Elephantitis

philqw78 · Post by **philqw78** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 7:37 am

Is there a reason why elephants can't have bowmen on top of them, giving them Bow capability? At least the Burmese seem to have put a lot of archers on/with their elephants, adding 5pts and 1 dice per base doesn't seem too much of a problem.

Agian it would add a bit of flavour to the game, but they would be very good.

And as an added bonus their shooting dice would be easy to work out. They'd have to be fragged or severely disorder to lose a dice, only ever getting 2 otherwise.

SirGarnet · Post by **SirGarnet** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 8:19 am

Not enough space to fit more than a handful of archers, and the minor effect is part of the close combat result.

philqw78 · Post by **philqw78** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 2:09 am

the burmese 16 per elephant?

shall · Post by **shall** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 5:57 am

The Burmese and Cham are the possible expections to the rule that all elephants are roughly equal. I think the artillery carrying elephnats f the Cham is accepted as something of a myth. The Burmese did indeed seem to carry 12 bowmen. For the rest we felt it really was the big bruising beasts that made the big difference and the rest was nuances that mattered little at the level we are "modelling"

Throughout FOG the lists have been designed to avoid creating super armies to give a wide range of viable options. We can see this in the tournaments so far where there is great variety in the games. Whether it is worth refeccting anything better for Burmese will depend a lot on this IMO. The primary benefit they will have - like Indians - is they can have lots of them.

In my Classcial Indian design I have a full 12 and they deploy as pairs of BGs. They are unavoidable as they are all over the table and they cause mayhem becuase 4 together is an order of magnitude more dangerous than 2.

So if you are an Elephantophile my suggestion is to find the lists with lots of them, rather than worry about whether certain ones shold be better or worse than others. The Burmese will have quite a few I am sure and the pwoer of elephants will come from that whatever.

Si

nikgaukroger · Post by **nikgaukroger** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 6:19 am

philqw78 wrote:the burmese 16 per elephant?

It is not clear that these were all crew, and even an elephant can get very crowded if you try and put 16 people on its back and expect them to fight

IMO they are more likely to be similar to the 50 light infantry who are recorded as accompanying each Seleukid elephant.

shall · Post by **shall** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 7:03 am

My sense too Nik.

So if you like Elephants - just take lots of them!!

Si

SirGarnet · Post by **SirGarnet** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 9:17 am

12 Simon?! I assume you don't run Maurya or lavish points on optional troops? Or save on leader points. I took an IC and was thinking a mobile reserve chariot unit would be worth the points. It did plug a gap nicely last time - is this a honeypot in the lis to distract me from proper elephantophilia?

Mike

hammy · Post by **hammy** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 9:20 am

I looked at using Indians for the Oxford doubles but rejected them because 12 elephants wasn't enough. I think I would have really wanted 16 or even 20 at 1000 points.

bertiebeemer · Post by **bertiebeemer** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 2:18 pm

Ooh time to get my Khmer with allies out of the cupboard and get painting those 28 Elephants! The most that I ever came up with from that, er, other game. Was defo legal at 600AP and was working out lower (but useless) AP lists too...

OhReally · Post by **OhReally** » Sat Jun 28, 2008 3:31 am

When is an Ancient Burma list expected to be around?