War With A Mate - Episode 16: Mean, Green, Hungry Regime

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

With the distribution of water and stores well underway in the desert, the guys have some revelations about the naïveté they may have approached logistics with. A trip back in time gives Andy a chance to recount atrocities of the past and the guys answer some questions from listeners about the atrocities of their short-sighted judgement entering the fray. Some wordplay gets heated and Irish traditions receive a patchwork tribute.Email : [e-mail] : WarWithAMate.co.uk.Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/warwithamate

hello welcome to war with a mate it's me james me andy yes there you are handsome devil yeah oh thanks oh hang on a minute i'm just looking in a mirror i'm not i'm looking into this uh this mike shield the pop guard it's got a little crumb on it i think might be from my uh my food before i mean probably yeah yeah well actually it must have been from last week we've just cracked these bad boys back out so it can't even be from can't even be from today's food so yes there's old food on the pop cards yeah i'd wipe it off but it would it would make a bit of a noise just let people know how glamorous this is yeah this is our studio it's beautiful in here we've moved off the floor we have yeah actually come to think

of it off the floor if we didn't mention that last week we're not on the floor anymore we've decided to graduate back up to table space because it's been very spreadsheet heavy the last few weeks so we haven't needed to get the boards out as much but map c is over there over on the sofa yeah we've been doing a little uh figuring out well supplies uh we've been going through the first it's the store consumption phase it is it is it's time to go through all of our food it's time to make sure all our men are fed and boy howdy have we realized there's some hungry boys there are there are if you are a garrison and you are part of the italian forces i have some bad news for you you will not be eating this week because i have neglected to find a way to feed

all of those men that's that's bad news today i realized a massive flaw in my logistics and it's that there's no food for the garrisons so that was a real shitter today to figure out that i just can't feed a good portion of my men and my my logic behind this and i explained this a little bit to you as we were playing andy is that i thought all of the garrisons were quite bad i thought they were not morally probably um but i thought that they were quite ineffective i thought they were low in strength and that they were there to just kind of keep watch but it turns out turns out a couple of them uh bardia particularly big garrison yeah they they really could do with the food and quite frankly they're not going to get all the food they need no so today we yeah

we focused on that we also had a little look at evaporation and spillage rules for fuel and water turns out we we haven't prepared the way that we thought we had prepared which was correctly but uh for the uninitiated actually dial it back a bit because we we do have quite a few new listeners we well we put we put the word out and you've come out in droves so hopefully you've stuck around on the back of a few few reddit posts we've had a lot of people picking it up so for the uninitiated i mean you'll if you've come here from the post you'll probably know we're playing spi is the campaign for north africa start to finish we're doing a little test run at the moment where we play the first six turns then we go back to the start and

thank god we're doing a test run i mean yeah because uh with the best will in the world some of my guys are going to starve i think and run out of water and fuel so it'll be good to get a grip of that before it knocks on and ruins eight years of play like cumulatively yeah we're not gonna have a a great time in this little scenario because we've got a rainstorm for the very first operation stage yeah which is going to really hamper the movement of our trucks and the trucks at the moment on paper aren't actually fitted out to be able to feed all of my men so it's a real double whammy of i haven't prepared well enough and the weather's really bad who would have thought first turn in a desert campaign big rainstorm it's certainly not helpful

we can't fly planes and our trucks are half as fast we can't fly planes is an insane way to start this we're just not really getting the test run that we need we're going to be six turns in in what 10 years yeah and ready to start the full campaign we won't know a damn thing not a damn thing hopefully we learned something well what do you feel you've learned today if you could if you could boil it down to one thing what have you learned today the guys are hungry they're really hungry it's mostly my guy you didn't seem too panicked about yours uh one of my like groups are on half rations yes that was a rule we explored again today because we'd read it beforehand and we hadn't really explored it a whole lot but turns out you can give your men

half rations only if the number of rations mean that you would struggle to feed them otherwise yeah if you can't feed them all properly you do have to but if you don't have enough you can put them on half rations and half rations or i guess we'll go to full rations full rations are four store points per two point you may remember two points from last week so per two point of unit you need to give them four stores for food and that's once per turn not per upstage so it's not as frequent but if you miss that two turns in a row then they start to fall apart they become disorganized which fair i mean i would become disorganized if i was hungry yeah i'm disorganized when i am hungry that's how today started i was very hungry so i needed to get some food in me

