The Grand Duchy of Stollen

Still quite a bit to paint, but I've finally got the color of blue that I'm after.  Should have done this to begin with.  Why in the world didn't I listen to the little inner voice in the first place? Sometimes, I guess, you just have to skin your knees a few times before things fall into place.  So, after trying out a wash of light blue acrylic over a white acrylic undercoat on a single hussar test figure Thursday evening, yesterday afternoon I re-applied (long, drawn-out groan) a white undercoat to the dolmans and pelisses of his 11 cronies.  Later, after supper and bedtime for Young Master Paul, while the Grand Duchess packed and streamed an episode or two of Desperate Housewives online, I stole away back down here to Zum Stollenkeller, to apply washes of Games Workshop light blue (Icy Blue?) and see how things stood this time. Voila!  Eureka!  Shazam!  Holy Utility Belts Batman!  This is finally it.  The third time's the charm.  ...

  The tactically adept -- or at least high-rolling -- Colonel von Adalnowski, a retired Stollenian officer and bon vivant of considerable notoriety. As August approaches, the time for annual late summer maneuvers is upon us in the Grand Duchy of Stollen.  It comes as no surprise, then, that the army has departed this week for the more open country of the northeast where such maneuvers are typically held each year.  However, due to a recent lateral promotion , the young Major von Topfsange (pictured below) finds himself inexplicably left behind and confined to a corner desk job in some  government office building or other in the capital city Krankenstadt. "Plodding, plodding, plodding," grumbled von Topfsange, "Does this paperwork never end?  I should be leading a regiment or two of cavalry on those blasted maneuvers!"  As the major continued to read through another one of the seemingly endless form letters, signing and stamping it with a government seal ...

This picture shows where we stand with the first squadron so far after several months of stop, start, mostly stop, and then start again. Here are the hussars at the end of last night's painting session.  I had to redo the blue dolmans and pelisses with a wash of GW acrylic Regal Blue -- Sigh -- since I wasn't at all pleased with the way the wash of Winsor Newton Griffin Alkyd Cobalt Blue turned out.  Too splotchy in its coverage once everything had dried.   That might have had something to do with the acrylic basecoat and the oil-based wash now that I think of it.  Blast!  Should have thought things through more carefully before doing that.  Where was a tin of Humbrol white gloss enamel when I needed it most?  Well, live and learn as the saying goes.  Still, it did help to offset the yellow and gold braiding which I touched up a bit too, to brighten it up a bit.  Tonight, yellow cuffs, collars, and (hopefully) the vandyking around t...

Hussars and infantry from Lauzun's Legion, a French unit that fought for the Americans during the later years of the American War of Independence.  Some of you might recall that I am basing the uniform of my unit of imaginary hussars on this one. Just a quick post to mention that I finally returned to the Minden hussars with a vengeance last night and worked on them for about 2.5 hours.  Not much to look at yet, but the first dozen sit on the painting table with bright red breeches (Cadmium Red) and mid-blue dolmans/pelisses (Cobalt Blue).  I'll post a photo or two later this evening for your perusal before I continue work on them.  Gotta strike while the painting iron is hot, you know.

In this first photograph, you can see the newly finished church at left along with an older spired building of some type to its right along with a few mounted officers by RSM95 (ex-Pax Britannica) to provide a visual reference with regard to building dimensions.   And here is another picture of the church.  This time taken, more or less, from the rear to show the rounded sanctuary (???), a feature that I am particularly pleased with.  Cutting the paper towel tube in half was not too difficult, but it was a pain in the neck to get the angles just right so that the five small pieces of "roof" fit together without an appreciable gaps between them.  I must have held my breath just right, because it worked the first time! Just checking in quickly to provide two photos of the now finished North German Sankt Mariakirche .  As with many of my buildings and houses, the doors and windows are suggested rather than highly detailed renderings, but it's still apparent wha...

Touch-ups to the North German church, shown in my previous post, are complete, and things look much more convincing.  I need only finish and paint the stairway and attached it to the main entrance, and then that's all finished.  Stay tuned here for a few photos in another day or so.   In the mean time, my mind has wandered, and I've decided that I need a town hall, or Rathaus in German, along with a municipal building or two before I cease construction and turn my attention back to painting soldiers.  As many of you know already, however, when the lightening bolt of inspiration to do something strikes, you should go with it. . .  even if it's not the primary focus of a particular project.  That, or I could simply be avoiding the resumption of work on those 30 Minden hussars.  Anything is possible here in the Grand Duchy of Stollen after all! So, what actual structures do I plan to base my envisioned tabletop built-up-areas on?  Well, a jau...

