Slitherine

I wonder if there are any inventive ideas to address the integral foot elephant formations in particular in the asia elephant world.

There has been some talk about maybe needing one. Any ideas?

I think it would be easier to just have two types of elephant. One for stuff like Roman/Cartheginian/Ptolomeic etc. elephants, and one for Indian/Burmese/Thai/etc.

A special formation would be cool, but it would take a lot of tweaking to do. Namely surrounding death rolls. If I have a unit that is two elephants and two MF, do I get +1 on the death rolls and am I then allowed to selectively remove a stand of MF on a failure? What if the combat in question is only in combat with elephants?

Or what about a scenario like this:

Foot unit of 4 Legions charges elephants, ends up like so:

LL
-EME

Where L is legion, E is elephant, M is medium foot. In the Burmese turn, the elephants reform to get more dice like so:

LL
EEM

Are the MF then stuck off to the side for the rest of the game after that?


Much easier, although perhaps not quite as pretty, to just have a different type of Elephants and give them an extra die or an extra POA or whatever, to signify the foot working in concert with them.

The resulting effect would be the same I think, you'd mix these better elephant units in between your crap foot BGs and suddenly people are scared to charge the foot.

I see your points, but don't find any of them real clinchers. The best reason not to have a new formation is to avoid complexity and go your route.

But as I look at FoG:R some formation rules makes sense there. Note they have no elephant formation rules.

In FOG:R there are some fairly rigid formation rules.

So were Elephants really concentrated in the asia armeis or were they disperesed down the line?

Much like the Pike and Shot are requrired in FoGR to be ShotPikeShot
you could create a unit
that was BowElephantBow

The questions is, is it worth the rule?

If modifying the FoG:R rules to work with this formation could work then I don't really see a reason not to do it.

I haven't read the FoG:R rules yet so you'd have to enlighten me.

As to how the elephants were actually used in the Indian armies, I'm not entirely sure.


Classical India presents a problem because there was no recorded history in India at this point in time. There is a lot of mythology, but there wasn't any cultural need to record historical exploits. There is actually no word for history in sanskrit, and the word for history in Hindi (Itihas) does not carry the same meaning as the English word.

The two main sources I think for Classical India are Alexanders accounts, and the Arthashastra. The Arthashastra refers to elephants in use in armies but not how, and I'm not familiar with the Alexander source, but he never really made it very far into India and his account really can't be used to portray the entirety of the Indian subcontinent over a 1000 year period of history.

The Indian Epics with big battles in them, namely the Mahabharata and Ramayana, refer almost entirely to chariots for use in warfare. It's as if footsoldiers only exist for the charioteers to kill in dramatic, awesome, and often magical ways in these works. In addition, in the Indian epics the chariots fly and the charioteers throw thunderbolts, so should probably be taken with a grain of salt.

In any event, a Ramayana/Mahabharata list would likely be earlier than the 500 BC cutoff for Classical India. It is something I would like to see, since there is a Trojan War list and that is based on the same sort of writing.


There are however much better accounts of later Indian elephant usage, which I never studied but as I understand it elephants were used in mixed formations with foot in these periods. I guess I am of no help, ha!

But, given that the later period elephant usage evolved out of the earlier period, and given India's history of doing absolutely everything in a rigid traditional way until forced to do otherwise, I think it's safe to assume that early elephant usage is similar to late elephant usage in India.

And given how much of the Burmese and Thai governmental and religious structure was based on older Indian structures, it's safe to say that everybody was probably using ellies in a similar fashion.

You should figure out and propose a formation Hazelwood, that way we can all pick it apart

Dan, could you explain to the assembled throng what an Elephant without a foot BG would look like exactly (or have I misunderstood)?

timmy1 wrote:Dan, could you explain to the assembled throng what an Elephant without a foot BG would look like exactly (or have I misunderstood)?

Well the foot is used as an umbrella stand

rpayne wrote:If modifying the FoG:R rules to work with this formation could work then I don't really see a reason not to do it.

I haven't read the FoG:R rules yet so you'd have to enlighten me.

As to how the elephants were actually used in the Indian armies, I'm not entirely sure.


