War With A Mate - Ep 19: High-Energy Podcast Adventure

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

HA! Gotcha! In today's episode, the artist formerly known as James has neglected to treat himself to any REM, resulting in even the most menial of the play session's tasks wearing him down. Andy on the other hand is fighting a war on two fronts; keeping James awake and remembering where Sportacus lives. In this gruelling fight to keep the flame of their souls alight, the guys cover the third and final Monty history segment, some camel-based mail that truly tantalises, and planning of the WwaM World Tour destinations. The movement game stage grows ever closer...

hello and welcome to war with a mate hello good evening it's us it's me james and it's you andy and it's war with a mate and it's a great podcast thanks for listening everyone good night okay so you're taking that tiredness to the recording are you i am i am it doesn't go away tired all afternoon james needs a nap james needs a nap i'm really really sleepy but the game has really helped invigorate me because nothing wakes me up more like spreadsheets and uh well that's that's it it's just been spreadsheets it's been water consumption that's been today's big thing how's that been going well i had to first of all finish off my fuel evaporation so the fuels evaporated the water's evaporated and now it's going into the bellies well the water's going

into the bellies of my hungry men but it's it's went all right it's not super bad i don't have as much water as i started with and i think by the end of next week i'm gonna have even less water such is the nature of drinking water anyone getting uh dangerously thirsty do you think no it doesn't look like it like i say i've still got a lot of the water distribution to do but i don't think anyone's in bad nick when it comes to the uh the water side of things so that's pretty good yeah also we're both in upstage one we are we're both officially in upstage one that should have perked me up a little bit but apparently not upstage one a go-go which means after we get this water stuff out the way we're actually ready to start doing some of the shipping shipping stuff

yeah some of the more exciting if it's not land trucks it's sea trucks yeah the big sea trucks fuck those sea trucks so yeah that'll be movement of ships then there's also construction training we've got movement after that it's yeah full steam ahead when we get rid of this i need to double check the training but uh i might not train anyone you might not train anyone yeah if it's going to take too long because we're only doing the six turns oh yeah you might not actually be allowed to train i think i can but i think it takes two or three turns to finish depending what i'm training okay and then it'll probably take two or three turns to get to the front from alexandria slash cairo your guys are slow the six turn thing i don't know how useful those

so i might just skip training i need to re-examine that but so they're not going to pick up the pace and hurry their butts from Alexandria to wherever I am. Well, they are, but they're not going to train because that takes a while. They're just going to get moving. Oh, okay. And learn in the field. Oh, yeah.

Out here in the fields, I fought for my meals. I mean, yeah, it's a fucking struggle too. What's Baba O'Reilly about the campaign for North Africa? I think that's the subtext you're going to get from it, yeah. I've been reading Between the Lines just now, and I've put together, that's what that song's about. That's also probably why they put it in CSI, in the opening credits.

Was it CSI Miami that had that? I'm asking you, and I know that you definitely don't have the answer to that one. Which one's Special Investigations? Special, it's CSI, it's Crime Scene Investigations. Oh, okay. I was thinking of the Special Victims one. That's, that's Law and Order.

Oh, is that the one where they just walk in there and they go, they're just like looking at bone fragments and stuff. For the most part, yeah. It's like none of the interesting bits of crime. It's just lab stuff. That's interesting. Labs are pretty cool.

They're not as interesting as like guns or car chasers. Are you kidding? We're playing this game. Yes, and it's less interesting than a car chase. But of all the games we could have played, we're picking one that is. It's the CSI of board games. It's all of the behind-the-scenes nitty-gritty admin

and not the fun rolling of dice. We didn't roll any dice today. No, because we check in with any dice rolls. That's true. Yeah, we've got no dice rolls to check in with this week, guys. Sorry. It's all just paperwork, as always. So we're going to have to break it up a little bit with something else.

This is a very game-light one today, because it's just been finishing up those last bits of water. And then we've got more bits of water to do next time. And the fact that I was tired through it all was... No, it wasn't good. It set me off on a little tangent. I ended up emailing the guys at Huel asking if they wanted to be our sponsor.

Are we letting that out of the bag before we get a no back? Yeah, because they're not going to listen to this one. They're going to listen from the start. I mean, let's hope not. They are. Because I've had some opinions on the Huel folks. Yeah, exactly.

I think a partnership with Huel is inevitable and I will still die on this hill that if I had Huel right now, i wouldn't be this tired if i could just chug down a nice big bottle of huel that's where my energy would be i don't think i've had huel in a good week that's why you're falling apart that's what's done this to me yeah drunk huel everyone and huel you guys know i'm doing god's work here you're welcome results from huel also require a healthy lifestyle if you're not getting enough sleep and drinking it won't help that's true just a little disclaimer for the folks yeah yeah uh you

you can't do extreme sports you can do normal sports is that does it say that on the ball uh no but i dare drink this and get on a bmx bmxing is an extreme it's in the red bull games that's all the extreme sports it's in the what the red bull game what's that is that like the beast games yeah but put on by red bull the beast games by the way for anybody listening to this in 2033 when halfway halfway through the game uh the beast games was something that um jimmy donaldson put together yes good old jimmy um it actually inspired a netflix series called squid games so yeah check that out that's that's crazy crazy history oh dear what should we do now what do you want to do now this is not good you need to sleep more what happens

i'm staging an intervention go to sleep i've got too many things to watch when i get home what are you watching youtube videos long youtube essays name one of the videos you watched yesterday that prevented you sleeping uh name anything you've retained i don't remember the names i just remember the the general topics which were the general topics were various old cartoons that are no longer in circulation and how they evoke certain emotional responses. Well, that's important to know about. Yeah, well, now I know that.

