War With A Mate - Episode 18: The Super-Naturals

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

The world is turned on it’s head as James enters the ring with his head held high, full of optimism, while Andy feels the need to call on divine intervention for aid. Delving into more of Monty’s history as well as some exotic mail calls, the guys touch on themes of love and loss (which isn’t really related to a board game about WW2, they’re slipping). Featuring Anubis, Bigfoot and Lauren!

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Because we have your number. Good evening. Oh, well, it's not on me to say what time of the day it is. That's determined by father time. Welcome to A War With A Mate. It's you, Andy. You, James. That's it.

Mixed that up a little bit. Bet that confused everybody at home. I bet most people don't listen to this at home. I can't imagine somebody deciding to stick this on when they're doing the dishes. This is more of a walking somewhere podcast. Driving podcast. No, not a driving podcast. Oh, okay.

You have to be walking. You need to have your hands free for this one. Oh, okay. You need to have them ready. Ready to throw them up in despair. I was thinking like fist in the air, cheering along. okay you've got about you're coming in positive this week we've got like a revolution starting a revolution on our hands what we're revolutionizing is uh the way that campaign for north africa is

played yeah fixing a problem that didn't need to be solved well we're playing a game that didn't need to be made or indeed played but we've we've uh we've been doing some bits and pieces today all around uh food and water mostly water to be fair yeah um water in the desert apparently mean well the rules say we should be fine for water yeah richard berg left us a little message in the rules that we we saw today which says that water isn't really a problem there's a lot of it and i'll i'll give credit to him when i've been distributing my water today and it's not the actual water distribution phase this is me completing the pasta point distribution my my men getting their their extra water for their pasta i've been getting it from the wells because

a lot of my men are garrisons so they're stationed in burrs or villages and we we had to we did a little bit of rules digging today to figure out whether or not i can use water from the wells and we determined i can but there's a table for that of course and the table means i have to roll to determine how much water i draw from the well and then i have to roll a second time to see if i've depleted the well and i don't get to know that so you may have just depleted most of the wells that are in the territory I'm going to be pushing into if things go well. Yes. Well, what I've done, I've rolled

eight. I've rolled eight different wells. And what I will say is at least one of them has been depleted. I'm not going to say where. I'm not going to say how many, but one of them has been depleted. What a dangerous mystery, my guys.

Yeah, I'm sending this out through Enigma. Consider it cracked. One of the wells is depleted. Just directly taunting people through encrypted messages. Yeah, Turing has got in touch with you and he said, one of the wells is depleted, but we don't know which one. And we don't know how many.

Thanks, Alan. That's real helpful. Hey, he's on money now. I mean, yeah, he made it, I guess. He's on, is it the £20 note? I don't know. You don't know? I don't actually handle a lot of cash these days. I don't handle cash. No, me neither. I actually had an interaction at work today where

somebody asked me to on my lunch pop out, I was already going out to buy some lunch, and they were like oh well do you mind popping over getting me some as well handed me a crisp 10 pound note and i was like well how's this gonna work because i'm buying my food at the same place and i'm gonna pay on card so you've either given me 10 pound which i'm keeping all of it or i'm using all of the 10 pound to buy both of our food so you don't get the change either way i'm i'm getting all of your money well yeah that's your tip for that's it to get them food because we

don't have tipping culture really in the uk no we have not giving people their change back culture and that's that's what i tried to get on the bandwagon of but it didn't work so what are your thoughts on today's gameplay how's it been for you andy it's been pretty calm for me i've been looking at the water distribution phase and doing a bit of automation the water distribution is not that bad it's if you guys you guys aren't drinking that much water it's one water point per toe point uh per unit not toe point yeah and your vehicles need water but only if they move yeah so i haven't at least from my side of it the water doesn't actually seem to be a problem it seems that wasn't a lie how's the pasta points affecting your water levels it's affecting my

