Second Cuirassier Squadron Nears Completion!!!

Here's the first of several photographs I discovered on our other digital camera that were taken during last spring's Battle of Saegewerkdorf between Jef Hudelson and me. . . The game that was flooded out after only two turns! :-( Above are the Stollenian generals, surveying their position just to the southeast of the village.

Here is the extreme left of the Stollenian line before advancing on Saegewerkdorf.

Here is the battery of Stagonian artillery that caused a fair amount of trouble opposite of Stollen's right flank.

One of the primary targets of that artillery was Stollen's cavalry arm, the 4th (Trakehnen) Dragoons.

And here is the opposite end of Stollen's infantry line, occupied by the 2nd (Von Laurenz) Musketeers.

No photo quite yet, but the second batch of Anspach-Beyreuth Kuirassiere is just about finished. One more tiny thing to paint, then it's onto touching up a few black areas, followed by my usual two coats of Future/Klear acrylic floor finish. Despite the "excitement" of the last month or so, I've still managed to make painting progress little by little and bit by bit. A pretty good thing given how much less free time there is than just a few short weeks ago. ;-) Young Paul is actually napping at this moment in his sleeping sack on my lap. No apparent interest in wargaming, playing the guitar, or cross country skiing quite yet, but he is trying to hold his head up and look around whenever he is awake.

So, only nine cuirassier figures left to paint, and with the university semester ending on Friday, I'll have a bit more spare time to do that. Epecially during the nights since I am taking over for the Grand Duchess once a modicum of sleep and the need to appear cognizent in front of my students are no longer necessary. And when Paul decides to sleep, guess who's going to roll his desk chair over to the painting table? If all goes well, I expect to have the entire regiment finished well before Christmas.

And then it's onto that regiment of Holger Eriksson cavalry purchased last summer. Or perhaps another unit of RSM infantry but in tricorns this time. Or maybe a two-gun battery and crew? Or possibly several additional mounted generals and their ADCs? Of course, I could just have a lie-down now and peruse issue #20 of Battlegames, which arrived in the mail earlier this afternoon. Don't you just hate having to make up your mind like that?

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 ...

The 18th century? What's the Fascination?

Hessian musketeers by All the King's Men Toy Soldiers of Snellville, Georgia, U.S.A. Just a quick post post today, but I thought the above question might be interesting food for thought. Obviously, there is an array of possible periods, theaters, and conflicts that might catch our eyes. But what is it about the era 1700-1799 -- either real, or imagined? Is it the commanders and politics? The fairly straightforward tactics? The myriad of uniforms and flags? The variety and scope of the conflicts? The patchwork of various and sundry petty states, (at least in Central Europe)? I'm very interested to learn your thoughts. Don't be a lurker! Please leave a comment -- or even two or three. Have a nice day everyone!

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...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

Search This Blog