Honestly, I'm so tired I haven't retained much of it. Go to sleep instead of watching it then. I'll go to sleep now. You can cover the next segment. I'll just have a little nap. How dare you? The listeners will love that.

You guys are okay with it, aren't you? Yes, James. You can have it. You can go to sleep now. Well, you sound awfully a lot like me, but thank you for that. But with bad mic technique. Yeah, well I was yeah, well I'll not get behind the scenes

as to how I pulled off that piece of audio trickery a bit of ventriloquism um, verisimilitudism that's close really just had to both begin with V I've really jammed that one in well that's my one for the week

shall we see what the good folks have been sending us over uh, yeah I think that seems like a good idea Telegrams. Telegrams are coming in, and oh, there it is. There's the telegram noise. Let's hope I'm not too tired to forget to edit it in, otherwise we're going to look like crazy people.

I mean, yeah. Or sound like crazy people. Hopefully you sleep in the next two days. Hopefully, hopefully. So let's have a little look at the Instagram. Oh, wow. So we've got those two Instagrams that we knew about. We've just received another one seven minutes ago.

oh okay should we have a little look at this one this this fresh one okay so um what we got here so someone right okay so this is this is a live reading of anything so we've just put up a story on the instagram of me looking at one of the spreadsheets and not really enjoying it and somebody's actually replied to our story um eon i'm not sure if i'm pronouncing this right yon i'm not showing the pronunciation there but they've replied to the story and they've really read the vibe of today quickly turning into stay brave and a crying face and praying hands sort of emoji uh you've you've really looked right into my soul yon um yeah stay brave is is what i'm needing right now so thank you that that has perked me up a little

but thank you for that thank you that's important that i follow through that message well it's good you've picked up eh yeah yeah all right we've got another one here from paul paul has sent us a message on instagram said hey just discovered your podcast and listened to the first three episodes so far i love your humor and madness keep going and always remember to fuck the trucks damn right paul oh i forgot how long ago it was that fuck the trucks became a mantra and it's always going to be true and it's still important still to this day so paul when you find yourself here all these episodes later remember that we're taking your words on board and now that i know the importance of resource management which i didn't quite before i will indeed be fucking the trucks

don't you worry about that and our last instagram message so far is from ed and ed has quite a bit to say and you're gonna love this one oh hi andy and james was just listening to episode 18 while painting some skirting boards at a friend's house in hamburg all the way in germany correct yeah that wasn't me looking to you for assurance or confirmation really what it looks like no no i was just letting you know that's where hamburg is fun fact for you andy i was just listening to the part about camel nuggets and i thought i could add some information to the camel meal conversation oh good here we go when i was a child i lived in morocco for four years where there were small chains of restaurants that served camel burgers called cafe clock so had them a few

times camel meat usually tastes mostly like beef maybe a bit tender and a slight bit sweeter it's not part of the standard diet in north africa usually but it is eaten now and then and has grown more popular with tourism probably the likes of you andy if you visit morocco nowadays camel meat street food is pretty available in the more touristic areas it's great word touristic areas such as the marrakesh medina market he's put in brackets uh hope this lends some light to the camel food conversation ps absolutely loving the podcast keep up the great work thank you very much ed we will keep up the work i'm very sorry that today it's not great work it's just work hell it's barely that but now we have we have some great info to work it does make

me want to eat camel more because that just sounds like it's tender and sweeter than beef that just sounds like better beef it does sound like better beef it does make me wonder why we're not having camel instead of beef maybe it's harder to raise camels in mass numbers no because they're a lot more survivable they can store water for god ages maybe people just don't want to hang out with the camels in the desert. Well, they've got a reputation for being rude, haven't they? Yeah. With the spitting and the big, beautiful eyelashes.

That's more reason to eat them. Because they're rude? Yeah. So you think rude people should be eaten? No, rude animals go lower on the totem pole. I mean, that's fair enough. Tastier animals. That really is the deciding factor.

Well, Ed, maybe we'll be taking a trip to Café Clock. Mean Andy is what I meant. Not you, sorry, Ed. I mean, Ed, you can come along. Ed can come along. First fan meet-up, Café Clock. Cafe clock. In eight years.

We'll do it on poncho day. Yeah. We'll have a little trip in beforehand and determine whether or not you want it as your victory meal. Well, thank you for that, guys. That's some great info and great timing with the live read where somebody realized that my soul was being crushed. Yeah, and what's the Instagram for people listening?

