The Ballad of Bradicles

“Brother, what have you done?”  The shock on Eeyoricles face was comical.  Well, at least Bradicles thought so.

Bradicles just beamed as he gestured with a flourish, “May I present Ares! King of Battle!  And this is his handler, Erastus.” The mahout gave a curt salute as he loaded up the beast’s feed trough.

“Are you mad?”

”Possibly.  But now I have an elephant.”

This one model is literally the reason I built this army. He’s the center piece and everyone else is there just to bask in his glory.

The figures are from Victrix. The transfers are from Little Big Man Studios. The mahout’s shield is from Aventine miniatures.

In game term, elephants have multiple options  primarily centered around whether they have a crew or not, what that crew is armed with and whether the crew has a Howdah (tower) to fight from. Mechanically, the crew is a separate unit consisting of two soldiers. As the Howdah is a bit small, I’m just putting in one figure in the tower and I’ll track casualties separately. And because I wanted to swap out figures based on what they’re armed with, I put them on their own bases.

Elephants have a number of special rules but essentially you just sort of aim them in the general direction of the enemy and hope you don’t get trampled. If they crash into an enemy unit, the enemy has a chance to dodge away but it’s harder the more armor they have. That’s one way to break up those damned armored formations!