morale in real life more than my actual water levels thankfully the wells i mean the amount of water you can draw from wells i don't have you looked at the tables much for the wells not yet you get a lot you get sort of like around 150 to 300 is the average that you're looking at on those tables for villagers so you get a lot and you only need at the most i've had to spend on units for the pasta point is like 12 water points yeah so there's a ton of villages now that just have water flowing through the streets ready to be soaked up with anybody who's got a little bigger so that's that's went quite well so the actual logistics of my men getting the water is going quite all right oh nice uh the positive as well is i don't think the men who are starving need

the water but either way i've deducted it no i think if you're starving what is more important oh but then you got that weird feeling you ever had too much water when you've not eaten much and you can feel it like yeah it's not a great feeling but it's better than dying of thirst and hunger well i suppose yeah if you had to pick lesser of two evils and all that so i've i've not actually suffered all that much and knowing that in the background while i'm doing that you're working on automating some of this for us is it's given me a lot of ease i've actually just had quite a pleasant time today it's just been ticking away the numbers it's it's been some solid work that hasn't felt all that despair filled that's good yeah yeah so i'm i'm i'm on and up today i'm on

and up that's good which is crazy because i'm very tired i slept like not at all last night so very tired well we stopped doing D&D at like midnight yeah we did Dungeons and Dragons last night and then I had a very early start at work and then came straight here from work more or less so yeah it's just another

love of the game could be doing something else with my night but instead I'm here doing this classic but hopefully the automation means when we get to this part of the turn next time it'll just be the excel spreadsheet it'll just do it all for us so what's been four five hours two three four

five hour sessions sorting this out should hopefully just be instant next time exactly that's what we've been looking at this as it's a way to prepare to play the game long term this six turn practice run is probably going to take a lot longer than those first six turns when we play them the second time around for the real game better yeah a lot of this is building the tools and stuff that actually make it finishable and i think we've done a pretty great job i say we you've mostly worked on the automation so you've you've done a lot so far and i'm very interested to see how that plays out in practicality yeah so it's all looking up everything's coming up millhouse yeah i think we're doing a hell of a good job and my men are yeah they're starving but

you know we'll we'll figure that one out there's food out there ready to be plucked up found out a little bit more about where you can dump food as well you can just dump food and ammo anywhere up to 50 points of each yeah i know you can't but it feels like a bad idea well you can just dump it anywhere in the desert and i don't even think i need to put it down as a supply dump i don't like need to notify you until you get to that hex so that's quite yeah yeah i guess i'm going to litter the not streets the dunes with lots of lots of food

the deserts of Egypt oh gotcha yeah well we had an Instagram poll this week about fun recurring phrases and your subtle humble brave made it to the top deserts of my mind

barely cracked second place it was up there with we started playing the game I would have voted for that if I had Instagram yeah yeah well anyone who is interested our instagram is war with a mate we will post a weekly poll where it's it's a bit like the podcast is tangentially game related so check us out on there it's also another way to get in touch with us if you have any questions queries or complaints i suppose not that there's anything to complain about we're doing this as a service to you you should be grateful

this is great public service we're not doing this for us we're doing this is productive helpful work we're doing we're doing this to be kind yeah well i was thinking what we can do to to kick this one off is delve into the past a little bit go back to the distant memories of last week and oh there it is again a lovely little sound effect for the reflection on last week where we talked about good old monty bernard montgomery one of the commanders of the commonwealth forces during the north african campaign and last time we'd covered off his uh his world war one endeavors yeah a lung shot and a history of bravery and getting medals yeah that was lung shot by the way not the b-52 song love shack very different vibe the vibe that we have with monday is he was

a little bit i think i used the word disenchanted with the structure of military command and he went on to have quite a decorated career after world war one so following world war one good old monty which is a nickname that i haven't given him it was actually a nickname that i've found in historical documentation people in the past were so creative they were maybe he was the original monty who knows probably not uh but monty's decorated career it did end up uh giving him a fairly significant role in the closing days of the irish war of independence he carried out a lot of counter guerrilla operations during that time all right and guerrilla warfare uh notoriously one of the worst warfares so probably second worst i mean

