Hepthalites

The Hepthalites were a bunch of steppe nomads who hung around Central Asia about 500 AD. They were possibly, or possibly not, related to the Huns, but anyway covered by the same DBMM army list. As is almost de-rigueur for anyone with an empire in Central Asia, a bunch of them crossed over the Hindu Kush and occupied a large swathe of northern India, giving rise to the delightfully batty "Hepthalites in India" section of the army list. At heart, they're still a Hun horse archer army, but in India can add 6 Elephants (S) and 8-18 Horde (O).

Well once I spotted this the army lists, I knew I had to give them a whirl with the elephants and hordes maxed out. For the first outing I decided to organize it into function groups. The horde were massed in one command with idea that they'd hole up in some rough terrain and hold a flank. A few cavalry would dissuade any enemy who came sniffing around. The elephants were similarly massed in one command with ten LH who could protect their flanks, or be interspersed with them to lengthen the line. The final command consisted of 19 LH(S) whose job was to sweep around the open flank, and be large enough to overwhelm anyone who got in their way.

Nasty big sand dune in the middle

Wayne decided to bring his Arabo-Arameans to the party this week, but organized in a new fashion as the army of Emessa with regular generals and regular cataphracts. The Hepthalites in India spent most of their time sitting around drinking beer and eating curry, so only have aggression 1, but Wayne's boys had even less interested in the outside world with aggression 0, so I had to attack. This allowed Wayne to put down two big sand dunes, one slap bang in the middle of the table, and one protecting his right. He also had a rocky hill protecting his left. I at least got some scrub on my left to hide the horde in.

Once the terrain went down, I knew it was going to be a tricky game for an army with no real terrain troops. Attacking on the left didn't seem to promising, as I'd have enemy held dunes on both flanks, but I thought the light horse could probably overwhelm the rocky hill, and assist an elephant attack between it and the central dune. Interdiction from there was something I'd have to live with, though I put some horde in there just to stop Wayne advancing through it unopposed.

Elephants had to start deep to fit

Wayne plonked down a huge command of bows in the path of my elephants, a mixed central command with some bows behind the central dune, and a large force of light horse (F for fodder). On the right he had another bunch of bows and some cataphracts commanded by the C in C. Wayne opened the play, sending his central light horse to cover the area behind the rocky hill, and marching the bows from both his central and right had commands over towards his left to counter my fairly obvious hook there.

Lined up and ready to go

I spent the opening few turns shaking out the elephants into a decent line, and advancing my light horse round Wayne's flank, with half of them tasked to remove a couple of psiloi from the hill, and the other to sweep round and get into horse archers (F for fragile). Assaulting the bow line head on was always going to be tricky, particularly with various psiloi and camels (LH(I) variety) appearing from ambush in the dune. A wiser course of action would have been to hold my attack until my flank attack had cleared out all the opposition, but that would have made a rather long game, and I wanted to see my elephants charge, so off they went. As was to be expected, with one flank being harrassed, various psiloi jumping in front of the bows (and bagging an elephant) and shooting getting the odd kill and messing up the line, the grand assualt ended up being a bit of a piecemeal mess. We killed a few bow elements, and one elephant broke through the line far enough for Wayne's general to get a whiff of his breath, but eventually the command broke.

Stinky breath elephant

On the other other, a bunch of auxillia and cataphracts had come out of ambush in the dune on Wayne's right and were laying into the horde opposite them, but the latter held on until the end.

Getting round behing

Meantime by light horse command had broken Wayne's and were pouring round behind his bow line and menacing his general. With one command down each, if I could bag him then I could still win. I couldn't get round his flanks initially, but managed to attack him with my LH general with two overlaps. This gave me 3 (S) vs 2 and a decent chance of a kill, but it wasn't to be. In his turn he followed up and finished the game in emphatic style by 6-1 ing the general and breaking the command.

The final humiliation

With no terrain troops, it was always going to be difficult attacking a foot army, so I'm quite pleased to have made a decent game of it. The army organization worked ok, with each command able to perform its role, though possibly the horde command had more pips than were needed. Will definitely try them again.