The Grand Duchy of Stollen

I've been carefully cutting out pieces of heavy cardboard, making mistakes, and trying again the past couple of days. The goal? To produce something that looks like the Lubeck Rathaus, or part of it, at the far right in the photograph above. One of the tricks is getting the five little vertical feaux-towers right. Another is keeping the "footprint" of the building small, so it does not take up too much room on the tabletop. I'm thinking about 3 1/2" by 2". Well, for me. Kind of. Summer vacation is sadly OVER, and my first class of the fall term is in a little less than three hours at 9am. On the bright side, I have a new pair of shiny black tassled loafers (I know, I know) to put on with a newly cleaned and pressed suit, so it's not all bad I suppose. ;-) And it's a film class, so I'll get to talk about movies in very general terms this morning before we get down to real business on Wednesday. It has been a wonderful summer, but not as...

If the thought that the Grand Duchess and I are down to our last 10 days or so of summer vacation before the fall term starts weren't sobering enough, I have had to turn on comment moderation again because some stooge in Japan continues to leave comments with links to a distasteful website. This has caused me no end of irritation in the last year or so, but I suspect that e-mailing a polite request to the responsible party or parties would not stop the problem. Hence the renewed comment moderation. I apologize for the inconvenience and extra steps required to leave your comments and suggestions but hope that many of you will continue to so. It looks like the comment moderation will remain on for the foreseeable future though. Grrrrrrr. . .

As a Zichenauer officer conveys General Phillipe de Latte's sword to General von Tschatschke, the latter invites his officers to salute their enemy, as a fellow officers and gentlemenn, while the Stollenian 11th Engineer Battalion and 3rd Kuirassiere look on. Thank you everyone for dropping by, plus your kind remarks and comments, during the last month (hard to believe!). I've had a blast playing these two related tabletop actions, based on Charles Grant's Tabletop Teaser in Battlegames #19 from last year. One of the many things that made the game enjoyable from a soloist's point of view had to do with the crowded nature of the battlefield, in common with many TTTs, which made any broad, sweeping maneuvers difficult. It was nevertheless interesting, in hindsight, how most of the decisive action, for both Day #1 and Day#2, seemed funneled into the relatively open space between Effibriest at the center of the valley and Crampas Farm at its eastern end with no help from...

Moves Seven and Eight were pivotal in the ongoing tabletop Battle for Teodorstal Valley between Colonel von Adalnowksi and his houseguest, the younger Major von Topfsange, who was still somewhat reluctant to pull up a chair given his recent accident during the wild boar hunt. But let's peek in on the two gentlemen in the drawing room and see how things are coming along. . . At the far western end of Teodorstal Valley, the large cavlary mele was resolved at the end of Move Seven with a few casualties on both sides and the squadrons invovled both retiring 12" to rally after everything was wrapped up. The beginning of Move Eight saw Colonel von Adalnowski give chase with a fresh squadron of Grenadiere zu Pferd. "Ha, ha! Take that!" shouted the Colonel with renewed vigor. To his dismay, von Adalnowski soon discovered that his vehemence and sabre rattling may have been somewhat premature. Major von Topsange quietly informed his elder host during Move Eight, "I...