To go with their game piece of Russian Napoleonic Infantry we have this command set from Zvezda. As with the other Napoleonic sets in this series, Zvezda have been more generous with the contents than they were with their World War II sets, since there are five figures and a horse here. Naturally the set includes a mounted officer and one on foot, and there is also a flag-bearer, drummer and fifer. All these poses are very conventional and perfectly reasonable. The musicians are actively playing their instruments and the flag-bearer is holding his burden upright, while both officers have drawn their swords to add emphasis to their commands. The only extra observation we would make on these fine poses is that, while all are marching together, with right foot forward, the marching soldier in the infantry set has his left foot forward, which may annoy some.

The two officers are single pieces, but the flag-bearer and musicians have multiple parts for obvious reasons. The results however are excellent in all cases, with very natural poses and no compromises or unwanted plastic. The parts are simple to fit and go together very well without recourse to gluing. The sculpting is uniformly superb as usual too, with all the detail you could want on these highly attractive uniforms. The flag, which is of a good size, has been engraved with a standard design for infantry flags on both sides, so looks really good.

All the men wear the curved-top shako that was introduced from 1812, with full ornaments as was usual. The uniforms are well done too, and the drummer and fifer have the swallow’s nest wings and the sleeve lace that such musicians should have. So no accuracy concerns either.

Zvezda had previously made fine examples of all these figures in their full set of Russian Grenadiers for the same period, with the main difference being that these men are not grenadiers. The poses in the full set were great, and these are different but just as good, so it is good to see such a set of musketeers being produced. This is another very attractive set that is really well made and will serve well for anyone looking for such specialists for their ranks of musketeers, and not simply as a game piece as was intended. The one down side, as usual, is the figures each come with a large, square and very thick display base, but the effort to fix this problem would be well worth it we would think.