Classical India presents a problem because there was no recorded history in India at this point in time. There is a lot of mythology, but there wasn't any cultural need to record historical exploits. There is actually no word for history in sanskrit, and the word for history in Hindi (Itihas) does not carry the same meaning as the English word.

The two main sources I think for Classical India are Alexanders accounts, and the Arthashastra. The Arthashastra refers to elephants in use in armies but not how, and I'm not familiar with the Alexander source, but he never really made it very far into India and his account really can't be used to portray the entirety of the Indian subcontinent over a 1000 year period of history.

The Indian Epics with big battles in them, namely the Mahabharata and Ramayana, refer almost entirely to chariots for use in warfare. It's as if footsoldiers only exist for the charioteers to kill in dramatic, awesome, and often magical ways in these works. In addition, in the Indian epics the chariots fly and the charioteers throw thunderbolts, so should probably be taken with a grain of salt.

In any event, a Ramayana/Mahabharata list would likely be earlier than the 500 BC cutoff for Classical India. It is something I would like to see, since there is a Trojan War list and that is based on the same sort of writing.


There are however much better accounts of later Indian elephant usage, which I never studied but as I understand it elephants were used in mixed formations with foot in these periods. I guess I am of no help, ha!

But, given that the later period elephant usage evolved out of the earlier period, and given India's history of doing absolutely everything in a rigid traditional way until forced to do otherwise, I think it's safe to assume that early elephant usage is similar to late elephant usage in India.

And given how much of the Burmese and Thai governmental and religious structure was based on older Indian structures, it's safe to say that everybody was probably using ellies in a similar fashion.

You should figure out and propose a formation Hazelwood, that way we can all pick it apart

That's a hell of a lot of words to say you don't know anything about the subject

If you want to find out something about it a couple of useful books are a pair of volumes by Major General Gurcharn Singh Sandhu - "A Military History of Ancient Indian" and "A Military History of Medieval India". I got them from India pretty cheap via Abe Books.

I was more trying to point out that it's difficult to say whether or not elephants were used in such a formation in earlier periods, but if they were used in mixed formations in later periods it's likely that they were also used the same way in earlier periods.

But yeah, my schooling was focused on ancient/classical India, I didn't take anything pertaining to after the Mauryan period pretty much.

rpayne wrote:I was more trying to point out that it's difficult to say whether or not elephants were used in such a formation in earlier periods, but if they were used in mixed formations in later periods it's likely that they were also used the same way in earlier periods.

But yeah, my schooling was focused on ancient/classical India, I didn't take anything pertaining to after the Mauryan period pretty much.

Books I mention say, IIRC, that Kautily's "Arthashastra" described Maurya organisation and possibly dates from Chandrgupta's reign and at least implies that the formations were normal by then - which would pretty much mean such formations for all the FoG Indian lists.

The Arthashastra discusses how much stuff should be in an army, and how individual soldiers should be equipped, but as far as I know it doesn't describe formations via unit. Been a while since I read it and I don't own a copy sadly.

It is very clear that Elephants were extremely important. In poems and letters from the time period, when a kingdom's military power is described, it is described as a listed number of elephants. Like for example "the Mauryan king has 1000 elephants" with the support troops not even being mentioned. So it's obvious they were the most important part of the army.


But I'd totally agree with that assessment. Especially by the Gupta period, pretty much everything pertaining to the way the Indians did stuff was based on tradition and locked into place, and I'm sure this would apply to military formation as well. A lot of ancient Indian history is done by tracing the way things are now back to the way things were then, due to a lack of source material in the classical period. Classical Raga (music) is a good example.


Anyway, supposing that all of our Eastern Elephant centric armies should use this formation, what should it be?

El-MF-El or MF-El-MF?

rpayne wrote:
Anyway, supposing that all of our Eastern Elephant centric armies should use this formation, what should it be?

El-MF-El or MF-El-MF?

Must admit to not having had time to go and look at it properly, however, I suspect that owners of Indian armies would be happier with the MF-El-MF style, perhaps as a 5 base BG with a central nellie with 2 bases of MF each side.

