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.