desert warfare isn't much better so between guerrilla warfare desert warfare he hasn't had a great track record of warfares yeah but i think i'd prefer being the desert war than the guerrilla war well he he had some thoughts on the the irish war of independence around its conclusion um so his conclusion in 1923 was that the only real solution to the conflict was the arrangement of self-government for ireland he was he was pro self-government for ireland as a solution to the conflict like one as one country yes yes well independence yes self-governing uh he actually wrote a letter i've got a snippet of it here which i found which is quite quite interesting quite insightful and tell me if you spot any modern day parallels in any of what's been said

here so it reads personally my whole attention was given to defeating the rebels but it never bothered me a bit about how many houses were burned. I think I regarded all civilians as shinners, and I never had any dealings with any of them. My own view is that to win a war of this sort, you must be ruthless. Oliver Cromwell or the Germans would have settled it in a very short time. Nowadays, public opinion precludes such methods. The nation would never allow it, and the politicians would lose their jobs if they sanctioned it. That being so, I consider that lloyd george was right being the prime minister at the time and what he did if we had gone on we could have probably squashed the rebellion as a temporary measure but it would have broken out

again like an ulcer the moment we removed the troops i think the rebels would have probably refused battles hidden their arms until we had gone the only way therefore was to give them some form of self-government and let them squash the rebellion themselves they are the only people who could really stamp it out so i think it's interesting how much of his opinion on that hinged on public opinion yeah it was i'm fine doing really horrible stuff it's just not the most effective horrible stuff yeah we'd squash that temporarily but we'd get in so much trouble in terms of the geopolitical structure of our own country and the opinion of our people you need to get ulster ulsters yeah get rid of the ulcers so i think you compare that to sort of the state of

warfare and media in the early 2000s late 90s and you sort of measure that up and go oh there's some parallels there but people took a very different approach in in modern times well it seems like a lot of wars that before in the latter half of the 20th century is that kind of war that they might have learned let's not do that from yeah because you think about how many wars have had so many atrocities and pretty nasty stuff that happened afterwards it's not really a sentiment that seems to have survived no but it is interesting that after that mindset he was one of the chosen leaders in the war without hate yeah i think as i'm learning well as we learned about graziani and i think as we learn more about this war i think that might be misnamed i think it might be

there was a war with quite a lot of hate just the hate relative to the eastern and western fronts of the pacific is a bit less yeah relatively less but you do have some pretty bad guys yeah some kind of vicious warmongers here uh so it's interesting that he ended up being one of those figures within that so that yeah that really that really piqued my interest as did a little anecdote from 1922 so monty had a he had a bit of an unfortunate ambush encounter that could well have ended tragically but he escaped unscathed so he arrived in the town square in front of macroom castle in ireland he was there to try and rescue four british officers that had went missing so he arrived with 60 men four armored cars he was under strict instructions

not to attack the ira though so he arrived and upon arriving he uh rendezvoused with the ira commander charlie brown met him out in the courtyard charlie brown told him that he had 10 minutes to leave the town with all of his men and at this point monty heard a whistle and as he looked round he found that riflemen had surrounded him and all of his men in this town square So I assume he left the town within ten minutes? He did

He did, which was an action chastised in the House of Commons afterwards as to why he did this Because he was surrounded by men with guns He was in a kill boss It seems pretty self-explanatory Monty, why didn't you just choose to die execution style?

