Lauzun Legion (Minden Prussian) Hussars Freshly Rebased!!!

Here's the two-squadron regiment of hussars on their new 40mm wide x 50mm deep bases.

The Litko bases arrived in record time with the mail today. Late this afternoon, I set about painting them. After dinner and the Young Master's bedtime (we are working our way through a wonderful National Geographic for Kids book on insects, spiders, and other assorted creepy crawlies) I returned to detach the Minden figures carefully from their old unpainted illustration board bases, touch up the edges, and finally cement each rider and horse in place on their new (and F-I-N-A-L) bases.

I am very pleased with the outcome and will add a couple of additional trumpeters, already in the leadpile, to the flanks of the two squadrons at some point in the not too distant future, eventually raising the regimental strength to 32 men and horses. Tomorrow, I'll tackle basing the ten completed artillery crews.

And now I am off to play a game or two of Yahtzi with the Grand Duchess and enjoy a glass or three of a new wine -- a red Zinfandel -- she picked up today while out running some Saturday errands.

-- Stokes

P.S.
Unusually, the dice gods were with me, and I was on fire for the first game of Yahtzi last night, while The Grand Duchess easily won the second game. The wine was rather mellow, reminding me odd of a Merlot. Sadly, we conked out by about 11:30 and retired upstairs. What a couple of lightweights we are! However, I discovered new episodes of Call the Midwife (Season Six) on Netflix and watched two (and looked over Prussian hussar uniforms) before giving up the ghost and turning out the bedside lamp.

You know, I have 30 or so RSM95 Prussian hussars that might look really nice, albeit understated, painted as the 6th (von Wechmar) Hussars. This, of course, is a very dangerous thought since at one time I believe I might have sworn publicly that I would never again paint a unit of hussars.

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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