Artists' Renderings of the Troops and Battlefield. . .

Here's a sketch, looking from east to west, of the Teodorstal Valley where it seems very likely a preliminary action will occur. In the foreground, you'll notice the Stollenian advance guard moving past Crampas Farm. In the middle distance is the village of Effibriest, while at the western end of the valley is the small village of Instetten. The eagle-eyed among you will also notice an alien ship, looking very Wellsian (Yep, we're really old school around here!), which has just landed on the southern edge of the valley, presumably to observe how gentlemen wage tabletop warfare in the latter third of the 18th Century.

Another artist's sketch, this time of the Stollenian advance guard, commanded by one Major Aegidius von Topfsange (in the yellow coat), consisting of a squadron of cuirassiers, a single gun and crew, and two companies of green-coated jaeger. Figures are RSM95, Revell plastics, and a cannon by MiniFigs.

Finally, here is a view of the Zichenauer advance guard, led by a Colonel Berend von Adalnowski (in white) just outside the village of Instetten. Remarkably, this force is very similar in composition to the Stollenians, however, the order of march is slightly different, The miniatures pictured here are by RSM95, Spencer Smith, Garrison, Holger Eriksson, and MiniFigs.

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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