The Grand Duchy of Stollen

  My own troops, inspired by Brigadier Peter Young's own Erbprinz Regiment., the Leib (Grand Duchess Sonja's Own) Regiment.  A gift for Christmas 2006, 60+ RSM95 Prussians painted to a clean "wargames standard" during late spring and early summer 2007, here freshly rebased during September 2017. I nspired by Big Lee's most recent wargaming vlog on his top 10 tips for newcomers to the hobby, and in response to his own invitation for viewers to add their own suggestions, I whipped up a list of my advice to newbies.  Or jaded old hands.  In no particular order, here they are:   1) Invest in enough and bright lighting for the painting table and paint your figures to the best of your ability. Wargames Standard (aka at arm’s length) is fine.   Painting is great fun by itself, but trying to do so in poor lighting is frustrating and will not produce the best results. 2) Stick to one period.   Hard, I know.   Variety is the spice of life.   The butterflies are many

'Political Billiards Game in Germany, 1758' A decided lack of mojo in the Grand Duchy during recent months, something I must do more to snap myself out of.  As I have mentioned here in previous recent posts, and to be entirely fair, there has been too much on the ol' work plate of late.  I have fallen into the trap of taking on too much and been guilty of letting that overtake everything else.  Sigh. But what of things actually in-progress over on the painting desk, albeit untouched since late last winter?  The 28mm Eureka Saxon cuirassiers sit patiently in their clear plastic box.  One squadron of 14, along with the regimental staff, are very close to being finished and the glossing stage, true, but the second needs a good basecoat of white gesso before anything more can happen in the brushwork department.   I'm thinking of painting the second batch in a different facing color to represent another regiment, however, since the squadron was the basic cavalry formation o