Firing & Movement Sticks. . .

No, not hitherto undiscovered paintings by Piet Mondrian (or The Patridge Family Bus), but a movement stick (top) and a musket volley and skirmish fire stick (below). The rulers are 18" in length and based on the Grants' dimensions laid out in The War Game.

Still glossing the Austrian dragoons piecemeal, but with the planned Thanksgiving Weekend game between the Young Master and me now two weeks away, it seemed like a good idea to begin preparations for it. I aim to simplify things as much as possible to keep the game moving and a positive experience for young Paul, now 11 years old, so that he will want to continue these occasional tabletop adventures with ol' Dad. Hence the movement and firing sticks, which owe as much to the von Reisswitz kriegspiel as they to Charles S. Grant.

The measuring devices I've produced over a couple of days have movement dimensions marked on one side, and firing distances on the other. I must touch up and label the various colored bars before everything is finished, but once done, the Young Master and I will each wield a movement-firing stick on our upcoming game(s). I've also whipped up a four foot artillery stick, painted in yellow (long range), orange (medium), and red (canister range).

The movement stick, that closest to the dragoons, has infantry, artillery, and transport move distances marked out on the upper edge with those for heavy and light cavalry on the lower edge. The firing stick at bottom has musket volleys distance marked out in yellow (long range), orange (medium range), and red (close range) with ranges for skirmish fire denoted in light and dark blue. Once labeled, all movement and firing should be clear and easy to determine without referring to a play sheet or fooling with tape measures. He said.

As to the scenario we'll attempt, I am leaning toward a refight of Sawmill Village, although The Young Master has already informed me that any settlement laid out on the table will be dubbed Hasenpfeffer. As Greg Horne, the man behind The Duchy of Alzheim blog, advised me several years ago now, when it comes to kids, you've got to follow their lead.

-- 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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