Clash of Spears: Punic Veterans & Leaders

This weeks painting concluded the Carthaginian Clash of Spears start box with both the veteran Punic infantry and commanders being completed.

The veterans are modelled using some captured Roman equipment with the most obvious piece being the shield but they also wear chain-mail armour instead of the linothorax of the standard Punic infantry.

This counts as full armour so gives them a save of 3+ (D6's are used for all rolls in Clash), they also have a melee & grit of 3+ so form the elite of the Carthaginian infantry. The lists also give you the option of having them fight in the Roman style with throwing spears instead of thrusting spears. 

They compare well to the Principes of the Roman army lacking only the Impulsum special rule which helps you force the enemy units out of close order with shooting.

Completing the army are the commanders which are used to activate units  during the game, the higher level commanders also boast extra attacks so could be useful in a fight if required.

The leaders come in levels 2 - 5 (strangely no level 1) which are increasing powerful as you would expect. You can also add various hangers-on to the leader and in this case I have one musician who can be added. The hangers-on are non-combatant but add an extra perk for a price.

To help keep track of the remaining command points each commander has I have mounted them on some bases with integrated counters from Warbases. This is in an effort to reduce the number of markers that will be trailing around behind units during play.

You need to use command points to activate units either for a normal activation or a reactive activation with it costing 1 CP if the unit is within command range to activate and 2 CP's if the range is outside command range. A musician increases the command range to 18" for normal activation's.

Clash looks to be a game where managing the various resources and knowing when to spend them is going to be key. You will need to balance the effects of fatigue on your troops against the need to get critical actions done. So the heavier armoured your men the more fatigue they take for undertaking actions and this increases if they are doing them in rough or broken terrain.

You also take extra fatigue for fighting, shooting and taking casualties, as fatigue builds up your troops are also less effective at fighting and also more likely to fail grit (morale) tests which in turn leads to them taking more fatigue.

An army of all heavy troops could quickly find themselves worn down trying to close with a lighter opponent and routing without having closed the gap.

With the Punic forces now completed I can get started on the Roman box next which features only one allied/mercenary unit with the rest being Roman's. As you would expect the legionaries feature heavily in the force with the lighter Hastati being the main choice and being supported by Velites and Principes.