The aardvark is a strange looking creature, somewhere between a wallaby and a dog in appearance, with a nose that looks like it got trapped in a car door and somebody pulled the poor creature out instead of just opening the door.
But I’m not having a crack at anybody’s looks, here. If you play Diplomacy and look like an aardvark, good luck to you.
Aardvark is Afrikaans, and derives from erdvark which literally means ‘ground pig’. Not ‘ground’ as in meat, I should point out, but ‘ground’ as in what you walk on (unless you’re Jesus or a snowman). This is because the aardvark is often to be seen using those long, strong claws and long, mobile snout to hunt out ants and termites.
The Diplomacy ‘Aardvark‘
In Diplomacy, an Aardvark is a player who hunts out SCs. They are opportunists, jumping on a supply centre when it appears. They’re good at sniffing out opportunities before they arise.
Aardvarks don’t plan. Possibly they’re not very good at it. Probably they just can’t be bothered with it. The most they’ll do is look at the board, see where the opportunities are likely to appear, and position themselves to dig them out.
Aardvarks, therefore, are not good allies, certainly not in the long-term. They’ll stick with you only as long as you’re defensively smart, but as soon as you leave them a gap to stick their nose in they’ll be feeding on you.
The best way to deal with an Aardvark is to kill them quickly, although you may want to point them in someone else’s direction as an alternative.
Or you could, I suppose, stick a couple of corks up their nose. ‘Snot a good idea to get caught doing it, though.
THE DIPLOMATICON 
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