Down But Not Out. . .

Next on the painting table, 30 Eureka Saxon cuirassiers, purchased back in October 2016 just ahead of "a certain birthday" as a gift to myself for rounding the half-century mark.  Time to get busy with 'em!

 

A well packed box of Minden goodness that took just three days to arrive in the Grand Duchy from Der Alte Fritz in Hesse-Seewald.

Just a few of the river sections after some basic color revision.  Still not quite done. but they are shaping up nicely and, most important, heavy and flexible enough to lie flat on the table without shifting around at inopportune times.

 

Well, sometimes it seems like life puts itself in the way of hobby activities, doesn't it?  And thus it was and has been the case with my planned Thanksgiving Weekend game.  

We have been going through a rough patch lately with the Young Master, which has kind of got in the way of much else.  He's fine, just 14.  And as a result of these ongoing issues, the game(s) of toy soldiers continue to be pushed to the back of my mind.  

Frankly, after one more mentally jangling episode with our son, it's kind of difficult to settle down and set up a table of scenery and soldiers for a game.  Were I a different sort of man, and in another era, I'd smoke my way through half a pack of cigarettes and knock back a large shot or three of cheap rotgut to steady the nerves  Jeeze Louise!

Still, there has been some hobby activity occurring here in the Grand Duchy of Stollen following completion of that company of Von Hordt Frei-infanterie a few weeks back.  Thank you everyone for your very kind comments by the way.

"Ok, so what HAVE you managed to accomplish of late Stokes?"  Well, a few things actually.

First, I've dug out those 30 Eureka Saxon cuirassiers purchased several years ago, and will glue the riders to the horses this evening after the Young Master has retired for the night but before I join the Grand Duchess for wine and possibly a game or three of Yahtzee by the fireside.  Tomorrow (Sunday), I 'll tack 'em down to my usual Litko bases before base-coating and painting follow.  I plan to paint up two squadrons from a couple of different regiments, as mentioned in a previous post, for colorful variety along with a small regimental staff, the colonel and kettle drummer at center.

Second, you long-time visitors to the Grand Duchy of Stollen will chuckle at this one.  But given Jim's annual Black Friday sale, I took advantage of the very reasonable discounts he offers and purchased a bunch of Minden Austrian hussars in busbies.  I know, I know.  Adding to the lead pile.  And you might also recall that I once swore off painting anymore hussars ever after completing those 30 Minden Prussians painted as Lauzun's Legion light cavalry 10 or so years ago.  However, the attraction of adding a squadron each of hussars from Wurttemburg (von Glasenapp), Mecklinburg-Schwerin, and eventually Hanover (von Luckner), was just too hard to resist.  There are also two squadrons of RSM95 Prussian hussars (30) and long in the lead pile already, which will need attention.  Whew!  

So, I'll work on these in squadron-sized batches of a dozen or so in and between other planned units over the next few years, hopefully keeping a weak grip on whatever scraps of sanity Young Paul allows me to retain.

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One reason I went ahead with another purchase has to do with planning ahead, something we all do to one degree or another.  My thinking here is informed by at least a couple of factors. One, I like the Minden and Fife & Drum figures.  A lot.  To me, they are the perfect figures for the 1740s-1770s in Europe and North America of the real world, or parallel imaginary settings.  If ever their production ceases for any reason, I've got a nice stock in place.  

Two, figure prices across the industry are unlikely ever to revert to a few cents/pence per figure.  Purchasing now, especially when occasional sales come around, makes sense in that respect too.  Besides, I am a well-established Johnny One-Note by this point, and that's ok.  Restricting my activities and troops to a single era is fine by me.  Hobby time is already scare enough, so it makes perfect sense, to me at least, to keep my focus rather than dilute already scare time and resources across several different eras.  

Now, some in the hobby seem to manage bouncing between a few different periods and scales quite well.  And more power to them.  It's a rather large butterfly that I wave away often enough myself.  Were time more plentiful, sure.  I'd dive right into building a semi-fictitious collection of fractious pre-unification tiny Germanic states in an array of uniforms from roughly the 1830s-50s.  You know, everything from Regency and Albert shakos to those early tall pickelhauben, kepis, busbies, and bearskins with an array of uniform colors and flags still in place.  Be still my heart!  

However, I finally concluded in the early 2000s, just before the Grand Duchy of Stollen project took off, and as I have written here before, that my hobby attentions were pulled in too many directions at once.  Part of the reason my ill-fated corps level 15mm Waterloo project petered out after many years.  So, I made peace with the idea of keeping to one colorful imaginary project, with a smattering of history running through it, and here we are.  It works for me.

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But let's return to the point at hand after that lengthy digression.  Recent hobby developments that I have managed even if the planned games have not materialized due to this thing we call life.

I've also been working on some of the river and lake sections purchased earlier this fall to make them, if not entirely realistic, at least less fantasy-cartoonish in appearance than when they arrived.  You can see above how they are shaping up.  The interior latex/emulsion paint I have been using is a color called NYPD Blue from Glidden.  Neither exactly blue, nor exactly gray, but somewhere in between, perhaps suggesting a partly cloudy sky overhead.  I am relatively pleased and will continue with the rest of the sections once these are finished.  

So, down, but not completely out hobby-wise even if the solo game based on the Combat at Zinna will have to wait just a little longer to happen.  Sigh.

Fourth, is anyone else running into difficulties with leaving comments on others' blogs?  The last 10-12 months, I have not really been able to do so except in rare instances even after logging into Google in another window which Blogger typically instructs me to do.  Might any visitors be able to suggest a possible solution?  Were it not such a headache, I would consider moving to another platform given these occasional issues with Blogger.  However, after more than 17 years and umpteen posts, it is hard to consider leaving Blogger behind completely for Word Press or another app that might provide a smoother user experience.  Any thoughts?

Last, I see that another few visitors have decided to follow events here in the Grand Duchy and signed their related X on the dotted line.  Thank you for your interest everyone and welcome!  I hope the, of late, sporadic developments and activities remain interesting given the on again, off again nature of things.  Still, onward and upward, eh?

-- Stokes