AUTUMN BIG GAME 2022 (PART ONE)

Sometimes, and almost unbelievably, real life gets in the way of 'playing with toy soldiers'. Having originally cancelled the "Assault on Newquay" Big Game back in 2020 by reason of the onset of the Covid pandemic, the Campaign Umpires rescheduled the event for the Autumn Big Game 2022, only to find that a combination of family obligations, illness, house moves, etc. left us critically short of the air commanders and sea captains necessary for such a Big Game. With a heavy heart (and much swearing under the breath), the Campaign Umpires therefore sent the "Bristol Fleet" back out to sea (again) and substituted a smaller scenario for the five VBCW Stalwarts able to make the Autumn Big Game 2022. The substituted scenario - sent out a few days beforehand - read:

"ALARM AT LLAREGGUB !

(A REDUCED SCENARIO FOR THE AUTUMN BIG GAME 2022)

Those seeking the hamlet of Llareggub [1] upon even a modern map of the Welsh coastline are doomed to frustration. The place is so tiny that it has been habitually overlooked not only by cartographers, but also commercial travellers, tourists, roadbuilders, restaurant critics, divines of all or any religion, even newspapermen and all of their ilk; it is, in short, something of a place of mystery. [2] And as for the maps of 1938, well……

Quite how a landing party from HMS Cockchafer [3], came to be in the vicinity of Llareggub back in 1938, in the middle of the Very British Civil War, is equally mysterious. Detached from the “Bristol Fleet” heading towards Newquay, some say that the landing party was in search of “wood and water” - although that explanation sounds more Napoleonic [4] than modern. Others tell tales of lost Welsh Gold, or simply ‘hosts of golden daffodils’ [5] in the vicinity of Llareggub, while serious minded historians scoff and insist upon the straightforward explanation of a “special military operation”.

Whatever may have been their orders, the landing party undoubtedly blundered into the defending forces of the Welsh Republic and their allies, said to have been a rather ‘motley but well-armed crew”, and battle was joined…..

Notes 

(1). “Llareggub” was the near contemporaneous invention of Dylan Thomas, a fictional place name used in “Under Milk Wood” to disguise his real stay at Newquay. It is best not read backwards.

(2).  A place of mystery because we have at this stage no idea of how the table will look once we’ve set up the terrain, or even quite what terrain will arrive on the day (i.e. what can be picked out of Roo’s garage/man cave). But hey…

(3). We’re not being silly or gratuitously rude. There really was an HMS Cockchafer in 1938, an Insect Class gunboat that had clearly, for the purposes of the VBCW, been recalled from the River Yangtze to the River Severn. See HMS Cockchafer (1915) - Wikipedia

(4). particularly to those brought up on “Hornblower” stories. Searching for “diesel and metal plate” does not quite have the same ring about it.

(5). with apologies to Wordsworth.

Yangtze or Severn? An Insect class gunboat under air attack

Player Notes: The VBCW Stalwarts produced the following Platoons on the Big Day - for the landing party from His Majesty's Bristol Fleet, the Royal Irish Legion (Roo) and Eustace Spode's Blackshorts (JP - with Koestlerian synchronicity, given recent blogposts); for the Welsh Republic, platoons of North Walians (Jon) and South Walians (James). All Platoons (even those on the same side) thoroughly distrusted and were to be in competition with each other for the much prized "Scenario Objectives", while a Platoon of Aberavon Police (Clive) was charged generally with "keeping law and order" (i.e. fighting against everyone, as all were automatically deemed 'armed lawbreakers in breach of the peace'). And so on to Part Two.......