Golden Company Elephants Review

Much akin to Hannibal and Pyrrhus you may also now field elephants in your army (mammoths not withstanding). The only requirement being that you also take another unit of Golden Company (either swordsmen or crossbowmen at present) as well as a hefty allocation of 7 points. But what you get in exchange is one very large and angry slab of muscle and tusks. Or more accurately a hammer to use against the anvil of your frontline. Golden Company Elephants...

A Brief Treatise On The Effective Use Of Elephants

In the same vein as used historically by the Macedonians and Carthaginians the best use of Elephants is as a heavy shock unit on the flanks. Pin with a unit capable of soaking damage and then hit them in the side with the elephant for an almost certain unit wipe on anything but the most elite foe. They pair exceptionally well with Baratheons who are able to almost indefinitely pin enemies with their tanky units as well as benefitting greatly from any additional movement or charge bonuses they can be afforded.

The other main and perhaps underutilized aspect of taking elephants is the field presence they bring. They are a useful psychological tool and this is also somewhat present in the tabletop as most opponents will focus a lot of attention on your elephants due to them being bigger and more impressive that the rank-and-file troops around them. I am sure there are some creative ways you can use this to your advantage but on a surface level it lets you take attention away from other high value troops. Although you will probably not be able to field many given the point cost if you also want to keep to a competitive number of activations per turn.

It also allows for some truly unusual army compositions. Such as a Wooly Mammoth, giant and Elephant force or even a dragon and elephant combination. It is really great to see the larger and more unusual units making their way into the Asoiaf miniatures game.

From a mechanical point of view, they have some rules fairly expected of a monster class unit. Each elephant has 8 wounds, a decent attack and armour value but lacking in attack die without making full use of the Stomp ability which awards extra attack die for each of the defenders remaining ranks. This makes them most effective against full enemy units but also means they can easily get bogged down if they fail to eliminate an enemy unit quickly and are definitely not a unit that can be left to solo an enemy regiment. They do however completely ignore enemy defence rolls and come with vicious.

The final rule to note is one that further restrains them. They must be kept within long range of a golden company infantry unit or they risk not being able to activate at all. This does take make them a little predictable in terms of deployment however and if you intend to combine them with another unit for a pin and flank maneuver then you are tying another unit down to a rigid position. To add another downside, being monsters they cannot control objectives which makes them tactically useless in some circumstances. It is a lot of restrictions for a 7-point unit.

The Components

As expected in Golden Company Elephants, you receive the supporting cards in the form of two-unit cards. One for each elephant. These are of good quality but are often obsolete due to the patching and updating done via the War Council app that keeps the game competitive. But the main draw of the box is the two models themselves. You get two large elephants that come equipped with barding and some armour. The models are nicely sculpted and they are suitably imposing on the field. Although one criticism is that both elephants are facing the same way which was a somewhat odd choice and looks a bit uncanny when they are put next to each other. But this is a fairly minor complaint.