Revisiting a Favorite Regiment. . .

This was the very first unit in my collection to get laser cut 3mm ply Litko bases. Well worth it in my view. Subsequently, I rebased (Groan!) everything else in the collection to impart a consistent look overall. Old school bright green bases, but I like the look, and even the late, great Peter Gilder used a similar basing scheme for some of his early Napoleonic collection.

And a 'craneshot' for you cinema buffs out there. Delusions of Orson Wells, you know. This one gives an even better idea of the footprint of an 80-figure unit of line infantry once deployed in line. The eight-figure bases measure 60mm x 40mm. Most of my base dimensions are based on those stipulated by Mr. Gilder for his In The Grand Manner rules. His troop densities always looked just right to me in all of those great old Miniature Wargames and Wargames Illustrated photographs, which still inspire and serve as my hobby touchstone.

A couple of shots of my version of the Ernestine-Sachsen Regiment, painted in the winter-spring of 2015 and finally finished during the winter of 2016 after our move from Illinois to Michigan the previous summer.

Figures are all RSM95 Prussian castings with a couple of Minden standard bearers for good measure. Painted with a mix of thinned oils and acrylics, this bunch of figures, in my opinion, comes the closest to resembling Meissen porcelain.

The Mainz Grenadiers have since been detached as one would expect. The flags are speculative, which I found somewhere online although I don't think I could get back there if I knew how at this point.

Still, they are perhaps my favorite unit of infantry that I have painted since the Grand Duchy of Stollen project began in Summer 2006.

Ok, it's Friday, July 2nd. I've managed to set up the tables again for the planned game with The Young Master, but first, a day of work outside since the sun is finally back and the temperature is predicted to be delightfully in the mid-70s Fahrenheit (ca. 23 degrees C.). Partly cloudy with a light, northwesterly breeze. My ideal weather that reminds me so much of Northern Germany and Scandinavia in the summertime.

And then there is the little matter of the pork BBQ, red slaw, hushpuppies, and sweetened iced tea to prepare for dinner on the 4th of July itself. A busy holiday weekend ahead!

-- 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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