A Dispatch to von Wilkewiczeske, Personal Minister to Irwin-Amadeus II

Pelznikkel, The Grand Duchy of Stollen

31 July 1768

My Dear Herr von Wilkewiczeske,

As the closest minister to our troubled Grand Duke, I write to you asking that you might intercede on my behalf.

Currently, my small army is spread thinly around the town of Pelznikkel, just two days march from Krankenstadt. My forces consist of a regiment of musketeers, a battalion of jäger, the Leib (Grand Duchess Sonja’s Own) Grenadiers, a regiment of dragoons, and a battery of field guns. Most of these troops are good men but unseasoned and therefore of questionable value in a pitched battle.

Alas, I fear they are not enough by themselves to stem the tide of Zichenauers now reported to be advancing northward. I beseech you to act on my behalf and request that the Grand Duke and his war ministry dispatch a veteran regiment or two of line infantry along with a regiment of cavalry forthwith, so that the Army of Stollen might enjoy a numerical advantage over its enemy. My officers would then be better able to reverse the course of this protracted, albeit sleepy, campaign and eject the Zichenauers from our own Grand Duchy of Stollen, putting an end to their claim on the Duchy of Schleiz once and for all.

Please send a reply at your earliest possible convenience, but exercise the utmost caution as the territory between the capital and Pelznikkel is rumored to be riddled with enemy agents. Any courier you send stands a good chance of capture or delay due to enemy activity in the area.

Your Loyal and Most Obedient Servant,

General von Drosselmaier

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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