Hello,

this is just a point to gather some impressions.

In most of the played wargames, first of all the DBX family (but also partially in Impetus), elephants are tough units, able to fight and resist for turns. You can deploy your elephants in the line, and they will do the nice infantry job of keeping your line against the opponent. Instead, in true history, elephants where typically more umpredictable.. they where often quickly repulsed (possibly with bad effect on their own friendly troops), or could quickly crush or disorder opponents with thei sheer weight and fearsome appearence.. more like schyted chariots in a sense.

I would like a house rule which makes elephants more umpredictable, as it was in true history. Something the general should consider as a "bonus troop, hoping for the best", rather than a "strong brick of your battle line".

What do you think about the following two possible house rules?

1) simply, elephants which fail the cohesion test due to melee damage are destroyed (as are troops caught on the flank). As an exception to this, an elephant unit which rolls a natural 6 in a melee cohesion test will turn 180 degrees and make a single charge move, and every turn thereafter it will make the same straight charge move until it exits the field of battle (rampaging). Should it hit friendly units, it fights them as normal; a rampaging elephant always adds its impetus bonus, even if it is not fresh. Clearly, the cost of elephants should then be adeguately lowered.

2) An alternative way could be simply to lower thair vbu and put a higher impetus, and in addition give a -1 dice to troops firing ranged attacks vs elephants (sparse). For example, african elephanst could be VBU 3, I 6 (they charge, do damage, and then probably die..) and indian ones VBU 5 , I 6.

Cheers,
Lorenzo

I think that specific ules on elephant should be applied on scenario basis.

don't forget that Elephants are the only troops that retreat from shooting.

Yes, this could be an option.

I think it would be perhaps useful to use this forum also as a point of comments and house rules proposal (not only questions), so that if the future you release a second edition you can gain from the experience and proposals of all the players around the globe. But you surely already tought about that; its just that I didnt see this much up to now in the forum. Perhaps its simply too early and as we players get more experienced...

Lorenzo

second edition???

you have to pass more than one million of cohesion tests before the release

But it will happen in the far future.. all games have second editions!

yes, after 1,000,000 cohesion tests passed how many did you pass so far

I am at 42 total.. Not far from one million...!

more than me