Because you're somewhat active on that, talking to people and putting polls and stuff up. I put plenty up on there, A weekly poll of sorts, some pictures and whatnot. Was it 80% of the audience this week showed themselves to be fools? Oh, yes, because this week's poll was, is Monopoly a fun board game? And 69%, there's a joke in there, a sexual joke, if anyone is up to date with sex. Not in the latest updates.

Yeah, it's going well. It's very big these days. I think it's going to be in Avengers Doomsday. so 69% of people said yes it is fun which means 31% of people said no it's not so 69% of people are fun loving happy-go-lucky scamps like myself who enjoy a bit of economic strife in their board games

and 31% are andy-shaped sticks in the mud who don't understand what a fun board game is but we won't hold that against you because you're listening to this so we haven't really painted a very clear picture of that so i won't hold it against you there's still time to learn and grow i i believe all of you can except you andy you're too set in your ways but let's see what some other people have said i'm sure someone else over to the emails what email have we got we got one in from dave dave hey lads

just letting you know you have a listener i have a game related question you're using spreadsheets but seeing as they weren't invented in 1978 how did the game designers intend people to keep track of all of this keep it up i'm with you to the end stay subtle humble and brave dave oh that's good that rhymes with uh if only we were called dave we could have picked aliases but we messed that up yeah yeah well we could have picked a different catchphrase uh catchphrase is good yeah the catchphrase is is pretty brilliant but if it rhymed it would be so much better so uh as for were using spreadsheets i don't honestly know what they intended people to do they include a fold-out sheet of like examples one of the like things included in the box is like a folding out

with examples for all the log sheets and stuff you might theoretically need i think you were just going to like copy them and write your own on paper or something yeah that seems to be the intention yeah it doesn't really give any clear direction other than it sort of keep track of it however you will and here's some examples of an all right way to do it and they're not very well optimized for the game to be honest we've had to do a lot of tweaking from that kind of format and the fact it's digital instead so i honestly don't know that richard berg wanted people to keep track of it i don't think he wanted people to play because if it was paper by the end of it you'd have like filing cabinets yeah easily yeah so i i'm not entirely sure that they thought about

that i think that was something they were going to leave to the players to figure out and figure it out we have because all this time later we've got such readily available technology that it's not even a problem it's just it's soul destroying instead of it being a problem which i suppose is actually a problem but there's there's an answer to your your question dave uh they didn't think about it and a fuckload of paper yes yeah it's one or the other and we're getting we're getting by just fine just fine but thank you paul paul is the next person to send us a message and paul has to say hey that's also rhyming for those keeping track at home that's two rhymes today get the rhyme counter going uh hey ding ding was that okay came across your podcast from reddit

and i'm so pleased that someone is taking on the mammoth task of actually playing cfna i believe that the designer admitted that he had never play tested the game so i'm sure he'll be pleased with the feedback for cfna2 well richard berg's dead paul um i'm sorry sorry i'd have to break the news to you there we're just talking about him but it was posthumously um richard berg has passed away we did a few weeks ago find out they are planning to release a new streamlined version of this game in the next year or so they are that's probably what he's referring to so that that'll be the sequel so if there is somebody out there who's uh collating feedback absolutely will be passing it on don't you worry about that one thing as a data nerd i'm very curious about

is how much actual time you are taking with the game could you mention in each show how long you spend playing that session uh well for context today it was about three hours so that was three hours of uh of getting through bits and pieces of the the water evaporation and fuel consumption fuel evaporation rather and water consumption uh so yeah that's that's what we were doing today and that was about three hours making a bit of a chip away at that you also ask perhaps even a breakdown of time taken per phase of the game that's something we're going to try and put together in the next few turns the first term we're just feeling our way through and then after that in subsequent practice turns we're going to try and break down how long each of it takes

so that we can sort of schedule these play sessions do a bit of planning yeah so it'll make it a bit easier to determine how long this phase is also definitely going slower because it's first time and we'll be setting this stuff up like spreadsheets and stuff yeah we'll have formulas to automate parts of that so that won't be too bad yeah we'll figure that bit out we'll we'll get there um and we'll will you be posting your errata faq on board game geeks so that people following in your footsteps have some guidance that might be a nice give back to the community i'm not sure that encouraging people to play this game is a give back i feel like that's some sort of curse that we're passing on to people but we will we will be doing that at some point

yes um probably after the grizzly arnie offensive when we start the game when we have a good enough grasp on the rules to give addenda because at the minute we've got some stuff we've noted down where things haven't made sense and we've sort of made assumptions but i guess we're going to test them in the game before we give anyone bad advice because that's more damaging than no advice for this game yes yeah we don't want people to be thrown off by us giving half complete information so once we know for certain that we're correct about things that are wrong then we'll start putting word out there definitely update and you say same applies for the spreadsheets and software you're producing too again yes once we know everything works we would be more than happy

