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"They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance."
Last words, Major General John Sedgwick, 9 May, 1864 Elephants are good for quotes, and military images. Hannibal pachyderm ‘s crossing the Alps is a striking vision of heroism (or craziness) in warfare, whilst poor Gen. Sedgwick’s last words are used to ridicule the officer class (indeed I remember Gen. Sedgwick being transposed to World War One and becoming British to be mis-quoted by my ill-informed English teacher whilst mis-studying the “war poets”). Gen. Sedgwick’s eternal memory has been ill-served by his final words, which is a shame as his fighting career is worthy of study. However enough of Sedgwick and more on elephants. I know an Ancients gamer who collects armies with elephants, and he has quite a choice, from Carthaginians to the armies of ancient Burma and many in between. He also has a WWII German force with….yup, Panzerjäger Tiger (P) Elefants! Now, the funny thing is, under most rules sets, elephants, at least the animal kind, aren’t all that good. Rules writers get all hung up on accounts of elephants trampling on their own troops (as some Carthaginian elephants did at Zama) and the poor beasties become less of a wonder weapon and more of a liability, or dare I say it, a white elephant. I know that the elephant is seen in many cultures as a symbol of nobility or kingship, so maybe they were just military bling for the great and the good, and their lack of prowess was, at it were, the elephant in the room. Personally I find it hard to believe that all those ancient warriors, who’s lives depended to getting these decisions right, would have employed elephants (let alone taken them across the Alps) if they were not in fact any good. The question of how to treat monstrous creatures is one more frequently asked of fantasy games writers. Interestingly, often such creatures – giants, dragons, or whatnot – behave in a similar manner to the rules treatment of historical elephants. I remember fondly the giant who appeared in the Warhammer second edition scenario pack “Bloodbath at Orc’s Drift” arriving drunk to the battle and collapsing on two units of his own orc allies. Not very different from an out of control elephant at Zama really. I guess it’s kinda fun have such powerful and unpredictable troops and it is a poorer fantasy set that gives such creatures all the advantages of size and strength but none of the downside. Another saying about elephants is “Question: how to you eat an elephant?…Answer: one leg at a time”. I’m in this very position now. My personal elephant is my new set of rules, “Welcome to Helmand: Afghanistan 1979-2010”. The rules are in their second draft and have survived a couple of playtests. As I’ve mentioned before, playtests are key to developing a set of rules. Suddenly I am faced with my cunning ideas failing miserably on the table. This has happened in the last playtest. I had a mechanism for randomising command ; each side split their forces into two groups and each group was given a card suit (hearts, diamonds etc.), each turn two playing cards are drawn and units with those suits are activated. Sounds good eh? But it doesn’t work! It is impossible to tell on the table which units (there are up to 40 or so on the table) has which suit, at least not without lots on on-table markers which are visually very unappealing. Back to the drawing board for that mechanism. Oh well…one leg at a time.
Matthew Hartley
August 2010 |
