Elephants in the arena -Roman Gladiator Miniature Wargaming

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The other day a friend of mine and I set out to familiarize ourselves with the Habet, Hoc Habet rules from Flagship Games. First we played a game in which two heavy gladiators, a Myrmillio and a Thracian, were paired off, a historically accurate pairing, then after that finished we placed the two figures representing the same characters in the arena along with a pair of elephants and tried out the animal rules. Here a few pictures snapped quickly of the game.

First, let's make it clear, the game was far from historically accurate. Despite the popular image, gladiators did not fight wild animals in the arena. Gladiators fought other gladiators in the arena. The "hunts" of animals were a separate event, a separate part of the game and conducted by other trained specialists called Venatores with the events, the fights against animals, being called Venatio. The Venatores were armed and equipped differently than the gladiators (despite there being several categories of gladiators.)

In Habet, Hoc Habet, humans are controlled completely by the players while animals move in a random manner depending on a mixture of random chance and the situation the find themselves in. Therefore the game consisted of two heavily armed and armored gladiators with swords (one curved sword and one straight sword) chasing around two elephants until, by random chance and events, the elephants turned charged and stepped on one of the gladiators crushing his arm completely. (Oh well, sounds like a realistic outcome at least.) The rules seemed to work fairly for this and be fun to play.

The two gladiators both come from Brigade Miniatures (I think, perhaps Crusade. Both companies make fine Roman gladiator figures.) while the elephants are plastic, pre-painted and come from Schleich. They were purchased off the shelf in a Target Department store and, I think, are their model Asian female elephants. I don't claim they are completely historically accurate or necessarily in scale. In point of fact, the elephants from Carthage were of a now extinct variety that was neither an Asian nor an African elephant while some of the other elephants from the far eastern fringes of the Roman Empire may have been Asian Elephants. These were, in my opinion, "good enough for gaming" although I would have been more careful, if, for instance, I were building a museum model or diorama.

The arena is mine, scratch built, and I plan to show more photos of it at various stages of construction in the future.