Carthaginian Veterans for Clash of Spears.

Included in the Clash of Spears Carthaginian army list is a troop classification referred to as 'Veteran Punic Infantry'. These are not the infantry type normally found in Carthaginian armies, which represent the veterans in Hannibal's army in Italy during the Second Punic War and are usually depicted wearing captured Roman armour. The Veteran Punic Infantry class gives you the opportunity to field the more experienced troops, which could be found in Carthaginian armies prior to Hannibal's crossing of the Alps and are useful for games where Carthage faces other armies such as Celts, Syracuse or the many Iberian tribes.

These veterans offer something of a challenge for us ordinary gamers who rely on the Victrix Carthaginian boxed set for our troops, as the only 'veterans' included in there are the ones wearing captured Roman mail shirts. A recent post on the Clash of Spears Facebook page, showing a group of half a dozen veterans NOT wearing Roman armour has inspired me to spend some of my enforced isolation doing a bit of conversion work using an old box of Victrix Athenian hoplites I had tucked away in the cupboard at the back of the garage, which were going to be employed as Hoplites in a Syracusan Clash warband.

The core of the veteran infantry is a torso (and legs) from the Hoplite boxed set, which includes a figure wearing a bronze cuirass over a linothorax, which seems to me to be more appropriate for a soldier of veteran status than the Punic infantry figures found in the Carthaginian set. In the Clash lists, the Veteran Punic Infantry can be upgraded to full armour and this cuirass gives them that extra level of protection over and above the ordinary Punic spearmen.

The heads for these conversions are not a problem as the heads from the two boxes are completely interchangeable. More of a problem are the arms, as none of those in the Hoplite set have long sleeves like some of the Carthaginians do. The only solution I could think of, was to use the sleeved right arms, complete with the long spear, straight from the Carthaginian sprue and use Green Stuff to add a 'sleeve' to a bare Greek left shield arm from the Hoplite sprue. The advantage of doing this is that the large shield will cover up most of the left arm anyway, so if my sculpting wasn't quite up to the mark it wont be too visible! Of course, some of the hoplite arms do have a short sleeve which meant that they could be used either directly or with some minor conversion. The figure below has a right spear arm that was hacked completely from a Punic figure and trimmed to fit the somewhat thinner hoplite torso and a Hoplite shield arm with Green Stuff sleeve added.

The only other issue to solve, was that the Punic spearmen have their swords cast on as part of the figure, while the hoplites have a sword belt that needs to have a weapon attached. Because the swords are cast on, there are no swords on the Carthaginian sprue that can be used for this purpose. At this point, I assumed that my gallant veterans would have been involved in enough conflicts around the Mediterranean to pick up an assortment of weapons, so I have given them swords from Celtic, Greek and Iberian sprues.

If this unit had been for some other set of rules and needed a couple of dozen figures, I don't think I would have bothered doing the conversions but, only having six to do for Clash of Spears has made it an achievable, although challenging project. As my thinking progressed for this unit, I firstly considered using the 'Romanised' infantry from the Carthaginian set and accepting the chronological inconsistencies when playing games from the pre-Alps crossing period. Secondly, I thought that I could simply use the Punic spearmen from the Carthaginian boxed set and make them look a little grander by decorating them in some way that would make them stand apart from the other 'ordinary' spearmen. As it turned out, that chance encounter with a post on the Clash of Spears page sparked off, what has been a really enjoyable few days of modelling, and I have a unit which can be used in any Carthaginian warband, be it in Italy with Hannibal or fighting Iberian tribesmen in Spain or, indeed, trying to overcome the ingenious contrivances of Archimedes at the walls of Syracuse.