Freicorps Musings on New Year's Eve. . .

Two different versions of the Chasseurs de Fischer infantry gleaned from the web.

Yes. I know. The promise was not to bore you with grandiose plans for much in 2018 given my relatively lackluster hobby activity in the year almost ended. But I find myself getting excited by the prospect of building up that tiny freicorps, and some shortly to be released Crann Tara figures aren't helping the matter any. If I keep things small and modest, what can go wrong?

On second thought, don't answer that! But if all goes well, I might even be able to get things finished before this time next year AND make up some lost ground on the figures I had hoped to paint to completion in 2017.

Anyway, you can see what I'm thinking for a company of 15 or so light infantry types in the illustrations above. The line portion will be an understrength two-company battalion (30) of Frei-infanterie (uniforms probably based on the Von Hordt regiment), a squadron of 12-14 hussars based on one or another unit of land hussars, and that new French artillery troop painted, more or less, as the artillery of Lauzun's Legion (medium-dark blue coats with lemon yellow facings).

The idea is to assemble a small force dressed in a colorful array of uniforms that will not duplicate anything already in the collection. To command the overall formation, I'll use a couple of mounted Minden and/or Crann Tara officers floating around here in a currently unpainted state. Hey, anything to knock off the rust and fire up the painting engines in an appreciable way, right?

Happy New Year Everyone!

-- Stokes

Comments

Steve J. said…

Sounds a great idea to me, as I love formations such as this. Looking forward to seeing updates on this.

2:38 AM

Rob Young said…

I tend to switch all the time, as you know I'm currently going through a small scale army phase producing lots of DBA forces - will later get back to grand designs no doubt! Adds to the overall enjoyment.

Happy New Year.

Rob

4:23 AM

Independentwargamesgroup said…

Stokes, can I recommend Crann Tara's, Fusiliers de Moliere. They are both on foot and mounted and are excellent figures for the petite guerre.

6:56 AM

Ross Mac rmacfa@gmail.com said…

There is something about the green coats and mirletons (I've had versions in 15mm & 40mm) but the Frensh often detached grenadiers to skirmish and what you really need for your Legion is some dual purpose grenadiers in fur caps! Nothing says casual elegance and disdain for foppishness and obeying the rules like a shaggy fur cap and a big mustache!

All the best for 2018!

7:14 AM

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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