That is very like this time period like oh you should have gone in jolly good and bopped him and it's like wars changed me bopped is a very good way to describe i can see the word bopped being used a guy with a frilly collar but in the end he was his actions were approved by his superiors um and what's worse is they found later that by the time they had arrived there in that town square those four officers had already been executed oh so it was why did they let him go i'm not sure that just seems like at that point either don't be there at all or you're there to kill him i i think at that point the fact that he's got a significant force i feel like they probably didn't want that

big of a skirmish breaking out in the middle of a town square and i mean i don't know how many riflemen surrounded but presumably they didn't want i mean it's enough that they left exactly so they yeah so monday is is no stranger to uh tough scrapes as well not to draw direct comparisons to graziani or anything and what we can do i suppose to move away from anything graziani related is to talk about love okay his romantic life monday's first documented running with the fairer sex was when he proposed to 17 year old betty anderson when he was he was pushing 40 so it's a bit of an age gap yeah different times but still still double yes yeah just doing the quick maths there yeah yeah that's that's still a strange bit of uh yeah numeracy also as

far as life experience gaps go it's a long time and also he's fought the first world war at this point what well to try and um you know uh seduce serenade uh he um he took her out to some uh some beach and he he drew something in the sand for her now what what do you imagine he would draw in the sand for her to try and coax a bit of romance a bit of love what would you what would you think you would draw in the sand for betty i don't know about is it some weird military thing is he like he is a formation of tanks isn't this hot yes oh it actually is exactly that what he did was he drew out plans in the sand for as to how he would deploy his tanks and infantry in a future war i like that because it's two things it's one not erotic at all and

probably breaking like classified military strategy and the thing is as well it was in the sand a future war in the sand was he a seer who knows i'm gonna say no probably not um betty um rebuffed his advance she was with her own tank formation in the sand or oh that would be interesting she actually went on to fight yeah so after that he decided a man twice her age tank formations on a beach didn't get it just didn't do it for her weird weird yeah well i'll take that off my list of uh of romantic uh approaches yeah uh it's all even more deranged from you because when i'm in a future war it's like are you in the military or i just play a board game but it's a it's not a fun one but it's a long one watch how i'm gonna take to brook oh

she's left i have a podcast listen to it it's all about a board game sometimes so he decided um the next documented romantic endeavor i can find is with betty oh yes it's a second betty uh betty carver so he's got a type he's got a type betty is his type um betty was a widow uh closer to his age she actually had two sons in her late teens and good old monty was commended for marrying a widow with two children so he met i've got down here that they met in 192 so uh clearly there's a number missing uh so he met her in uh ancient times and they they lived a long happy immortal life bit like the film hancock um so yeah that's wrong and then oh wow i've really made a cock and balls of this because apparently in somerset 11 937 goodness me so what actually happened in

somerset was in 1937 and this was a parallel to uh to graziani in terms of some story elements in that there was an animal attack you see betty was bitten by an insect and after being bitten she suffered from a very serious infection and had her leg amputated from an insect bite in Somerset following the amputation

she died in Monty's arms like right then or at a later date at a later date from what I can ascertain it seems like it got worse over a very short period of time which led to Monty being consumed in his work immediately after the funeral he went straight back to work okay um and his stepson actually um dick um dick carver he was funnily enough taken prisoner at mercer matru in november of 1942 oh he escaped in september of

1943 but yeah so he was involved in in the the campaign so modi will send the stepson off to yeah i'm not sure if he had sort of direct line of command over him but yeah so he he had family there um and and following that he he had a lot of busy times in in the late 1930s i won't go through all of his many titles that he cycled through but it's an impressive list uh he went on to operate in palestine he assisted in suppressing an arab revolt spurred on by opposition to jewish emigration and after battling some serious illness in july of 1939 he returned to britain to command the third infantry division he wrote around that time i shall be sorry to leave palestine in many ways as i have enjoyed the war out here okay uh yeah

so he loves war he loves war yeah and conveniently enough for monday two months later Great Britain declared war on Germany. Was he particularly involved in that decision? I don't think he was involved in the decision. However, he was involved in the events that followed greatly. What sort of rank is he at this point? Is he a general at this point?

