Having played Kavan using the Akkadians versus his Classical Indians, we decided to swap sides and play the game the other way round.

The Akkadians were outscouted, and set up in a long line of men holding sharp pointy sticks, placing their veteran battle carts on their left/my right. I matched their infantry with my own, but put all my chariots and cavalry on my left. My plan was to hold my infantry back, giving them as long as possible to shoot their longbows, whilst I outflanked and won the battle with my mounted troops on the left.

Initially, this actually worked very well indeed. On the left, my chariots and horse neatly swung out a bit and headed past the end of his line at a rapid rate of knots.

This allowed me to send one unit of chariots towards his camp, and the other into the flank of his right-hand infantry.

Surely this was the game sown up…but, no, the Gods laughed and shuffled the deck, and the lone Akkadian spear unit at the end of his line snapped round neatly and disposed of my (previously outflanking) chariots without much difficulty!

This was disappointing, but his camp was still about to fall:

Meanwhile, on my right, his battle carts and infantry had finally reached my line and were dashing themselves against it.

This was actually quite worrying as although my javelinmen can hold their own in hand to hand combat, my longbowmen have a tendency to crumble really quickly.

Fortunately, the Akkadians assaulted the longbowmen piecemeal, so my three units of archers could concentrate their fire and pincushion the most forward enemy unit each turn. This meant that they tended to hit my line disordered, which really evened things up.

Moreover, my javelinmen were up on a hill, and resolutely refused to give way no matter what. Here’s a pictorial account of events on that wing:

So the left wing was doing well, but hadn’t won the game for me; and my right wing was holding, but under pressure. I would now have to win the game in the centre, and that was where I had my elephants and the elite Maiden Guard.

In they went as fast as a charging pachyderm, and nothing could stand before them!

Well, that’s a slight exaggeration, but with the cavalry on the left now free to assist, and the right wing just about won, the elephants did provide the coup de grace needed to take the last of Kavan’s victory medals.

A glorious victory for the Classical Indians!