to put that out there so other people could give this game a crack a bit more streamlined that will probably be much further down the line when we know that it works in the in the long run but that's that's all all something that will be put out there at some point you will be welcome to it yeah we'll drop the template spreadsheets and stuff and the code for the software i'm writing in a minute it's very ugly but if i take the time to tidy it up maybe i'll go on github at some point so yeah keep an eye out that it will all come out at some point it will it will be distributed podcast social media includes github our podcast social media is uh yeah it's it's it's creeping up there bit by bit things are happening i really hope that this podcast goes from strength

the strength and perhaps you get some famous guests on the podcast on big anniversaries thank you and keep up the amazing work paul well thank you paul we also hope it goes from strength to strength right now it feels like this is a bit of a dip because i am a shell of my former self however andy's still here he's still keeping things going so i think we'll be just fine next week we'll be back back to double strength and we'll be bringing on a famous guest next week that's right people idris elba is coming on to the podcast next week a a renowned huel uh advocate so yeah um or if he's not available maybe it'll just be us two but um almost certainly well the ball is in mr uh elba's park now so um he probably probably listens so if um if you want to let the

fans down idris that's not something i can control but we are interested in getting guests in that are attainable uh we just don't know who we are we've got we've got some conversations going on yeah we've got some some things in the works we just need to figure out how everything works best for people so it is something we're working on we we will follow up with that advice thank you all right what have we got next who's next uh ty ty what's what's ty saying dear pervert hello i'm very excited to send in an email finally i was hoping to be the first but i know i'm not i've been listening to your podcast on the drive to work which is about the length of an episode okay as an avid war gamer for years i was curious to hear a podcast where two

guys are trying to finish the famed campaign for north africa i've been trying to get my hand on the game for years since i heard about it but it's rather scarce here in the states to my knowledge having played tabletop's hex world games say that five times fast i didn't say it once successfully uh before like squad leader panzer blitz rden 44 and a few other niche titles i do have a few questions about the game and just in general question one how does the storm work exactly is there a visual thing on the board is it uh or does it take up from x coordinate to y coordinate and are there any other major impacts beyond just your supply line sucking so in terms of the visual component it is unfortunately all theater of the mind they don't include any any

storm pieces i wouldn't have been shocked if they did a watering can or something to permanently damage the board but no it is it is just a case of it affects certain maps there's five maps broken into five yeah abcd and this affects bcd so the middle three maps uh are experiencing a rainstorm which yes makes our supply line suck more it also it would prevent or slow down construction if we were doing that you can't build things in a rainstorm and also we can't fly up planes that's a massive one big one because we still don't really know how the planes work and we can't test them this time around because we can't get them up in the air yeah well it's kind of almost all our planes are on well i don't know about you but most of the planes for me are on e

well most of my planes are some of the fighters yeah so they're not in the rainstorm they just can't fly to anywhere strategically relevant yes yeah same for me i've got a lot of planes that are able to lift up and get in the air but then they can't do anything when they're in the air so that's uh that's a real a real shitter um as they say so we are yeah unfortunately not getting any cool visual displays but if anybody wants to uh suggest something we could do to put on the map to represent the storm then let us know because we are diy experts at this point we've got a lot of a lot of magnets second question do the dead camels have an effect on morale or are they just dead camels for the sake of dead camels i think they're dead camels for the sake of dead camels

hi i think you know damn well that we don't know what the dead camels are for we are trying our best to figure it out but honestly i think it would affect morale definitely if i was hopping into a uh a plane to transport some supplies in a desert war situation and then i all right come on james and you get and just move past those crates and yeah you have to tuck in next to these dead camels i'd be like oh no that's this is not a place i want to be my whoever's in charge is just an idiot whoever's in charge doesn't care about me yeah as far as we can tell the camels are mentioned once and it's just about transporting them yeah we're still not sure loading them or what you do we don't even know what they weigh so we don't know how many you can you can ship

so it just feels like something that should have been edited out and wasn't or there was going to be a whole camel system they didn't get around to maybe that's maybe that's a dlc wouldn't surprise me if it was like the camel migrations and herding it's like a sub thing for some reason we'll have to create the camel dlc at some point so ty we'll have to make our own answers so right now whatever you think the answer is that's sort of how it works the answer is that uh you can you can run your own narrative in your head about the camel so if you feel it affects morale it certainly does it's affecting my morale uh just thinking about that rule and how how cheeky richard berg was to pop that in there so he finishes up as well my laptop battery is about to die and i can't be

bothered to charge it so that's the end of this for me i can't wait to stick around for 10 years plus years to see this through until next time ty thanks ty yeah yeah thank you uh 10 plus years sounds about right and we'll be here the whole time in various states of awakeness but we'll be here Ty and thank you again for bringing up the camels hopefully you've got around to charging your laptop yes hopefully that wasn't the end of your

laptop forever you can charge them just so you know you can refresh the battery on those bad boys you do have to buy a new one each time something that I figured out a little while ago the only six laptops deep so not too bad

well you know that's that's life that's life who we got who we got next hewitt there we are hewitt has messaged to say andy and james hello my name is hewitt and i'm a big fan of the podcast i just found your guys podcast a few days ago and i've been binge listening to the episodes i'm writing this as i'm listening to episode nine and you guys convinced me to email you i wanted to ask for the 10 minute original episode ah yes the original cut of episode nine where, funnily enough, my laptop cut out. So there we go. That was my lesson about laptop etiquette.

