More practice for the To The Smallest competition: this time my newly painted Han Chinese (so newly painted that I still had a couple of proxies in there: half an Arab camp, an Assyrian four-horse chariot, and some 19th Century Boxers) versus Si’s Sassanid Persians.

As the battle opened, the Sassanids advanced rapidly, particularly on my left flank. I wasn't overly concerned, as I had deployed my infantry two ranks deep in that sector, both to protect my camp and because I simply had too many foot units to fit into a single line. My greater concern was the right flank, where my relatively weak cavalry was positioned. Fortunately for me, the cards worked in my favour, and the Persian forces on that side were slow to press their attack.

Massed mounted bowfire against my left did cause me some initial problems, particularly as Persian lancers then targeted my melee-weak crossbowmen, but the hail of quarrels that I sent back evened things out.

On my right, my mounted crossbowmen were quickly dispatched, but the Sassanid horsemen still hung back a bit, hopefully giving me enough breathing room to break his army elsewhere before they brurst through and curled in towards the flank of my main line.

Up until this point, my attention had been firmly on my flanks, but then disaster struck in the centre!

A “Lost” (via a stratagem) Persian unit of horse archers burst into the rear of my Pagoda camp, costing me three coins immediately, and more Persian lancers got through my first infantry line to threaten the crossbowmen of the second line right in front of my other camp.

Fortunately my infantry on the far left had now managed to beat the Sassanids in front of them, so whilst some of my troops kept pressing forwards, I was able to bring others back to help re-take one camp and help defnd the other.

A fierce battle for the camps developed, and although I eventually managed to shoot the enemy horse archers in the left hand camp down, it was only the heroic defence put up by the crossbowmen in front of the right hand camp that allowed me to stabilise the situation.

There were more Chinese heroics on the right flank, where the horse archers kept a command of Sassanids occupied rather than letting them turn and attack my right flank.

To summarise the situation: the left flank was won, but I had nothing left there that could contribute to the rest of the battle. The right was lost, but the enemy there were tied up pursuing my slowly retreating horse archers. The camps in the centre were retaken/held, but the forces I had there were busy mopping up the last of the Sassanid central attackers. The coin count to date was in my favour, but I only had three or four coins left, so couldn’t really afford to lose more. The only place where I could properly win the game was in the centre, where my command of tribal foot and a single heavy chariot (the Assyrians!) faced more bow-armed Persian lancers.

There was nothing for it but to send the Tribesmen and Chariot forward and see what they could do!

The Sassanid lancers were just as keen to engage. They needed to kill one of my units there to win the game before the rest of my troops killed anything else of theirs elsewhere on the table: something that was quite likely in the areas off to the left and around my camps.

It was an epic clash: thousands of tribal warriors and some heavy chariots charging and being charged by Sassanid lance-armed cavalry. The advantage swayed backwards and forwards but eventually the tribal warriots prevailed (admittedly helped by some regular infantry coming in from the left!) and the last Persian coin was mine!