War With A Mate - Episode 1 : Making A Meal Out Of It

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

Join Andrew and James as they unravel the premise of War With A Mate, as well as their psyche as they touch on the pros and cons of such a long form project, and the vast rewards that lay ahead.Email : [e-mail] Website : WarWithAMate.co.uk

cold wonder day no it is it's cold it's freezing cold it's very chilly we're deep into november i know 29 days of it do we have to start with a non-sequitur yeah i mean well how would you start this hello welcome to war with a mate oh wow recording recording a podcast and introducing it first episode wow cliche but it is it is it is war with a mate and you are andy and i am james and that's wow well you've you sort of took took all the good material right off the dome so uh gonna have to really just dance around everything else now really improv the rest of this this episode okay so it looks like my role here is going to be a keep us on track right yeah that makes sense i'll do my very best to derail this at every opportunity okay so uh but yeah it war

with a mate you see i'm going along with it i'm going along with the idea of the podcast and what is the idea of the podcast uh so so this is a podcast in which me james and you andy yeah see I even know your name I'm very organized we are going to play a board game for the next probably seven to eight to nine years and we're going to record a podcast every week as we go along this playthrough of the board game and what's the board game called the board game is I know this as well I know this as well the board game is called SPI's the campaign for North Africa the desert war and it is a board game notorious for being difficult nigh impossible to finish and that is because nobody has ever supposedly finished the board game there's a lot of people who've have they

have anecdotes of trying to finish the board game but there's no one that we found through our research that has finished the board game and we happen to have the board game and so we decided to we would finish this and record the process exactly we're going to we're going to make history that's what this is a little slice of history in which we play a board game that is so granular so complicated and so detailed that people uh give up they their friends have too social a life to commit to playing it and it's competitive as well it's a it's a it's a versus game yeah so shall we explain the basic premise of the game which is well yeah it covers the campaign for north africa in a very granular level of detail including all the logistics

involved and it covers the whole war a week is the equivalent to a turn well well i guess i guess slow down there cowboy what what is the campaign for north africa what what is this this strange abstract concept you've just thrown out there under the ether. The actual thing. Well, yeah. People aren't going to necessarily... They're going to hear, oh, it's a board game, the campaign for North Africa. What is that?

Okay. It's part of World War II, the actual war this is based on. Yeah. Oh, it's based on a war. Yeah. Very closely. Yeah, yeah. It's... In North Africa?

am i am i getting that right you are yes i told you i'm organized so the um the the game itself yeah based on the the campaign for north africa yeah like you say it's a it's a portion of world war ii it was the campaign in north africa i feel like we've said that a few times now um for those listening as dwindling numbers as there are probably now i imagine half of the people that started listening have probably dropped off so that's what two that we've got left um the campaign for north africa that's four times is uh yeah it was it was the part of world war two fought in north africa primarily uh initially at least by the italian forces against the commonwealth forces later on the germans also showed up as they did it in this time period

yeah yeah they cropped up a lot during this time period i believe that's actually the uh the initial problem them sort of popping up where they where they really didn't need to be which was anywhere yeah anywhere they certainly didn't need to be there in the capacity in which they were so the board game is based on that to a yeah really scary extent it's it's very very detailed it's got 1600 game pieces the board itself the actual map for the board game is about nine feet long by four five feet uh four feet i believe yeah yeah it's big it's huge we don't have the table space to do that we're gonna have to play it maybe on your floor maybe i was gonna say on your ceiling but you know as funny and difficult as that would be we're just not tall enough yeah

maybe if we finish the game too quickly and we need to keep dragging the podcast on we'll do the upside down version oh so in your mind we've got a deadline for this we've got to stretch it to a certain point no oh all right good good because i was worried we're gonna synthetically extend it by saying campaign for north africa five times in the first episode and just to get a little bit more uh well that's why we've picked a game with a long name so we can kill a lot of time saying it by saying this is something like short like risk yeah that's true yeah risk is uh risk is the the coward's version of this this is the this is the thinking man's risk yeah and i guess talking about risk we'll transition that into our experience with war gaming and massive board games

so by the sounds of it you've caught you've dealt with risk you just know how to play that now well we've played risk we've sorry we started playing risk once and then we stopped playing halfway through because we got we got bored i assume that's abnormal for you you normally finish a big game like risk uh well again i've only played it once and it was with you uh what i what i do play as you know is dungeons and dragons with you every week and have done for the last seven years a long time yeah yeah a lot of dnd yeah we've we've played it for a long time and we've done it reliably yeah we've stuck to it pretty reliably normally doing at least one session a week for those seven years so through covid as well yeah you were you were in my bubble why was in your