I didn't leave enough storage. And yeah, we did actually advertise in that that we would distribute the original one to anyone who wants it. So Hewitt, I will find the file and I will email you it over. So you should have that probably by the time you're listening to these words.

That's like the Wu-Tang album for our podcast. It is, it is. It's private, but you can have it. You can have a copy of it. so i will send you that over don't you worry about that that will be yours to keep and cherish i also wanted to ask if it was a possibility to post the spreadsheets to the website so we can visualize the bookkeeping a little better i know that sounds super nerdy lol not at all here it's as nerdy as us playing the game uh it's not even that nerdy um as us playing the game so we will

we'll try and find a way to do this because you've got to bear in mind we've got a lot of spreadsheets and i need to update them regularly so we'll try and figure out a way to streamline that being accessible don't really want to dish out a link to the google drive because i feel like that could cause some potential problems so we'll figure something out uh we'll we'll make sure that maybe downloading them like after an upstage or after a turn or something like when they're sort of yeah when there's been a bit of a moving as it were yeah when there's been a bit of a noticeable change to them so mine now are looking quite a bit different because of all the water and fuel consumption and evaporation so there's a bit of a change there already and that will change even

more by the end of the actual upstage so we will be putting that out there absolutely might not put all of them out straight away uh we'll figure out how and we'll share it definitely at some point But if there's an interest, let us know for just maybe some example documents so you can sort of see what we're referring to when we talk or something. We can maybe put a couple of them up. Yes, yes. So by all means, continue with the feedback of what you'd like to see. We will try and pop the information, the spreadsheet somewhere sometime soon

when we figure out a good way to do that. But Huwitt finishes. Thank you guys for making me laugh, and good luck on your journey in completing this game, Huwitt. well hewitt thank you for for making me um realize that this isn't completely in vain because people are are listening and laughing along so i might not be laughing myself right now but as long as you are because this what i'm saying right now is very funny then that's that's fine by me that's that helps get me through this a little bit more it's an accountability tool it's nice to know

that people are enjoying it so thank you everybody for those messages we still have plenty more to get through so next week we'll have a ton more we can read through some of them are absolute corkers so we're looking forward to those so keep them coming any feedback any questions any non sequiturs uh you know that we love them all um i especially love the non sequiturs so well that's that's some some some good mailing some good telegrams yeah so i think what we should maybe do then is try and get me back in the game a little bit, a bit more focused and I can talk a little

bit more about our good old pal Monty yeah, Monty he's an interesting character he is that Monty is quite the fellow sort of war loving Betty loving he loved

his Bettys so as you may remember let's cast our minds back there it is there's that sound effect that perked me up a little bit more maybe by the end of this i'll be a real boy so that's a pinocchio reference um do you like do you like pinocchio andy not a big fan right uh i wouldn't watch shrek then if i were you he's in that quite a bit yeah it's probably the worst part of that no no the worst i'll get into the worst part of shrek with you another time so monty as you may remember uh had um had just found out that uh that war had been

declared on germany by great britain that that had happened sure he gave a little fist bump fist bump sorry fist bump he was a fist bumper himself sort of powering his hands together like a like a power ranger activating his suit calling war mode war mode i think he was always in war mode so the the third division which uh he was he was up at the tippy top of um shows up in france as part of the bef the british expeditionary force in 1939 and good old monday was almost immediately found in hot water you see monday was reprimanded by not just military officials but also the clergy for his very forward and blunt attitude about the sexual habits and sexual health of his soldiers,

specifically relating to venereal disease. Was he pro? He was pro-sexual health in preventing the spread of... Oh, he was, like, giving his guys condoms and stuff. Well, well, so it was... This was so bad. Let's get ahead of it. yeah no trust me i'll get to it don't you worry uh it was so bad he almost got dismissed

until his superior brooke stepped in for trying to have his soldiers not have brought in dicks because of the well to be fair it says that he used incredibly stark uh language a bit like i guess what you just have there when you've said rotting dicks into the mic so i guess you're a bit of a montgomery in that sense because yeah he um he was using language yeah so extreme in this communication that it got him in in real real trouble so is he just telling them to be careful and like aggressively i think so that's that's the impression i'm getting like put a bag on it boys well that's not even that bad i don't think that's even well what he had done he distributed an information pamphlet about the

prevention of vd uh venereal disease uh which was apparently so obscenely worded that the church of england and some roman catholic senior chaplains objected to it those guys rarely agree on anything yeah but apparently the very vulgar description of vd prevention that is something that can cross over that those two circles and make a bit of event diagram all right so is he close to get like dismissed from this yeah yeah he was almost dismissed and then his superior stepped in and in the farthest corner. It was like, we're fighting a war. This is not important.

