Friday 3 July 2009

Elephant Size Comparison Shots

I promise that this is the final post featuring elephants for the time being! I'm going to compare the Empire Models (Indian) elephant, on the right in each photo, with three African elephants from other ranges, in part to convey the sheer mass of the former. Indian elephants should be much larger than African forest elephants, and Empire's certainly is!  All photos are clickable.

The African elephants will all feature at the Society of Ancients Zama game, next year.First (above) we have the Gripping Beast Carthaginian elephant http://www.grippingbeast.com/shop.php?CatID=154 . This would convert very well to become a Ptolemaic elephant at Raphia; it is very much smaller than Empire's Indian, but then it should be! The bulk of the Indian elephants at Raphia apparently gave them a considerable advantage.The second elephant (above) is an African from Essex http://www.essexminiatures.co.uk/frames25mmcont.html . I feel this is the least satisfactory of my Africans, and won't be buying more; it doesn't look much like I think an African Forest Elephant should appear. It is very plump and rounded, with 'orrible thickish legs.Finally, we have a heavily converted Renegade elephant http://www.renegademiniatures.com/numidian.htm
. The basic Renegade elephant is an unhappy composite between an Indian and an African elephant, with features of each; however, extensive work with greenstuff makes it into a rather satisfactory African Forest nellie, in my view at least, and it is my favourite African at the moment (not least because it was the cheapest, at £6).

Altogether we will field 11 elephants for the Society of Ancients Zama game next April; my six, another 4 from my mate Dr Simon, and one that still needs to be sourced. In our first game trialling the battle, they managed to inflict a surprising amount of damage against their Roman foes; rather more, in fact, than they should have!

6 comments:

Adam said...

11 elephants vs how many legions? It will be great to have another 25mm game at the SOA Battle Day, they should look pretty spectacular!

Timur said...

Ecellent idea this comparison ! Empire Models elephants are really big, aren't they ?

BigRedBat said...

Adam, 4 legions with 112 figures each is the plan...

Timur, they are huge! Biggest I've seen. I want some smaller Indian nellies that I can use alongside them, and then I'll think of them as the big bulls.

Timur said...

A&A carthaginian (and Sasssanid) look really good too. But i think they are smaller too...
Well, good luck on the tabletop !

Caliban said...

Hi Simon, just got back from holiday and saw your latest elephant posts - great stuff, especially the comments about size comparisons and conversions. I seem to remember that in a previous posting you made a comment about elephant casualty figures. That got me thinking. I have a couple of Essex Indian elephants, and I think they needed heavy assembly work (it was a very long time ago). They had two-part heads and two-part bodies, plus separate tusks and tails. If I shamelessly copy your idea of casualties, I would only need to buy another two and use each half to produce enough casualties for Zama. Would any of the other figures you have come across work like this?

Keep up the good work!

Paul

BigRedBat said...

Hi Paul, possibly the Renegade ones could be converted. I also wonder how hard it would be to sclupt one from scratch in greentstuff, and cast up.

Simon