and it turns out that was when i had that moment of realization that moment of clarity and realized i was disorganized that i'd done everything wrong for the last 15 weeks well it's good to realize now i guess it is it is time time is flying by i mean today's st patrick's day yay yay yeah and of course to celebrate st patrick's day we uh instead of going out and you know having a having a few drinks celebrating dressing up in green we've sat here we filled out some spreadsheets we've realized that there's some hungry men back in the 40s uh yeah i mean that's what it's gonna be that's it that's that's what this is you've got to you've got to suffer for this yeah this is our our cross to bear this is our our voyage but having said

that it's not with uh all negatives andy because i do have a little present for you for sim patrick's day okay i do indeed let me let me just grab it okay oh he's got a bag i do i've got it i've got a bag for you here okay i didn't know gifts were happening so i've got you nothing right and he's putting the gift away yeah that's well i guess this is mine for me now okay no for what do you got yourself for saint patrick's day look what i got you oh goodness that's being held together by scotch tape yeah and the security protective tags this is not shoplifters this is just um how they've packaged it i think these security protected stickers are actually keeping the taped together but i thought you've got me some guinness you found in like a skip yeah yeah well

i thought since since we're not out enjoying saint patrick's day we could have a nice guinness together okay how about that sure i'm knocking everything i don't love guinness you don't there we go oh is it is it going everywhere no it's fine okay cool well i'm gonna open mine over the plastic bag just so that it definitely doesn't go all over oh wow yeah that is okay that is frothy there we go to to the to the irish and green yeah there we go yep that is that is guinness taste of neutrality some iron in there see you have that in the desert you're not going to go hungry it's probably a pretty good beer for the desert yeah like a meal in a can i wonder if that's what some of the stores are it's just guinness it's room temperature guinness

and it's uh room temperature in the desert that's a cool refreshing beverage that's true that depends on where the room is yeah so you can sit around your garrison starving to death crack a nice guinness yeah yeah and then uh and then go go to war yeah so you've got several starving garrisons i've already got people on half rations and all my people are going to starve next turn unless i can get food out to them which the rainstorm isn't going to help with no no we can get food to people on the borders of the map on maps a and e but we we just can't do anything about the middle which is a damn shame but it'll be interesting to try and play the scenario out with half of the men starving to death i mean yeah it'll teach us efficiency not in terms of

keeping people alive but doing things with those who are alive it'll definitely teach us something it also again i think i mentioned it last week but uh when we start taking prisoners this level of management is a war crime it is it is so need to sort that out well thankfully we don't need to worry too much about that right now because we've got to focus on on this incoming telegram andy do you hear that it's coming back again oh yeah i can't hear it again yeah it's it's it's weird how it comes in now before i've added it in in post i just now hear it in my head you shouldn't because the sound effects probably done by now no just outside of the podcast now in general oh it's like tinnitus yeah oh i see do you know what the morse code is saying for that what the sound

effect yeah no no okay so please let us know guys it's it's a it's a royalty-free sound effect okay which um which means that i don't know what it is because the origin it's just titled sort of telegram sound effect so um if anyone does know what it says please let us know and please don't fib and make me sound silly but thankfully what people have sent so far uh has not been has not been fibs or silliness as far as i'm aware but we have had some correspondence so thank you for getting in touch so we're gonna we're gonna cover a little bit of that i believe you've got the first one to hand possibly andy the one from our website we got a web form sent in over at war with a mate.co.uk uh yeah the reason i was going to that is because

we've got an email that's very similar okay we're knocking them out may as well cover both of these yeah so you look at that but in the meantime we do have an email from luke and luke has sent over an email asking do you all have an instagram y'all isn't it's not very natural terminology to me but But I'll not put on the twang. I imagine there was a bit of a Southern American twang to that, maybe. I don't know. If not, Luke, sorry for presuming. Maybe it's just a bit of an affectation you've picked up.

Who knows? But do you all have an Instagram? I'm old now, and it's the only social media I use. I wanted to share your podcast with my board game group. Well, at the moment, as we're recording this, Luke, no, we don't have an Instagram. However, by the time this episode is out, we should have an Instagram.

yes because we're going to get some high quality pictures taken rather than the smeared messy images we've been putting up so far so we should have one ideally it would just be war with a mate if it's not don't worry it will be in the description of the episode telling you what it actually is but it should just be war with a mate but yes andy that is homework for you put whatever the instagram name is okay in the description so we will be putting that up and the web form was just asking about social media in general uh yes yeah the web form was do you have any social media to see visual updates so yeah we'll be putting them up on instagram and also we'll have a basically movement happens every upstage uh like i move and then you'd move and

like back and forth so basically whenever we're moving things we'll take before and after pictures and they'll be up on the website so i'm probably the instagram so you'll be able to visually follow along with either of them that's right um we do have an ex formerly twitter account we haven't been updating it a whole lot it's that's my wheelhouse so yeah whoopsie on that i did start off we put up a tweet where we added insane clown posse because of magnets and that's more or less it what i will be doing is putting one out whenever we release an episode so keep an eye on that as well if you forgot what day of the week it is but that's yeah that's where we are so far although Otherwise, look on the website or listen to this.

