The Grand Duchy of Stollen

The bucolic field of battle with roads in place, at the Young Master's insistence.   T he Young Master and I commanded two small forces which met around the village of Maddening just a few days ago (Sunday). . .  For our purposes 24. July 1762.   Maddening is located in the Duchy of Schleiz, a fertile region nestled between, and long contested by our warring nations, The Grand Duchy of Stollen and The Electorate of Zichenau.  As usual, my son commanded the Stollenian troops who look very like Prussians in their dark blue coats, while I took command of the Zichenauer advance guard, which, oddly, resemble Austrian and some Reichsarmee troops in white.   Young Paul's tabletop persona was, of course, the heroic Herr General Paul von Stollen, formerly in the Russian service and still clad in his dark green coat with decorations across the breast.  And, as expected, my tabletop avatar was the dastardly and nefarious French mercenary-adventurer and veter...

  The field across which advance guards from the armies of The Grand Duchy of Stollen and The Electorate of Zichenau will meet on 24. July 1762.  A close-up of the Village of Maddening. T he table is ready to go for tomorrow's clash of miniature arms with The Young Master.  At center, is the bucolic village of Maddening with isolated farms some distance outside of town to the east and the west.  The general landscape is undulating farmland dotted with thickets and copses here and there.   Armies will move in this evening.  Victory will go to whichever general controls two of the three built-up areas by the conclusion of 10 turns.   Now, I still must make a few final amendments to the A Tangled Mass play sheet, print out a couple for our use, and dig out my many D6s and octagonal dice try.  Tomorrow afternoon, it's "Tally ho!" -- Stokes and Young Master Paul

  N ot entirely happy with these photographs, which I will need to reshoot, but they give a nice idea of my painting output for the last year or so.  We have a three squadrons of Austrian Batthyanyi dragoons and the Young Master's two-gun battery of Russian artillery.  The Schaumburg-Lippe-B ü ckeburg Infantry with the Young Master's 3rd Prussian Garrison Regiment follow as well as his tabletop avatar, Herr General Paul von Stollen with a small staff at the rear.  No doubt urging the two units of infantry forward.  At the bottom, a shot of everything.  Not sure what my camera was doing, but even with a tripod and 10-second timed delay, it does not quite seem to be in focus.  Grrrrrrr.  This was supposed the be the money shot.  Back to the drawing board as the saying goes.  In any case, not award winning painting by any stretch of the imagination (there's that word again), but a nice, bright, glossy wargaming standard, which works well fo...

  J ust tacking down to their bases and flagging necessary now.  Oh.  And somehow I missed the left hand of the NCO at far left.  So, we'll need to attend to that this evening too.  But otherwise, almost there.  Of course, he could be an early indicator of the new direction. -- Stokes   P.S. For Alan and anyone else who might be interested, here is a link to Peter Gilder's base dimensions as laid out in A Grand Manner .  I've always felt that figures based on these have just the sort of look I am after.  I use Litko 3mm ply bases by the way. 

  Introduction A Tangled Mass is a game of toy soldiers in the old style, set more or less in the middle part of the 18 th century.   Our miniature forces are colorful and, we hope, glossy.  Although the latter, like so much else, is up to the discretion of the players.   But it is the modeling, brushwork, and unit organization of hobby greats like Gilder, Mason, and Robinson that provide our visual touchstone and continue to inform "the look of the thing" even now. Tabletop armies in A Tangled Mass can be historic, semi-historic, or whimsically fictitious, but the more flags and mounted officers, the better.  Formations, while bearing some resemblance to their historic precedents, are generic: column, line, or extended order for lighter types.   Squares, while possible, are less common than during all of that later Napoleonic madness with its guillotines and Spanish ulcers.  And we'll simply choose not to mention patent leather dancing pumps, o...

  T he Young Master earned his red belt in Tae Kwon Do after a retest last Saturday.  The Grand Duchess and I are so proud of his focus and determination during the last 3.5 years.  With any luck, we will have a black belt in our midst this time next summer.  And possibly (hopefully) assisting his instructors when he turns 14 in the fall of 2023.  Keep your fingers and toes crossed! -- Stokes

  A fairly easy week's worth of hobby time brings us to this stage. E xcept for the two standard bearers at the rear, who need their flagpoles before joining the rest of their regiment.  Citadel Warboss Green (two coats) on the bases?  Check!  Black shoes, gaiters, cartridge pouches, and hats?  Check!  Dark brown haversacks, canteens, and musket stocks?  Check!  Flesh tone on the faces and hands?  Check!  A number of small touch-ups to clean things up here and there?  Check!  "All present and correct, Sah!" "Very good, Sergeant Major!  Carry on!"  Still lots to do, but we're off to a solid start I'd say.  This slightly different painting procedure -- getting one batch to a particular point, then moving on to the second, and so forth -- seems to be working nicely when it comes to a reduction of painting tedium and fairly rapid progress.   Probably the neck stocks and hair next before moving onto the gree...

