The crushing defeat at Panhala Bridge sowed discord among the Bengali Confderation, that soon started to fall apart. The Bengali Kingdom was one of the strongest successor states, and as such, the rising Marathi Kingdom moved to challenge it immediately. Sure in the strenght of his Pikemen, King Chatrapati Shivaji moved north with his army, and when he saw the Bahmanis King forming a fortified line in one of his castles, he decided to attack him. He didn't send his men blindly forward, however: he sent his Marathi Raiders in the woods on his flanks and thought it was enough.He was wrong. As soon as he committed his army against the enemy lines, the Bahmanis reinforcements descended on his army from all sides.
Scenario starts in a difficult position: I am surrounded and the bulk of my infantry is already committed. I decide to try to power through enemy lines with my pikemen while forming a defensive perimeter against incoming enemy reinforcements. Enemy cavalry starts swarming around, with Misl Irregulars taking potshots with their carbines at my units, but I manage to contain the enemy action on the left flank, pinning a lot of units down in melee. Unfortunately, my frontal assaults on enemy positions mostly failed, except one melee between a Mansabdar infantry holding off two of my pike blocks thanks to higher ground and rough terrain.
In Turn 4 I managed to get a unit of Marathi Raiders behind enemy lines, and realign a pike block to threaten an Archer unit manning the fortifications. I hope that the combination of frontal assault and rear charge will force them to rout or at least flee, opening a gap in the enemy line. Fortunately, it worked and by Turn 5 I have a foothold over the fortifications. Unfortunately, enemy units are taking down my defense perimeter: in the right flank an enemy Irregular unit charged and routed my Longbowmen, and on the left flank enemy infantry coming from the woods and Irregulars preparing to charge from the opposite side risks collapsing my lines with a two-pronged attack.
Turn 8: mixed results, but mostly bad. My attack near the castle is still stalling: the enemy infantry refuses to back off. Remember my foothold behind enemy fortifications? It got pushed back by enemy Nawab's own guard, so I decided to pull back entirely and try to salvage the situation in my backfield, where enemy cavalry is running amok. The left flank saw my cavalry being mostly wiped out or chased off in the fields, but the pikemen and my own personal guard managed to wreck everything the enemy came up with, so it's not too bad. The real problem is the total collapse of my right flank, where my cavalry got floored and a rear charge of a unit of Misl Horsemen routed my only pike block in the area. Enemy cavalry rode forward and overran my artillery and remaining Longbowmen.
