When Imperial troops left Catalonia to its fate in 1713 the meagre forces left to the authorities in Barcelona included relatively little cavalry. A number of new units were quickly raised from various sources, and these were designated as either dragoons or cuirassiers, although in reality there was no difference between these in terms of dress, equipment or role.

As with the infantry, regiments of horse tended to be much the same in all European armies, with an ordinary coat and tricorn hat much like dismounted troops. In fact the only major differences in costume were the heavy boots cavalrymen wore and the lack of packs as everything was stowed on the saddle. The figures in this set have fairly typical costume of the time, which was doubtless no different for those in the Catalan service. However while the figure on either end of our picture is suitably dressed and armed with a carbine suspended from a belt over the shoulder, the two in the middle of the row have no such weapon (which is not in itself necessarily a problem) but they do seem to be wearing a sash - a universal mark of an officer. In addition they both seem to have rather heavy decoration around the edge of their hats, which all gives them the appearance of being officers rather than troopers. The fourth figure also shares this heavy hat decoration, so as a whole the set seems to be weighted heavily in favour of wealthy officers rather than ordinary troopers. Therefore while there is no problem with uniform or weapon accuracy the balance of the set seems to be wrong.

The poses are what you might expect but the fourth man, with no weapon drawn and looking to his side, has an appealing dignified look to him and was our favourite despite not being a combat pose. All the men have been quite well sculpted with long hair and modest levels of detail, although these are far from ornate uniforms in any case. There is no flash to be found, but the fragile nature of the plastic used means items such as swords and scabbards are particularly vulnerable to breakage, so these are collectors pieces rather than 'toys' in the wider sense.

All the horses seem very familiar, and like the riders have been used repeatedly in many sets in this series. Their saddlery and cloths look reasonable, and the men fit their mounts quite firmly. As we have observed before, the horse with the barrel under its hooves is of little use, certainly when depicting a charge, but otherwise the poses are reasonable.

As with many sets in this series the box includes elements unrelated to the main title. In this case there is a cannon and three crewmen, all of which can be found in the GerMan set of Catalan Artillery and Baricade and elsewhere, so we will not repeat our comments on them here.

Although these are quite nice figures the apparent bias in favour of officers is a poor feature, especially when there are only four different poses on offer to begin with. We also prefer our cavalry sets to contain just cavalry, so this set fails to quicken the pulse, especially when it contains nothing that cannot be found in other sets from this manufacturer.