First off, here's a mundane shot of some red-coated Irish Grenzers (RSM figures) under one Colonel O'Malley.  A long forgotten unit of Wild Geese, who are currently in the service of Zichenau. Almost since the start of the Grand Duchy of Stollen project, during the summer of 2006, I've used small point-and-shoot cameras to record my progress and occasional tabletop actions here.  While I've enjoyed using my old late 1990s-era Poloroid Elf (remember those?) that used actual film and more recently our little Canon digital model, I've long harbored a desire for better photographs that present everything within the frame in sharper focus, i.e., greater depth-of-field.  Blame it on the wonderful photographs that routinely grace the pages of Henry Hyde's Battlegames magazine and the Wargaming-in-History series of books by Charles Grant along with his Christmas annuals.  The latter two feature the photographic handiwork of Phil Olley. But back to the subject of to...

Yours truly, the Grand Duchess Sonja, Young Master Paul, and his pal Miss Kitty after this morning's annual July Fourth parade held for the neighborhood children.

Here is the eventual North German Lutheran 'church' discussed in this post. Well, it's been a busy several days.  Heck, several weeks is more like it!  But now's the time to return to the sadly neglected Grand Duchy of Stollen project.   First off, I managed to finish and send off two outstanding projects, both hobby related, yesterday after a few months of sporadic work as and when time permitted.  With any luck at all, these should appear before too many months elapse.  Shouldn't really say much more about that right now though and should stop mentioning it.  Bad, possibly obnoxious form and all that.  What I will mention is that I've also recently finished a work of children's fiction, which I will send off to a publisher after the Fourth of July weekend concludes, to begin what I am sure will be a long round of rejections and resubmissions to other publishers.  It the publishing gods smile on me, eventually my story might see the light ...

Just overwhelmed with various projects at the moment, wargaming-related and otherwise.  But the Grand Duke Irwin-Amadeus II, his long-suffering English man servant Hives, and their miniature minions passed the 150,000 visits sometime last night.  Hmmmm. . .  I can't decide if that sounds like the title of some film noir from the 1940s, or a romantic comedy from the 1990s with Andie McDowell, Meg Ryan, and Hugh Grant.  But anyway, thank you to everyone who drops by here often, or occasionally.  Your continued interest is greatly appreciated.  Look for the resumption of more normal nattering on about painting soldiers and such to resume before too much longer.  Now, if only I could find the time to read that latest issue of Battlegames.  Charge!

Just a quick post, to spread the good word about this upcoming work -- for those of you who might not know already -- which I am sure will be a gem, and a solid addition to the literature that is such an important part of the wargaming hobby.  The Wargaming Compedium by Henry Hyde, who is the creative force behind Battlegames magazine.   At the moment, Henry is apparently writing hell for leather (pardon the bad pun) to finish it, though, apparently, the book's Amazon ratings are already pretty high for a work that has yet to appear.  Of course, it has been added to my yearly birthday/Christmas list, which I'll forward to the Grand Duchess in early September.   I feel safe in suggesting that this one will rank right up there with various works by "the greats" of the hobby: Featherstone, the Grants, Young & Lawford, Wesencraft, and Wise.  Can't wait to see it become available!

Four squadrons of 15mm MiniFigs French Napoleonic Dragoons (with two Essex elite company figures in Bearskins), a gift from good ol' Mom for Christmas 1989, finally painted during the late winter-early spring of 2006.  She and my step-father lived in Southampton, England at the time where he was a lecturer at the University of Southampton, and when they returned to the States in late December '89, she brought me a shopping bag FULL of 15mm Napoleonic MiniFigs.  Still one of the greatest Christmas gifts I have ever received. A few evenings ago, while rooting around through several boxes of things that were never opened after our April 2008 move into "Stollen Central" -- looking for some carefully hoarded heavy cardboard tubes for the current building project -- I unearthed my boxes of carefully painted 15mm Late Napoleonic Minifigs, on which I have not set eyes in more than five years.  Many of us have parts of our toy solider -- Ahem, military miniature! -- collecti...

Oh no!  It's Windmills 10 -- Don Quixote 0. . .  Kind of how I fell, er, feel at the moment. Have you ever had one of those days when you planned some kind of wargaming related activity, and then real life intervened?  Of course, you have.  We all have.  And such has been the day so far this morning here in the Grand Duchy of Stollen. I woke far too early for a Saturday -- 6am -- and couldn't fall back to sleep, so gave up the ghost and rose quietly at 6:30.  A short while later, safely ensconced before my computer here in Zum Stollenkeller, I realized that I did not feel quite right and returned to bed.  Since I volunteered last night to get Young Master Paul up at 8:00, I informed the Grand Duchess that she might need to bell that cat after all.  I then fell fast asleep for another 3.5 hours, though that was interrupted intermittently by. . . The dreaded Terrible Twos !  Yes, although Young Master Paul is only 19 months old, the routine ...

