Upcoming Release from Italeri. . .

It’s been awfully quiet here at the Grand Duchy of Stollen blog lately. But that doesn’t mean things aren’t happening. Far from it! In fact, I’ve been plugging away, painting the third batch of the 80-figure Zichenauer infantry regiment behind the scenes. This third company of 19 figures is progressing nicely, and I’ll have a photo or two posted here in another couple of days. Just think, almost finished with 75%+ of the unit!

On an exciting and related note, I’ve learned that Italeri are poised to release a new set of Napoleonic Austrian infantry 1800-1805 (Item #6093), sometime before the end of the year. As you’ll notice from the above illustration, these figures look like they will work well for the late 18^th century. Hopefully Plastic Soldier Review will have more information on set composition before too much longer.

Jim “Alte Fritz” Purky mentioned, in a recent discussion over on TMP, that the casquet (Sp?) headgear was worn by Austrian troops during the SYW period, or perhaps slightly later. The bearskins with brass plate will certainly also work for my imaginary armies. If there are figures wearing the crested helmets included in the set, maybe I can paint them up as some kind of special light infantry/jäger formation. Or perhaps a smaller engineer battalion or something? We’ll see. But I don’t want to stray too far from historical plausibility, even though my contentious territories and armies are imaginary.

In any case, I’ll have to order a single box first to see of they’ll work next to my Revell plastics, RSMs, and Spencer Smiths where height and proportion are concerned. They must be at least 25-26mm tall (base-to-eye) and slender -- the Revell figures provide my benchmark. If the Italeri figures meet it, I know they won't look out of place next to the lovely RSM and Spencer Smith miniatures either. So, I’ll probably order 5-6 boxes in the new year, depending on the types/numbers of poses per box. In the meantime, it’s back to the painting grind. Can you hear the Volga Boatmen humming in the background?