Hydaspes May 326BC.

WHAT A GAME!!-I refought the battle of the Hydaspes river,326BC on Monday,involving the armies of King Porus and Alexander the Great,and it was terrific!
I decided beforehand that I would "phase" the game,using minimal dice throwing,so that I could try and fully understand the genius of Alexander's tactics,and his ability to predict what Porus would do in response to them.

Phase 1. Macedonian RF cav. and inf. advance to skirmish with Indian LF troops,to try and lure them away from the Elephant screen.The phalanx would slowly advance,whilst the Mac. Lf stood.

Top shows the table before any movement,bottom shows Macedonian RF advancing against Indian RF-note superiority of Mac. cavalry.

Phase 2. Indian LF skirmish troops withdraw,and cavalry melee ensues.Porus sends his RF cavalry infront of the Elephant screen to support his out-numbered LF cavalry.

Top shows the cavalry melee,bottom shows the Indian cavalry sent to support.

This is an overall shot of the table at the end of phase 2.

Phase 3. Mac. LF cav move onto rear of Indian support cavalry,phalanx slowly advances,Indian centre stands and skirmishing breaks out from Mac. light troops.

Top shows the Macedonian LF cavalry attacking the Indian support-this caused the Indians to have to fight on two fronts,thus denying their Lf cavalry any real support-brilliant!
Bottom photo shows the table at the end of phase 3.

Phase 4. Indian cavalry is pushed back into the Elephant and Infantry line causing disorder and chaos! Phalanx moves to attack,whilst the Macedonian LF advances onto the Indian RF.

These two photo's show the Chaos and confusion caused by a massive cavalry melee-all the cavalry ended up in one big block-marvelous stuff!!

Top shows Elephants being skirmished with and attacked,bottom shows the overall picture at the end of phase 4.

Phase 5. Macedonian army is winning on all fronts and almost surrounding the Indians-total confusion in the Indian centre as the Elephants go berserk and inflict more casualties on their own troops as against the Macedonians!!

Two photo's of Elephants vs Hypaspists and Phalanx-the Phalanx got a bit "mashed up" but managed to eventually see them off-you can see in the background some of the Elephants retiring(it's good being retired!) into their own troops!!

This is the overall view of the table at the end of phase 5,and the end of the game.
I thoroughly enjoyed playing this game/re-fight.I used three sources of information to determine where to place the troops from each side-all very similar,but with a few variations-but that's history and why we love this hobby.

Osprey,Fuller and Arrian-sounds like a mid 70's "Pop" group!! with an illustration from the Osprey book-note that I have interpreted the brilliant cavalry manoeuvre as a move by the Macedonian LF cavalry,mainly because I reckoned that a ride of that proportion would have taken hours and the horses would be that "knackered" that they would not have been able to mount an effective attack on the Indians!(a theory supported by a couple of mid 19th century authors!)
How would the Romans fare against an Indian army,and why didn't the Romans invade India?
I'll have to have a game to find out,I think!!