Adventures In AI

Background

I'm sure you've all seen the media hullabaloo about Artificial Intelligence (AI). I'm also sure you've asked yourself: what has AI ever done for us (me)?

After some twelve months of dabbling and delving deeper into AI's capabilities, I'm pleasantly surprised at how helpful it can be. I started down this path because, although I know enough about how things work to ask the right questions, my coding abilities are rudimentary. The AI is so much better and quicker.

To show what's possible, I thought I'd list the things I've been able to do with the help of Anthropic's Claude AI (mostly). I have only used the free service.

15 mm Byzantine Mounted Commanders (Donnington "Originals")

Introduction

As a change of pace I've painted two command bases for my "fantasy" Byzantine project. This time they are figures specifically bought for the project, not cheap figures from eBay.

In keeping with my "fantasy" approach to this army I painted one commander astride a white horse. Every wargamers knows that all the best commanders ride white horses (except for Alexander the Great of course).

My intention is to use these for the Byzantine armies of Justinian to Nikephoros a five-hundred year span marked by frequent changes in arms and armour. Accordingly, I’ve opted for models whose equipment is indicative rather than strictly historically accurate. Even so, I’m reasonably confident that each figure will be plausible for at least some point within that period!

I'm rather enjoying this flexible approach.

15 mm Byzantine Infantry Archers (Museum Miniatures & Donnington "Originals")

Introduction

This is the third in a series of "cheap" purchases, or should I say bargain buys? Last year, at 2025's "The Other Partizan", I bought three second hand bags of Museum Miniatures' Byzantine light infantry bow (BZ10), from those nice people at Instant Armies.

The bags contained twenty five figures, which is a lot for me, but later on I realised that if I bought three command figures I could make two light infantry units for ADLG (4 figures), two medium bow units (12) and four bases of three archers (12).