I have frequently seen games with the words "No Art No Ele" in the title. The fact is, these units are by no means the bastions of destruction people seem to think they are.

I know some of you are thinking "Any n00b can use an onager to shoot from far away." Well, the point I'm trying to make is, an Onager gets MAYBE 15-30 kills a game. Yes there are rare instances in which that firepot will land on a testudo formation or a large clump of cavalry, but that is luck, and luck is a part of warfare.

The simple fact is, the onager is more of a psychological weapon than a high powered long range killing machine. He forces your army to advance while he sits pretty and fires away at you, landing maybe 3-5 shots on the way. Anyone who gets Onagers for their killing power is a fool.

There are two ways of countering an onager user, you can get them yourself and knock out his onagers, or you can rush him, in which case you will be playing into his hand by;

A. Tiring out your army by running across an open battlefield to close the gap
B. Breaking formation and overall strength of your front line


Now, the dreaded elephant, a very deadly unit when used correctly, but also a very fragile one. Elephants are by no means the invincible beasts people make them out to be. I have killed an entire Armored Elephant division with 2 of my Royal Pikeman because of a poorly-placed charge. These animals are nothing but very resilient shock troops. They are by no means uncounterable.

Some of the elephants' weaknesses are fire, javelins, onager fire, and those pesky incendiary pigs . I have seen 3000 denarii go down the drain the second my enemy sends his elephants at my 6 dicisions of Companion Cavalry, or into my front line, just to be met by my 200 denarii pigs, thinking they were invincible. Also, people seem to forget that elephants are still classified under "Heavy Cavalry" and are still weak to a phalanx formation, even if they don't die immediately.

I suppose I created this little "article" to enlighten some of the players that these units are NOT the end-all-be-all units of the game. They have their counters, and they work very well if used properly. These units counters' take a little more effort, but are still very blatant.

And with that, I point to my sig.....