Whoa Nellie!

 

HaT plastic 54mm Carthaginian war elephant and Roman Elite. The Carthaginian 
figures are 60mm metal John Jenkins Designs figures.

Click on the pictures to enlarge

I had purchased three already-painted Punic Wars elephants on eBay back in 2022 and I decided that it was finally time to repaint them and add them to my 54mm Carthaginian army. These figures are fun to paint, so much so that I assembled and primed two more new elephants, from the box, and will be working on them this week. This will give me a total of five elephants which should be enough relative to the size of my planned Carthaginian army. I have a sixth elephant that I could paint and add to the armada of elephants. I am thinking of "brigading" two elephants together plus twelve light skirmishers into one game "command" for one player. But for now, I think that four elephants is sufficient.

One of the weaknesses of elephants is that they are vulnerable to attack by light infantry skirmishers who are nimble enough to "hit and run" attack the beasts. As a counter-measure, the Carthaginians would usually surround their elephants with their own light skirmishers who would engage the Roman infantry, thereby enabling the elephant to advance into the formations of heavier Roman infantry.

The elephants proved to be rather ineffective because once the Romans got over their initial fear of the elephants, they were able to develop tactics that effectively neutralized the elephants as a threat. These included attacking the elephant with light infantry rather than waiting for the elephant to close with the regular infantry, and opening up gaps or lanes between the Roman cohorts and herd them through the Roman line where they could be eliminated by the regular soldiers. Also, in some cases, the Romans were able to panic the elephants and cause them to run amok in every direction.

Hannibal brought something like 30 elephants with him from Spain, but all but one elephant died while crossing the Alps. Elephants seem to have been used more often in the battles fought in Spain. Hannibal is reported to have had some 80 elephants at the battle of Zama, but these were largely untrained animals that were easily scared in battle and rendered ineffective by the Roman army.

Carthaginian light infantry protect the elephant from the attacking Roman
light infantry Velites.

Here is a "before" and "after" comparison of the elephants:

Elephants, as purchased on the left, and after repainting on the right.

The elephant, as purchased, had a basic war gaming standard paint job.

The same elephant after I repainted it.

I still have a little bit more work to do on the repainted elephant, namely painting a design on the red shield on the side of the tower and painting the metallic color on the chains that hold the howdah onto the back of the elephant.

I have two more "repaint" elephants on the painting table and two more new out of the box elephants are in primer and are ready to be painted. I am looking forward to getting all of the elephants painted and based. They should look spectacular.

ccc