Yeah, yeah, pretty much. He's our best guy. Have you not seen the tanks he draws on dates? On what? The tank formations he draws on dates. Oh, right. Have you said on days? Oh, just some days.

Yeah, on some days he'll draw them. I thought you were just wording things very vaguely. So, Monty's 3rd Division saw very little action in the Battle of France, and later returned to Britain with minimal casualties nice a lot of it said to be down to his uh his training you would go through some very vigorous training routines with them so monty really had them in uh ship shape so they came back mostly all right but they were fighting and stuff they weren't like a back line

yeah they did see some action from what i can ascertain of the third division but they weren't um they weren't super frontline in in the battle of france um and uh upon returning Monty kicked up another storm by criticising the command of the British Expeditionary Force and was relegated to divisional command of the 3rd Division which at the time was the only fully equipped

division in Britain Okay, so he says his regiment or unit is the only one that's properly equipped and he comes in and looks around and goes, you guys all suck Seems to be the case, yeah Seems like he might have been right on that one

If he's got the only equipped guys. Yeah, he definitely has something to say about that because he's come back with a fully outfitted group. So everyone's still okay for the most part. Minimal casualties. So what else was notable during this time? This is quite an impressive one. So in December 1941, he was given command of Southeastern Command

and eventually executed Exercise Tiger in May of 1942. which is, to date, the largest military exercise in the UK's history. All right. I've never heard of it. Yeah, so it saw over 100,000 troops involved. It had them marching over 100 miles across the country. All right. Just getting used to marching. Yeah, well, that and other aspects involved in that. I couldn't really find a whole lot of information about the ins and outs of it,

but it has been described as incredibly grueling. So is this like a training thing? It's not like a... Because it was Exercise Tiger, not Operation Tiger. Yeah, not an operation. It was a training exercise. So basically it was like, your unit's pretty good. You're now in charge of making everyone reach that standard.

Yeah, this is when he was in charge of Southeastern Command. So yeah, a lot of troops under his umbrella. And yeah, he was getting them into ship shape, it would seem. Which takes him up to 1942 when he arrived. in the theatre in North Africa which is where our beloved game is set

Churchill appointed him after being persuaded by Brook the same Brook that defended him during the VD health information debacle he recommended him to Churchill and Churchill took up that

recommendation and there he was and I suppose as was the case with Graziani we'll not cover too much of his time in the actual campaign because we'll get to that as and when we sort of pick through those parts of his life as we get to periods

that he was actually around for. But I do have some comments here on his personality which I found particularly interesting. So it gives a little bit of background on who Monty was as a man and quite the man he was.

he was very well known for his is a lack of um social etiquette and uh tact which it's got him in i mean as we've already heard quite a bit of of hot water there's a um a mention here from brooke the the man who seems to be getting about his biggest fan getting him out of hot water um he is liable to commit untold errors in lack of tact and i have to haul him over the coals for his usual lack of tact and egotistical outlook which prevented him from appreciating other people's feelings and he also supposedly suffered from war he also suffered from an overbearing conceit and uncontrollable urge for self-promotion

he ended up as the head of all british forces i believe so that worked out pretty nicely well general hastings is me who was at the time winston churchill's chief staff officer once said of dear old Monty, I've come to the conclusion that his love of publicity is a disease, like alcoholism or taking drugs, and that it sends him equally mad.

So he's no social graces, but he loves fame and wants to be at the height of... Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it is a strange... It's a weird... It's a strange crossover. It is said though, so the psychiatrist

michael fitzgerald gerald rather wow james is james is tired on this one um has argued that he was likely autistic so that's gelled with what you've said yeah the the very stark and abrupt behaviors because the tank formations on the beach for a day yes yeah i mean the few autistic people that i've met and and had in-depth conversations with sometimes you yeah you do get the the hit of well that felt like it wasn't very nice but i also know that's not how it was probably intended yeah and it seems as though monday was probably the same because he was getting results and he was going in the right direction he just he wasn't picking up on those social cues he's getting really good results from we'll go more into his war stuff but it's

my understanding in general he's one of like the most well-renowned british generals from this period yeah yeah well he's uh he was very capable and that capability was uh was continued through the the north african campaign there was a little anecdote here actually from the campaign which i suppose we can delve into which is uh yeah an example of his behavior getting a little bit out of hand again okay uh he bet uh walter bedell smith that he could capture sfax s-f-a-x I'm really not sure on the pronunciation of that because it feels like it should have some sort of, yeah, exotic pronunciation. It's a major port in Tunisia.

All right. And Smith jokingly said that if Montgomery could capture Sfax in the middle of April, then he would give Montgomery a flying fortress complete with crew. Smith promptly forgot about all of that. Monty didn't. his fax was taken on the 10th of april right on schedule he immediately sent a message to smith claiming his winnings when smith tried to laugh it off just correct me if i'm wrong is for a thing that doesn't exist or is this flying fortress like one of those big bombers

yes it's a b-17 boeing flying fortress it's not an actual flying like castle no it's a it's a heavy bomber aircraft uh developed in in the u.s why does he want one because they were very capable aircraft. I think he... He wants it for the war, it's not... I don't think it was for him personally, no. I think it was for him to have as part of his warfare. And Smith tried to laugh this off and Monty insisted on

it actually happening. Thankfully, the incident was finally resolved by Eisenhower who, with a bit of diplomatic jiggery-pokery, ensured that Monty did indeed get his flying fortress.

