New boys in action - the game

One of the things I like about these battles is how unexpected the results can be. This was one of those battles...

All the 'Persians' are new castings - from left to right, Bactrian cavalry, Ethiopians, Nubian/Egyptian, Indian archers and Libyans. On the Greek side the hoplites straddling the road are new, the others have been around a while.

The Persians and Greek cavalry get to the river first and the Persians (apart from the archers) dice to see if they can cross. Note the 4 deep formation of the Nubian/Egyptian unit - when Cyrus the Great fought the Lydians, Egyptians in the Lydian army were described as fighting in very deep formations.

The Ethiopians manage it, the rest are delayed a move.

Second move the rest of the Persian force starts crossing and engaging the Greeks with the Indians offering missile support.

So... light cavalry and infantry have low factors against each other and various pluses and minuses tend to cancel - it boils down to a dice roll. Persian side rolls 2 and a 3. Greeks roll a 6  and a 4. Both Persian units break!

And here... Libyans roll 2, Greeks a 5... bye bye Libyans...

So the end of Move 3 sees 3 out of 5 Persians units in route...

Move 4 not much different to show. The Greeks failed to follow up across the board -  ALL the following up units rolled 3 so couldn't cross the river. Meanwhile, the Indians firing caused the cavalry to just recoil.

At that point, Move 5 it seemed likely the rest of the Persians would give up on a bad job and leave.

The thing about this battle is that if the random factors had been reversed then a couple of Greek units would have routed and the hoplites outflanked. A case of Greek luck!