With two good wins already under my belt, it was inevitable that my third battle of the day was going to be against Peter and his Gurjara-Pratihran Indians.

This was going to be a tough battle (I have never beaten Peter in competition, and only managed to hold him to a draw twice…which adds up to a lot of losses!) so, after losing the scouting, I decided to abandon my usual “infantry in the middle, knights on the flank” set up and put all my knights on my left flank.

This did give Peter some food for thought, and he pondered my deployment for a bit longer than usual before, as expected, weighting his troops on one side: his plan being to form a schwerepunkt on his right wing, fighting two thirds of his army against a third of mine, then turn and roll up my line.

As predicted, The Indians slam forward on the left

As you can see, I knew exactly what was coming…and still couldn’t stop it…but at least I had all my knights (my best troops) where the action was as opposed to seeing them flail around on the isolated flank for the first part of the game.

Anyhoo, we were barely out of the second turn before his cavalry and elephants were upon my line: the elephants and camelry being particularly troublesome to my knights (the veteran nellies save on only a 3+ when facing mounted troops!) and his lights threatening to lap around my far right flank.

The gallery below shows the battlefield at this point from left to right. It looks pretty bad, (and it is!) but the one thing I have learnt when facing Peter in this position is not to give up: you have to get your troops that he has managed to isolate on the flank opposite the action back into the game as soon as possible, ignoring the lights that hover to harrass them, and hope that your knights can hold out for long enough for the reinforcements to get there!

Fortunately, my knights on the left were wearing their metal armour for this game (they often seem to be wearing their ceremonial cardboard armour!) and managed to hold out against both elephants and camelry for the next couple of turns, even managing to push back the centre of Peter’s line as my infantry started to arrive from the right.

The writing, however, was on the wall, and soon my far left command collapsed entirely, and Peter turned his troops in and prepared to roll me up like a kati roll on a Kolkata street corner.

Rolled up like a kati roll on a kolkata street corner!

Then, much to both our surprises, the “time” was announced: no new turns could now be started. As I was just finishing off a turn, literally about to draw cards to activate my final command, that meant that the game would end once I had finished what I was doing: no chance for Peter to polish me off.

I won’t say that this wasn’t a collosal relief, as one more turn would, I think, have given Peter the victory. Looking at the picture above, I can see the light cavalry next to the pen taking my camp, possibly both; the other lights on the back row and his elephants smashing my knights with the army standard from the flank and off the table; and me also losing the disordered knights in the centre. As he already had nine of my coins, Peter only needed another four to get a total victory, and I’ve just listed the opportunities to gain ten!

As the game had seemed very short (and we weren’t playing particularly slowly) I checked with the organiser whether we could, in fact, start another turn, but was told very firmly that we couldn’t. Madness to check, I hear you cry, but, fair’s fair: Peter had me beaten and deserved the overall victory…but I won’t say I wasn’t pleased that the “end the game” decision stood!

So a winning draw for Peter 6-9, leaving all to play for in the final game of the day.