend to be vastly more expensive. 

Coming to the rescue (some time ago, but still, I'm new to 20mm), are Plastic Soldier Company with a large and growing range of excellent 1/72 scale figure sets. Currently these are focused on the later war period, but fingers crossed they will expand some more of their 15mm sets to the large scale. 

Each set is very well appointed with figures, and I've put mine together for the excellent Battlegroup system. 

The US Late War infantry set contains 51 figures, including a mix of radio operators, BAR gunners, riflemen and figures with Thompson SMG's. Though marked as late war the figures are actually all wearing the earlier M41 uniforms so are ideal for Normandy and Italy, though this was worn right until the end of the war, never totally being replaced by the later M43 uniforms. 

The only irk I had with the set was the infantry webbing at the back looks like a German Y strap rather than the X shape it should be for US webbing. I did toy with the idea of changing it but decided I could live with it. 

The heavy weapon set features a bucket load of ordnance, this is from the PSC website: 

57 hard plastic 1/72nd miniatures and 18 models depicting WW2 Late War US infantry heavy weapons as follows:

• 3 M1917 machine gun teams
• 3 M1919 0.30 cal machine gun teams
• 3 M2 Browning machine gun teams
• 3 60mm mortar teams
• 3 81mm mortar teams
• 3 4.2 inch mortar teams
• 3 Bazooka teams 

 

 

 

 

Whilst this huge range of weapons is not overly necessary, the beauty is that combined with the infantry set it allows you to use your collection as either mechanised infantry, glider infantry or regular leg dog faces.  I've built a small sample of it to fill out my platoon, however I'll built a couple of the heavy mortars and M1919's when I expand my collection. 

 

The heavy weapon set has some fantastic crew, and this time the webbing is accurately represented, the only fly on the ointment is that the .50 machine gun is enormous, easily the size of a 28mm weapon, if not bigger, and I replaced mine with some spares from my tanks. 

 

 To paint these I started off with leather brown for the trousers and Russian uniform for the jackets, and then highlighted up using khaki for both, mixed with increasing amounts  of pale sand, all from the vallejo range, a quick hit of  army painter soft tone on the trousers, and army painter green ink on the jackets with a final highlight of pale sand and the figures were done. 

 

Basing is a mixture of Warlords new grass tubs, and some plants I acquired from Ebay.

 

Both these sets are excellent value, and apart from a few accuracy quibbles are a great buy and an excellent way to either build up or expand a force.

As ever you can see more of my work at Volley fire Painting Service and you can order your figures from Plastic Soldier Company.