bubble you were i think we share the bubble it doesn't belong to anyone in particular oh i like to think of it as my bubble and you were invited in i mean yeah that says a lot about uh yeah yeah i like to you know i like to own bubbles uh i like to be a bit of a i've got no idea where i'm going with that um yeah so uh so we even played it during covid we we've reliably played it for that long we think we can probably stick to this it's going to be nowhere near as um as much of a creative space because in dungeons and dragons it's very much a lot of theater of the mind a lot of creativity whereas this is regimented rules that span on for what five or six rule books we are we're going to be doing this by the book as much as possible but there's so many rules

hundreds of pages of rules and we've we started reading through them yes i started delving into that tome of rules we thought we would record this one before we got too far into it to give an initial impression of what we're undertaking so with your first look over the rules how are you how are you feeling in a word regret does that is that a feeling regrets a feeling regrets definitely a feeling i'm feeling regret yeah it's not the feeling you'd want to be feeling before we've started yeah i was sort of hoping if the regret came it would be you know maybe year two or three yeah yeah like when we've when we started playing it we've realized that was a mistake not before we've really took all the game pieces out because the game the version we've got our

hands on is in near mint condition and this board game wasn't easy to find but we found it we found it and it is a it is a game collector's wet dream it is it's rare it's a game that's seldom played it's the perfect collectible and we're going to pop all those little cardboard pieces out we're going to try not to lose any under furniture and we're going to play a game just so we can say we finished it yeah we're not going to necessarily enjoy the whole thing like i say i'm sort of regretting the idea this is an incredibly concerning attitude because at this point we don't have to release anything oh if we really are that scared we don't have to punch the pieces do you do you mean that no oh oh right okay for a moment there what i felt was hope

which is actually it's the estranged cousin of regret they don't talk anymore i don't don't roll your eyes i don't know what else i'm meant to do with that i guess compliment me good joke good joke james good humor we'll save that for when you've earned it i like your sense of humor i like your quips no okay trying to brainstorm some good jokes quickly do you you find a knock knock i've got a good knock knock joke but you have to start it knock knock who's there what's the next part

knock knock jokes now that is comedy gold who's there welcome to war with a mate the stand up comedy podcast where we

well it wouldn't you can't really do stand up with knock knock jokes can you yes of course you can't you can't do you can't do stand up

with knock knock jokes I mean you could you can't you could be a very bad comedian sorry yeah yeah you can't you can't make a a living off it no you can't you can't you you thought about it for a moment yeah but you live

in an age of irony i feel like you could try and get that off the ground and why are we doing this i don't know this is this is to become rich isn't it that's what that's what the idea is oh i thought this was a form of earnest self-expression oh right right yeah that's why we see we have different vibes going yeah right okay yeah you're immediately regretting it and saying this won't be creative yeah i mean i thought when i came in here wearing sunglasses that are in the shape of pound signs i was wondering why you didn't have like any other kind of money paraphernalia well one i don't think we're gonna make any money no two i believe you've set the contract up in such a way that i will profit very little from this yeah yeah um

everything's in in my name um personally i've i've actually uh i've actually put your rental agreement in my name as well it's not really a an asset no i just thought if there's no assets to take take liabilities that is a that is a great tagline for this that's basically what we've done because this is not going to be anything well anything beyond us finishing the game well i say that but we have put some stakes into this haven't we andy yeah if you're going to commit five years plus to a board game you're going to do it for something and we are doing it for something we're doing it for something very important because we decided since we're playing against each other i will be playing the the role of the axis forces the baddies so to speak they were the

the aggressors uh italy germany really on the really on the wrong side of history in this chair that's that's where i am and you're going to be the commonwealth forces yes i'm going to be the allies and i don't have to carefully justify anything i'm not justifying anything just to make that explicitly clear uh it was war it was horrible and um well while we're saying we're not gonna have a good time this is ultimately a board game about war what we're going to be covering the way we're going to be covering it is going to be through the lens of it being a board game so any any lightheartedness any waxing lyrical about anything that goes on is about a board game and shouldn't not it should not reflect whatsoever any views on history because we are

