15th Century Rumanian Archers and Light Cavalry

I've had a Vlad Tepes figure by Old Glory kicking around in my unpainted bin for many years now, and it occurred to me that it would be fun to paint him, along with a pack of Rumanian archers and Rumanian light cavalry, and call them "Balkan mercenaries" in Italian Wars games.  The archers are chunky scuplts and quite tall for Old Glory.  I could not find a plate online that matched their clothing style (a knee length baggy tunic with an open jacket on top of that and a cloak on top of that), but the distinctive fur hats were the main feature I was after and every figure in this pack has one.

I based these so they can be in units of ten figures on three 40mm square bases (three figs on two bases, and four crammed on the third base). This isn't for any particular game system, it just maximizes the number of units I can field from one bag of 30 figures.

I had similar bad luck finding reference images for the light cavalry.  They all wear a peculiar disc on their chests. I painted this metallic. I knew I wanted them in red jackets to match Vlad so wasn't too worried about other accuracy.  I still need to add a banner to one of the riders.

These could moonlight as stradiots in Italian Wars games, although both these and the archers are a bit old fashioned looking (1470s-ish) for the Italian Wars (1495-1515) period.

Its a bit of a fool's errand, but I've also been upgrading the basing on a lot of my Italian Wars units.  Or at least changing the base decoration to match my current preferences.  Up until 3 or 4 years ago I would use Oregon beach sand for grit and just apply some flock to the base and call it good.

Left to right: Milan, France, Venice, Este, Florence.

My current preference is to use (clean!) cat litter as a base, let it dry, paint it with cheap "fawn" colored acrylic paint to get a dry/dirty/arid look, then add flock, then tufts.  I mainly like the lighter surface tone which makes the minis stand out a bit more.  I've also taken to rebasing my command stands from round bases to square MDF, which is what this group is.