Happy New Year from the Grand Duchy of Stollen!

An rather charming vintage German greeting card for a happy new year, featuring a gnome, the good luck pig, and a sack of good fortune.

Before all of us get too busy with New Year's celebrations, in whatever form those might take, allow me to wish all visitors to the Grand Duchy of Stollen blog a Happy (Happier?) 2025.

Many similar wargaming hobby blogs have fallen by the wayside since the initial rush of enthusiasm back in the first decade of the 21st century, but we're still here in the capital city of Krankenstadt clanking along as and when time and real life permit. The early kernel of thought that became Grand Duchy of Stollen will celebrate its 20th anniversary at the start of December 2025 with the blog itself turning 20 years old in early Fall 2026!

That hyper focus and Johnny One-Note-ism notwithstanding, these upcoming anniversaries provide perfect occasions, now that I think of it, to keep the painting and modelling fires burning. I've already drawn up concrete plans -- progress charts really -- to keep things on track over the next couple of years with, hopefully, more actual battles taking place than has been the case during the last few years. In any case, I hope you might continue along with me for the journey as and when your own schedules permit.

More immediately, I can report on another painting session last evening, about 90 minutes, during which I applied my preferred 'charcoal' highlight to various harnesses and reins on the current 16 horses ridden by the first squadron and regiment staff of these blasted Eureka Saxon cuirassiers. Slow going, yes, but with only one minor brush mishap, which I was able to wick away quickly before the paint splotch dried. Later this afternoon, I'll sit down again to tackle the rather more complicated bridles, and then the part that most of us dislike about painting miniature horses will be finished. Whew!

We're now getting very close to completion of everything that I can manage before the necessary touch-ups and acrylic gloss varnish. And while I have managed their shoulder thingies pretty well, the two musicians' sleeve chevrons, however, have continued to elude aging eyes, painting skills, and patience after several attempts. Sigh. So Max and Moritz will just have to make due with plain white sleeves. Possibly another Kodak moment update on New Year's Day though.

On a slightly more subdued and somber ending note for 2024, I hope we can get through the coming year(s) with a minimum of the now daily discord, strife, willful ignorance, and general ugliness that we have come to expect in what now passes for acceptable sociopolitical discourse. As that fantastic British band The Kinks intoned 40+ years ago, and I may be misquoting their song a bit, I hope we'll find better days for 2025 and beyond.

-- 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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