Painting Progress and Enfilade Preperations

Work has been keeping me busy the past month and I've been a little out of synch with my project painting and Enfilade preparations. But I've made some major progress over the past week and-a-half.

First up, I finally completed my version of the LCS-2 from PT Dockyard, although the LCS-2 model isn;t for sale any longer. I hadn't based the ship when I took these photos, but they will give you a good idea of how it turned out.

Port side view

Starboard side view

And a better view of the helicopter deck

As you can see, I used the photo-etch netting for around the helicopter deck. While it turned out looking okay, my experience with the photo-etch parts has pretty much convinced me that I don't want to use them again (I just don't have the right tools for working with the parts and I'm not sure that they added that much to the game model). I was hoping to find some decals to help with the helicopter deck, but ended up just painting the lines myself (there is supposed to be a circle in the middle of the deck, but I couldn't get it to look right and just painted over it).

The LCS-2 is going to be part of the Straits of Hormuz scenario I'm running with Kevin at Enfilade. In addition to the LCS and a bunch of Iranians (more on them later), the scenario will include mines. So, I picked up some naval mine markers from Fight's On!, the same guys that make the missiles I use in my games. They come 8 to a pack and paint up nicely.

Naval Mine markers from Fight's On!

The mine markers are around 1 inch in diameter and will fit with most naval miniatures (although they are probably too big for my 1/6000 scale stuff). Here is a photo so you can get an idea of how they compare to the LCS in size.

I don't think this is how the Navy wants the LCS to clear mines.

On the other side of the scenario, we have the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Navy. These ships are also from PT Dockyard and I picked up a bunch of them. 

Iranian boats: in front are two Boghammers, on the left is a Tir class torpedo boat, in the middle is a C-14 "China Cat" class missile boat, and on the right is a Thondor class missile boat.

The Boghammers are from a new mold and are one piece, so no assembly required. The Tir class torpedo boats came in 3 pieces; the hull, aft machine gun, and radar mast. Overall, these went together pretty easily. The C-14 "China Cat" missile boats had 5 pieces; hull, twin 23mm gun, 2 missile boxes, and the radar mast. The only issue with these was that I needed to putty up some holes in the missile boxes. Again, these weren't too hard to assemble. The Thondor missile boats were a little tougher. These ships had 8 pieces; the hull, rear gun platform, 2 missile boxes, the upper radar mast (the lower part was molded on the hull), a twin 23mm gun, a fire control radar, and the barrels for the twin 30mm gun. The Thondors proved to be the toughest ships to put together. For some reason, I was only able to get part of the guns to turn out. So, I had to dig through my "Spare Kits" box for the guns and fire control radar. The models turned out fine, but I was glad to have some extra parts around.

I'm a big fan of Dave's work at the PT Dockyard, but these ships aren't for everyone. The resin kits are usually not to difficult to work with, as long as you have some sharp knives and/or clippers to trim away excess resin from weapons and other parts. But the parts can be hard to cut away from the resin or get deformed while cutting. Many are small and can be a bit of a pain to assemble at times. For me it is worth the extra effort, but for newer modelers I would recommend getting some of the plastic or metal weapon kits that are sold by various model companies. It will probably make it a little easier to assemble these ships. 


Kevin and I are going to playtest our scenario this weekend and it will be interesting to see how each side uses their forces. We'll be using David Manley's Bulldogs Away! rules for the game. Unfortunately, I won't have my camera and won't be able to take photos of the playtest. So, here are a couple more shots of all the boats and mines together.

Comparing the size of the Iranians and the LCS

I'm looking forward to trying out the game, since I expect most of the players won't really know much about the ships the are commanding. It should be fun.

One last group photo