Carthage's Professionals

Why get citizens to fight when you can employ full time mercenaries? Carthage employed or levied North Africans to serve in her armies and here are a few units of heavy infantry representing Libyan, Liby-Phoenician or Punic spearmen  in 20mm by Newline Designs.

These spearmen types are usually associated with a large round shield like the ones carried by Hoplites but I liked the idea that they could have been using the oval thureos so went with the Iberian style Scutarii shield provided from Newline's Scutarii figures. I also have some pikemen miniatures set aside to be African Spearmen with Hoplite style shields for future projects.

These units stem from updating these 32 African foot to the double DBX style basing I have been using.  I dug around my lead mountain and organised the African Infantry into groups of 32 including 3 command figures. I set aside 2 units worth with Macedonian commands for future Hellenistic armies, then grabbed 6 Carthaginian command figures and 26 African Infantry for the pictured units.

I hoped to have them all in the Thracian style helmet but I was 6 short so I used the African wearing the conical looking helmet with cheek plates. I attempted to add a visor using PVA glue built up in layers to give them a more Hellenistic look. I have made a separate post on the PARADE GROUND WORKSHOP on how I painted the miniatures. With the 32 older miniatures I removed the shields, highlighted and generally got them to fit in with the newly painted miniatures.

The shield transfers are a mix of 15mm Hellenistic Veni Vidi Vici transfers and some home brew transfers.

Although I achieved what I set out to do they are too uniform for the ancient world, even for freshly raised troops. However I like the uniformed contrast to my Roman Citizen soldiers so decided to go for artistic rather than historical painting. Hellenistic rulers sometimes gave military cloaks as 'gifts' to mercenaries. I like the idea of Carthage recruiting for their armies with a promise of regular pay and all clothing and equipment provided for service... maybe something like this happened to some degree.  Also uniformity helps get the production line moving. Next on the bench are the Italian Allies cavalry and infantry.