Move Five. . .

No combat to resolve in Move Five, but lots of movement and jockeying for position. With an unmistakable air of tactical superiority, Stollen's Major von Topfsange managed to establish a line between Effibriest and the wooded ridge on the southern side of Teodorstal Valley.

The good major next positioned his rallied cuirassier squadron on the eastern edge of the village, thus protecting his far right flank. "If you attempt a move on the village or my flank, I shall send my cavalry crashing into the flank of your own troops, my dear von Adalnowski." His words still hanging in the air, von Topfsange then poured himself another glass of schnapps and, without comment, produced a clay pipe, which he proceeded to light, filling the room with the distinct aroma of the finest Turkish tobacco.

Coughing theatrically for effect, Colonel von Adalnowksi scowled and ordered his forward company of O'Malley's Irish Grenzers into the copse atop the ridge south of Effibriest. "Let's see you get my grenzers out of those woods, old fruit," he challenged through gritted teeth.

Rolling to see if the Pillau-Zerbst gun commander, on his left flank, noticed the Stollenian cuirassiers forming up just outside Effibriest, von Adalnowski threw a "3", indicating that his crew most certainly did observe the new threat. Accordingly, they traversed their gun a few degrees to the left to face it. "Ha! Put that in your pipe and smoke it," von Adalnowski intoned. Major von Topfsange smiled slightly and exhaled another large cloud of smoke in his opponent's direction, signaling the close of Move Five.

The Technical Bits for Those Who Are Interested. . .

* I'm using a much better camera than is usually the case, a gift from good ol' Mom, along with a telephoto lens and another 50mm lens, to document the developing action and later Battle of Teodorstal. It's currently set to focus and adjust itself automatically for each shot. I'm not completely happy with the results just yet, but the learning curve is rather steep to say the least. Click on the photos twice for a really enlarged view of things.

* The woods consist of a dozen or so Zvezda spruce trees along with a whole bunch of birch trees, which are actually sold in bags of 50 as cake decorations for a rediculously low price. I stumbled upon the cake decoration and party supplier, based in Philadelphia, online a few years ago and ordered a bag for something like US$9.95 plus shipping. I demarcate the woods with irregular shapes of green construction/craft paper just like children used to cut up for school art projects with those blunt-nosed, dull scissors when I was a schoolboy so many centuries ago. . . that is in the 1970s.

* The houses and buildings are made from heavy cardboard and bits of balsa wood, assembled with plain old white glue (Elmer's) and painted with acrylic paints as described sometime ago on this very blog.

* The table consists of 2'x2' MDF squares, 3/4" thick, which I painted in Olympic Latex "Meadow Green" two summers ago.

* The hills, painted in the same shade of green, are simply made from sheets of Styrofoam packing material that were scavenged from several flat-packaged bookshelves that we purchased for our library when moving into Stollen Central in the spring of 2008. I'm swimming in the stuff, of course, but just think of the possibilities! Or at least that's what I tell the Grand Duchess, bless her, when she ventures to comment on the stacks of if here in Zum Stollenkeller.