No, he was a... I believe he was a colonel during this time. I will have to just admit that I don't have that to hand. I'm pretty sure he was a colonel around this time. What I can do is double check. No, no, I don't believe

he was general for a good little while so yeah there was a a good period of operation where he uh yeah he really really sailed up through those ranks does he say what he enjoys about the war in either ireland or palestine or is he just like i like war well there is some more information which i think we'll save for next time about his endeavors in world war ii which gives a bit more of an insight as to who he was as an actual leader as a commander some interesting stuff in there all in all i think we do have an interesting guy here in monty at first i was concerned that maybe there weren't going to be as many eccentric characters on the uh on the the commonwealth side of things but it would seem no there's it's a pretty

eccentric time it is it's like centric people a lot of these people came up in the like brightly colored uniform era and like cavalry charges and stuff and then transitioned over and here they are the desert yeah things things got wild but that's that's a little bit more about monty and we'll pick up more monty next week i love a good bit of history yeah just handy given the board game that we're playing yeah this would have been a bit shit if we were playing monopoly i'm sure there's some interesting characters and in monopoly in the world of capitalism no not i hear capitalism it's uh very boring not many people involved in it these days sort of dried out communism's where it's at these days i hear it's it's on the rise it's it's coming back

there's a real boom real communist boom going on well maybe we should uh answer that oh telegram call coming in we should we should uh should deal with what put your finger to your ears no earpiece actually no there were headsets weren't they they had the yeah headsets i was getting into it oh sorry man no you're right you're right sorry i'm i'm talking out my ass here that's these physical things are for me yeah there's no video yeah it's just for you i'm amusing myself it's not for me because i clearly don't like it so stop doing it i'll take that on board well we've got we've got plenty more uh mail to get through uh you you've been you've been sending them in hot and heavy when you've been sending some great ones in as well so thanks we're uh very excited to get into

some of those so let's let's open up one of these here what we got so we have we have an email here from from mike an email from mike let's see what mike has to say i'll speak into the mic and i'm answering the questions from mike hi andy and james he knows our names my name is mike i found war with a mate from a random comment on an instagram reel that mentioned the game yeah we've had a few people mention that i've actually tracked down the comment and replied to it i started listening on spotify just over a week ago and i've already caught up 16 episodes as of typing this that's commitment that's commitment that's it's a lot of us to listen to so condolences so i can start listening to the episodes as they release from now on

you two have made listening to people discuss the world's most abhorrently tedious game both interesting and fun keep up the great work thanks thanks we do our very best this game does not make it easy so you i'm glad you understand that what we put in is a tremendous amount of work and creative brilliance so it's nice that's recognized thank you um stay humble part sorry sorry yes we're humble we're humble and subtle um yes it's it's no trouble at all mike so with that said i have a few questions first does james have a unit for graziani like the other leaders even though he's only present during his offensive uh so to answer that no unfortunately the only i guess maybe fortunately the only sort of named character in this who has a

piece in the game is rommel himself and the game does describe it as being more of a sort of jokey element than anything else because rommel from what i've read wasn't actually driving around in his jeep running around the desert yeah because he's got a lot of cpa so he can move a lot more than most of the units he's unkillable for the most part so he's a unique unit one thing i do like that they specify is that he only has access to am radio i do love radio yeah it says specifically that we did actually wax about originally calling this podcast rommel has no fm so we yeah we decided not to put rommel's name in the podcast name because that's feels like bad seo uh he is the only named one but there are a couple

of special characters so there's the long range desert group which I only get three you only get one have their own special rules I think I get the SAS you get the flotilla

or something like at one point during the game in the full one you can send like a mission to blow up Alexandria harbour I can it's a sort of submarine mission yeah I think that was like a couple of guys in like early like

one man submarines sneaking into the harbour. Yeah, so at one point I get a sort of special unit that I get to carry out. I get to try this raid once and I get to choose at any point in the game but if it gets pulled off, I basically destroy your harbours. Yeah, it'll take a lot of work to

unblock the harbour. Basically it's a thing that really happened from my understanding where they snuck in and set a bunch of mines up in the harbour and yeah, basically crippled the naval capacity for a while so so we get a few special units but no Graziani isn't one so unfortunately we don't get to see how he plays out but you do go on to say Mike to add to that from Andy's history lessons in 15 and 16 we learned that Graziani is unfortunately very