  Appropriately enough for Waterloo Day 2022 -- Or perhaps not? -- here is the first photograph of where things stand with my version of Austria's Wied Infantry after about six days of painting an hour or two a day here and there.  Not as fast or as regimented (ha-ha!) as some painters out there, but it is nevertheless amazing what one can accomplish when wife and child are away.  Hmmmm. A fter months and months of mulling over which 'proper' Austrian regiment to paint, the Wied Infantry (green facings) is underway!  Here is how I am tackling the brushwork on the first two companies thus far: 1) Green Bases 2) Black Hats, boots-gaiters, and Cartridge Pouches 3) Brown Musket Stocks, Knapsacks, and Canteens 4) Flesh tone    Once I get to this stage, it is time to catch up with the next company of 19 figures (and small regimental staff at the rear) before addressing the neckstocks and then returning to larger, easier-to-tackle details.  As an experiment, ...

  I t seems -- SEEMS -- that I have at last completed my penance and found favor with the Blogger Gods once again.   Activity has not ground to a standstill since my last post two months ago however.  I've been at work on various things like woodland bases for the tabletop, painting a bunch of barrels and crates to go with my supply train painted back in 2013 or so, flags for The Young Master's 3rd (Prussian) Garrison Regiment, and most recently have begun base-coating 60+ Minden Austrian infantry.   This batch of figures is slated to become a version of the Wied Regiment with green facings and some less commonly seen striped flags from the early part of our period.  I finished applying a mix of light gray mixed with white acrylic gesso, my preferred base coat, to the first 20 figures last night and will continue today or this evening as and when family life permits. As usual, I have also been tinkering with my home brew rule set 'A Tangle...

  Still a few small things to do, including apply fleshtone to a left hand on an officer that I somehow missed at some point plus lace on the drummers and officers , but we're very close to the glossing stage. L ots of painstaking work to clean up edges, highlight folds, and touch up various bits and pieces the last few evenings.  My trusty little Sony Cybershot, I fear, has gone to that big electronics place in the sky and no longer seems to be working.  Well, I've had it since 2013, and small electronics don't last forever, so I cannot complain.   With that little hiccup in mind, I snapped today's shot with my iPhone, brightened, and cropped it in Fotor before sharing it here.  Again, the blue is not quite so bright in reality, but the auto-improve, or whatever they call it, makes for nice bright photographs in which everything shows up.   Not long before these are done, and The Young Master was suitably please when I asked him to have a look a ...

The figures are not quite this bright in reality.  The autofix feature on my Fotor online editor makes things really, really bright, which helps small objects show up, but the colors are sometimes artificially enhanced.  Still, they aren't half bad. H appy to report that my work on The Young Master's 3rd (Prussian) Garrison Regiment is almost complete barring buttons, flags, gloss varnish, and permanent basing.  Yes, you heard right.  And we've only been picking away at them since January 2021! But it is amazing how a couple of small things will suddenly brig a unit of figures in-progress to life.  For these particular figures it was the addition of the light blue pompoms and white tassels on the tricorns.  Except for a few touch-ups, followed by the many brass buttons, they are just about done. Blogger access issues continue to plague me at home, so I am writing this post at work while taking a coffee break (Monday morning.  Photo uploaded Tuesday mor...

  A nd I am not just talking about the frightening state of the world just now, but then we've been moving ever further into this general area since at least late 2016. No, I am referring specifically to the continuing issues I seem to have with using Blogger.  Access to my blogs, even with a recovery phone number, has become increasingly sporadic and frustrating when it comes to troubleshooting what the problem(s) might be.  I think I might move to Word Press or Wix before long and include a link to the new premises here for visitors who might like to find me in my new digital digs. Of this, more later. Lots and lots of cross-country skiing, however, has kept me sane this winter.  We even managed a final quick tour at a small, local area last Saturday before temperatures jumped from the teens to the mid-50s Fahrenheit Sunday and melted all of our lovely snow here in Mid-Michigan.  I have not skied this much since Norway in 1999-2000 in any case, so no complaint...