Though at a great cost and ill-feeling. from eisenhower yes so i don't know i didn't like him but it was like well you have to keep your bet you can't welch on that uh yeah yeah uh so monty just would not let that go also was there anything about because it was like oh if you conquer this city in the middle of april i'm assuming that was like a completely unreasonable proposition which is why the like ridiculous bet was made yeah and monty pushed forward and was like i want my plane is there any information about how many people died to get on this plane.

I'm not actually sure. I will have to have a look at that because that's an interesting question. Let's have a little look at the history of Sfax because I imagine it will probably have it in here. Not readily available from what I can see in Sfax's history.

This might be one I have to come back to but I am interested because I think you may well have had people dying over this I'd be amazed if nobody died in that. Yeah, well, it's like, people will die at the capture of the city, but was it like, they got

there two months early by pushing through? Yeah, yeah. Mondi is, yeah, a very interesting character, and I suppose summarised quite succinctly here by Churchill, who supposedly, by all accounts,

a faithful friend, quoted saying of Montgomery, in defeat, unbeatable. in victory unbearable okay and that i think that that may even somewhat bear your behavior a little bit during this game so if there's anybody to take on board the attitude of it would seem monty's uh he's he's been channeled into you because if you win i know it's going to be

unbearable because you're going to be you're going to be making me eat those those camels well yeah you made a bet yeah and I'm also quite interested in eating the camels now I'm getting one over every single week oh great but it does mean still that when I win I'm still gonna treat you to the Huel dining

experience well can't say no to that maybe there's an episode down the line about us facts yeah maybe we'll delve into that so that's a bit about Monty we will return to him at some point Monty will return in Avengers Doomsday

and we'll also in this game when he shows up yeah when he actually pops up in the game we'll get into his history a little bit more and i'm sure eventually his um his his death we'll get all the way through to the end of his life and and for now i'm trying to hang on to my life by the the threads i'm gonna sleep so well tonight i promise when i get back i will just go to sleep you're gonna watch such bullshit i'm not gonna watch any more bullshit i'm going to go to sleep okay i'm gonna gets him real good, should I? You're not going to watch a thing about how Patrick from Spongebob is secretly

socialist or something? No, no, but is that a video? I saw your face there. You were going to search that up. No, I've made that up. Don't go looking for it. Someone must have commented on it somewhere.

What is Patrick's political leanings? I suppose, let's leave that one. Let's maybe find some other common ground. And now for something nicer, a little oasis in the war. It's time for some Common Ground. I'm trying the intro for Common Ground. I'm recording.

Maybe. Yeah. I think that was a good segue. That was very natural. I'm still slick. I'm tired, but I'm still slick and charismatic and all the other positive traits that I wield so well. so for the uninitiated common ground is a segment in which andy and i decide to try and build this bridge back up of our friendship since we're competing against each other

and we uh take turns each week coming up with a topic that we will then have to find some common ground on something to agree on and i believe it's your turn this week andy your time to present common ground yeah and what would that be it's not a great one but you know well that sort of fits in with the vibe of the episode yeah i wish i could have brought this up this is a low energy one but i've been walking around you know in general my whole life since early on but recently i've just been looking around and it's all these houses are so fucking boring so i think people should start painting their houses bright colors more often like in cities and stuff so you you want to you want people to do what they do in in the kids program balamori yes so what what kind

of color scheme would you need would it be associated with your job like it is in balamori or i didn't know that's how that works balamori yeah yeah so i didn't realize that was a sort of categorization system yeah it's like a tier system of society so is that what you're trying to impose here no i just make your house bright and interesting to look at but why because they're all gray and brown and boring yeah they're meant to be better walking around balamori than like just some boring terrace street well not balamori in particular because the characters are very upbeat and and energetic and for anyone who's not aware because i know a lot of you guys listening or in America

Balamory is a kids TV program here in the UK or was a good 20 years ago maybe where a guy with a moustache tried to make us not be fat no you're thinking of LazyTown oh ok

no you did gymnastics and stuff sorry yes I know who you're talking about Sportacus from LazyTown oh that was also when I was figuring out what the house is I think right sorry so when I've been talking about right so i need to explain it to you as well so for everyone uh who's not in the uk and andy balamori was a kids tv program where uh it was it was in this village in i think it's scotland

it's an actual place but it's got a different name and all of the houses are very colorfully painted i was thinking of balamori sorry for that little roller coaster guys yeah i was thinking of balamori i just got the mustache exercise guy wrong so andy does know about balamori but he's decided to transplant Sportacus from LazyTown into Balamory and they're very different vibes. Well, I'm just looking at some pictures of it. This is much nicer than most

like, even other seaside towns. I mean it's very bright. I don't know if it would be better. I've never been. We could do a trip there at some point. I mean, yeah. Live podcast in Balamory. We'll add it to the tour. The world tour.