absolutely not qualified to share views on history no would not even qualify to share any sort of views on the board game to be honest yeah we have no experience with history or board games of this magnitude or recording podcasts that's another issue this could come out sounding like shit it may well do so stick with us for that see how our editing journey goes maybe we'll become experts at audio editing maybe we'll stop doing the podcast and instead we'll do i don't look there's definitely careers so you're gonna become sound engineering expert at audio editing for podcasts and then quit the podcast again well yeah don't don't do it for free i'm not going to start giving out advice for free on a podcast when i can go work on a podcast

editing their audio edit our audio i'm gonna try poorly at first i'll imagine but anyway back to the stakes we are doing this for ourselves for the board game and as well as that since we're competing against each other the loser is going to be punished yeah and it's going to be rough to reflect the thousands of hours we will each put into this the stakes are one dinner that's right, at the end of all of this

the loser is going to be buying the other one a meal and I'm not talking about a Sainsbury's meal deal, we're not talking about even the premium Sainsbury's meal deal where it's £5 and you can have Huel as the main we're talking about an actual

don't don't sigh at Huel just because you think it's a dystopian meal because it's convenient and efficient it's a joyless awful thing that shouldn't exist it's like a milkshake but you're full

how is that joyless have you never had a milkshake and just thought oh if only that was all I needed to have no I have an issue where I have the milkshake and then I go I'll have a burger and some chips and some other solid foods

all right okay mr five guys oh i want to have a milkshake and actual food when you could just have fuel cut out the middle man okay i mean i'm not the biggest fan of five guys in the world but you're comparing five guys to fuel i'm not comparing them at all i'm saying that i'm just did i'm comparing your views to mine and what it sounds like is i'm all about efficiency and this is coming from by the way the guy that you said is trying to derail everything here i'm talking about efficiency drive time consuming the nature of eating food can derail your whole day that's what i can do and i'm trying to stop that from happening drink yule okay and that's got to the other reason we're doing this to see if uh all-in-one nutrition drinks have a measurable

effect on tactical performance yeah i'll be doing this whole podcast only consuming yule while andy will be eating five guys every day for the next eight years uh but um as fun as that would be and we will maybe come back to that the the meal it's gonna be a sit-down meal gonna be a nice three course yeah nice three courser paid for by the loser that's that's gonna be the the light at the end of the tunnel every time that we're bogged down in the deserts of our minds i'm gonna be thinking about what's coming next and it is it is that meal that's what's coming it's what's gonna get us through this yeah yeah that and we're also recording this as a way to be obligated to finish it because if if we know there's a risk of people listening to this and then halfway through we stop

it's it's going online where people can just hurl abuse at the nature of the podcast yeah this is this is the shackle around our angle to make sure we can't get away i mean even if no one ever listens and then like two years down the line someone comes across this and there's seven episodes that's just going to be embarrassing in and of itself that's right so shame is what's going to drive us shame and the sense of accomplishment we'll get from beating the game and a meal we've really boxed ourselves in here there's no way out of this yeah we sort of figured when we were looking into this game and the fact no one's finished it or if they have they haven't documented it is uh there's not enough things tying them to the board so we've

done shame meal podcast we have a chance well i think we should have stuck with my original idea which is that the the loser also has to enlist in the armed forces for the number of years it takes for us to finish the game yeah that's a wildly bad idea yeah i don't think we'd fare well in the armed forces um especially since we would be seeing it through the lens of a board game set in world war ii for close to a decade yeah and also i think when you get to the army like one of the first things they do is tell you to run like two or three miles um yep i'm good for that yeah i'm not and i'm not gonna be in eight years oh wait yeah oh no yeah that's a good point that's a good point also i lied um don't think i could do that now so no but i as well as all of

that uh we will be well while we're you know making sure there's a lot of things stopping us from quitting we're also not going to have any of this nonsense about us not doing this correctly because if it is the case that people think we're you know not actually doing this we are and we're going to document that we're going to be recording an episode after each play session which will be for a bunch of hours we're not going to be recording during the gameplay because that's just going to be us trying to read rule books get confused and frustrated a lot of a lot of radio silence dead air and i don't think that'll be fun what will be i say what will be fun that's not for me to say what we think might be listenable is us recapping what we've went through each play

session and documenting it so that people can look upon it because this game because of the complicated nature of it is more of an exercise in bootkeeping than it is a board game and we're going to share the bootkeeping each week so people can see we are in fact playing the board game yeah it won't be any video or recordings of us playing most likely but there will be sort of each episode an accompanying dump of images pictures our tracking stuff so if you're into that more in-depth stuff and you want to go through it and see where we've made elementary mistakes

and tell them about us, you'll be able to find them at rawwithamate.co.uk and that should have all our website stuff. So if you're interested in more of the nitty-gritty, that should be on there. Is it .co.uk or .com? .co.uk.

