[William Cloud Hicklin]

The Mumakil seem to have been about as useful as real-world war elephants: not very. Their advantage was that they frightened horses and so neutralised cavalry, but they proved almost impossible to persuade or goad to trample and crush formed infantry, and eventually were relegated to mobile but vulnerable archery platforms- but ones with an unpleasant tendency to go berserk and then indeed crush and trample everyone, friend and foe alike.

Hannibal brought elephants over the Alps- but they didn't do him a darn bit of good. They were useless (and most died) at Trebia, and Lake Trasimene and Cannae were won by conventional soldiery and canny generalship.