Clash of Spears: Roman Leaders and Infantry

 In preparation for next week's first play through of Clash of Spears (as long as lock-down holds off) I've made a big push on the Romans and managed to complete the rest of the starter set. The different armour and weapons used by the three classes of Roman infantry mean that each has a different role and feel on the battlefield. It also meant that they had a nice bit of variation on the painting table, which is always helpful when working on a project.
First up are the Hastati who traditionally form the first of the three battle lines and are the lightest armoured. As you would expect they are armed with a throwing spear (pilum) and have abilities which help them cause extra fatigue with their pilums and also allow them to advance more quickly in close order.

Hastati

The second line would be formed by the more heavily armoured Principes who are armed in exactly the way as the Hastati but are more proficient in melee combat.

Principes

As we can see from the unit stats below the Hastati and Principes share the same special rules but the Principe are priced as veteran shock troops and the Hastati as trained. This makes the Principe the best melee troops the Romans have available and they should be able to withstand damage as well as they dish it out.

The last unit is the traditional rear guard, the Triarii. These troops retain the long spear and fight in the Hoplite style. With full armour, a heavy shield and the fidelis special rule these troops will be difficult to kill and won't run away easily if the going gets tough.

Triarii

I also complete three leaders and a musician to lead the Roman force and again mounted these on the wound dial bases from Warbases, this is to keep track of the leaders command points as they are spent on activating units.

Leaders

Next up on the Clash of Spears front are some Greek archers and Hoplites which will be used to add some extra options into the Carthaginian and Roman forces. Unfortunately we still have no sign on the Iberian box set coming out from Victrix, it looks like they are concentrating on their own new releases at the moment.

And here are all the boys together, again a nice colourful force, though with the matching shields they look more uniform than the Carthaginian force.

Clash of Spears: Velites

 The week's Roman troops are the Velites, who are a premium skirmishing unit. You get twelve of these in the started box and I added one of the commanders in with a shield swap to act as a leader and to add some colour to the force. The Victrix sprue does come with some wolf pelt pieces which I have put aside for other uses so these chaps just have helmets and shields for defence.

The Velites come in at 13 points per figure which is a significant step up from the 9 points you pay for the Carthaginian javelin men. For the extra points you get a boost in melee to 4+ (from 5+) and a boost in grit to 4+ as well. This means they should have the upper hand in any melee with opposing skirmishers and are more likely to stay in a ranged/melee fight without becoming over fatigued. 

It also worth remembering that activation/reaction activation tests are made against the units grit value so they should be more reliable when trying to carry out advanced manoeuvres. 

Here we can see the Libyan javelin men and below the table of model prices for the various troop training levels. Clash uses a very simple formula for determining model cost so you could easy make up your favourite unit type as long as the special rules needed for them already exist. 

So we can see the Libyan's are costed as Inexperienced and the Velites as Trained, special rules each cost 1 point with armour & weapons costing between 1 - 3 points depending on type.

Clash uses a pre-battle movement system whereby your units are assigned a numbered token (your opponent does not know which number is assigned to a unit) and you then take turns to activate a token and move them. Tokens get locked in place once they reach a certain distance from the enemy and once all tokens are locked the assigned units are deployed onto the table and the game proper begins. Light troops useful in this phase as any infantry unit with a 6+ save and any cavalry with a 4+ save generate a extra 'fake' token that can be used. In the reveal phase this token is just discarded rather than being replaced with a unit. This gives the option to mislead your opponent as to the true disposition of your forces.

Another important part of this phase is that whilst you can activate a token multiple times the unit it represents will start the battle with accumulated fatigue depending on it's armour save and the number of times you have activated it. So you may have done a cunning flank march with your heavy hitters but they would then start the battle with multiple fatigue.

So that's all the light troops and allies done, next up are the three types on Roman combat infantry, Hastati, Principes, & Triarii.

Clash of Spears: Equites

 Cavalry was never the strongest arm of the Republican Roman army and was recruited mainly from citizens of the equestrian order. This meant it was well equipped but low in numbers. In the starter box we get only four heavy cavalry as opposed to the six Numidian light cavalry in the Carthaginian box.

The Equites come with a 4+ save and hit on 3's with their cavalry spear so like to be charging in to wavering heavy troops or using their extra speed to sweep enemy skirmishers from the field. With only four models in the unit they probably don't want to be shot at very much or engage large fresh units.

Troops in Clash are assigned to one of three rarities in order structure the building of forces. These go upwards from Civis to Milites to Rare. Generally the troop quality also improves with the rarity. At least half your force must be mustered from the Civis troop rarity which is an easy way to help balance out the forces seen on the table.

The Equites are Rare so in order to field them you would already need 1 Commander, 8 Civis and 4 Milites in your order of battle.

In the Roman starter box you get 12 Velites, 8 Samnites and 12 Hastati but only 6 Principes, the only Milites choice in the list, so this would limit you to only 6 Rare models in the army. Expanding the number of Principes would be a good starting point for expanding the Roman force it would seem. The inclusion of some allied veteran Iberian Scutarii or Greek City State Hoplites would also help increase the number of Milites troops in the army.

The Carthaginians have two Milites cavalry options in the light Numidian and heavy Iberian cavalry, so could field a 50% mounted force, which could be interesting.

Next up are the Velites who are a premium skirmish unit.

Clash of Spears: Samnites

 Having completed the Carthaginians last week I'm moving onto the Romans this week. The Romans don't make extensive use of allies in Clash but they do some with a unit of Samnites in the starter box.

These are armoured in a very different style to the Roman troops and almost seem to be an Iberian / Greek mix of equipment. This makes a nice varied little unit to add into the Roman force.

Like the Iberians in the Carthaginian army these troops are happiest when striking out of rough terrain. With partial armour and Wall of Spears they should be more durable on the defence if they can form close order to receive a charge.

As with the other Victrix models these are easy enough to put together and have lots of extra options on the sprue so you can get each model looking pretty unique.

The Roman list is going to consist of a lot of spear throwing infantry with only the Triarii fighting in the hoplite style. So getting the most out of the various different types of spear throwers is no doubt going to be key.

Onto the cavalry next, which is a small elite unit so shouldn't take long.