Okay. You know more about that than me. If it's not, there'll be a small insert at the beginning or end of the podcast correcting me so we're not editing this out we're hey that's a good thing we'll admit we're wrong now which means that it's so it's so genuine this is so candid i think we don't edit mistakes out what we do is audio footnotes at the end okay yeah i like that that's yeah an amendment to show that this is all raw this is yeah this is the cold hard truth as we've spoken in the moment and if we're wrong we'll admit to it later yeah or i guess earlier

if it's at the very start. No, we do it at the end. We said we'll do it at the end. We'll do it at the end. That's another thing we do. We're sticking to our word. And there it is, folks. A segment is born.

We're men of honor. And the actual coverage, we'll be recapping what we've done each episode, as in what we've done during that game turn. The game lasts a full length of 111 turns. Those turns have a lot of different stages within there, all about managing all of the troops, all of your infantry, your armor, moving all the pieces around in North Africa, the fights, everything else in between.

It's meant to simulate the whole campaign for North Africa over the course of 111 turns, with an estimated playtime of 1,500 hours. The game was never fully playtested, and no one, as I say, is documented to have finished playing it we found a few people who've started a few people who we think might even still be playing but those people haven't documented it as far as i can tell we're the first ones doing that yeah there's our usp we're documenting this game absolutely we've been foolish enough to start playing it well we will be starting to play it soon we haven't started yet when we when we do we'll be sharing our experience our mental fortitude will be tested

and we'll be recording it as we go through the breakdown we're not going to get super into each turn in terms of the very specific rule sets the rule book's available online as a pdf you can just find it we'll probably try and put a link in somewhere so people can get a hold of that easier so if people do want to try and follow the rules get an idea of what we're doing week by week as we describe it and follow that up by all means do we don't recommend trying to go through the game because even we know that it's it's a bad idea but it's it's a funny idea yeah yeah see how it goes and uh see how that complexity messes with us and see where we break at which point do we realize this this really wasn't worthwhile because the regret i have now is it's it's more tongue in

cheek it's knowing that there's a massive gargantuan task ahead but that we'll we'll have an experience doing it oh yeah one of the first things in the rule books is that each team should have five players on it yes to organize the various parts of the the strategy involved yeah uh because there's that much to keep track on and we saw that and what we thought was we both don't have four friends each will join us and be part of this war and also no one else is going to commit to something this long and stupid no there's no way that i know four other people uh just to bring on my side and again i also have the added pressure of appealing to them would you like to uh take on the role of the axis forces of world war ii for eight years and then

talk about how that was every week for 45 minutes to an hour yeah i think as far as sales pitches go of that is going to get you the type of person who's deeply excited by that you don't want to see every week for nine years yeah yeah we're very much just gonna have to cobble this together ourselves the the recording the editing gameplay itself it's new territory to all of us uh all of us being both of us yeah we've been trying to figure out how to even distribute this wherever you're listening to this we haven't figured that out as we speak right now we don't know where this is going to be but if you're listening to it well done you've found it i don't know how you found it here yeah we'll keep being wherever you're listening to this now as long as we can we don't

know how to get this out just yet we don't know much in terms of we wanted to have a bit of a jingle or a song at the start of the podcast maybe that's happened maybe it hasn't the the idea that we had by the way that i was talking to you about the other day the idea of having a cover song for the start of the podcast that's illegal oh it is yeah because i did express some concern about that as you said as long as it's a cover it's fine yeah no it's not it's not i looked it up it's not okay okay i've i've checked some reputable sources you can't just do a cover and it'd be fine yeah because you were very confident about that and it felt wrong when you were saying yeah of course i was confident i i didn't want to be wrong but uh yeah it's it's

not okay to do that you can't have that you can't have it for 15 seconds you can't have it for 10 seconds because the copyright that applies to songs is for both the master which is the actual recording and then the the lyrics and the the music itself the song in its essence we can't do it's not it's not allowed can we not do an andy and james's version in the as a sort of taylor swift well that's because she lost the she'd not lost she never had i think the the masters the the copyright for the masters which is the original recording yeah but she did she must have had the copyright for the lyrics etc that's why she can do that so that's why she can do taylor's version okay we can't we can't do i don't know what what's a what's a song that we would do

