First Despatch from Syldavia!

 Next on Parade, Infantry Regiment Moltuja

Here we get a peek at a Syldavian army line infantry regiment, IR 3 Moltuja. I had it as the third infantry regiment in seniority, recruited from an interior valley province with its primary armoury in the city of Istow, a place named in Hergé's canon.  I had this region as a stalwartly loyalist province having a significant German-speaking population derived from an early medieval migration.  That is my own invention, not something hinted at by Hergé.  

I used Eureka Miniature's excellent 18mm SYW range for this unit and for almost all the rest of the project, as you will eventually see.   These are Austrian infantry figures with a couple of other additions. All of my Syldavian regular army is strongly influenced by the Austro-Hungarian KüK and I have used gone so far as to use my Syldavians as stand-ins for the real Austrian army here and there. They are more colourful however - the basic theory of the uniform is that coat, trousers and small clothes are in unbleached local wool, hence the ochre-tinged base shade of white. Cuffs, turnbacks and waistcoats (for some regiments) are in distinctive colours.  For IR 3 Moltuja, the distinctive colour is black, which gives them a sombre, bad-ass look.  Other units have a more indulgent colour scheme. The black is set off by white-ish gaiters, this is a buttoned-down unit! 

I used Eureka's Russian infantry fifer as a musician and an Austrian artilleryman has been converted as ensign.  Tucked away in the rear someplace is an Old Glory napoleonic Saxon infantry officer converted into a short Syldavian officer.  He was an early attempt at conversion so I did my best to hide him!   The flag is my own design but was hand painted on foil by the inestimably talented Mark Allen, a genius in the bespoke flag business.  The original is a radiant little work of art, I wish I knew Mark's secret.   

Also in the background are sections of my own hand-made fortification walls and a bastion.  One of the inspirations for this project was Charles S Grant's Siege of Crenoil, something he has since revisited again at Pirna. I love the look of siege games and the lavishly-set tables of both the Grants and John Ray as examples.  I  built a number of wall sections, entrenchments and the guns for a siege and am hankering to set up a siege game.

I recall finding the Eurekas a bit fussy to paint and a bit chunky as I was previously accustomed to Anthony Barton's figures which are without peer in their scale.  I managed to get used to these quickly enough however and they paint up easily for me now, a couple of hundred figures later on.  Looking at them again I can note that 10 years ago my eyes were sharper and my hand was rather more still.  I have real trouble painting so precisely now.  Lets say that my eyes are less focussed and my style is a little more impressionist nowadays!  Oh well.  I was quite uptight about precision and detail back in the day. My current opinion, informed by experience, is that I should perhaps have gone to 28mm if I wanted "perfection", that objective is a trap in 15-18mm as of course you can't see it on the table.  The best way to make an 18mm figure look good is to put another one beside the first.  With that in mind, I expanded my original plan of 24 figure units to 30+.  Here you see five 6-figure bases, and the grenadiers are still attached (so 36 figure unit if attached).  I love the visual impact even just one more stand makes.  On top of that, I have a few extra figures (mounted officer, fifer, nco's) that I have been placing behind the unit as a third line, for the sake of depth, an idea borrowed from John Ray.  I'll probably change how I base those extra figures but I think they look great back there, even in 18mm.    

Disclosure : If you haven't guessed already, I amused myself by using an AI utility to crop out the ugly and non-pertinent background of some of these photos (my garden shed) and swapped in some imagined Syldavian settings.  The outcomes are sometimes a bit odd...

That is it for now.  Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting IR 3 Moltuja led by Maj. General Streusel!