Early Carthaginians - an accidental army

 

"Needing" an army for the Classical/Hellenistic period, a period I am not that interested in, I almost accidentally ended up building an Early Carthaginian army which turned out more effective that I thought it would be. Here is a bit of an account of how it came to pass ...

For some reason the majority of the Classical and Hellenistic periods, and indeed the early Roman Empire period, have relatively little interest for me despite being one of the core periods of ancient wargaming and supplied with many ranges of figures.

However, I like wargames competitions and these periods feature quite frequently and so, with grim inevitability, I decided that I really really "needed" an army that would fit into the commonly defined competition periods.

My initial thoughts were that some sort of Hellenistic army would fit the bill, maybe one of the slightly fringe ones like Pergamene perhaps. Alas, even after much pouring over the army lists none of them caught my eye or provided something to pique my intertest in the history. The closest were probably the lists covering the back end of the Seleukid Empire, but still no.

Then, for no obvious reason, the Early Carthaginian popped up as a possibility. Obviously Carthaginians are a pretty popular army in their 2nd Punic War guise, what with Hannibal and all that, but the fact they are popular always puts me off them. The earlier version though, before even the 1st Punic War did look more interesting. Finding a couple of books that covered the history helped, and out of the blue I had found my army.

The books in question were:

Carthage's Other Wars: Carthaginian Warfare Outside the 'Punic Wars' Against Rome

The Tyrants of Syracuse: War in Ancient Sicily: Volume I: 480-367 BC

The Tyrants of Syracuse: 367-211 BC v. II: War in Ancient Sicily: Volume II: 367-211 BC

Well worth getting if you have an interest in the subject IMO - obviously the tyrants pair goes beyond the period I was looking at but it was good to follow things through to the fall of Syracuse to the Romans.

Having found my army the next step was to sort out an army list to act as my buying plan and choose which figures to use.

The second part was the very easy bit. The choice was Xyston Miniatures, no question. The only other option would have been Forged in Battle, but in my opinion they are very much second best in this case. Some people don't like the fact that the spears are separate on the Xyston figures and so you need to drill out the hands for wire spears, but for me that is actually an advantage as I prefer the look of wire spears - avoids over thick spear shafts.

As it turned out deciding on an army list turned out almost as easy as the figure choice. The MeG army list can be found in the Spain, Sicily and Africa PDF in the Classical lists set. I wanted to use chariots and Numidians so this meant my list would be an army in Africa between the dates of 309 BCE and 276 BCE. The latter date is also the end date for the availability of the Sacred Band infantry which were also on my "want to have in the army" list.

Drawing up a list can be a process of almost endless tinkering, however, in this case the list seemed to fall into place once I had decided on the "must have" units. So after a couple of iterations I settled on the following:

Well, being honest not exactly this as this is the list under the 2021 points which are a bit different to the 2020 ones, but it involved very little change as the troops whose cost went up were mostly cancelled out by the ones who got cheaper.

The command structure is straight forward and ends up with a healthy 13 cards, an acceptable 6 PBS cards so you won't have to pass during the PBS phase, and 4 scouting cards gives you a fighting chance of some outscouting. The ally is Talented as the army needs these to be active from the start, it will struggle badly if the ally is Hesitant at the start of the game; so Talented gives you the best chance of them being active from the get go.

The Punic chariots provide the army with a unit with some real punch. There is a regrade option for them which allows them to be Bow armed, but without the Devastating Chargers, however, I felt that this was not how I wanted to go with the army and that a proper punch unit was a better approach. The Numidians should provide a good skirmishing force anyway. List allows up to 8 chariots so I could have taken 2 units of 4, but as this will be a main fighting force I think a single 6 is a better bet.

To provide a bit of support to the chariots I included a small unit of Campanian cavalry but downgraded to Average - they're not meant to fight most of the time. Xyston don't do a Campanian cavalry figure, or another Italian figure I liked, and so I used Greek cavalry for these.

Next are the Sacred Band of Carthaginian citizens. Hopefully it is perfectly clear why these are in the army - they are really tough and capable of taking on pretty much anything. They are recorded as having white shields, but I have taken a bit of a liberty by adding transfers from Little Big Men Studios - still with white background though. For anyone wondering looking at the picture, the edges of the transfers don't stand out in the way they show up in the picture (thankfully).

The bulk of the infantry in the army is provided by the African spearmen - 3 units of them. Whilst competent enough as Long Spear armed troops, they are nothing special; no Shield Cover or Shove as contemporary hoplites would have, but then again this means they are fairly good value. They can hold a good chunk of space and if deployed 3, or even 4 deep they can grind it out against better troops - dying slowly whilst better troops win elsewhere. LBMS transfers for these like the Sacred Band.

Spanish scutarii and (compulsory) Ligurians fill out the non-skirmisher infantry part of the army. Both of these are Loose formation and therefore, as there are a pair of units, can hold or contents a piece of terrain fairly effectively. Just trying that with a single unit of Loose troops can often end up a mistake. One possible issue with these 2 units is that they are both Tribal and so you're not going to be trying anything too clever with them.

As Xyston do not do a specific Ligurian figure, I have used Gauls for them but kept the colour scheme quite plain as this seems more in keeping for them. Both units sport LBMS shield transfers again.

Foot skirmisher support is provided by a unit of (compulsory) Libyan javelinmen and a unit of Balearic slingers. The latter are Skilled shooters so their inclusion adds a useful missile component at a reasonable range - the possibility of rolling Skulls on Green dice against some opponents is very useful.

The javelinmen are more modest, but having 9 bases and so 3 shooting dice can still cause useful attrition on opponents. Whilst it can be common to downgrade such troops in quality and/or shooting skill I think in this army they are better kept as they are.

Lastly we come to the Numidian ally.

This consists of the full 4 units allowed to an ally - a 4 base Noble units (they are compulsory) and 3 units of the Skilled shooting Best light horse. The Nobles have been downgraded from Superior to Average as there weren't quite the points to have then as Superior so something had to give - but to some degree, given what they are likely to be doing if they need to be Superior you've probably done something wrong. The nobles are a mix of Numidian cavalry and Punic cavalry with LBMS transfers - the latter may not be wholly right for Numidians, but what the heck.

The light horse are the main point of the ally. A 6 base frontage of Skilled shooting can rip holes in the enemy. However, as Javelin on has a 2 BW range you do need to be careful about how you use them, and remember that they will still roll White dice if they Run Away from a charge rather than Skirmish.

Last part of the army is the camp. This is a generic one that I won as a prize at one of Ray Duggins' small competitions if I recall correctly. A nice prize for sure.

Since completing the army I have used it about 10 times and I have yet to lose with it. In use it has turned out to be a lot more effective that I thought it would be. A couple of good combat units plus the Numidian light cavalry will end up doing the heavy lifting in most games, but the supporting cast all have a role to play and there is no real "filler" in this list.

Since using this I know of one player who has basically copied it exactly - as imitation is the sincerest form of flattery I'll take that as a vote of confidence in the army.