A flurry of painting activities. . . And all without a spill or drip!

A view of part of the Mollwitz re-fight at Partizan 2007.

Some weekends, everything just seems to go right! To paraphrase Michael Caine's Alfie, "Know what I mean?" I’ve spent about 16 hours so far working on those 21 RSM French musketeers, which are slowly becoming an independent company of the Wolmar-Bock Regiment, currently in the service of the Electorate of Zichenau.

This time, I’ve experimented a bit and have tried the painting method described by Bob Barnetson in the current Battlegames. Not finished yet, but we’re getting very close. Really just muskets, hair, and flesh left -- plus the inevitable touch-ups. Then, it’s a coat of two of Future/Klear floor finish and attaching the flag, and then we’re all done. Afterwards, it’s back to that unit of plastic cuirassier conversions since my special soft plastic cement arrived a day or two ago.

I took a break earlier this evening after dinner and applied two coats of Olympic “Grassy Meadow” to the underside of those 16 two foot square pieces of MDF. Hope to get to the edges in the next couple of days. And then it’s onto painting a few river sections, using mid-blue and brown acrylic craft paints. I’ve decided to throw caution to the wind here and do a at least few sections without worrying too much about painting myself into a corner -- hee, hee, hee. . . ;-) -- and losing flexibility.

Henry Hyde and Charles Grant both have some great modular river sections for their respective layouts, seen in previous issues of Battlegames, and I might try constructing something like these one day before too long. But for now, I’ll keep it really Old School and paint a winding 5” wide river directly onto the surface of one side of those extra four squares.

Speaking of Charles Grant, guess who I heard from today out of the blue? Yep, you guessed it! Needless to say, I was both surprised and pleased (giddy as a school girl is more like it) to hear from one of the shining lights in the wargaming hobby. Why, it’s about as good as Paul McCartney phoning me to say, “Hey, let’s jam on some of those old 50’s numbers that your band is playing.” Anyway, here’s what Charles had to say:

Dear Stokes,

Please forgive me for contacting you out of the blue. I have been looking in on your blog, enjoyed your article in Battlegames and your name has come up in conversation with Phil Olley, who has provided me with your email address - I hope you don’t mind. I enjoy the continuing adventures of The Grand Duchy of Stollen, and it all sounds so much like our own endeavours (my father and I) over these many years. I loved the houses - do they have ruins inside? I am currently replacing my Lorraine and VFS armies - after 40 years service, plastic fatigue has meant that they are just loosing too many real casualties. I have been replacing two and threes but decided that the time has come to make a fresh start. In fact it has really got me going, and the regiments are fairly pouring out. I am also in the middle of a five scenario mini campaign (a VFS raid into the peace loving Lorraine!!) with Phil using the old armies, and that will be in a booklet in the not too distant future. Well, so much for introductions - I hope to hear from you.

Yours aye,

Charles

All in all, it’s been a pretty nice weekend, wouldn’t you say?

P.S.

I can’t wait to tell the Grand Duchess about this!