A Case of the Butterflies. . .

Beautiful to look at , but very, very dangerous from a wargaming perspective.

In light of a recent conversation I had with a wargaming friend while in Berlin, I find myself lately pondering how I might use those unused Waterloo-era Napoleonics. These, some of you might recall, have been in careful storage since the early 2000s when I made the radical switch from 15mm to 30mm, and the Grand Duchy of Stollen project with its imaginary mid-18th century focus began.

In theory, it all seems so simple. So plausible. So reasonable. So do-able.

Here's my thinking on all of this. Think more like a general instead of a company officer. Make the game a more abstract exercise. Use the hundreds of figures I have painted already, transfer them to small, square basswood bases, and paint up the few remaining that I might still need. The figures become purely symbolic, a dozen or so (for infantry) representing various divisions and, in a few cases, brigades. Each base can then be modeled as some kind of interesting mini-diorama or vignette rather than trying to represent actual late Napoleonic tactical formations like lines, columns, or squares. Easy, right?

And yet, I know from experience that the Napoleonic road leads to an inescapable mire. Figurative Belgian mud. Hobby quicksand. Or, to put it another way, trying to reduce the entire Waterloo campaign to an attainable corps-level collection and playable game seems like a temporal sinkhole that leads nowhere. Except to madness. And still these thrilling, Peter Gilder-inspired thoughts plague me during the hours of consciousness. The Waterloo campaign was my first wargaming love after all.

Perhaps, it is a very good thing that all of my stuff remains in storage, and current living space very limited, given our temporary housing situation. Sigh. Far better to steer the course and continue with my tri-cornered hats and mitre caps in their semi-fictitious context once we are again in a house equipped with a Zum Stollenkeller Mk II.

-- Stokes

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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