This is where the action's happening. Yeah, but social media incoming. Social media incoming. Work in progress. The next email we got, a bit more in-depth, less social media related. This email comes from Matthew. Its subject is, am I the first? And sorry to say, Matthew, as you probably know by now, you were beaten to the punch last week.

So apologies for that. But it does read, hey there, chaps. i am an avid listener slash pervert yeah we i think we've dropped that term yeah we're gonna drop that term but but thank you for for popping that in there um since seeing a post of yours on reddit see see told you it works um brackets when magnetizing the game first became the plan and is currently the plan the only mishap we did have today was when i knocked one of the magnets when looking at it and it fell down the front of the board because we have it vertical it fell down the board and just collected a bunch of other magnets as it went down

so we got ended up with a stack of about 10 different units and then had to go back through the spreadsheets and figure out which unit was which and where it belonged so that's a slight flaw we didn't think it's a little stress test for our note keeping it was definitely stress definitely stress when magnetizing the game first became the plan you've made my commute much more entertaining i've got as far as episode 12 and still nobody has emailed you i know it took them a long time didn't it but i'm glad that you stepped in there so i take it upon myself to correct this injustice i'm somewhat of a war gamer myself and i even have some questions for you regarding the game and your gaming you spoil us you really do uh question one what rule took you by surprise

as an interesting mechanic in this game pastor points is disqualified as an answer yes it is it is because wherever we've been posting this and information about us playing the game people bring up the pasta rule and that's that's natural because that is one of the things that grabbed us but now for us this is that's old hat that's old hat that's that's nothing for us yeah it's a good example of how ridiculous the game is but uh i'm now my brain's on camels yeah my mind's on the camels so um we i mean i'll be experiencing the pastor rule probably next week so i will need a bearer in mind but yeah um so we will should we answer that one first then so what rule took you by surprise you mentioned you had one in mind earlier yeah i mean from when we started to now

i guess maybe a bit naive on this my part but when we started i had no idea how much would be hidden from each other how much like deception there's rules for reconnaissance and scouting and also when someone does do recon on you you don't give an exact answer you give a range they overlap so there's a lot of uh trying to deceive each other fake supply dumps things like that so uh yeah that was an element i really wasn't expecting yeah not specific rules or theme through the rules yeah something that we were both really pleased with because we didn't really know how this game was going to manage to stay as competitive as it was meant to through the whole thing we thought it was going to be the logistics fall apart the game falls apart and then

someone loses but it turns out you do get a fib as well a good example of that actually is the recon rules yeah where if a recon plane for example flies over a group and you identify the you identify the tow strength value of the overall group, and when you have to tell that to the other player, so say Andy is flying a recon plane over one of my

divisions, if it's a division of, say, tow strength 10, I get to lie in either direction by a degree of I think it might be 2? Yes, 2 sounds correct. So the value will be within 5, I guess, but

we don't know if you've undersold it oversold it yes so it does make for a little bit of tactical play even in just describing what a recon planer saw and there's a few other examples like that where you get a fib about what's what's showing up it's less like fib as in like a straight up lie yeah an exaggeration or underplay yeah and that also applies to my convoys yes let's see i yeah i describe my convoys as small medium or large there's a bit of overlap between those so it means that i can i can sort of twist the truth a little bit and give you a false idea as to what's being shipped so then you go with either over or under equipped air force to attack them yeah so that makes for an interesting play so yeah i agree

that is a very fun point um a point that i really yeah so one of the ones i really enjoy is the fact that there's a there's a rule that's sort of the base rule so to speak that you get a schedule of pilots that arrive throughout the game and they are different star rating different level of pilot and the higher a pilot level the better they are maneuverability because in in the air fights the dog fights it is plane versus plane individually you roll each individual plane battle on their own each dog fight is is individually resolved so the pilot of each individual plane really plays into it and these better pilots really play into that but there's a variant rule which means that instead of getting these scheduled pilots instead your pilots develop as you play so a pilot every

