Dark Ages in Devizes 2018
African vandal vs Arab Conquest
Game 1 African vandal vs Conquesting Arab
Game 2 African vandal vs Arab Conquest
Game 3 African vandal vs Nikephorian Byzantine
Game 4 African vandal vs Nikeforian Byzantine
So, one game down, one West Country titan crushed under the righteous fury and devious subtlety of the African Vandals ... what would await me in the second game of the day?
Only the online wunder-kid, the heartthrob of "I can't believe it's not inbred" South Wales, one of the most prolific crypto-fascists of the South West circuit, the one, the only (thank god) Mr Tercio Despertferrets himself with an uncharacteristically ethnically diverse Arab Conquest army!
The list for the African Vandal army from this game can be seen here in the L'Art de la Guerre Wiki.
The Arabs had deployed carefully, anchoring their left on the extreme edge of the table and working their way inwards command by command and unit by unit. This however had left a gaping ideological vacuum on their right, where a poorly thought through position left them dangerously exposed to a well-constructed grass roots activist campaign.
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The by-now increasingly Corbynite Vandals had anticipated this enemy deployment with its weak right wing position - or more likely had decided to stack the left wing in a display of dogma over pragmatism - and had put most of their own lancers on this side of the board. Once the starting pistol fired the Red Horde lurched forward at a rapid Trot (see what I did there?) and occupied the ideological vacuum with a populist uprising of working class horsemen. |
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Galloping Gelimers! Quickly instigating a reactionary social media campaign, the Arabs attempted to reinforce up their already untenable right wing positioning by shuffling over any old rubbish they had found lying around on the internet and ordering it over to the opposite flank. The Vandals were preparing their banners for the glorious revolution and relished the opportunity to recreate the battle of Cable Street on their chosen ground in the near future.
The Vandals vs Rome
The Vandals were fully committing themselves to the left as they swept forward as if driven by the very tide of history itself
The Arabs in turn dithered in the face of having to deal with the actual demonstrable fact that the Vandal lancers represented a physical embodiment of the tide of history sweeping away reactionary forces.
With pointy sticks.
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The left wing of the Arab army was potent in theory, a line of rather cheaply assembled 4 or 5 to a base Heavy foot swordsmen - but they found themselves becalmed and somewhat confined to the margins of the battle by their commanders obsession with devoting all his efforts to shoring up an untenable right wing position where the argument as to who would win the battle had, arguably, already been almost won. With Vandal Moorish skirmishers screening off any hope of an advance the Arab foot fumed impotently as the Vandal infantry declined to get any closer. |
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Marxist Quiz
Soon the cadres of Vandal proletarian workers collectives were assembling in orderly lines, working in perfect harmony with their Moorish skirmisher auxiliaries to present a united North African/European front to assail the gapingly open right wing position of the Arabs.
Meanwhile the acres of space that existed between the Arab and Moorish Vandal infantry continued to expand - there was space enough to drive a bus plastered with entirely spurious financial statements regarding the opportunity for funding the NHS in a post-Brexit world through the gap between the lines!
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The Vandals left wing position was now secure and carefully constructed The extreme right of the Arab army was at their mercy and they would show none as they swept down on them like wolves - although admittedly the comprehensive welfare state the Vandals had planned for after their victory would ensure that the surviving Arabs had plenty of opportunity to enhance their life prospects in the North African egalitarian environment the Vandal leader Gaeseric van Corbyn was planning for after his victory |
The initial attack of the Vandals was swift and decisive. As they swung in from their left wing positions and smashed the right wing of the opposing army barely pausing for breath as they removed their enemies ideological foundations and rode roughshod over their poorly constructed defensive arguments.
The Arab Conquests
Even the Mediocre Camels disguised as Elephants were barely an obstacle as the Vandals poured forward in a polite and vegan tofu-eating multi-cultural tide. Soon the Arabian camp would also be at their mercy, inflicting further destruction on the Arabian capitalist economy and its exploitation of the proletariat through a regressive taxation regime favouring capital gain over income earned by legitimate toil, the end result of which had meant that the Arabian foot could only afford to populate 4 men on each base meant for 6.