Whole thing may end up being a step too far for v2 to be honest, depending on how many other changes are being implemented. Must think on it.

Using a similar number of figures to what the current elephant armies get, MF-EL-MF as a 5 stand unit would make the most sense.

It seems like it would require an awful lot of FoG:R rules to import for one specific formation that only 3 or 4 armies would get though.

Further, the armies themselves would have to be restructured. Currently Classical Indian has 3 types of foot, the BW/SW guys, the LS/SW guys, and the clubmen. Would these all have to have integrated elephants? Wouldn't you then be forced to use Ellies for rear support?

Still seems simpler to me to just have two types of Elephant, with the tougher of the two types woven between foot BGs in our elephant centric armies to create something just as scary.

Looks the same on the table, hopefully acts the same, requires fewer special rules, army list modifications and exceptions.

Make the Indian ones 3 base BG and put some foot figures on the base. Remove the +1 form death roll for these.

philqw78 wrote:Make the Indian ones 3 base BG and put some foot figures on the base. Remove the +1 form death roll for these.

That would not be appropriate.

IIRC Indian armies used a basic "squad" of a few bowmen, a few swordsmen, one cavalryman, one chariot and one elephant, with formations built up from these squads.

To represent that you would need a new troop type, which would be something like:

Moves and terrain effects as MF.
Causes disorder in enemy mounted.
Fights as HF unprotected (maybe protected) bow, light spear, sword, but only 1 rank can shoot, and in melee only front rank bases fight, but with 2 dice.
Depicted as cavalry, chariot, elephant or 2 ranks of MF on an elephant sized base, and BGs contain a mixture of these.

Take one BG of 8 MF and one BG of 2 Elephants. Halve each BG and combine to create two mixed BGs each of 4 MF and 1 El.

Mixed BG don't get a +1 on the death roll.

Use all the other rules as is.

[quote="hammy"]Take one BG of 8 MF and one BG of 2 Elephants. Halve each BG and combine to create two mixed BGs each of 4 MF and 1 El.

Mixed BG don't get a +1 on the death roll.

Use all the other rules as is.[/quote

Or, to make as close to other mixed BGs as possible, make it 4 foot plus 2 elephants (there are BGs of 4 HF + 2 LF). Then you could just use current rules pretty much. Agree you wouldn't want +1 on the death roll.

How might you deploy this? Could be elephants in the front rank, rest in rear ranks to be resilient. Or elephants in front, foot on either flank to be a bit wider.

2 elephants + 4 MF I think would be significantly worse as a formation than the current system.

It would reduce the number of BGs in most EL armies significantly, first of all. Your average EL army is 15-16 BGs, this would reduce the BG count of these armies to 11-12.

Second of all, most of these armies revolve around having a lot of crap troops that can easily give rear support to the entire army. Under the current system, an elephant BG can be supported by a single mm of a single stand (a little gamey I know), so one 4 man unit of shit Cavalry can give rear support to 2 elephant BGs and a 6 man MF BG between them. This new formation would reduce the amount of frontage 1 unit can give rear support to from 7 to 4, and make it more difficult to have cheap rear support troops if all your foot has to have integrated elephants.

It would also be much harder to maneuver. You would no longer be able to peel off an elephant on a wing to intimidate CV/LH without breaking up much of your line, nor would you be able to charge with an elephant to run skirmishers away, and then move up with the MF and shoot the fleeing skirmishers on the same turn.


I suppose all of that is a little silly and removing it would likely be a good thing. But people have already discussed on here extensively how the elephant armies don't really perform very well, so hopefully there is something to gain from this formation other than being able to pull an MF and not an ellie on a death roll.

Perhaps something like what I've heard the Pike/Shot get in FoG:R, like mounted don't get their + vs. MF in open against this formation as long as the ellies are still alive?

rpayne wrote: I suppose all of that is a little silly and removing it would likely be a good thing. But people have already discussed on here extensively how the elephant armies don't really perform very well,

Did they perform well historically against non-nelly armies?

...or maybe the logic is that if all the Eastern armies who could get them, used them, they were good performers and no army wanted to be without them.