ROMANIAN COMMAND DONE: PROJECT COMPLETE!

Romanian Army Command Stand Using Castaway Arts Franco Prussian French Figures.

Greetings, fellow shut-ins!  In this post, I am pleased to report on the completion of the "pandemic project" that has been the subject of posts reaching back to March 14.  My goal was to complete my Romanian Russo-Turkish War contingent by May 4 (so I'm a bit behind, but still in lockdown, so it's all good).  To recap, I had done the cavalry previously, meaning that the project involved doing the rest: the Dorobanti Infantry, the Chassuers, the Line Infantry, the artillery, and finally, the command elements (the subject of this post). As usual, in this post you may clix pix for BIG PIX.

Castaway Arts French Franco-Prussian War Command Figs: epaulettes and kepi plume added to convert one to a general (left).  

As I have mentioned previously, the Romanian uniform was French influenced.  In searching about to find a suitable set of mounted command figures in kepi, I turned up the excellent Castaway Arts Franco Prussian line...

...in order to represent the elegant Romanian general officer kit, I  took out my green stuff and added epaulettes to the shoulders and a plume to the kepi of my general.

Another perspective on the command stand: the flag was downloaded from Wikimedia Commons. 

The depictions of Romanian officer kepis vary wildly.  So I took a middle ground approach and did mine as representative rather than specific.  Also, the "canvas" provided by the headgear on these sculpts didn't leave much space for embellishment. Thus, I worked with what the figs gave me rather than trying to force a set of details into a shape and space where they wouldn't really work.  I did take on a challenge, though (no surprise) in doing the staff officer's kepi in white with yellow details, a combination that was just too smart to avoid. I have to add that these yellow details look more distinct to the the eye than they do in this shot.  One trick to help make them work was to up the contrast by using Humbrol Light Gray as opposed to flat white for the kepi, along with a bit of very fine black cartooning of the yellow lines. Regular readers of this blog may also notice my free-handed hungarian knots on the shoulders of the staff officer (and other officers). 

The flags on my army command stands have magnetic bases, so they can be used as additional eye candy or removed for a more utilitarian look (above).  I was not at first going to include the foot officer, but once he was done, I couldn't resist adding him. The distinctive pose is both dynamic and very toy soldier-like at the same time, an excellent example of how a "plain" figure can deliver a big effect.

I also did a separate sub-commander/chief of staff stand.  This is an unmodified figure for those who may be wondering about the Castaway line.  The only critique I have is that this is the only pose.  So down the road, I intend to look into using figures from the Foundry Maximilian Adventure French Imperial Command set to expand my sub commander stands so that they aren't all pointing in exactly the same way. 

The Castaway Arts figures (right) are a a bit slight, but are comparable to the North Star 1866 figures (left). I wouldn't mix them in units, but for singles and specialty figures they will work just fine. 

 Castaway Arts (left) and Ral Partha (Right). I was originally thinking that the Castaway Arts figures were similar to the "true" 25mm figs of old.  However, when I pulled out a venerable Ral Partha 25mm colonial command figure for a comparison shot, I quickly saw that this was not the case!  (But I do loves me my Ral Partha Colonials--which reminds me, I'm overdue for a colonial game).

The Romanian Command Complete = The Romanian Pandemic Project Complete.

Next up, a pass-in-review of the whole Romanian Contingent. 

Excelsior!