Pick & Mix (4)!

This post features the last group of figures from my latest painting batch (if you want to you can check back for the others in my previous post here). This was a small, generally uninspiring, group but it included the most intricate flag I’ve had to paint for a while!

The last group is shown above, all 20mm scale 19th Century figures, although some are not quite what they seem (which makes this post slightly convoluted)! The figure on the left is an Ottoman/Turkish flag bearer, second from the left is a French 1870 Garde Mobile soldier and the remaining four on the right are Romanians.

The easiest one to deal with is the Ottoman flag bearer. For some completely inexplicable reason I stuck his flag flying to the right of the figure rather than to the left (which would have kept it over the base). This means you can only really see the design on it from behind, which is fine if you’re controlling his unit!

So what about this unit then? Well, without the flag bearer they’re 19th Century French Turcos. With the flag bearer, they’re Airship Marines for my steampunk Ottoman forces. Ottoman infantry went through several uniform changes in the 19th Century but for a period they wore this style of dress, albeit in a darker blue and with high boots instead of gaiters. I thought letting them have a light blue uniform would fit with them being airborne troops and I had a spare ACW zouave figure that could be painted as a flag bearer. So I get a completely different unit by only replacing one figure with the flag bearer!

The next two units are later 19th Century Romanian infantry units, or what can hopefully pass for them. These models have a convoluted history that I won’t bore you with! As they stand they’re fine for my steampunk Balkan League Romanians and passable as Romanian reserve infantry for the Balkan Wars or WW1.

The unit in grey coats is shown above. The three new figures are the central ones in the front rank. Most of these figures are WW1 Belgians but pass quite well as Romanians. The info I had at the time I started the units years ago suggested the shako was common headdress, but I’ve more recently found that the kepi was probably more appropriate.

The other unit wears blue jackets and predominantly kepis, so is probably more representative. The new flag bearer is in the front rank and next to him is the new French Garde Mobile trooper. By removing the flag bearer this unit represents a French Garde Mobile unit and that’s what most of the figures actually are anyway. They came with shakos and where I could I filed them down to kepis. The new guy on the right is actually a WW1 French infantryman but passes fine for a Garde Mobile with a coat. The flag bearer originally had a plain blue/yellow/red flag when he started off as a Romanian, had the yellow on the flag repainted white to let him be a Frenchman, and has now had a completely new flag added to let him be Romanian again. I saw a picture of a 1914 Romanian flag and thought I’d just have to add one of those for some colour!