For those not familiar with renaissance cavalry and the Stradioti, our review of Set 1 gives a little background. The principal weapons of these men, the spear and bow, were covered in that first set, so this set has poses with their secondary weapons – the sword and assorted maces, hammers etc.

These poses give a good cross-section of some of the secondary weapons such men carried into battle. Three of the poses are holding the sword, which was usually curved like a scimitar, and fairly well reproduced here. The man with sword square across his head is rather flat in appearance, and the man with his sword arm pressed against his head could have been better, but all three poses are reasonable and usable.

The top row has a man holding a hammer, but doing so in a bizarre way with the hammer held towards his head, requiring him to strain his wrist to achieve this. Why would anyone want to hold it this way? We do not know, but it looks bad and silly. Next to him is someone holding an axe in s fairly similar way, although this time he is almost looking in the direction the weapon is facing, so we could almost imagine it is at the start of a downward blow. Almost, because the axe head is still more side on to the gaze of the man, which is easier to mould but looks less than convincing. Finally the first man in the third row is holding a mace over his left shoulder as if about to deliver a blow to the right. This is hard to see in our photo, but unlike many previous attempts at this sort of pose it actually works quite well here. Most importantly, the man’s right arm is not impossibly close to his neck as they so often are, and he is looking to his right, so the whole thing is quite credible. This is the best of the three poses we have just discussed.

The sculpting of the men is of the same good standard as the first set, with pleasing detail and a natural appearance. However the man with the mace suffers from a lot of flash, particularly around the weapon. There is a little excess plastic on a couple of poses, inevitably including our friend with the mace, but this is minimal and does not present any real problem. All the figures are complete as shown, but the sprue includes some extra weapons and shields, which is a nice bonus that will be much appreciated by those looking to vary their poses more.

The dress of these men is much the same as in the first set, with some characteristic long robes, tall hats and a little visible armour. Once again everything looks authentic and suitable, which is great.

Unfortunately another shared attribute with the first set is the horses, which are the same models and so deliver some terrible poses and a fair amount of flash. All the saddles and equipment looks reasonable, but many of the animals are so badly posed that you would surely look for alternatives elsewhere.

The traditional and accurately done costume of these figures is great to see, and the sculpting is very good too. The weapons are fine, and although we would have liked to have seen a pose with the short javelin or assagaye, this could be achieved by cutting down a lance in the first set. The way some of the weapons are being held is very strange, and is so obviously unnatural that anyone can see the problem, while the horses are so bad that they simply need to be dismissed completely. Seen in conjunction with the first set, this is a good expansion of the available poses and weapons, but the bad horses and awkward poses make this set rather less than it could have been.