The Situtation at the Close of Turn 8. . .

General de Latte's first assault across the River Elbow comes to a standstill thanks to Stollenian musketeers and artillery Not much is left of the first wave of von Flickenhoffer's Fusilers (foreground), and the Ermland Garde (background) have suffered badly the hands of von Tschatschke's 13th Musketeers.

For the next hour, General de Latte's advance stalled as his officers and NCOs attempted to sort out their men and restore some sort of order. By 7:30pm, General von Tschatschke asked for the return of his telescope from the Grand Duke-Irwin Amadeus II, who remarked cheerily, "I say! Did you know that if you look through the other end of this thingy, everything looks farther away?" Von Tschatschke raised an eyebrow in reply, as did Hives, and took back his telescope. He surveyed the scene before him.

Reduced below 50% of their initial strength, de Latte's remaining Irish Grenzers (in the distance) turn tail and flee while the Mittau Volunteers attempt to recover from brutal musketry and cannon fire.

Von Tschatschke noted the great gaps that had opened up in the Zichenauer front line thanks to his infantry and artillery. Much of de Latte's army had ceased fire and seemed to be wavering. An odd lull hung over much of the battlefield save for the occasional clatter of another musket volley in the distance or the thunder of the Stollenian guns.

Flush with their recent triumph over the squadron of enemy hussars, and contrary to his explicit orders, General von Tschatschke's Jaeger zu Fuss advance and fire on the right flank of de Latte's reserve line, inflicting light casualties (one artilleryman and a company officer in the Ermland Garde).

Von Tschatschke finished scanning the scene before him. He snapped his telescope shut, handed it to a nearby aide, and pondered the situation for a moment. Should his men be permitted to continue firing on the enemy at will now, or should he order an advance across the less treacherous stretches of the Elbow followed by a bayonet charge?

Meanwhile, in General von Tschatschke's rear area, the Leib Grenadiers and 4th Dragoons have just about reached their intended new positions in support of the western flank.

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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