pilot starts off with a sort of base rating of zero but then the more kills they get every five like dog kills in a dog fight or victories in a dog fight they go up a star they um go up a star so the normal variations is they're fixed at arrival times like you get say a three star pilot on turn four yeah but we thought it would be a fun to use that alternate rule which i really like because it gives us a bit of chance to like maybe a bit of narrative storytelling yeah unexpected fight of the ace emerging some emerging storytelling would be good in this i think it's going to be fun to see if we get any sort of favored pilots yeah or any any stories coming out of that so it just means that we don't go completely mad and we do get a little bit of

creativity within there get to project onto pilots that are entirely fictional because they're so uh that they're so broad and templated so we're going to use that for the full run that variant rule for the short graziani offensive we're doing now we're going to use the pilots as they come in just because they wouldn't have time to develop yeah we'd end up with just flat uh base of zero for the whole thing there's just not enough time especially with all these rainstorms when the planes can't fly means we can't do anything with them yeah so we can't do anything with the pilots rainstorms none of the pilots ever get better yeah none of the pilots are gonna get out at this rate the pilot you know what if we could make the pilots redundant and we could somehow

put that money into my men getting more food at the garrisons that would be ideal i'm gonna sack off half the air force don't need them that's what's gonna happen the air force is out no more air force a wild choice no more air force i'm firing them all you're getting your pink slip you're going home you can't fly this week though so that i think covers off that question so thank you thank you for that matthew but your second question you mentioned your dnd gaming we have we have we play that religiously we played that every week for the last what seven eight years now yeah and no no sign of stopping that is running alongside this and it's a big contrast playing dungeons and dragons and then playing this yeah couldn't be more different one is

creative storytelling one is based entirely around theater of the mind this is all theater of the excel spreadsheet and magnetic picture frames so do you have any wargaming experience or you're just jumping in at the mariana trench of deep ends it's the ladder yeah i'm afraid we mentioned it a good while ago that we've um we played risk once or started to play risk we got about an hour in and didn't finish it we haven't played anything like this before we haven't played any hex encounter games we haven't played any any war games we've played i think the most recent game that we played before this that was new to us was ticket to ride which is a great game a lot of fun very different i'm a my guilty pleasure is monopoly i do actually enjoy that mostly

the times had playing it then the the game itself is bad one of our one of our favorite games that we've played um quite a few times though which is a brilliant board game is arkham horror yes we have played quite a bit of arkham horror that's a great game that i think if anything that might be a sort of gateway drug for for this experience where it was a game where we thought there's a lot of counters in this there's a lot of rules and you can play it very differently every time very diverse set of rules and encounters so a lot of room for emergent storytelling in that it's a brilliant game i'd recommend it um if you haven't played it before that is a yeah great game but nowhere near this yeah it doesn't even touch the sides so when it comes to war gaming nothing at

all this is the first time which i think is why it's taken us so long to get the grips with this because we have no idea if this is at all similar to other war games so if if um if you or anyone else has experience with actual war games if you could let us know based on what you know of this is it at all similar is it the games you played but cranked up to 100 or is it a whole other beast entirely because we quite naively didn't really research that so let us know i think if we had done all that research at the start we would have scared ourselves not done it maybe i mean quite possibly quite possibly yeah finishes up keep it up lads i've committed to listen to you for a decade so now you'll be gilded into completing yours humbly subtly and bravely matt well thank

you because as you know you are an accountability tool matthew so the fact that you've made sure that that's reiterated it it has motivated us i will admit we had a little conversation about this earlier on and the the uptake in in correspondence we've had has been great and it definitely reinforces that and it does feel like it's pushed us that little bit harder so thank you for that now we do have more correspondence that's been sent in so we will we'll save some of that for next week so if you have sent that in don't you worry it will definitely be getting read and answered but we we just have we have other things to get through we simply do and it's like buses isn't it you ask for one and and then a lot of them get emailed over to you at the same time

yeah that is how the buses on my street work is they arrive and freeze well the buses on your street i popped out before to get some some pop from the shop that's a good little bit of rhyming um that's don't give me that condescending look you know it's art went up to the the shop and there was a bus pulling up and it was full of green just so many people wearing green for st patrick's day that does feel like a new thing in bread it's definitely got more of an uptake because i i definitely don't remember being this big but i i think maybe maybe it's a post-covid thing yeah maybe during that time yeah well people say that about halloween as well bigger americanization yeah in america halloween massive cultural event that in the uk feels like it has

been creeping up there yeah it's never really it's been yeah i don't know about halloween it's sort of like i love a good halloween it's avoidable i love a good dress up like a dress Turn all the lights in the house off so no one knocks. That's so antisocial. Well, I don't want them. Yes, it's antisocial. I don't want to give them sweets. Oh, okay.

