Happy New Year from the Grand Duchy of Stollen!

A reprise of our Christmas Week game at the end of Turn Seven when it became crystal clear that The Young Master was going to with this battle too.

Happy 2021 everyone! Here's to more toy soldiering during the next 12 months in whatever form that might take.

In the Grand Duchy, we'll continue plugging away with adding to our mid-18th century armies and playing the occasional game. Since Young Paul seems to have been bitten firmly by the bug, the incentive is stronger than it has been for several years to set up scenery on the table and unpack the figures for games more often than has been the case in recent years.

Besides that, I have no lofty new aims,or goals for my hobby. As I mentioned when we discussed our plans for the coming year in a breakout room session during the December 19th meeting of the Virtual Wargaming Club, I plan on more of the same as and when time and life permit. It's a very comfortable mental space to occupy I must admit. As much as I am interested by a few other eras, like mid-19th century European conflicts, if I never venture beyond the mid-18th century, that's fine by me. There is plenty to keep me interested and moving forward there.

On that note, I've recently discovered that I've got at least five line infantry regiments of 60+ figures painted and in the collection for both The Grand Duchy of Stollen and The Electorate of Zichenau plus considerable artillery, limbers, a sizable body of cavalry, light infantry battalions, transport, and other supporting troops.

While there is still much to paint in the magical (bottomless) Drawer of Lead to my left, I am actually closer than I thought to my goal of developing armies large enough to play many of the various Grant scenarios and Tabletop Teasers from the last 50+ years. Coming to that realization is kind of a nice way to end an otherwise trying year.

-- Stokes

It's Early Days Yet. . .

M aking some early progress with Batch A of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment over the last several days/evenings. Nothing terribly exciting just yet, but the basic black, brown, and flesh areas are done as are the green bases, and gray undercoat. The latter two areas needed some careful retouching early in the week. Next up, the neck stocks. I might just do these in red for the enlisted men although some of my source material suggest they were black, but I always look for an excuse to shake things up a bit. Any errant splotches of red (or black) can be covered with another application of light gray before I move onto the next step. "Giddy up!" as one Cosmo Kramer might have said. -- 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 ...

A Little More Brushwork. . .

A little more brushwork on the first batch of (my version of) the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment yesterday (Saturday). Taking a different tack this time and addressing many of the details first before the white coats and other larger areas of uniform. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that I've painted the (dark) red stocks of the enlisted men. Always a difficult and frustrating item to paint, it made sense to paint from the inside out as it were and get that particular detail out of the way first rather than try to paint it in later after much other painting has been accomplished. Trying to reduce the need for later retouching of other items on the figures you understand. Hopefully, I will be able to get back to these later today after a second trip back to the Apple Store for help with a couple of new iPad issues and, following the return home, some revision of Google Slides for tomorrow's meetings with my students. -- Stokes P.S. And according t...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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