Saga: Carthaginians

 I recently completed all the extra models to convert the Clash of Kings Carthaginian starter force in to a SAGA army. In fact with the extra Greek models I have I can probably also field an Iberian & Greek force with a little proxying for the Iberians.

The Carthaginian list reflects their reliance on mercenary contingents by dividing the troops up into Citizens, Contingents, and then Levies. You can use any dice to activate a Citizens unit and need a Common or Rare dice to activate your Contingent units.

As can be seen above the Contingent troops are all Warriors whilst the Citizens include Hearthguard, Chariots and Elephants as well. A players army must include at least one unit of Citizens but the rest can then be of any type. Getting the correct mix of home grown and mercenary units is important in this list as some of the ability effects vary by unit type.

Some new Iberian Cavalry

Citizens can also use Contingent troops as a human shield using Blood Price, useful for protecting your Hearthguard but even better for protecting your Elephants and Chariots. You could also use a unit of Levies to soak up the damage as well. A unit of Javelin Levy who could advance and take a free shot alongside the Elephants would seem a good tactic. I will try and cover the two new units in another blog post in the future, they look like fragile damage dealers to me at a quick glance.

As mentioned the Carthaginian battle board has several abilities who's effects vary depending on the unit type. So Coordination can be used to boost the attacking power of your Citizen troops and boost the defence of the Contingent troops. All have this common theme in place, so you have more abilities to help your Citizens cause damage and more to make the Contingent troops stay alive.

 I presume this is to reflect the use of Hannibal's Contingent troops to absorb the Romans charge whilst his Citizen troops enveloped the flanks.

The board also has an ability to encourage the Carthaginian general to invest more heavily in mounted troops (including Elephants) than a Roman general would. Being able to activate 3 units with just one dice is very powerful as it allows you to concentrate dice on other abilities on the board rather than movement activations. Even being able to activate 2 units for one dice is good so foot armies can still make good use of Encirclement. 

The Carthaginians also have an ability to boost their shooting and deprive the enemy of any cover bonus they may have. This again would make taking a unit of Javelinmen alongside Elephants extra potent, not forgetting that the Elephants also have a ranged attack so could benefit from this as well.

With the inclusion of unit type specific ability effects and an the extra option of Elephants & Chariots the force selection for Carthaginians and the battle board play is more complicated than the Romans. I think it will take a fair few games to work out exactly the best way to tailor the force and this will change depending on your likely opposing force. On the bright side as I don't own any Carthaginian Chariots at least that is one option that I don't need to worry about. 

Perhaps a good starting force could be:

2 points of Hearthguard in 1 unit

1 point of Mounted Contingent Warriors with Javelins in 1 unit

2 point of Foot Contingent Warriors in 2 units

1 point of Levy Bowmen in 1 unit

It feels like the Citizens should be the fist in the force with the other units in place to shield them from harm and harry the enemy.

Then once you know the board a bit better you could swap 1 or 2 Elephants in for Hearthguard points.