Just a quick post for now.  The three-day weekend has come and gone in the blink of an eye, and I didn't manage to get to those Minden hussars after all.  But, I have made a huge headway with that group of buildings, which are just about finished except for a few small details still in process.  With any luck, I shall be able to finish those in the next evening or two and then paint up everything in various earthy tones though you;ll have to wait on photographs of those I'm afraid.  At any rate, then the decks will be cleared, and I can finally get back to those hussars with a clear conscience.  In the meantime, my poor painting table is a mess with scraps of cardboard, balsa wood, toothpicks, and coffee stirring sticks scattered all over, to say nothing of sawdust and blobs of spilled glue.  Kids, don't try this at home!

Here is a new group of buildings that I was asked to design and assemble last winter, and, as you can see, I need to get moving now that school has finished for a while.  Not much to look at yet, and I've had some trouble with the gable on the building in the middle of the picture, but things will improve once assembly and painting are complete.  Then, it's on to the final two small items which are part of this collection of buildings.   Hopefully, I can make serious progress this weekend and get very close to finishing these.  Painting is the easy part though.  When dealing with angles and trimming cardboard, cursing a poor fit, stabbing yourself with the hobby knife, cursing some more, and finally gluing everything together, well, it kind of takes time.  Ok, enough talking about it.  Time to get going again.  After all, these buildings won't assemble and paint themselves, will they?

A pair of new shoes, won recently on Ebay.  Vintage Florsheim Imperial Wingtip Brogues in Tan. . . for the rediculously low price of US$ 20.00!  Can tweed 'plus fours', knee-length Argyll socks, and a long weekend at Aunt Agatha's be in the picture? May Term ended today, and none too soon.  It's always a great deal of fun sharing my love for all those old 1940s and 50s films noir with undergraduates in their late teens and early twenties.  It is also a great deal of work reading and preparing nightly for almost a month of daily three hour classes, reading through student assignments, and so forth. It is, therefore, with great internal fanfare that I celebrate my final day in the classroom. . .   at least until mid-August rolls around again!  Time to get back to more important things like painting model soldiers and pushing them around the gaming table in their hundreds.  Along with somewhat more routine nattering on about it here on the Grand...

I've had a new comment posted for a January 2009 posting -- The 18th Century? What's the Fascination? -- from a relative newcomer to the hobby, who asks about getting started, figures, and so forth.  So, I'll say a few random words about my personal preferences and then turn things over to anyone else who might care to chime in here with further advice. As far as getting started and finding inspiration, I'd suggest that you can do no better than to find and read the two books shown above: Charge! Or How to Play War Games (1967) by Peter Young and James Lawford and The War Game (1971) by Charles Grant. Both titles are available in recent reprinted editions at reasonable prices and filled with all manner of historically-based explanation and explication.  In addition, the two books present detailed rules for fighting 18th Century battles.  They also contain a variety of inspiring photos, useful information on painting figures, building your armies, creating scener...

Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade with a cigarette and the maltese falcon. . .  The image that comes to mind for many when the term Film Noir is mentioned. A non-toysoldierly post today I'm afraid everyone!  Tomorrow (Wednesday) is the first day of May Term, and I'll be teaching my course on classic Film Noir, something to which I always look forward.  Lots of reading, viewing of different films, and discussion -- to say nothing of student papers and projects -- over the next few weeks, but it's always interesting and thus a lot of fun.   We kick off with Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944) tomorrow at 10am.  This particular movie is one of the  best examples of the genre/style/school, which typically makes quite an impression with young viewers these days given its emphasis on story, plot, and character development in complete and utter contrast to many of the more contemporary films they know.  That is to say it, Double Indemnity , is not choc...

Thank you to Mosstrooper for nominating the Grand Duchy of Stollen blog for a Stylish Blogger Award.  Naturally, I'll accept on behalf of the Grand Duke Irwin-Amadeus II since he and his manservant Hives are away at Aunt Ermgard's country home for a long weekend of hunting, dining, and dancing -- in honor of Great Britain's recently married Duke and Duchess of Cambridge -- plus avoiding connubial entanglements of any kind.  Now, I believe there are a few things to see to for old IA the Deuce in absentia: 1) Provide links back to Mosstrooper's own blogs Tinsoldiering On and The Steadfast Tin Soldier , the second of which is brand new but looks very promising given it's stated 30mm Old School focus.  My cup of tea and all that!  Just click on the previous highlighted links to be transported magically to these two blogs via the magic of the Internet. 2) Share seven things about myself.  Oh, no!  This could get embarrassing, especially if mention of that 2...