We give them something else. Give them one of these duct-taped cans of Guinness. I presume you're going to save these for the next five months? Probably, yeah. Five months. Oh, God, it's only March. No. Crack that up to seven months, then.

Yeah, seven months. These bad balls will keep... I don't know. The shelf life's probably not great. they've already seen seen the worst by the looks of it i mean yeah they look like you got them from a clearance bin no well to be fair they were the only guinness left in the shop probably for a good reason because it's saint patrick's day so i feel like everybody else bought the good ones i was stuck with the dregs and uh i'm not making great progress on my guinness to be honest yeah i'm a

guinness trigger you're not i thought you might have got me something i like for saint patrick's since i i got you this i didn't think it was a gift giving occasion yeah apparently not apparently not we'll talk about this off mike don't worry this will be the last episode this will be the last episode or it will be the last episode with andy as co-host we'll be recording separately yeah the audio quality might dip a little bit because andy's going to be locked in his own cupboard every time i'm here but i suppose speaking of people who deserve to be locked in cupboards andy and i'm not talking about you don't worry you have a continuation from last week i think it's it's time maybe that we pick up a continuation of the history of graziani yep

rodolfo rodolfo graziani what a gate if you haven't listened to last week's you probably should yeah just a quick i guess to get you caught up on where we are in his life story so far yes hang on let's let's have a little a little recap sound effect there we go i'm sure that's not Oh, that took me back. Yeah, so this guy has basically been avoiding death constantly and doing atrocities in Africa at this point on behalf of the kingdom of Italy at this point. Oh, siren's going past.

Someone parting a little too hard. So, yeah, last time we got up to... He'd been reassigned after his success in Ethiopia. That was it, yes. Yes, I remember now, unfortunately. So he gets sent up. This is World War II's kicking off. So he gets sent back up to help the Italian invasion of France. I didn't know much about this. This is not a very successful invasion. Germany is rolling through France at this point, taking everything.

Yes. The Italians come up from the, like, North Italian border to come through the Alps to France. The French just blow up all the passes. so smart way to do it there's like five passes through the alps that are big enough for like be worth taking soldiers and stuff through the french just blow them up and sit back in there like forts yeah yeah that's a smart way to do this this entire the in the italian invasion of france is a 15 day event where about 300 to 400 french fatalities and casualties and the italians have about six and a half thousand okay a third of them are from frostbite right so this is an

environmental hazard yeah so this is the first time graziani's fighting another like mechanized like imperial colonial power because beforehand he was going through and killing civilians pretty much for the most part rebels and yeah yeah militias more than armies yeah right so yeah And he's seen that it's not working for him, by the sounds of it. And just, this is a quote from Mussolini about their intentions in this invasion of France. Right. I only need a few thousand dead so I can sit at the peace conference as a man who fought. So this is entirely like a, we were in the war, can we get some stuff when eventually peace treaties...

It's all peacocking, it's all wanting to be part of the gang, right. Yeah, so Graziani oversaw that, I mean, quite frankly, almost a non-event. no it was a big event it sounds like a lot of italians died yeah but no borders moved i guess or yeah it didn't influence the invasion of france really it was just this thing happening down to the south yes down in the south a lot of italians died but nothing tactical actually pushed forward and during this uh grigiani receives another piece of undeserved luck well i guess this may or may not be luck the there's another marshal who's sort of like just above him called it's hallo balbo okay he dies in a friendly fire incident on the 28th of

june facilitating graziani's rise to governor general and commander-in-chief of the italians in north africa right you say you say a bit of luck and friendly fire i didn't find anything saying he did it i didn't find anything saying he didn't do it and it's i'd say it's well within the capable capabilities of the man we've been talking about surely not not not graziano not not good old rodolfo the the honorable man who wouldn't dare fire on his own man i mean this is so he's sounding very suspect yeah so he gets a promotion and gets rid of a rifle yeah oh that's that's convenient yeah okay pure chance yeah so they're like 15 days in the french italian invasion of france uh comes to an end he gets sent he gets sent back to africa okay this is when he gets the orders

to invade egypt this is leading up to the graziani offensive in the game the start of the war in north africa okay we're getting there we're getting there he doesn't want to do this mussolini is like you need to go and invade uh egypt which is occupied by the british at the time and graziani is basically like my men aren't good enough they're not well equipped enough i don't want to do this that sounds like me yes that sounds like me right now i've actually channeled his mentality only for this part of the game so eventually it basically gets a thing of like if go and attack or you're gonna get demoted yeah which i think is you also die in this situation you die in a friendly fire incident that facilitates the rise for someone else yes uh so he does launch the

