Anhalt-Zerbst Troops Stand Ready for Glossing. . .

Not quite from the pages of Charge! Or How to Play War Games (1967), but the entire regiment stands at the ready ahead of the usual acrylic glossing.

It is the final day of April (already???), and there has been considerable hand-wringing here in Zum Stollenkeller about figures and flags in recent weeks, and indeed throughout the Grand Duchy if we can believe recent accounts in Die Krankenstadt Rundschau. Much to the amusement of the Grand Duchess and Young Master it has to be said.

But they're finally painted now, flags and all. So, I figured it might be fun to share one last photograph of my version of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment -- the little known second battalion, raised for service in the Army of Zichenau -- before glossing and transferal to their permanent 3mm ply Litko bases. Good God, but that was long-winded.

Lengthy sentences aside, here they are. They should do the trick nicely I think once the final steps are done. I can't help but envision the figures arrayed in line before Sittangbad.

It's Finals Week here, though, so that will have to wait until early next week after course grades have been determined and entered into the registrar's database by 4pm on May 5th. Then, time will be a bit more available and a bit more my own. And, believe it, or not, I'm eager to get cracking with those 55-60 or so Austrian hussars. I know, I know. Remind me of that in about 14 months.

-- Stokes

And a Linguistic P.S.

The ongoing efforts of the Grand Duchess have paid off in dividends. Since he was a baby, she has spoken to the Young Master (now 16) in German, and he recently scored a rating of 'Functional Literacy' in that language according to internationally recognized standards. Lengthy testing has ranked him in the Intermediate High-Advanced Low range for speaking, listening, and reading comprehension. Paul's writing was a little less solid, but he and his mother are redoubling their efforts, and he will retake the exams next year. Paul received a very nice framed certificate too. We are so proud of him and eager to see where Spanish might take him given how much he enjoys learning that language in school.

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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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