Sui vs Later Muslim Indian

Having now played a few games of DBMM2 with the Desert Rajputs, I am gradually coming round to the realisation that they are in fact..   rubbish. A poor excuse for my own generalship you may think, but actually it is just the reliance on only a few elements that can actually fight - and the PIP coordination is abominable. Not to mention that Camels are seriously underpowered in this ruleset (probably correctly I should add, the ship of the desert is more like a landing craft, best used to just get the PBI into the right spot.

So, as Wintercon, with it's Mysterious East theme is only three weeks away, I decided to get out the Sui I painted up for Cancon, fiddle with the list (of course!) and get them on the table. This variant included artillery, less double based bow, and a Central Asian Turkish ally.

I played Jon's Later Muslim Indian. Joy of joys I was the defender, and had to suffer a night attack. Luckily for me, Jon had several bad PIP dice rolls, and by the time dawn came, he wasn't in position to mount a crushing offensive.

Fun game. Lots of mounted, and I realised just how fragile the Sui are. Even though almost everything worked for me, I basically would have scored very poorly, as my own losses mounted up. The only bright spot was the 'Hail Mary' charge uphill with my cataphracts vs his Cavalry which saw me shatter that command thanks to the Kn rolling up on every combat.

Jon advances while I try to bring my allied mounted up past a patch of bad going - my Moho light horse and superior cavalry on my right are trying to be a pincer.

 It's getting very ugly, a big melee of LH, Cavalry, and on the far left, the Cataphracts charge in..

Fortunately, knocking over enough of the opposing cavalry to shatter that comand. The Blades though managed to fend off all comers, and despite having to flee, lost not a single casualty.

Back to the drawing board for me... I wonder if they would be better as Early Tang?