The Game is Afoot Once Again! Move Two Melee and Artillery Results. . .

The Stollenian Jaeger zu Fuss, within and outside of Eispicke Village have not fared well during Turn Two. The red-coated battery of Zichenauer artillery on the hill at the eastern end of Sittangtal (remember them?) fired on the village once again this turn. This time, however, they found their correct range, and inflicted two casualties on the enemy troops holding this isolated group of half-timbered wattle and daub structures.

Elsewhere in the same vicinity, Zichenau's dastardly, though dashing, first squadron of hussars wreaked havoc among that isolated platoon of Jaeger zu Fuss, inflicting six casualties in bloody melee before retiring the requisite 12" to rally and regroup.

And here we see those smug ruffians gathering around their colonel and guidon just outside the northeastern edge of Eispicke Village. No doubt, they are bent on spreading more panic and confusion elsewhere along the Stollenian lines during subsequent turns.

"Oh, I say!" exclaimed General de Latte, "Your jagers have taken a damned good whacking this go around old boy. Time for you to get serious about things like winning, eh?"

"Er, what?" answered General von Tschatschke in a fluster. Is that brandy on the tray over there, old shoe? How about a snifter of that for the old tactical abilities?"

"By all means," replied de Latte. "Help yourself, but I'm afraid you'll need more than that now that the rest of your jaegers are pinned down in Eispicke Village. A Cuban cigar would be just the thing, I think."

"Oh yes," said von Tschatschke, warming to the idea, "That would do nicely. Shall we agree to start Move Three then?"

"Move Three it is, then, old boy," said de Latte with a smirk. "Here are your cigar and matches. Do help yourself to the brandy. There's a good chap. Snifter glasses are over behind the bar. Now, how about those orders?"

It's Early Days Yet. . .

M aking some early progress with Batch A of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment over the last several days/evenings. Nothing terribly exciting just yet, but the basic black, brown, and flesh areas are done as are the green bases, and gray undercoat. The latter two areas needed some careful retouching early in the week. Next up, the neck stocks. I might just do these in red for the enlisted men although some of my source material suggest they were black, but I always look for an excuse to shake things up a bit. Any errant splotches of red (or black) can be covered with another application of light gray before I move onto the next step. "Giddy up!" as one Cosmo Kramer might have said. -- Stokes

A Little More Brushwork. . .

A little more brushwork on the first batch of (my version of) the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment yesterday (Saturday). Taking a different tack this time and addressing many of the details first before the white coats and other larger areas of uniform. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that I've painted the (dark) red stocks of the enlisted men. Always a difficult and frustrating item to paint, it made sense to paint from the inside out as it were and get that particular detail out of the way first rather than try to paint it in later after much other painting has been accomplished. Trying to reduce the need for later retouching of other items on the figures you understand. Hopefully, I will be able to get back to these later today after a second trip back to the Apple Store for help with a couple of new iPad issues and, following the return home, some revision of Google Slides for tomorrow's meetings with my students. -- Stokes P.S. And according t...

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 Grand Duchy of Stollen

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