attack i'm not going to go into too much detail on this because this will play out in the game and over time we'll do more history there was a rainstorm and everyone starved yes but basically that does not go well and operation compass the british counter-attack yes smashes them and uh he gets pulled out of command back out of uh north africa and returns to early on the on the topic of operation compass actually it goes back to the echoes of war channel the guys that we had on back in episode three yeah they have a great episode on that yes which i really enjoyed that's actually part of the historical research i did before playing this did not help me at all because unfortunately that's about real competent if not nasty men

we we aren't good at that so if you're interested in the history side of stuff look at that as well but yeah so so operation comp has crushed them yeah he gets sent back to italy where he thrives for a couple of years because he's now in charge of dealing with anti-fascist civilian protesters which is his wheelhouse is just fighting civilians apparently yeah so he's he's happy here unfortunately and then this leads up to the end of the war like 1945 mussolini he's the only general to remain loyal to Mussolini all the others are like fuck you we've lost this war another rival of his is the one who signs the like peace armistice he's the only guy who goes with Mussolini okay so floor judgment to the very end then uh yeah and then well part of the reason they

think he did this is because his rival signed the thing this is a petty man so you don't say so So Mussolini flees north, and Graziani's left is like the de facto leader of the Italian fascist state, especially after Mussolini is captured and executed. So after that, he is the de facto leader of the Italian fascist movement. Okay, okay. Until he surrenders. Because they're basically, from what I could tell, the Soviets are coming. so you don't want to be around anymore so they go looking for some americans to surrender to

because say what you want about the soviets but boy do they love killing fascists yeah i will give them that that is very much their wheelhouse yeah and this is where this is part of why it's so frustrating uh about this guy is he spends a few days in prison in milan before he gets transferred to a prison in Africa because they're worried about him being murdered and lynched in Italy by, like, the anti-fascists as they come back into power. So the Allies protect this guy. I mean, yeah, that's one of those big moral quandaries of war, isn't it?

Yeah. Trying to keep the ringleaders alive when all the people want to kill them. Yeah. So this leads up to his after-war career. which is just, there's some things here that are just very, maybe very angry. So after the war, the UN gets formed and they form the War Crime Commission.

Primarily it's focused on dealing with crimes during World War II, specifically mainly targeting the Germans and the Japanese. Yes. But the Ethiopians present a case to this commission about everything he did during the colonial period, the gassings, the concentration camps. Based on what you said last week,

everything that was the progenitor for the Holocaust, the inspiration for some of the more grueling parts of the Holocaust. So, yes, I think they've got a pretty good case there. As well as everything I've told you about him, there's a written order from him that says, keep in mind also that I have already aimed at the total destruction of the Abyssinian chiefs and notables, and this should be carried out completely in your territories.

It's just written proof of genocide and him giving the order. I mean, that's pretty damning. So I presume they immediately locked him up through with a key or had him executed? No, the Allies questioned the veracity of Ethiopia's claims against the Italians on the grounds it was impossible to identify which individuals gave the specific criminal orders. Despite the fact he's in charge of the whole area,

and is a very vocally loves doing war crimes apparently they can't pin this on anyone i've got to say allies that's not a good move that's a that's a big l because it sounds like there's a lot of and again i'm taking this from you as the source and you could be making all this up you could be typing all this up yourself tip tapping away but based on what you said it's my opinion in that it was him i think rodolfo did it with the candlestick in what most parts of ethiopia by the sounds of it yeah so he never gets punished for his colonial crimes at all oh the allies sort of go look we don't want to deal with this please shut up ethiopia for some reason that's a hot couldn't find a compelling reason for them to defend these people but they did so he's never

punished for his colonial crimes but in 1950 an italian military tribunal does sentence him to 19 years in jail for collaborating with the nazis how long do you think he spent in jail so he so he's sentenced to 19 years yes i'm gonna guess and only because this story's been so horrible so far i'm gonna lowball it at five years well you've not lowballed it enough right okay what's the actual number four months what the fuck right okay and do you want to you know the line of reasoning that his lawyers used in the appeal which ultimately worked and got him out i bet it's gonna be bullshit but okay let's hear it he only performed his actions after he received orders oh he's just following orders the just following orders defense and it worked for this

guy apparently that's some absolute mad shit that's not really okay at all so we get four months yeah so he gets out of jail and in like the last four years of his life he joins this newly of forming neo-fascist movement in uh italy who like name him as their honorary head because he's a fascist hero when was this 1950 1950 yeah i think the comment the italian socialist movement maybe but yeah um he joins that they love him which leads up to 1954 he's losing his strength and experiencing mounting health issues his mental health's deteriorated to the point where sometimes he wakes up thinking he's still the imperial viceroy in addis ababa the capital of ethiopia hmm so that was really on his mind then yes he really he really lived in that one