we can't do backstreet's back james and andy's version which would be by the way very fun choice of song for a world war ii board game podcast yeah to have a very badly sung cover of that song full length as well yeah the whole thing um the funny thing is as well it's a boy band we would need more people again for that yeah that's becoming a recurring theme that i'm sad about yeah this is it's just us yeah it's us well we'll probably have other people on to either look at parts of the board game and then give their thoughts on it uh we we've got plans to bring some people on to give some historical context to the game we will be bringing other people in occasionally from time to time to give their thoughts on the process or just people we

think will be fun to have to comment on maybe not even this maybe just these uh the various tangents that we seem to already be kind of bleeding into. Yeah. Loose to start with, but should get more structured once you've got the game to actually be structured around. Or not. We'll see how things

develop. The goal is to finish the game. We're not going to try and set ourselves an arbitrary deadline to finish it, which is kind of what I was concerned about you saying before, about stretching this out. No, this is going to take as long as it takes okay okay so if so if one of us is really good at the game

if one of us has been if one of us has been maybe practicing in secret maybe they've already had the game for 12 years then this has been a very long and pointless trap to get a dinner i want dinner if you if you're that hard up buddy i'll buy you a dinner right all right get uber eats up right now okay so it seems yes he's he's closing down his equipment i want a five guys you hate five guys i've drawn you how much it hurt me to say that before to try and rag on five guys their burgers are fantastic it's a premium price for a premium burger it's a premium price for a fine burger you gotta watch them cook it i don't want to watch them cook it well what are you going to do when you're waiting for it be at home because of uber eats right okay so you're not there no then that's

why you feel this way yeah i don't want a dining experience at five guys why that's what they are well they don't offer just that they offer more or less unlimited toppings refillable drinks and it's the ones where you can mix and match as well where you can you have to be in the store well yeah you can't mix and match up with uber you can't just ask for an uber delivery and the guy shows up with 12 bottles of pop and then he's like right what kind of cocktail do you want me to make on your doorstep as fun as that would be they just can't offer it the bag would be too heavy just had a business idea if the podcast doesn't work out sorry so you think that the alternative to a podcast about a board game is a business venture about i'm i'm just going to guess

immediately fast food delivery yeah but even more exploitative so if a restaurant offers if a restaurant offers free refills they will ride back and forth between your home and the restaurant all day making those refills you want to exhaust a man on a bicycle i don't know why it went to my head but when you got an uber driver on a bicycle that's that's what came into my head there yeah i'm not paying for someone with a car oh because the fuel well no i'm just not paying them right okay well that that's a very pointed remark about people who drive i don't really i don't really get where you're going with that one i don't respect them you don't respect drivers no you've been scorned by one you've been in a you've been hit by a car or no i'm a fairly good

driving experiences right i'm i'm confused then i don't get it it's just walk just just walk which is the mantra of the podcast yeah don't run things in the longest most difficult way yeah walk everywhere no i like that i like that that is the mantra of the podcast walk everywhere just walk just we're gonna reflect that through into the rules where we're gonna completely get rid of all the truck and airplane no we need those we need those because it sounds like they're vital to the game yeah and you can't travel across the desert as just a guy yeah well not safely no i imagine it'll be really dangerous i've never been to a desert nor have you i believe no no i've been to a beach yeah yeah so twice yeah twice you've been to a beach twice yeah just the one you've been to

which you've been to one beach yeah twice yeah that's your experience of sand i mean yeah i've been to like countless pebble beaches but sand beaches right that's harder to find yeah but they're better so you're scared of erosion you want to lie on hundreds of small rocks oh you're lying down as well having a like a nap or picnic oh just relaxing maybe burying myself up to my neck and in pebbles that's that's so i'd be worried about getting them down like my mouth and you know choking on them much like walking everywhere instead of using a car the pebble beach is the hero's version of a sand beach the thinking man's beach yeah burying yourself on a pebble beach on the ground to be like soft what a coward yeah

yeah you know do you know what fields are you're gonna be really angry if you don't that's why you need to pave over them right okay so you're really into like destroying green belt land yes to build car parks that will never be filled so i guess in the game i'm going to be playing the historical bad guys but you're the contemporary villain yeah you want to destroy the environment yeah i'm a bad guy playing the good guys and you're a bad guy playing the bad guys what have i said that's bad i'm you've not said anything yet but this has been going for like half an hour i'm i'm a champion of five guys i'm also a huel drinker so psycho so i'm efficient I support massive chain fast food restaurants.

