Last of the Enfilade prep.

Spirit of CNN flits past the LCS-4 Coronado, likely drawing boos and perhaps .50 caliber fire.

Enfilade  begins Friday.  Unfortunately I have to teach that day and I'll leave from school with my fully packed car.  I have to be pretty careful and meticulous in my packing, so this year I've made a pretty long list.  I'm running or helping to run four events, but most of the prep and packing comes in my Chickasaw Bluffs game.  The Straits game is minor because it's a naval game.  The Sail and Steam Navy is still up in the air, but I'm hoping David Sullivan will let me know what ships to bring.  There is also the matter of the Sunday afternoon War of 1812 game Mark Waddington, Doug Hamm and I are playing.  Lots of stuff. It's going to be a busy three days.

Fire Scout drone screens LCS-1 Freedom.  I didn't get a good comparison shot with Coronado to show the size difference.  Those pics were more blurry than usual.

Anyway, I've added some goodies to my Straits of Hormuz vessels.  First, I painted and mounted the two MQ-8 Fire Scout drones that come with my LCS-2 model.  They are nothing to paint, and the mounting turned out to be easy too. The Fire Scouts are intended for reconnaissance purposes, armed chiefly with sensors and a laser range finder.  There was some talk of arming them with rockets, but a couple of crashes in March have got the lot of them grounded at the present time.

A nice look from the side and above to show the size difference between Coronado and the Iranian vessels.  Unfortunately the Iranians seriously outgun the much larger vessel.

I also painted up one more small vessel.  I believe that what the Straits game needed was press coverage.  I had one little left over vessel from PT Dockyard that Dave Gregory sent me as an experiment.  I think it's an MAS boat, an Italian torpedo boat, but what the heck.  I painted the hull white and superstructure red and stuck a CNN flag on the back.  If I had one more, I'd paint it up for al Jazeera.  We talked, while we were doing the walk through, about the public opinion factor.  I don't know if Dave included it in the final scenario, but maybe it will make players nervous.  Besides, it's a naval game which are generally short on the cute factor.

Yeah, this was a mistake.  The CNN vessel is about an inch long and 1/8" tall.  The flag is only 1/8" long.  Magnified it has lots of flaws.  I'm okay with it.  Looks fine on the table.

I've included a couple more photos of  of the big Independence class LCS just for a size reference.  Damn it's big.

LCS-4 Coronado and my most sincere thanks

'm more or less finished with my Independence class Littoral Combat Ship.  As I said in a previous post, it's the Cyber-Hobby styrene kit.  Assembly was just plain over my head.  I am a pretty basic model builder and this had more tiny bits than I was prepared to add on.  Not only that, but it's a game piece and not something to be admired on my shelf. 

Even so, I did manage a fairly basic assembly and paint job.  This was the first time I'd worked with photo etched parts.  Some of them were fairly easy to work with.  Others such as the flight deck rail/netting were beyond my limited tools/experience/ability to do much with.  The final embarrassment, however, were the decals.  The kit came with a pretty extensive decal sheet, which I decided early on I would use selectively.  I chose to paint the dark gray walking areas on the bridge and gun deck and focus mainly on the flight deck.  I never realized getting things to lay down in straight lines could be so hard.

I guess the most important part is the ship is done and I can move on.

I also took a few the time to finally paint my Skytrex APD, or destroyer transport.  It's a chunk of lead I bought six or seven years ago when I first began collecting my 1/600 coastal vessels.  Built on a flush deck destroyer hull, I'm not sure when I'll ever use it in a game, but when the time comes I'll have it. I have a few Skytrex vessels.  I have a pair of their LCG's I've used in a couple of scenarios and I like those a lot.  I'm less wild about most of their smaller craft.  The metal flash seems highly noticeable and hard to get rid of compared to my PT Dockyard boats.  I have one more large Skytrex vessel, a British V and W class destroyer to paint, and I hope to complete it over the summer.

I have a couple of the little helicopter drones to finish that go with the LCS, but they are just a basic gray.  I'll be moving on to 28mm horsemen for my Mississippi project.  The ship models were a very nice break.

