Breaking News: Battlegames to Merge with Miniature Wargames!

The great BG is scheduled to "merge" with Miniatures Wargames in just a few issues.

A bit news came into the offices here at Stollen Central yesterday that has me feeling a bit of I don't know what this morning. At loose ends maybe? Atlantic Publishing's Miniature Wargames will absorb Battlegames in the next couple of issues. Here's the full story in a release issued by Atlantic Publishing yesterday. In nutshell, BG's Henry Hyde has been given editorial control over MW and, hopefully, will revamp it to resemble something of its glorious past. That's the plan at least.

I've got my fingers crossed, in particular, for something that's a cross between the current thoughtful and thought-provoking BG and the first dozen issues or so of MW from the early 8os. The latter remain fascinating reads today and, of course, are chock-a-block with photographs of Peter Gilder's, Phil Robinson's, and Doug Mason's figures among others. Wonderful and exciting news for Henry career-wise, and he's going to be kept very busy I imagine.

At the same time, I am more than a little sad to see BG go. It really had something to it and was a fresh voice that has consistently been leagues above the eye candy and vapid articles seen in so many issues of Wargames Illustrated, Miniature Wargames, et al in recent years. Frankly, and on a personal note, these two publications simply have not felt like they contained much of interest for many years now. 18 or 20? Well, maybe that's somewhat unfair, but you get the point. Sure, I have occasionally picked up an issue at the hobby store in the last twelve years or so and thumbed through it, but that's about it. Battlegames was different. Hopefully, Henry will be able to maintain full editorial control over the new MW plus his high content standards without too much micromanaging from the publishers.

Still, chin up, stiff upper lip, carry on, and all that, chaps! It should be very interesting to see an issue of the new Miniature Wargames and see how things have turned out. And I mean that sincerely. No hint of sarcasm or irony intended. If anyone can merge the two in a fairly seamless way, Henry can. And as for Battlegames? As a friend remarked yesterday, "Battlegames is dead! Long live Battlegames!"

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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