Romanoff Figures: Cleaned, Assembled, and Reviewed!

Two packs of Romanoff 30YW / ECW figures.  These I got from S&S who export them from OldGloryUK.com far as I can tell.  I _believe_ that OGUK also adds to the line with new sculpts periodically.  At the S&S catalogue, they are:

40RTW4  Musketeers - firing and loading with felt hat             (5 figs) $17.00

40RTW4a Musketeers - firing and loading with monmouth caps (5 figs) $17.00

Unfortunately for the pic, I sorted out all the monmouth caps for pikemen and added more felt brimmed hats from S&S.  But you can see what you get, basically.  Each pack had five identical bodies (humph, would prefer at least two different bodies) and six sets of arms/gear to make the 5 figures.  So you can make three loading/three firing, then two of the other.  Five nicely sculpted swords and I believe it was six heads, maybe a couple more (the command pack has 8 heads for 5 figures).

*research point - Osprey ECW vol 1: Infantry suggests that the monmouth / knit caps were favored by the pikemen as they wore them under their helmets for added comfort, while the brimmed hats and caps like the montero were favored by musketeers [perhaps to keep sun out of the eyes while firing?  maybe the brims helped keep the lock dryer during wet weather firing?].  Interesting and makes sense, so I'm running with it*

The amount of mold lines, flak etc was average for an OG casting, but there weren't any really bad ones across the face and such, and most cleaned up easy.  Only annoying problem was a line that was _in_ the trouser side, sort of a groove in fact, that resisted all but the most aggressive filing attempts.  In the end I had to settle for a combo of filing and filling them, unknown if it'll work.

Assembly was not bad and often fun.  I enjoyed making natural poses and thinking about what the guy was doing.  Also, as a former military man, I know that during any drill there's always some variation in how people stand and do things.  During this period drill was even less strict and uniform, so there should be more variety.  With the slight variation in the arms and different heads, several different figures can be made. 

At $17 for 5 [$3.40 ea.] they cost 50 cents more a figure than S&S 5-packs, and $1.15 more than the "value-pack" of 20 firing figures from S&S.  So the bottom line is get them for pose variety - if you value that then great, but if not go for the S&S, I guess.

Now, how do they turn out?  Well, just fine, really.  But it takes a bit of modelling to do it with the separate arms, weapons, and swords, and heads!  I found it pretty fun, but not something I'd do for an entire project.

Cleaned and assembled, five giving fire and 5 loading.  Are the poses accurate?  One seems to be - my copy of de Gheyn has the exact loading posture, holding musket and priming the pan w' fine powder from a flask:

And this is how my assembly came out:

I also tried to vary their relative foot positioning so they didn't look _quite_ so identical in body.  I think with the painting and basing I can succeed in this a bit more, altho for real variety I'll have to await the Montrose highlanders Chris is progressively offering this summer and fall!  Now the shooting posture and posing:

The Romanoff pose has the gun crooked in the bicep/elbow [ouch!] disregarding recoil.  The de Gheyn postures don't show that in the postures just before/after firing either, so in my mind they've been taught their postures by a veteran who has them holding their 'peece' slightly lowered just before/after actual firing.  They still look just fine and having done lots of shooting/drilling, I'm certain that there's not just one way to do it, and the period definitely had lots of self-proclaimed experts with their own ways.  Fair enough.

This stage went fine - big question for me is will the priming process fill up the gaps between the arms and bodies a bit more - they're too obvious right now.  I'll try some gap fill and see how it goes.

Overall, I give them a 7.5 for average casting and value, but superior posing and pose variety.