Thanks for all of the kind comments about Jack.  It's been a very difficult week for my wife and I.  We've been married for 32 years and she's never seen me shed a tear, but they've appeared in buckets this week.  He was a very special dog, a very special friend and I miss him so. It gets a little easier every day, and we've even begun talking about another companion for my Lucy, who may miss him even more than I do. Maybe in July.  We'll see.

Enfilade is in two weeks.  I'm in for four games.  It looks like I'll remain for as president of NHMGS for at least another year, and I'll try to cobble together a functional board of directors.  Should be enough to keep me off the streets.

Revenge of the Boghammers

Three missiles fired from the China Cats in the background rush toward the LCS Freedom.

Today was the day of the Staits of Hormuz playtest.  Daveshoe and I hauled our ships out to Game Matrix and met son Casey and new friend Charlie Berlemann to try out our game.

I called the scenario Tripwire, not sure it works, but Dave developed a fine scenario based on the closing of the straits by mines.  The Iranian player has to defend the minefield, while the American mission is to clear the minefield, seize any potential mine layer and fight off any Iranian attacks.

Any Dave Schueler scenario requires the players to make choices, and this was no different. Charlie was the American player and chose a Freedom class Littoral Combat Ship and a six vessel battle group including two U.S. Cyclone class patrol boats and four United Arab Emirates missile boats and gunboats.

Casey and I were the Iranians and chose four battle groups.  We settled on two groups of three China Cat missile boats, a group of one Zaraf class rocket boat and four Boghammer class patrol boats, and a group of four Tir class torpedo boats that would enter the game later.

Two of the Iranian groups began the game escorting vessels through the minefield.  I took the Boghammer group escorting a trawler through the mines.  Casey had one of the China Cat groups and escorted a minelaying auxiliary masquerading as a freighter.

One of the escorting Boghammers in the foreground trains its 75mm recoilless rifle on an advancing group of American and United Arab Emirates vessels.

The hands of Charlie Berlemann moves more US and UAE vessels.  Soon he'll move his MH-60 helicopter to the trawler in the foreground and the die will be cast.

Of course Charlie acted aggressively against the minelayer, and attacked my fishing trawler.  He dispatched his helicopter and fired shots across its bows to get it to stop.  Boghammer crews filmed the whole thing for YouTube and Al Jazeera and shouted insults at the American pilot.  I immediately turned my speedy little boats around to give attention to the passel of American and UAE vessels.

Freedom launches a mine hunting MH-60, as it moves to the middle of the board.

After one turn of fire a Boghammer is sunk and another is badly damaged, the trawler is sinking.  However the striped Cyclone is also crippled.

In the next turn a UAE gunboat fired into the engine room of the trawler and badly damaged it. Given all the diplomatic cover I needed, I opened fire on my larger adversaries with recoilless guns and rpgs.  The opening salvo badly damaged one of the Cyclones, and wrecked one of the UAE gunboats.  Fire from Zaraf's multiple rocket launcher damaged an additional UAE gunboat.  Machine gunners on the Boghammers shot down the offending helicopter.

Round one to the Boghammers, but retribution was coming.  Fire from the larger ships sank one of the little patrol boats, and wrecked two more.

However the turn was not over.  The Freedom plunged into the mine field and detected one of the mine locations.  Her helicopter flew off trying to find more.  Unfortunately, with all the the commotion to the north, Casey decided the time was ripe to unleash his TV guided C-701 missiles from his China Cats.

Two hits by C-701 TV guided missiles strike Freedom, leading to her demise. Game over.

With three missiles in the air, Freedom maneuvered to unmask his RAM short range missiles.  Unfortunately it only brought down one of the missiles and the surviving pair slammed into the LCS.  Freedom sank and brought an end to the scenario.

We debriefed considerably.  There was a lot to like about the scenario.  I loved running the Boghammers, but it's always challenging to the game master to know how other players will run their commands.  Dave is talking about some tweaks, but nothing major is required.  It was a great game. We use David Manley's awesome Bulldogs Away!! rules.  I find them to have the right balance of modern technology and ease of play.