A Persian victory

In last night's campaign battle, the Persians finally took back Bactria from the encroaching Sakae.  I took quite a  few photos, but they look rubbish, mainly because there was no basecloth on the tables.  So I won't bother showing them.  The game was pretty straightforward. I constructed and deployed the Sakae.  The left wing was composed of a large number of hillmen (sitting on a couple of hills) and was run by William.  The centre was a loose collection of light horse archers and more seasoned horse warriors (Marco).  I had the right: more hillmen (on another hill) and then all of the aristocracy on the far right wing.  There was a long line of skirmishing horse archers right across the front of the army.  Gordon made up and deployed the Persians.  On their right and right centre (facing William) were Billy and Simon, with a mixture of light and medium cavalry.  Gordon ran the left centre and left wing, with Kardakes right in the middle of the field and a very powerful left wing composed of multiple waves of cavalry.  The Persians also had various foot skirmishers out front to soak up the horse archery.

Wlliam did really well on our left with his hordes of light infantry, trashing unit after unit of Persian cavalry.  Marco skirmished for as long as he could in the centre.  On my wing, the hillmen did well and then the aristocracy threw away the battle.  They couldn't shoot or fight and then ran away en masse anyway.  I haven't thrown such dreadful dice for a long time.  Having said that, they really were up against it given the numbers they were facing, but I was hoping that they would cause more grief by killing Colonist militia cavalry.  They couldn't even do that.  The bards are blaming two generations of easy living at the expense of Persian farmers for corrupting the nobles.  The best units on the army were the hillmen!  In a strange way, though, it was good fun.  I pretty much knew from the outset that I was going to lose unless I could pick off some Colonists and get a morale cascade.  When that didn't happen, I just sat back end enjoyed the spectacle.  One minute my nobles were there, the next they were gone.  There are times with games like this that I get somewhat annoyed with the incredibly poor luck, but for some reason that didn't happen yesterday - probably because I should have lost on our right anyway.  Just not so spectacularly and swiftly.