Initial Positions of Armies at Neu Sittangbad. . .

Here, we see the Stollenian Army marching out of Neu Sittangbad to meet the Zichenauer foe, led by the dastardly General Phillipe de Latte (played by the equally dastardly Greg Horne of the Duchy of Alheim). Note the improvised field works and wharf at the riverside. Both are due to be replaced ASAP this weekend.

Next, we see the early Zichenauer positions at the other end of the valley. And it looks like Stollen's Jaeger zu Fuss have been caught far out ahead of their main body. This doesn't look good given their apparent disorder, no doubt brought on by the panic and surprise at waking so close to the enemy lines this frosty February morning.

Here is a close-up of General de Latte's second line, consisting entirely of infantry, his premier brigade in fact that is made up of the Ermland Garde (The Newts) in the foreground, von Flickenhoffer's Fusiliers in the middle distance, and the red-coated Voluntiere aus Mittau in the far distance. Yikes! That's General de Latte in blue at the center of his officers by the way. Doesn't he look like a nasty piece of work?

De latte also has the advantage of a strong cavalry brigade, consisting of horse grenadiers, dragoons, and hussars, right now in his front line very close to the Stollenaian cavalry.

Here's another shot of Zichenau's second line with the Voluntiere aus Mittau in the foreground.

Here is part of Zichenau's second and third line -- O'Malley's Irisg Grenzers and his three batteries of the Most Honorable and Efficient Electoral Artllery. The Stollenian cavalry will want to steer clear of them!

Finally, here is another picture of Neu Sittangbad and the Stollenian positions with and around town. You will also observe the Blau Zwischen River and the toll bridge over it along with the improvised wharf beyond. At the far right of the photograph is the improvised marsh, which we -- Greg and I -- have decided to make passable to infantry but at only 3" per move to reflect the hard going through the muck, briars, and other undergrowth.

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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