Who are known to be efficient. Hey, well, if no one supports them, they're not going to be around anymore. So you're all about efficiency, and apparently I'm all about doing things in the hardest way possible, as long as it's pointless. Yeah, that's right. Okay. So you're a nihilist, and I'm a hero? No. We've thrown that word around.

Yeah, yeah. It's been said once, and that's too much. Yeah, champion then. I'll stick with champion. A champion of Five Guys, a champion of maybe, dare I say, the people? Uh, the Huel Corporation. Yeah, I don't think they're a corporation. I mean, they almost certainly are. I think they're a grassroots startup that are just trying to make the world healthier, quicker.

Just make everything grey. We're not actually sponsored, by the way. Just anyone listening who thinks we're sponsored by Huel, to be fair, we've said disparaging. remarks on both sides about both Huel and Five Guys. There's no way we're sponsored by them. Anything you like enough to allow

to be sponsoring us will be dumb and stupid and I'll fight against it. We're going to fight each other's sponsors. We're going to become enemies outside of the game as well. Yeah. There will be two separate episodes a week if we ever get sponsored where we privately endorse things. So we're not

playing the game at that point either then? because we there's one with a mate will develop it'll start with a board game and then as we we do sort of grow to hate each other more that'll expand into real life we're doing an mcu sort of diversification where we'll start putting out tv programs cartoons video games oh yeah of course yeah yeah this is a huge huge franchise listening congratulations you're listening to the birth of media empire yeah so i suppose when they play this for the netflix documentary in 20 years time this is the soundbite they'll use right now we're talking to you the people listening to the netflix documentary in 20 years time welcome to filthy rich part two

i'd like to immediately retract that yeah that's uh that's not the kind of connotation i want for this oh i hope in 20s time that's just not something people know about so that that doesn't have a connotation uh i'd like it to not be forgotten just brushed under the carpet i guess yeah well that's that's part of what the game is isn't it we're we're looking at we're looking at history through ideally a bit of a light-hearted lens well it has to be a light-hearted lens we're playing a game about war but we are we're going to try and learn as we go we're going to try and pick up some some facts some information we'll try and learn a little bit about the campaign for

north africa as we play the game about the campaign for north africa seven times once we finish it maybe we'll maybe we'll be a bit more knowledgeable maybe we'll just be sick of the sight of each other i mean yeah there's a very good chance that the meal we have to commemorate my victory we have an incredibly in-depth conversation about the war for north africa and then we never talk again sorry what what victory oh in the board game we're about to play no sorry yeah but that's going to be determined by how well we play and we're on even footing and i i feel like i'm better suited to win so that's a it's a weird weird presumption you've just made there that's pretty outlandish actually you are no yeah yeah yeah you can't handle this no i can't

I'm going to handle this. I'm going to handle the shit out of this. No, you're going to be getting people in to help you. I hope. You're going to be crying a lot. Yep, yep. Oh. Yeah, that's not not handling it.

I mean, it is. Sorry, you think crying isn't handling something? I think having a weekly breakdown at something you do by choice. Yeah, maybe not handling it. Right, okay. There's some other things I may not have been handling then. I'm going to have to go back and check the books, so to speak. Because you've really dropped that one on live mic for me.

Yeah, it's shocking that that's a revelation to you. All right, Mr. Emotional Intelligence. Yeah, I am the EQ genius of this pod. Right. Well, I don't know what that makes me. The hero? Sorry, so what you're calling me... Yeah, you're a hero, buddy.

So what you're calling me is an underdog. Yeah. Oh, okay. You're an underdog. Oh, people love that, man. People absolutely gobble up underdogs. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what people, what balances out the other.

How much people love underdogs and how much people dislike the Nazis. I'm not actually the Nazis. I'm playing a board game where I'll be moving around Nazi pieces. Yeah, so anyone who wants you to win is a bad person. That's, what a loaded way to do this. Wow.