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In a brief respite from the fierce ideological struggle being waged on the battlefield, here's a sort of artistic picture from inside the gates of the Vandal camp Here you can see the solid line of Vandal infantry some way off through which any Arabs wishing to free their rightly imprisoned leader Tommy Al-Robin'son would have to fight in order to fulfil the order of their Bannonite leader. |
The Arabian right wing had by now pretty much evaporated under the ideological assault, with Vandals freely roaming around the rear of the entire Arabian army, leaving Marxist graffiti and singing Billy Bragg songs loudly as they went.
Unisex Chip Shop
The Arabs were unable to withstand the onslaught as they were assailed from all sides by vegetarian allotment-owning Vandal horsemen from the front, back and rear in a sexually liberated and non-judgemental manner.
The left wing of the Vandal army were now wandering around like dazed 1980's students, drunk on a heady cocktail of cheap cider and loudly shouted anti-Thatcherite slogans
The Arabian right wing was evaporating before their righteous fury - the game would be over long before tea-time.
Not since the Redskins had so memorably and successfully channelled singing like the Supremes and walking like The Clash on the Tube in the late 80's had a left wing act proved so devastatingly effective and unstoppable.
Keep on Keeping On
It was increasingly hard to find any Arab troops - their centralist position was about as right wing as they could now justify as the Vandals continued to chew them up in a veganistic manner by advancing along the line from front and back.
The Camp fell as well, with the Vandals keen to cart the good back to their North African empire, knowing they had to do so quickly before the implementation of a hard Brexit sacrificed such easy movement of both goods and people on the altar of ideological purity and Blue passports.
Nothing would soon be left of the Arabs, and their vague attempts to try to rescue the situation were only sporadically successful even as the Vandal legions finished the job.
The Arabs at last realised that there was hope for them if they concentrated more on advancing their cause with a left of centre approach.
Infantry inched forward, reluctant to use such funny foreign Europhile measurements as centimetres (probably), and tried to sneak round to make a dash for the Vandal camp.
But it was too little too late. The Vandals left wing has utterly routed the essentially indefensible Arabian right wing and scored a stunning victory for the trade union of horsemen with pointy sticks.
The Result is a crushing victory for the forces of revolutionary socialism over the Al'Robinson clan.
Click here for the report of the next game in this competition, or read on for the post match summaries from the Generals involved, as well as another episode of legendary expert analysis from Hannibal
Post Match Summary from the African vandal Commander
The great wheel of history has turned, and turned decisively in our favour as the march of the multicultural proletariat overwhelms the base instincts of the right wing idealogues to bring about a glorious revolution.
In this game there could only be one winner, and even though the right wing press made great efforts to smear my benign and ideologically pure approach the triumph of my Left Wing perspective on waging war was both swift and decisive.
Proving that the Left if the place to look for for original ideas was a great victory in itself, but also showing that it is entirely possible through swift and decisive action for a mounted army to in effect undertake an on-table flank march is also great to see.
The final nail in the ideological coffin was the way our Moorish, European and North African troops worked together - this is truly an alliance of many nations I have assembled here, and the spoils of victory are now ours.
Hannibal's Post Match Analysis
Bloody hell and high water, you were lucky here to come up against an opponent so obligingly Welsh and willing to play the role of the sheep, not the sheel farmer to boot in your little tabletop role play!
To characterise your tactics as succesful may be fair, but innovative - I mean, riding into an open space propelled on the tide of your closest supporters is not difficult, however it is only luck that meant you met an opponent so incompetent that yoru 1970's-esque approach was able to find itself still in fashion and favour.
Were you to be faced with even a half-brained opponent with less ideological baggage than Jack LoPresti's childminder your inflexible and dogmatically left wing only approach would surely have also come a cropper too.
The only good thing here is that after sweeping home on the left you realised that you then needed to turn to the right to engage the enemy on their own turf and put them firmly to bed. Lets see if things as as simple in the next game
Click here for the report of the next game in this competition
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Game 1 African vandal vs Conquesting Arab
Game 2 African vandal vs Arab Conquest
Game 3 African vandal vs Nikephorian Byzantine
Game 4 African vandal vs Nikeforian Byzantine
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