It is is Sunday here in New Zealand and I have just photographed the unit I finished last night. Three units completed this week. One was already started/mostly done by last weekend but still – not bad going.

These miniatures are Elite Miniatures produced in Australia by Nathan at Elite Miniatures Australia. If you have not visited his web-store you will almost certainly have seen his fantastically inspiring Lonely Gamer blog.

As I am theming my army as Early Peninsular War I have gone with Portuguese in the barrentina shako and early uniform. Elite only make one set of Cacadores in this rig comprising four poses (Kneeling Firing, Standing at Ready, Loading and a guy that looks a bit like he should be sweeping a broom – advancing I guess) who are all armed with muskets. In the 1812+ Cacadore range there are mounted officers, drummers and foot officers. I decided to go for a 24 figure battalion and just mix the four poses I had. I may get a few more and do some head swaps to get officers – or more probably just leave things as they are.

These were nice big minis. Nathan really cast these up well – they were pretty crisp and only needed a bit of cleaning up – a bit of flash in the odd undercut but that was about it. I have found that these older style figures that are more animated than most of the ‘modern school’ of figures often have more underarm flash but half an hour or so with an xacto knife and file isn’t much out of my hobby time.  I went with the red cuffs of the 2nd Moura Regiment – because I like the red and brown. I hate painting yellow so used GW Zamesi Desert as is for the tunic lace. Against the brown I don’t think it looks too bad. The brown itself is a 50/50 mix of GW Rhinox Hide/Doombull Brown.