A Meroitic Kushite civil war

 

Steven home usually means a game. So, he said 'Didn't you have a load of Zulus you used as Kushites?' Yep, looked up armies. Meroitic Kushite. Saw it could have a elephant general... intriguing, couldn't resist myself, so sorted out 2 DBA armies - Indian elephants acting as general as I don't have any Meroitic elephants.

Steven lost dice roll and had to set up first. I mirrored him to a degree except I put my Ps element next to my blades (well, guys with spears and shields pretending to be blades). Ready for spears mayhem in the middle as our generals slog it out.

I let my left flank get too close to him while he partially refused his...

OK, I thought. Lets take out the Psiloi element - straight dice roll, I win, he flees, unless he doubles up I just recoil. No, I died... Happily, one of archery elelents succumbed to a hail of arrows leaving a gap in his line.

Just before contact I had stopped a bit over a move away from Steven. That meant I got to be the one making contact and choosing order of combat. As I had given myself a right flank overlap to start with, and as I had also made sure his single ranked spears next to the general were facing a double rank, I had given myself a slight combat advantage...

Steven threw a 2 for PiPs...meant he took out one of my archer elements but couldn't then roll up my line... 

Anyway, the way the combats went I finished up with a double overlap on Steven's middle spear elements. Steven had a dice roll advantage over me early in the game; that changed and I got three sixes in a row. Including here... two dead elements, suddenly the game moved to my advantage...

Last move of the game. Steven's single element of spears succumbed.

I did actually get my flank attack in on that last move. It bounced! But, having taken out four elements, game over and I finished up winner!

So it proved to be a very close game. It would be easy to say that it depended on dice rolls - true, but that's true to a certain extent of every game. When his Psiloi took out my archers we both thought it was game over; I would his line being broken by the loss of his arher unit was more important - broke his line and made him more dependent on PiPs. At the wrong time he threw a two, couldn't dress his line and attack as much as he wanted and was left vunerable. Meanwhile, throwing three sixes at the right time helped me - but my tactics had given me a +1 or +2 advantage across the whole of my right wing and centre anyway. If the dice rolls on that combat that took out his two spears elements had been reversed I would simply have been pushed back!