forever yeah and by the end of the year he undergoes surgery to try and help him with this and this goes well until the first week of january well second week of january where he goes into a coma he briefly comes out of it to say his last words and then he dies in his bed in rome at 6 a.m on the 11th of january 1955 do you want to know what this motherfucker's last words are you seem very impassioned and angry so i can't i can't sleep tonight without knowing what this monster said before death if my time has come i'll go calmly to be judged by god he dies in his bed thinking he's gonna get an eternal reward and dies unpunished for us all of it if i was a god-fearing man and i did what he did i would not be going calmly

to judgment no i would be very scared i don't if this is my time i'd like more time please i don't want this to be when i get judged because i haven't made up for or repented for anything that i've done no he goes thinking i've lived a good life i'm not worried about it history is not fair no it is not so this guy yeah i mean constantly avoiding death and consequences for his actions through to the end through to the end through to the dies in his bed like some people just slip through the cracks it's just so frustrating and just they weren't put you just got away with it that's oh mate he did those four months i mean yeah and that defense he was just following orders like i don't know how this that's a wild thing

i don't know why it worked for him but apparently the allies were like not this was led by the british as well did not want to overly punish the italians i think because they didn't want like after world war one where they went hard on germany yeah they didn't want they didn't want another place where they could make the conditions but i would argue kill this fucking guy because uh rodolfo graziani i think of all of the figures that i'm uh tangentially aware of at the moment and there'll be more because we are going to cover more of these characters as we go through the game i think of all the ones i'm tangentially aware of so far he really takes the biscuit in terms of being

just an awful awful piece of dirt and not a yeah there's no justice to that sorry to bum you out but that is Rodolfo Graziani

the leader of the Italian forces at the start of this game happy St. Patrick's Day green that's what I am sick you made me sick with these words what a horrible git yeah hey well at least now i know the the forces uh that i'm that i'm leading in this in this game the the people that they were behind so the fact that there's a bunch of my men in garrison

starving very him yeah that sounds about right sounds about right yeah i also have a sneaking suspicion uh a lot of the guys at the start of this are gonna have similar paths from the colonial end of the colonial era quite possibly so i think a lot of these guys probably on both sides are not going to be great but uh it's a special place in hell for this guy yeah well he went calmly to it oh fucker it's really really rubbed you that one yeah wrong way but i think that's completely justified yeah so shall we transition of something a bit more light-hearted to end this? I think so. I think maybe it's time for

maybe it's time for a bit of 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. Well, it's your Common Ground, so I don't know what it is. is it light-hearted please can it be well what would be good i could if it's you know common ground the idea behind the segment is that we discuss something that's supposed to have us agree on something well we can have a bit of a light-hearted debate and finally find somewhere a bit of no man's land something for both of us to enjoy because we're playing this game for eight years so it's important for us to have a bit of a bit of connection so hence the common ground

segment so we alternate each week you come up with a common ground one week i come up with a common ground the next week an easy one i could go for would be graziani's a piece of shit but i won't do that instead i do have my common ground okay so this week's common ground is i think every three years society should have to refresh all slang terms to keep it fun and exciting okay all colloquialisms okay all all turns of phrase every three years they get rebooted okay uh why three years is it well every year it's a bit much yeah i think you'll you'll lose track of stuff and stuff doesn't really have meaning you don't want to go five or ten i think that's a bit too long okay but every three years things are still fresh yeah i think that's

important yeah i think it'd be good at the end of the three years you have like a yeah let's have a referendum uh and we put some of the words into the dictionary oh and then the rest of them can't be used so they become real words yes some of the slang becomes real the rest of it we're not keeping that let's get rid of it new words now so so i suppose for an example which which ones would you have voted in the referendum to put into the dictionary if you could pick some slang from the last, let's say, five years and you could stick them into a dictionary, what would they be?

Oh, God. Any of them? Not lit. Oh, is that one? No. Is it lit? No, we're not going for lit? No.

What about Riz? Would you go for Riz? I don't hate Riz. Okay. That might get a vote. Do you have Riz? No. No?

Is the Riz in the room with us? No, Riz has left the building. Riz is... I don't mind. I don't mind Riz, actually. I could do with Riz. Should we put Riz in there? Riz is in the referendum.

