The Grand Duchy of Stollen

Today's set-up, now featuring mats, roads, and fields from Hotz Artworks.  Everything works together very cohesively, and the felt mats drape very well over styrofoam hill contours. W ell, the Young Master has not expressed much interest in a battle of toy soldiers with ol' Dad lately, so I am having a quick solo affair myself today (Sunday) while he and the Grand Duchess are off to the Detroit Zoo and IKEA.  I've decided on a battle for a crossroads somewhere along the frontier between The Grand Duchy of Stollen and The Electorate of Zichenau.  Whoever controls it by the end of ten turns will be deemed the winner.   The situation before the start of hostilities is this.  The two generals commanding the respective scratch forces -- of roughly equal size, but with some slight differences on composition -- have each been sent by their superiors to seize the vital crossroads at the village of Wegkreuz , which sits in a shallow valley taken up by farmlan...

  Not much to look at at just yet, but plugging away with the first squadron and two regimental command figures. A quiet, calm Sunday afternoon here in the Grand Duchy of Stollen.  The Grand Duchess and Young Master are out doing something at a local nature preserve, so I have taken the opportunity to give Zum Stollenkeller a much needed spiffing up (dusting and the Hoover) before getting back to applying some paint.  Before the glaze of  London Red Alkyd oil, an undercoat of acrylic yellow (red oil glazes over a whiter undercoat don't look right. . .  not exactly pink, but definitely not red enough), which I'll wrap up after finishing this post.  OK, time to quit blathering on get back to work!  There is just slightly more than a month left of summer vacation, and still so much to accomplish. . .  including another solo game, during which I'll playtest the latest version of my Call It Macaroni! rules  More of which anon. -- Stokes ...

Still early in the painting game with this two-squadron regiment of cuirassiers in bearskins.  I am tackling them one squadron at a time although the two-figure regimental HQ right square in the middle of the front rank is being done along with the first squadron to its left.  The second squadron will have either a slightly different dark brown for its horses or, perhaps, black steeds. T inkering around with painting the horses of first dozen RSM95 (French) cuirassiers in bearskins this afternoon, and a few new things emerged clearly in my mind while I did so.  In no particular order, they go like this.   One, if you use oils to paint your horses, you cannot beat Van Dyke Brown as a color for both various chestnuts and bays.  Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber are also good colors as is Grumbacher English Red over a black undercoat, which helps tone down the very reddish brown cast of this particular color.  Otherwise, I no longer use black as a base ...

Two suitable images by reenactors for the July 4th holiday.  Not my particular cup of tea, but you've got to hand it to the  people who take the time, effort, and spend the money to get it just right. A lmost finished applying white gesso basecoat to those 30 RSM95 cavalry.  Then, it will be time to start painting in earnest.  First, I'll apply the usual alkyd oil flesh wash to faces, followed by an acrylic yellow undercoat to the horses before a dark brown oil glaze (Burnt Umber), black cavalry boots, and then the main uniform colors.     My son, the Young Master, wandered by yesterday afternoon and asked when I would be all finished painting soldiers.  I replied that, much like a flower garden, one is never quite done when it comes to painting, collecting, and playing with soldiers.  You could probably say that for many other hobbies as well.  Happy Independence Day everyone.  KA-BOOM!!! -- Stokes

Apparently, the above illustration shows how a Prussian cavalry squadron appeared on parade during the late 17th and 18th centuries.  Battle formation was similar, but the distances between files were closed up if I understand correctly.  Anyway, this is interesting because of where the officers, trumpeters, and standard bearer are placed.  Note that they are not all together. T hought that I would share this here.  I came across the above illustration of a Prussian cavalry squadron yesterday while trying some German search terms  -- 'fahnen' and 'standarten' -- on Google.  Looking for possible information on Wurttemburg and Bavarian cavalry flags you understand.  One sometimes turns up unexpected new things online by trying another language for searches, something I learned 20+ years ago when I had a job in the Geography Library at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  During the 1995-96 academic year, my boss put me in charge of findin...

  Bavaria   Bavaria Wurttemburg W ell, if our G.D. internet connection were more cooperative -- a problem for the last two blasted days -- I'd have a bit more to write here.  Suffice to say, I will start on the first squadron of an eventual two-squadron regiment of RSM95 heavy cavalry in bearskins later today by gluing riders onto horses and, hopefully, getting white acrylic gesso basecoat on at least some of them.  While I might still paint one squadron in dark blue, I'll definitely paint one in red, based on either Bavarian or Wurttemburg heavy cavalry of the mid-18th century.  It's simply too good a temptation to resist, and about the only way I'll ever get a unit approaching the dramatic Scots Greys on the table given my mid-18th century, semi-fictitious, quasi-Germanic focus.  The Grand Duchy of Stollen is, after all, rather far away from the plains of Belgium! -- Stokes Later. . . Righty-oh!  Riders have been glued into...

  A half-timbered, or fachwerk, house. A delightful couple of hours spent this late morning and early afternoon tweaking the construction of my foamcore lightbox and then taking a slew of better-lighted photographs of the recently completed model buildings.  While some a re rather good, others need to be reshot.  I've tried three-point lighting, but that still leaves shadows and certain important details in the darkness, so a fourth source of diffused light, probably positioned behind the camera and  bounced off the ceiling of the lightbox, will solve the problem.  Stay tuned.   By the way, the Young Master, who returned Sunday evening from 10 days visiting his grandparents in Seattle, approves of Dad's recent construction boom.  We're planning a very simple Featherstonian-type wargame this weekend using his soldiers that he received last Christmas.  A few of the buildings here just might make an appearance.  Can't wait! ...

