I'm looking through the basic rules and I can't find it. I'm sure I read a long time ago that bases for Elephants halved their frontage. So for 15mm basing an Elephant bases could be a 4cm x 4cm square. Could someone let me know if this is right?

yes, it was in the first edition of BI. Also Art had 4cm frontage. Now all Units have 8cm frontage. THis is too avoid some problemns that may occur with a different basing. I have based my elephants sometimes with 2 models sdometimes with only 1, but you need to add a small escort for a better visual result.

Anyway if you prefer 4cm frontage is not a great problem. Should you go to a competition you can use a slotta base in case.

Well I've finally read through the most recent edition of the BI rules. I notice it says elephant base depth is 4cm (or 6cm). Does this mean that 4cm is "more official" in some way? Or maybe that 4cm is preferred or will be preferred over 6cm for some reason. If not (and since I'm basing specifically for Impetus), I prefer the look of the 6cm depth as I'll be using 3 elephants. Furthermore, since elephants fall into the cavalry category it seems like it would look more intuitive on the table.

P.S. In a slightly unrelated matter, I've finished painting and basing up two units of Libyan Spearman (FP) for the Carthaginians. I'm in the process of painting 2 units of Gauls and 2 units of Numidian light horse.[/img]

depth is not so impotant so 4 or 6 it is a matter of taste, of DBx compatibility (just psycological) and of model dimensions of course.

For example S are 2cm or 3cm deep. 2cm deep is the DBx format but 3cm are probably better looking nad uses the same bases of FP. But should some player base 2.5 deep, well it is ok as well.

I have based my elephants 6cm as they have the same depth than other cavalry, but I placed only 2 elephants and in one case 1 model.

Here a picture of my Indian elephants