Coming Soon: The Blasthof Bridge Post-game Report. . .

Young Master Paul makes his opening move in our Blasthof Bridge refight yesterday afternoon.

A busy Monday ahead as somewhat more normal life cranks and clanks back into gear following a long July 4th holiday weekend here in the U.S. As soon as I have the chance, I'll share a few after-action ramblings, but the two of us had a blast (ahem) playing another game of toy soldiers, which lasted about 2.5 hours. That seems just about right.

I won the game on a technicality, but The Young Master meted out considerable punishment and rolled well when it came to morale tests. And, most important, he enjoyed the experience of pushing lead around the table. We're planning another game shortly, possibly a raid of some sort. He likes these.

Our game also got me thinking later of ways to continue refining (otherwise known as trimming the fat) from my developing rules, so that they can indeed be committed to memory instead of of (right now) five pages of small print (Groan!). But of that more anon.

-- Stokes

Comments

Rob said…

Congratulations on finally turning the tables on the 'Young Master'.
I see a few more troops than at the original Battle of Blasthof, looking forward to the triumphant AAR.

7:48 AM

Der Alte Fritz said…

You are living the Wargames Dream: father and son enjoying playing a game together.

Jim

9:17 AM

Matt said…

Reminds me of my Fire & Fury games with my eldest son (now 26 and starting his own family).

We both have fond memories of the hours spent together. His younger brother never really got wargaming so we spent hours at football (soccer) matches instead!

You will remember these times long after they are concluded.

5:19 PM

tradgardmastare said…

Looking forward to hearing more. It is a great photo of son and armies.

12:58 AM

Peter Douglas said…

Great looking table, properly old school. Sounds like all involved had a great time.

2:20 PM

Neil said…

I'm glad you get to play with your son. I have 5 boys and they were my "geeks in training" and I enjoyed every game with them. It's great when they visit and say, "Okay Dad, what are we playing?"
Neil

12:53 PM

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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