"Getting Elephants Right" Topic

Writing in Slingshot, Richard Lockwood says:

The treatment of elephants is one of the great challenges of many ancients rules…

Which set(s) of Ancient rules get elephants right, in terms of making them historically accurate in their performance?

…………………….

……………………..

I agree with Tarantella…..

John T

So what constitutes "right"?

Elephants had potential to be formidable against formed infantry?
Elephants has a negative effect on cavalry unused to their smell?
They were best countered by light troops?
They had the potential to cause heavy casualties & chaos on their own side?

Is there more?

I remember reading of a proposal that troops following a lead elephant should get downhill bonus on account of the dent it makes in the table…

Which set(s) of Ancient rules get elephants right, in terms of making them historically accurate in their performance?

Lost Battles.

There are no military manuals for elephant tactics. Best guess.

Try to utilise them better than Kursk.:)

If they were so great against cavalry why didn't Hannibal use them against the Roman cav at Zama instead of the infantry like he did ?

Elephants had potential to be formidable against formed infantry?
Elephants has a negative effect on cavalry unused to their smell?
They were best countered by light troops?
They had the potential to cause heavy casualties & chaos on their own side?

That is pretty much what I was aiming for in my Sword & Spear rules, and I'm happy with the way elephants work.

The one thing that is very difficult for any set of rules to do is represent a spaced out line of elephants (typically deployed in front of the battle line across the whole of, or most of, the army), rather than when they are deployed en masse. I can't see how this can be achieved in any big battle rules where one elephant figure (or unit) represents a large number (say 20-50) of elephants.

MajorB gets close (if it becomes a poll I'll probably vote for Lost Battles)

Re Korvessa (and just my view after many a discussion with the author of LB) … the elephant effect vs cavalry is defensive/negative (it neutralises the advantage the enemy will have) … although Hannibal has this problem at Zama, he also has to break the Roman legions (so he opts for the offensive, unconventional and potentially battle winning stratagem and attempts to use them to disrupt the infantry centre … gambling that he can win here before his inevitable loss of the flanks) …

If Hannibal wins through his audacious use of elephants at Zama, it cements his reputation in military history. In fact, and no doubt due in part to the genius of Scipio, it doesn't work (so with hindsight, like many a failed gamble, it looks like a bad call) …

Of course, had Hannibal deployed the elephants across his flanks it would have delayed a decision there while his infantry were progressively chewed up in the centre.

Well, that's one explanation, anyway

Phil

Hmm, not sure what happened to my post just a second ago – some very strange replacment of the text I wrote with something completely unrelated!!
What I was trying to say was that it looks like Hannibal did try and use his elephants against the Roman cavalry, his elephants screening his whole force. It was when the beasts panicked and fell back on Syphax's Numidians that Masinissa charged him and routed the disordered Carthaginian Numidian horse.
Unfortunately for Hannibal, exactly the same happened on his left flank, with Laelius seizing on the retreating elephants disrupting Hannibal's heavy cavalry and scattering them too.
My hunch is Hannibal didn't have much of a choice – a hastily pulled together army with in all probability raw and badly trained pachyderms. He gambled that they would cause enough disruption to the Roman army to give him the edge (and they did badly mash up the Roman Velites) but it was ultimately the loss of his cavalry that cost him the battle. And in all liklihood, both sets of Numidians were probably used to elephants anyhow (except when they stampede through you!!)

I used to play WRG rules a lot and I think that elephants were pretty well covered. Well trained elephants were a terror. Badly trained ones were dead meat. Plus there were counters available.

I once had a game with my Indians versus another player's Indians. I blush to admit that I handled mine pretty well and the other player did not.

MarknFry wrote an interesting article about elephant warfare in South East Asia in a slightly earlier Slingshot. Interesting because it refers us tonthe first European accounts of elephants in warfare and they throw a different light on how elephants operate from the descriptions in Ancient souces which are mostly Greek ir Roman. In particular the behaviour of wounded elephants is quite different,nthey simply retire off the field. The article has several other points that make it well worth a read, but the bit about elephants retreating rather than rushing off, maddened, crushing friend and foe alike. Maybe the behaviour of wounded elephants is related to the death of the mahout, which couod be separately assessed, ir perhaps the beasts ability to retire, i.e. that they panic only if retiring is blocked off?

Perhaps not all elephants are the same … Given differences of breeding, climate, training and the tactical doctrine of the armies hoping to use the elephants, this almost seems a dumb observation (but, aside from the old Indiand/African distinctions, wargames do want to create a 'catch all' box into which they can put elephants regardless of period or tradition) …

Perhaps it is time for a rethink… (?)

Phil

@Monophthalmus: The TMP Bug stole your original post, and no doubt it showed up somewhere else on TMP. The solution when you see strange text in the place of your post is to hit the back button and resend your post again, or, copy the text, hit the edit button and paste your post's text over the strange text and hit change and done as per usual….

Thanks Great War Ace! I was completely confused as to what the heck was going on!
Cheers
Greg