Some of these ideas I’ve thought of James, others I have not, so thank you for the inspiration! I thought the same thing for the Romanian chasseurs and the artillery, but was a little more stuck on the line infantry, Dorobanz, and cavalry. I’ll have to look into the two conversion options you suggested (I’m not the best at converting figures it must be said).

The Russians are a bit easier. Any union ACW figures work as line infantry, and with some very slight modifications the Ecsi and Strelets Foreign Legion figures make great Russian infantry with havelocks. For guard regiments wwi Russians work great. As you mentioned Cossacks are easy to come by, and the WWI cavalry works good as well.

The Turks are a bit harder to assemble. Any Zouaves work, as do Egyptian infantry for Sudan, and then of course the Strelets sets. You would have to create your own line cavalry, and either convert the artillery or track down Strelets’ brilliant artillery set. Strelets does have a beautiful Bashi-Bazouke set as well, the best I’ve found at any scale.

The only things I’m really stuck on are what to do for the Bulgarian Volunteer battalions, and the Krupp guns so widely used. There’s a lack of late 19th century breech loading artillery in this hobby I’ve found.

But anyways, I’ll think about it some more. The main reason I was drawn to 10mm is because at that scale substitutions and paint job cover ups are less obvious, and pendraken has a wide range of available unit options when drawn from other periods (wwi, Russo-Japanese, Egypt in Sudan, Franco Prussian, ACW…)

While I know absolutely nothing whatsoever about this particular war, I have a thought concerning breech loading artillery.

After the American Civil War the US Army produced only a few guns until around 1900, but in that interim period many of the guns looked a lot like the 12 pound Napoleon, but with an opening breech rather than the closed breech and no cascabel, that's the knob on the breech end.

So I have taken some of my surplus ACW guns and cut the knob off the end and painted them as if they were 1880's artillery and solved the problem using existing equipment.

https://bunkermeister.blogspot.com/2017/08/dr-dooms-army.html

Here I was making an army for Doctor Doom, he is the prince of Latveria and that country has a small and under equipped army.

I took an ACW 12 pounder Napoleon, and pierced the bell on the breech end and pushed a rod through it. That turned it into a breech loader with the rod being the handle to open the breech. I also updated it to the 1930s or so by adding rubber tires. But by leaving the original wooden spoked wheels you could make it an 1880ish gun, in my opinion.

Close enough, is good enough unless they make exactly what you want.

https://bunkermeister.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-army-of-latveria.html

Here are some more views of the cannon, I made four of them.

Hope that helps.

Bunkermeister