So the world tour right now is Cafe Clock Balamory fuck it, stick LazyTown in there as well. I imagine that's just some closed down set in Hollywood. I thought this was going to be a quick one. Do you not want to think people should be painting their houses? I don't think people

should be, no. Where are you going to buy all that paint? Are you paying for this? No. Who's paying for this? It's pretty cheap. It's pretty cheap. Have some house pride and buy some paint from, I don't know, B&Q. I know plenty about B&Q and I can tell you that

It's not cheap. You can't get that much paint. To paint a whole house on the outside. Yeah. That's a lot of house. And what are you going to do? So say you live in a two-storey building. Yep.

Different flats. Yep. One person lives upstairs, you live downstairs. Who's taking responsibility for the painting? Well, you paint your floor. And you can coordinate. Have a little community building thing. And be like, what colours should we have?

oh no that wouldn't be community building yeah it would we used to live together you and I and we've had neighbours upstairs before can you imagine talking to all of the neighbours we've had in the past and asking them to sit down with us and decide on a colour scheme for us to paint

the outside of our house I think it would be fine with about 50% I agree and we're thinking of exactly the same house Yes, we are. Yeah, no, that's fair. 50% is fair. No, I'm not getting into this.

So, yes, I think it would really lead to some problems. Is there something else we can do to make the houses more interesting for you? What about we get you some cool glasses so everything is through a different coloured lens? I'm not going to change anything about myself I want the whole world to change to accommodate me I know, I know

And I would never challenge you on that Because I know that you're flawed in that way I'm a bit of a monty You're a bit of a monty, you're a bit of a monster I think you need to Take a little bit of weight on your shoulders here So maybe find something to beat in the middle Find some common ground in the common ground

So how about Right, okay, so we'll paint some houses will paint, say, 25% of houses. If you own your house, you paint it. If it's rented, don't paint it. No, that's fair, that's fair. That's also a good way of highlighting homeowners. The class structure.

Yes, so we are doing a class structure thing. I guess we are, yeah. If you have a colourful house, you own property. If you have a bland, drab home, you're renting and will be trapped in the renting cycle forever. Ha-ha. There we go. So that's the common ground, then, I guess,

it's that people who own property should highlight that to the world by painting it bright colours and those who can't afford to own property or the system just won't let them own property they live in drab darkness forever yeah but they can go to colourful day

birds and aspire hmm yeah I suppose so but that's quite a depressing thought yeah you really did oh I think things should be more bright and colourful and fun into probably the premise of a pretty shit dystopian teen uh like young adult fiction book

you know the fucking energy i was coming into this with and you decided to present bright colorful houses i mean come on man that is on me a bit i was trying to bring you up well it didn't work did it didn't work it's riled me up is what it's done okay we're running on an angry note now i'm I'm fueled up. I'm fired up. Oh. Okay. I just...

Yeah, I just really... I need to catch up with my sleep. But next time. I'll change my common ground then. Go to sleep. Next time will be better. I think you should go to sleep. Well, I'm going to bring loads of caffeine next time.

I haven't had any caffeine today, by the way. None. None at all. Why not? I just... I didn't feel like caffeine would help. i feel like it would just make me feel sick i just felt like i was in one of those states where it's like at this point if i have caffeine i'm just gonna i'm gonna crash immediately when the

caffeine it just sort of seeps out my system i mean you do you i guess yeah oh okay deary me i think me doing me is gonna be going back home um i'm gonna i'm gonna find this patrick video that you mentioned i'm gonna quickly watch that and then go about at two in the morning watch some lazy town and some balamory and then i'm sure there's some interesting video essays about that yeah yeah probably actually so i'm gonna do that and then i've got i've got ages to to catch up on my sleep before next episode ages so i'll catch up you better fucking do it next one's gonna be great guys next week we've got a great show it's got uh idris elba it's got me awake and andy is going to remember what Balamory

is and not put Sportacus in it. Hopefully at least one of those things happen. Yeah, yeah. Idris Elba, baby! It would be so funny if we did through some complete insane thing. He shows up and you're just like,

I'm tired, man. Shut up. I would never tell Idris Elba to shut up. That's good. He's a detective in Luthor and he's mean in the office well i'm gonna i'm gonna go get myself a little bit of should i just a little bit though and uh and and we'll we'll speak to you next time yeah stay so humble and brave and i oh actually um i forgot to say um the the emails uh you can send them into info at war with a mate

dot co.uk and to reiterate the instagram is war with a mate because i don't think i said it earlier and we will also have a YouTube channel coming up sometime soon details about that next week yeah we'll figure that one out as we go but keep an eye out for that it won't be there just yet

with any content so if you find it there's nothing to look at but subscribe day oneers right I'm actually going to go now I'm going to go to bed so sleep well and yeah stay subtle, humble and brave

as Andy said, I'm going to go for a little nap in the deserts of my bed thanks for listening, goodnight