The Riz-a-random, more like it. And maybe some cycles, there's no words, and we just... No words, as in no new slime? No one gets put it into the dictionary. Oh, I thought you meant there might be like a three-year cycle where it reboots and there's no slang for that three-year period now that would be weird everyone just is formal

yeah it's just really really solid no one because cool cool's already yeah like that was one that would transition from the slang to well that's already that's already happened yeah that's an example of that system yeah yeah cool's already in there i think it's important to keep society fresh and on its toes and that's a that's a big thing for me yeah make sure that people don't continue to use the same terms and get bogged down with them and i also am a a really big hater and i'll use the word hate um i don't think i used it once during the whole graziani section but apparently i am now this is this must be a stronger feeling i really hate when stuff gets new words constantly and that's that's a very broken english way to say it i don't like when

there's new colloquialisms invented things that already exist constantly yeah well a lot of them are like different ways of essentially saying cool that seems to be a thing that goes through slang yeah but one of them and this is a bit of a a controversial one i'm sort of peeling back the layers of my own psyche here in in saying this but well so we're in the uk yeah and and cuppa is used yeah or cup of tea i don't like that you don't like cuppa i don't i don't like cuppa because the thing is if someone was to come over to me and say would you like a cuppa yeah i'm like well i know you mean cup of tea but the thing is i a cup cuppa cup cup of is the that's what you've abbreviated cup of yeah what about another hot drink cup of cup of coffee i would like a cup

of coffee i want to exactly but instead it'll be would you like a cuppa would you like a coffee or cuppa cuppa should be a broader term you've went too niche you went too specific the default hot drink here but i don't want it to be is the issue because and it also i don't know it's just one of those things where you've now went to niche and then you have to broaden it out and it's Would you like a cuppa, so a cup of tea, or would you like a coffee? So cuppa would have been gotten rid of in one of these purges. Yes, it would have.

God, so long ago. I'd get rid of that. It would also, the three years where people were using literally incorrectly, you've got three years, and then at the end of it, it doesn't get voted in, and you can't use literally anymore, and we stop words having their meanings changed. Yes, I don't like when people use literally, and another pet peeve of mine while we're on these words is when people say obviously and

they use it in in a context that is not obvious so they'll be telling you a story and they'll say you know and then i then i went to my my uncle's house which is you know my uncle lives in york obviously oh and it's like what do you mean obviously i don't know your uncle i don't know i don't know until tuesday do you live in did you used to live in york is that why it should be obvious or is this just new information but you're saying obviously because you don't know how to fill the gap okay and i'm not saying i'm a perfect conversationalist all right it's not what i'm saying i'm not going to sit here on my high horse pretend i'm perfect what i am going to do is call out other people when they deny that they aren't perfect it wasn't obvious it's not

it's still not obvious it's not this now feels there's a specific instance no it's so frequent it's so constant that it's it's not it oh it's so yes in short because i feel like i'm it's getting away from me a little bit but i don't like when these words are used incorrectly so i feel like every three years we refresh the system we get new words out there that people can use to get it out their system yeah and i think that's a safe way to do it keeps me happy keeps me calm yeah keeps me keeps me relaxed and chill so i can focus my time on stuff like the board game and it means people get to try out new words yeah make up new words and it's probably a wordsmith it's sort of a cycle that exists with words and slang at the minute we're just formalizing

it exactly exactly i think it's important to formalize every process and nothing should be natural nothing should flow everything should be robotic and uncomfortable boy well i like the idea uh some of the reasoning i'm not sure i'm 100 on board with you for but that's fine you don't need to be on board with why i'm doing it yeah just on board with the fact it's happening yeah and that is what common ground is yeah but if anyone here has an idea for a word fire that over to us if there's a word you want to get rid of a word you want to introduce when you pop that in a question about the game wouldn't go remiss either so by all means send that over to and i think for the most part that's that's that's us done i think we've we've covered

all the topics we need to do the game graziani yep words all of it st patrick's day as well happy st patrick's day everyone yeah hope you enjoyed your your green and your beer and your well that is it those are the two big things as long as you had a great time that's all that matters and we've had a great time today

so anything you want to know you know how to get in touch with us there's probably an Instagram out right now it's probably warwithamate if it's not it's in the description we're on Twitter which is at warwithamate we are on the website

warwithamate.co.uk and our email address is info at warwithamate.co.uk so fire your bits and pieces over and you'll hear us next time yeah thanks for listening stay subtle, humble and brave you better we'll be watching

we'll be listening and I'll be listening to the words that you say and what they mean that's important to me okay just it's gotta end goodbye obviously

We'll see you next time.