Those new Zvezda Swedish GNW Dragoons look very tempting!

The Plastic Soldier Review people have their latest review up. . . and it's on this new release by Zvezda. Find the link at right and have a look yourself. In general, these look and sound like excellent figures, so I might just have to order three boxes to form a large regiment of dragoons, who fight for on of the lesser principalities surrounding the Grand Duchy of Stollen and the Electorate of Zichenau.

Have been exchanging e-mails with Richard from the Dayton Painting Consortium about some suitable cuirassiers (with swords cast as part of each figure rather than separately, as in the case of the RSM Prussians) . Looks like the Austrian troopers and officer fit the bill. Richard suggested that I use the English heavy cavalry trumpeter. Since I want to include a standard bearer in the unit, I 'll have to ask about that. I think I might need to use one of those open- handed Prussians here with a flagpole and a home-made paper standard, which I always prefer to commercially available flags and standards.

One of you, Marc, I think, asked whether I was moving away from plastics in favor of metals. Quite the contrary! As you'll see, I am excited by the new Zvezda set -- so much, that I think an order is imminent.

I must admit though that those attempted conversions (Zvezda Saxon cuirassiers and Revell tri-cornered heads) currently hold less fascination for me than they once did. I just can't seem to get the angle of the cut right when I separate the heads from their original kneeling musketeer bodies. The result has been that many of the heads are cocked at very strange angles when pinned and glued to their new cavalry bodies. I think it's very good that I harbored no desire to become a surgeon when I was younger!

So, those are on the back burner for the time being. Besides, I've got hussars to finish, a game with Jonathan Broadus to plan, and an 80-figure regiment of RSM Prussian fusiliers to paint before year's end.

Which brings me to today. No social obligations for the first time in about two months this weekend. Meaning that painting can assume its rightful place once more here at Stollen Central. I hope to wrap up that first squadron of Revell Prussian hussars and maybe get started on the second. Look for some photographs Sunday evening or Monday morning!

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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