At last, it's Market Day, and the square between the Rathaus and local university is abuzz as townsfolk and country people alike journey to the center of town to have a look around.  Perhaps, they might also purchase some common necessities like seasonal produce, flowers, or freshly caught eels for instance. F inished the important surprise details mid-afternoon, and have had a little time to set up better lighting, the tripod, and camera for a few slightly better photographs.  Still some tiny things to see to and some final painting, but nothing anyone but me would notice.  Ladies and genetlemen, I give you the town of 'name-yet-to-be-determined.' -- Stokes Children frolic around the corner in the square before the old Hospital of the Holy Spirit.  And is that?  It is!  It is!  Here comes Magarete the Marketenderin on the way to set up her stall around the corner for Market Day.  A bit further afield, in front of the coffee house, ju...

A tiny peak at the town center to be. . .  S till not quite there with everything, but I wanted to share a few early photographs of the almost finished Baltic German town center after a quick trip to my local 'big-box' arts and crafts store midday where I found, in the scrapbooking aisle of all places,  12" square heavy (vinyl?) textured sheets the make perfect cobblestone mats on which to place the various town buildings!  Who knew?  Allow me to reiterate that I will never again sneer at the scrapbooking set.  At any rate, there are various companies out there that produce cobblestone gaming mats in various sizes, but looking at them online, the colors seem either too dark, or the size of the cobblestones depicted seem too large for 28-30mm figures and buildings.  So, I thought that I'd take a gander at the dollhouse and scrapbooking aisles to see if I might ind reasonable substitutes  Lo and behold, there they were, the perfect randomly patte...

'The Buddenbrook House' on Mengstrasse right across the street from the Marienkirche (Saint Mary's Church) in Lübeck, Germany.  This was author This was author Thomas Mann's family home for a time wen he was a boy. N o photographic update this morning everyone, but I can report that the windows and doors are just about done on the dozen new buildings that comprise my Baltic German town center.  Just the university/palace to do, and then a final few small surprise details, and the project will be complete.  A scant month plus a few days since it began. Today's photograph is of Thomas Mann's boyhood home in Lübeck, Germany.  I am unsure what is in it now, but there was a bank in operation on the premises way back during the winter of 1986 when I first visited the town.  I cashed a traveler's check (Remember those?) there the morning I left heading north to Copenhagen.   In 1990, when I spent another week  in Lübeck, the bank had gone, and t...

The Hospital of the Holy Spirit model is just about finished.  Remarkably, I made no mistakes that need later touching up.  That happens so rarely that I am still a bit stunned.  Clearly, one is able to paint somewhat better when not distracted by the trials of normal day-to-day life. T aking a lunch break here in Zum Stollenkeller Mk. II at Totleigh-in-the-Wold, but I thought I'd share where we are in the process of suggesting windows and doors.  This one was the toughie!  Fairly smooth sailing from here on in with comparatively easy rectangles representing the doors and windows on the rest o the buildings.  All that is needed on the above hospital building though is the clock near the top of the central gable, two strips of "corroded cooper" stripping on the front edges of both shorter gables, and this particular wargaming structure will be done.  I plan to come back to those kinds of details a bit later though once the addition of stylized win...

In the midst of adding the suggested wondows and doors to the town orphanage this afternoon. A fter completing a reasonably good half-timbered effect --  achieved through a combination of brown magic marker, olive green crayon, and mid-brown colored pencil -- on the four model buildings that required it, it's time to suggest those carefully traced windows and doors with the addition of some equally careful brushwork.  This time with diluted acrylic Burnt Umber.  I've done this with water before on earlier buildings, but you risk the color running everywhere.   This time, I'll use more viscous acrylic glazing medium (pictured above), which thins out colors, makes them quite a bit more translucent, and enables you to maintain a fair degree of control over the paint while still drying pretty quickly.  Above, you'll see the results, minus the tiny bits on the dormer and circular window, which await their wash of translucent brown.  Black, to me, loo...

To aid my fenestration, the word for today, I made  nifty little template this morning.  Time for a new and extremely sharp hobby knife blade. R elax!  It's nothing obscene, immoral, or lascivious.  'Fenestration' is just a fancy word architects use in relation to the placement of windows and doors.  I must admit the need to look up the word in my trusty dictionary when I heard it for the first time in an architect's video on YouTube.   The meaning should have occurred to me given the similarity of the word to the German and Swedish words for 'window' ( Fenster and fönster respectively. . .  presumably the word is derived from the Latin.), but there you go. Funny how the ancient Romans remain with us in so many ways in 2017.  " I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus, this, that, and the other. . ." Anyway, I started applying the half-timbered effects to a few of my smaller building models yesterday, and that went reasonably w...

    An old print of the Holstentor (The Holstein Gate built in the late 1400s) outside the old center of Lübeck, Germany, which I've always meant to have a crack at since visiting the city for the first time in February 1986. T hank you everyone for your continued interest in the Baltic German town center project currently underway here at Stollen Central.  After a bit of real life midday today, Monday, it's back to trying to render some half-timbered effect to four of said town buildings. But first, a couple of questions this morning from long-time reader Gerardus Magnus, Bishop Emeritus, who asks: " Will this possibly be used in games such as a fighting withdrawal through the streets on some future gaming event or is this to serve solely as a picturesque backdrop? There is also a second question which has piqued my curiosity: will you ever be doing city walls for this civic grouping, either medieval or Vaubanesque? That would certainly increase your p...