A Dispatch to General de Latte. . .

Schmitten, The Principality of Pillau-Zerbst

28 July 1768

My Dear General de Latté,

This letter is to inform you that my force and I will join your army in several days’ time just north of its current position. In my charge is a company of the Wolmar-Bock regiment, operating independently of its parent formation. The men, though ragged and somewhat course in temperament, are eager to join your army and will perform well in battle as I had the chance to observe some years ago when my regiment fought the Prussians in Pemerania. We were then in the service of Sweden. Both myPrince and colonel have asked me to relate that they will send additional companies if and when required in the interest of fostering closer ties between the Electorate of Zichenau and our own Principality of Pillau-Zerbst.

Your Faithful and Obedient Servant,

Captain Licentius von Meckern

Comments

Anonymous said…

Was von Meckern, perchance, originally an artillery officer?

"PLAY ANYTHING, SIR, JUST PLAY IT LOUD!!!"

2:19 PM

Der Alte Fritz said…

It seems to be "Wacky Font Night" in Stollen.

11:03 PM

Bluebear Jeff said…

Perhaps this mail has been intercepted by those lovely ladies who represent the Presipality of Monte-Cristo?

(note: I believe Jean-Louis should be back online within the week . . . let's give his agents credit in absentia.)

-- Jeff

3:19 AM

Steve-the-Wargamer said…

...and the spell checker is off.... :o))))

6:31 AM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

NO, no. . . The name Licentius is deliberately misspelled to make it appear more "Latin" in form. ;-)

Best Regards,

Stokes

10:33 AM

And We're Off!!!

Arrrgh! Gotta go back into camera settings on my iPhone to bring all of the frame into focus. Blast! Painting is underway on the 60 or so Minden Austrians, which are slated to become my version of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment of AWI renown. More or less indistinguishable from Austrians of the era really, right down to the red facings and turnbacks, but the eventual flags (already in my files) will set them apart. I went ahead and based-coated all of them over a couple of days lthe last week of August, using a mix of light gray and white acrylic gesso, before next applying my usual basic alkyd oil flesh tone to the faces and hands. In a day or two, I'll hit that with Army Painter Flesh Wash to tone things down a bit and bring some definition to the faces and hands. As usual, the plan is to focus on about 20 figures at a time, splitting the regiment roughly into thirds along with the color party and regimental staff. Depending on ...

Sunday Morning Coffee with AI. . .

A rmed with a second cup of fresh, strong coffee, I messed around a bit this morning with artlist.io using its image to image function in an attempt to convert my hand-drawn map from September 2006 to something that more resembles an old map from the mid-18th century. And just like my experiments with Ninja AI in June, the results are mixed. The above map is pretty good, but Artlist keeps fouling up the place names and has trouble putting a faint overlay of hexes across the entire area. Hexes, admittedly, are not likely to be found on any genuine maps from the era in question, but there we are. Frankly, I prefer the appearance of the Ninja map, but there were problems getting it to correct its errors. Grrrr. As is the case with so much having to do with the various AI's out there now, the output generated is a direct result of the prompts entered. For text alone, and when you develop a lengthy, highly detailed prompt, it is...

Continued Regional Map Revisions. . .

F ooled around a bit more with the revised map just before and after dinner this evening, using the Fotor app to reinsert missing text . I also removed a few other things using the 'Magic Eraser' function, which works surprisingly well. Now, we're getting somewhere. I just have to figure out how to ensure that the text is all a uniform font style and maybe figure out a way to add a few bunches of trees to suggest forested areas, Ninja AI is not always entirely cooperative to the tune of "I'm sorry Dave. I can't do that." -- Stokes

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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