lucky when it comes to surviving fatal attacks slash accidents very much so if James does have a Graziani unit will he need to roll luck checks at random times to see if he survives more absurd incidents i do love that as an idea i do love the the graziani hijinks table where i said oh he's he's fallen into a well he was just trying to draw some water and now he's stuck down there will a dog find him or not is lassie around yeah i would like to see the just him get into scrapes like i mean you just have a sideboard of mousetrap and grassy you build it up as he moves around i like the idea of incorporating a second board game into graziani's misadventures fall through carpets and die maybe we'll have to make our own peace and insert graziani who knows

um uh next question beyond lying to each other and acts of sabotage decoys and salted wells someone's been either paying attention to the podcast or reading the book uh i don't recommend either are there any rules for espionage um so i guess we've touched on it a little bit because the the desert raider groups when they move around we don't put them down on the actual map so we keep track of those in secret which means andy's desert raider groups they they are the only ones who can try and capture rommel and if they capture him there's a chance they capture him permanently or temporarily it's all rolled on a table i think the temporary one is he's actually he was away on business in rome so he wasn't with his unit or something like that yeah there's a

table i think one of the results is it's either rome or sicily turns out that he was there the whole time and no we weren't actually following rommel the whole time it was a decoy so yes espionage in the sense of we have some hidden units uh we mentioned earlier about the wells that i was using if i deplete them and he only finds out when he gets there so less intentional espionage from those aspects they they're just things that won't be found out but there are intentional sort of obfuscations in the sense of we can lie about

toe points from scout missions within a degree. So that's sort of as far as the espionage goes. There's no intel gathering, so to speak, in terms of... You can do patrols and reconnaissance flights and stuff like that, but there's no, like, there's, thank God,

not like a signal layer where you're intercepting and decoding stuff. I'm surprised that richard berg didn't include just didn't get around to it didn't include like a cipher yeah and a whole other rule book where it's hidden codes that would be fun but no that's it for espionage there is a small element where the tile on the map is the highest ranking thing of the group so one tile might represent an entire division of like several thousand people or two guys uh two two points with the guys in a truck and you don't really know that until you start interacting with

it yeah yeah so there is a level of obfuscation where it's like is that thing that's moving towards me an entire like panzer division or like a distraction with one unit of guys yeah the the pieces don't represent necessarily what they they come as you sort of as is i could detach more or less every unit from that game piece and then send it in and it's just the hq unit and a truck and all of the tanks have been linked up with another unit and assigned and attached to that so there's definitely room to pull the wool over each other guys but when it comes to espionage in the the way that i see espionage i don't think much more but but very good question um and you do go on to say thanks again for dedicating yourselves to a project of

this scale and good luck working your way through the deserts of your minds and he then also goes on yours subtle humble and brave friend mike so mike you've bridged a gap there maybe that's the common ground it's mike's email bringing us both together with both those beautiful phrases so thanks mike fantastic questions and even better quoting of me so i think that was great but we've got a we've got another one there you want to take that one uh yeah we've got one in uh based on our last um common ground uh subject line ponchos are cool damn it yep there is i agree with andy on his common ground tm like that it's now trademarked on episode 17 cloaks capes and ponchos need to be more socially acceptable to wear in public my wife won't let me wear a poncho out in public

because she knows i'd embarrass her and i need that to change that's from sean yeah sean uh i i feel i feel you man i mean yeah it's it's a damn shame that you don't get to wear your poncho and if if there's any sort of um marital strife based on that uh just have your wife listen to a common ground from last week where we we argue the pros and cons and i mean i i argued there are some cons but i mean yeah if you want to wear the poncho i mean divorce is always on the cards you can always you always go that route i mean you don't have to suggest you don't have to you don't have to do it it's it's just you know there is a world sean where you are a man with a poncho

