It's Saturday at Last!

In lieu of a model soldier picture, here is a photograph of the lovely view I had yesterday morning about 8:15 while walking across campus on the way to a professional development seminar, which actually turned out to be pretty interesting. So far, that's two really good ones in the space of a month. This could become a trend if we aren't careful.

Another cold, slightly snowy one this morning, the first Saturday of our nine-day Spring Vacation here at Totleigh-in-the-Wold. The Grand Duchess is breakfasting quietly in the dining room, the Young Master is building something quietly with his Legos upstairs, and I am down here in Zum Stollenkeller Mk. II with a mug of coffee and a cat or two. High time to return to those two stabdards for my large battalion of Ernestine Sachsen Infantry. With any luck, my Litko bases will arrive in the mail today, or Monday, and I will be able to begin preparing those for mounting the figures.

On that note, I've worked out an acceptable basing scheme for my infantry and cavalry units using the dimensions laid out by the late Peter Gilder in his In the Grand Manner rules along with the diagrams of an infantry battalion deployed for battle in Christopher Duffy's The Army of Frederick the Great. It's a bit too early in the morning still for me to attempt detailed explanation, but the basing scheme manages, I think, to satisfy my aesthetic sensibilities AND keep things very manageable where playability is concerned.

Since drummers along with most (but not all) NCOS and officers will kept as singletons, virtually any size unit may be represented on the tabletop, from 24-80 figures strong depending on rules and/or scenario. It will make more sense once I post a photograph or three. Hopefully, before long. Stay tuned.

-- Stokes

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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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