I've gone over the elephant rules to incorporate some of the ideas brought up on the list. What I've tried to do is keep the elephants quirky and unpredictable, as all I have read about them makes me think that that is what they were. Basically, a general that included elephants in his army could never be sure how they would act; sometimes they would win him the battle almost single-handed, while at other times they could lose him the battle single-handed. To my mind any elephant rules should reflect this 'two-edged sword' aspect. The problem has been that so far elephants have either been too predictably good or too predictably bad. Hopefully these ammendments will make it so that they are good or bad about equally!
All this said, there does appear to have been two grades of elephant used in ancient battles; Firstly there were what I'll call 'war elephants', for want of a better term, that were fully trained for the rigours of battle and appear to have been quite reliable (for an elephant at least). However, elephants of this type were both rare and extremely expensive, and because of this on a number of occassions ancient generals used only partially trained elephants in there battles instead. The most notable example of the use of the second kind were the Cartheginian elephants at Zama, which were poorly trained and quickly ran away. I've therefore added a rule that allows players to pick what grade of elephant they want to use - cheap and cheerful or expensive and reliable.
One last note, I've been doing a bit of reading about the ratio of elephants to men in ancient armies, and am coming to the conclusion that I've been much too leniant in the number of player may take, even in the AoA lists where I applied much more stringent limitations. At the Hydaspes, for example, Porus had @ 100 elephants, 300 chariots, 4000 cavalry and 30000 infantry. If we ignore the chariots that's one elephant per 340 other troops. At the Battle of Raphia (famous for the number of elephants employed by both sides), Ptolemy had roughly one elephant per 1,000 men (!), while Antiochus had roughly one elephant per 700 men. All in all then there is a powerful argument for limiting elephants to a maximum of 1 in an army, or may be 1-2 for the Indians. These numbers could be doubled up if the cheaper, unreliable grade of elephant is used.
The elephants included in the army lists are assumed to be well trained and (fairly) reliable war elephants. A player may choose to take poorly trained elephants if he prefers, but they are much more liable to panic (see the scare tactics rules below). Halve the total points cost (i.e. including crew and upgrades) of a poorly trained elephant, rounding fractions up.
Elephants were generally only effective against enemy troops that were not used to them. With familiarity came, if not contempt, then at least an ability to deal with the large creatures in a business like manner. To represent this, you should roll a D6 on the following table at the start of any battle that includes elephants. Important note: An army that includes elephants itself always counts as being 'used to the beasts!'.
| D6 | Result |
| 1-2 | Never met them before! |
| 3-4 | May be this will get rid of them... |
| 5-6 | Used to the beasts! |
Designers Note: Players fighting a scenario or campaign may want to choose the result rather than rolling it randomly to reflect the historical situation or what has happened in the campaign. For example, if you were refighting the battle of Heraclea the Romans would use the 'Never Met The Before!' result, as they hadn't. In a campaign you could use 'Never Met Them Before' in the 1st battle, May Be This Will Get Rid Of Them, for the second, and Used To The Beasts from then on.
Never Met Them Before!: The standard rules in WAB apply. In addition, to reflect the 'fear of the unknown', all infantry in the army are subject to terror of the elephants until a unit in the army manages to fight one round of combat against an elephant without being broken or falling back in good order.
May be this will get rid of them...: Armies that hadn't yet learnt how to deal with elephants tended to come up with all kinds of weird ways of defeating them. Probably the most notable example of this was the (alleged) use of flaming pigs by the Roman's in a bid to scare off the elephant's in Phyrrus's army. To reflect such tactics, an army that rolls this result on the table is allowed to use such a 'scare tactic' once per battle. The scare tactic is announced at the start of the turn when charges would normally be declared (it doesn't make any actual game difference as to what the tactic is, but in the interests of fun it is highly recommended that the player invents his own, suitably outlandish tactic, before roll any dice!). At the time that the tactic is used 3D6 are rolled. Any and all poorly trained elephants within that many inches of an enemy standard bearer or musician who is on foot must pass a ld test or stampede (note that mounted standard bearers and musicians can't be used for scare tactics). An army that uses a scare tactic may move and shoot normally during the same turn, but may not declare any charges or make any march moves (basically, the army stands around and watches to see what effect the scare tactic had!). If the test causes at least one elephant to stampede then the 'fear of the unknown' rule does not apply any longer; if the scare tactic fails to stampede an elephant (or is not tried), then the fear of the unkown rule is used as described above.
Used to the Beasts: The army has faced elephants several times and now has a pretty good idea of how to deal with them. Once per battle the army may use a 'scare tactic' as described above. In addition all skirmisher infantry, all light infantry, and all drilled infantry in the army are considered to be 'used to' elephants. Lastly, infantry that are in skirmish formation can only be hit by an elephant on a roll of 6, and may ignore it's saving throw if they score a wound (they've learnt to atack the beast from the sides and to attack it's vulnerable spots). Note that the crew will still hit any attacking skirmishers normally. In addition the 'fear of the unknown' rules are not used if this result was rolled.
Jervis