That is a, that's a horrible way to skew this. to put people in the position of looking at this podcast listening to this podcast through the prism of your hatred for me i guess yes if you become a nazi i'll hate you no but i'm not becoming a nazi i'm becoming a i'm becoming a podcaster and a master i also hate you for becoming a podcaster yeah that's what i'm more worried about yeah because that's something you will become that's what i've become as we speak right now i am a podcaster what does that make you also god damn it oh there we go and this kind of word play and waxing lyrical is how i'm going to walk you into your own defeat because it's all about playing the player especially when both

players don't really know how to play the game yeah i don't think it's going to be about playing the player at all i think it's going to be a lot about playing the game well to make sure you play the player in like a poker where there's like four things to keep track of you're not playing hold'em then are you because that's five cards yeah but one of them's always pointless which card i don't know you get two or three just chuck that on the ground play your four you threw a card away during hold'em oh yeah right why because you don't want it you don't want it you don't want it what if it comes up it won't it won't definitely won't right and i'm gonna have this same uh attitude towards aircraft tokens truck token sorry so you think it's tank so so maybe a few

weeks in you just you get the funny feeling that one of the pieces might not be useful you're tossing it aside throwing it away probably it's like some kind of artillery like what's the point in that uh warfare mostly well actually exclusively it's for warfare actually yeah there's a lot of stuff that you don't multi-use. Yeah, artillery's for warfare. Yeah, it'd be fun to find another use for that. For artillery? Yeah. Right, if it's not

for warfare, you're going to the Hague. I guess celebrations? Fireworks or sky artillery? Right, fine I'll give you that. I can't believe you did because it wasn't It's a stretch but I'll take it. But I don't really

know how to argue against that because it's sort of close. And that is a microcosm of my tactical brilliance versus his attempt to deflect it. No, that is me pitying you because you don't really seem to know what fireworks are.

Harmless artillery. Harmless. I mean, if you use them right. For the record, Arnie just said fireworks are harmless. If you use them right. Like, artillery's harmless if you use it wrong. In many ways, artillery and fireworks are the direct opposites, like water and fire.

Or regret and hope. that's a callback oh wow look at that oh he's boxed me in here and that is tactical genius in a nutshell and that's how this is going to be it's going to be back and forth it's going to be poorly thought out

poorly thought out it's going to be brilliantly entertaining it's going to be captivating it's going to be motivating for some of you it's going to be touching it's going to be beautiful it's going to be long winded and it's going to go on for years

it's going to go on for nigh on a decade yeah what we're going to do to soften the blow when we start though is the board game well we can't just go in hot can we no that would be outrageous the board game offers a sort of breakdown of smaller versions of itself where you just play a few of the 111 turns in a sort of smaller scenario and we're going to start with that we're going to start with the first 11 6 turns which covers Graziani's defense

the Italian offensive at the start of the campaign for North Africa so that's just covering a few of the turns just so we can get into grips with the rules and then when we finish those 6 turns we're going to start again from scratch and we're going to play the whole 111 turns

and because that's only 6 turns instead of 111, the winner of that gets some sort of small snack. Yeah, like a like a bottle of Huel. That's

if you give me Huel, I'm gonna fight you for real. Right, well, I better win. If the meal at the end of this, if you ask for Huel, if you win. A sit-down Huel experience.

A sit-down Huel. if you do that you've turned your reward into a punishment for me yeah that's how I want it to be because you're going to have to dine as well on Huel apparently yeah cutlery included oh if you

just the misdirect of you rent out a Michelin star restaurant for the evening walk in it's completely empty it's like oh my god we're going to have a private dining experience then just drink a Huel and we have to leave

it would be fun to find a Michelin star chef who would let you disrespect them like that it would be fun but I think it's fun because it's not likely to happen what is likely to happen though is this board game is getting finished

we're beating it whether or not it's arduous and insufferable and painful we're gonna do it we're gonna record every week you're gonna hear it all it's gonna happen you'll be here for it or you won't be if you're not here you're missing out yeah so be here so be here be in the moment be in this place yeah be in the now we're gonna be in the desert the deserts of our mind you're really trying to get that in on you

deserts of our mind yeah i like that that's a good turn of phrase the deserts of our mind yeah that's where we're gonna be but we're also gonna be right here on the mics and you're gonna hear at all so we'll we'll see how it goes this is a mere introduction we'll see what comes next i mean what's going to be next is probably a breakdown of the rules what comes next is what comes next is going to be a high level breakdown of the rules next steps probably in a couple episodes time we start the game we start the game we'll keep you posted we'll see you then We'll speak to you then Listen out

Keep those ears peeled You're just trying to sign us You'll hear us then In the deserts of your mind Hear you later