AUTUMN BIG GAME 2022 (PART TWO)

With the Platoon Commands organised, all that remained was to lay out the battlefield (with many thanks to Umpire Roo).....

An east - west view of the village of LLareggub, 1938 (or around 10am, 01.10.2022)

Eustace Spode and his Blackshorts were positioned in the south-east corner of the battlefield (to the left of the foreground Church), while Roo's Royal Irish Legion were in the south-west corner. At the other end of the table, Jon and his North Walians advanced from the north-east corner, while James and his South Walians advanced from the north-west corner. The Aberaron Police defended the village of Llareggub itself, bang in the centre of the table. The "Game Objectives" were suitably and randomly scattered all over the place...

A word on Eustace Spode: absolutely nobody at all has asked how it can be that Eustace Spode, last seen as a "Prominente" (and none too sober) prisoner of the Communists following the Fall of Leominster (Spring Big Game 2022), suddenly came to be leading a Platoon of Blackshorts in deepest, darkest Wales. Well, mumble, mumble - anyway - after capture at Leominster, Eustace and his few surviving Blackshorts were transported to West Wales by secret train, courtesy of Comrade Colonel Professor Winters, and there "set at liberty". Given the considerable tension between the Welsh Nationalists and the Communists, this was compared by Winters to "injecting a bacillus" into the Welsh VBCW, designed to "mop up any Welsh Fascists" by recruitment to Spode's cause, and cause acute problems for the Welsh Republic. When it was suggested to Winters that Eustace Spode might later return to Herefordshire with a strengthened Blackshort presence, Winters patiently explained that, in that event, "there would simply be more Fascists to massacre", clinching his argument with but two words:

Now that being explained away, on to Part Three...