and that's it that's a world that can't exist just sit with that for a moment take that in and and live with it a little bit this is uh i i honestly that's a that's a fantastic little uh yeah that's a great email my wife won't let me wear the poncho yeah i mean sean's wife please let him wear the poncho let him wear the poncho let sean wear the poncho just for a bit once a week you'd be embarrassed it's fashion forward it is gonna be a trendsetter when ponchos come back you know you're gonna to be kicking yourself because sean could have led the way with this so sean you know what maybe just once a week go out on your own just say i'm just gonna pop up to the shop i'm gonna

gonna go grab some uh some some milk some broccoli and pop the poncho pop on the poncho put it in a bag wait until you're out of the line of sight of the house stick the poncho on see how you feel yeah i don't think it's it's gonna go all that bad so i i agree ponchos are cool it's a shame society hasn't caught up with that but sometimes society lags behind real progressive thought well the 17th of june uh 2027 yeah that's the poncho day poncho day so from that day it'll be socially acceptable and everyone will be wearing them so you've got two years to be fashionable a trendsetter so uh yeah make the most of it sean you know you'll you'll sean you're gonna be fine man you're going to be just fine i believe that with my whole heart so thank you for sending that in

it's a real insight as to what andy's creating by talking about capes and stuff so our next uh little delve in we we have a message from joe joe says i felt bad listening to you begging for emails so i decided to send you one thank you thank you thank you well we're getting them in now joe but you you really helped start push those dominoes because you're a very early email that we have here i like listening to your podcast you speak very well on mike even though you're supposedly amateurs thank you thank you thank you very much we do our best not to knock the mic and we got some feedback a little while ago on one of the episodes that there was a rattling sound with one of the wires someone wasn't very pleased with it so we've tried not

to knock them anymore but thank you the audio quality is something we strive to protect get better over time i haven't listened to two of your episodes yet as of this email so 14 and 15 Oh, they're doozies. They're great ones. You're in for a treat. Oh, you'll love it. You'll probably listen to them by now. If you listen to this one, you have.

But a topic I would love to hear you cover is the supernatural, particularly any personal stories you might have on ghosts or other strange occurrences. I would love to be your board game successor in case of your demise, but I want a future.

Sincerely, Joe. Joe, do you know what podcast this is? Because you asked about ghost stories here. I like it. The supernatural. I like it a lot I wish I had one I hope we haven't let Joe down here in thinking that

we have anything to say particularly about the supernatural but we did actually, we were playing Dungeons and Dragons yesterday and something that came up in Dungeons and Dragons recently is your superstition that the dice are magical Yeah, the dice have some form

of intent behind them D&D is a perfect example play 10 sessions of D&D you know the dice have a mind of their own they do they are magical i will agree in for the story i think the dice we got in this box has been infested by the spirit of richard big because immediate rainstorm on the practice run when we're trying to learn the rules yeah you won't be doing air flying that's the dice getting involved yeah just absolutely stripping back any capability of learning the game so dice are magic

So no supernatural experience per se Not fully against them You're against them I'm not a full sceptic Oh really? No, I'm a bit open to it You're X-Files, you want to believe I do want to believe

I just, I need the evidence You really are the fox to my You're the fox moulded to my scully That's who you are You're a real believer Yeah, of course Well, not, hopefully But yeah, I do have dice superstition

So there is a bit of supernatural there in terms of uh stories on ghost i've no when i was younger i used to be very fascinated with ghosts but i i've got to say i don't have any any run-ins with them uh thankfully because that would be spooky as fuck i don't want to run into any ghosts we've got another eight to ten years of the pod so uh maybe we'll encounter the supernatural on our journey and if we do you'll be the first one to know joe we will happily share any supernatural experiences um oh man it's a very good thing to throw out there i feel like i'm very sad that we don't have more to talk about the supernatural but what we will do joe is any supernatural experience we have from now

to the end of the podcast we promise to talk about it so if anything does come up then yeah it'll be on this mic that you hear about it um all other strange occurrences uh i don't know i don't you ever had anything strange happen i've had a very non-strange life you are one of the most normal people i've met uh well joe i absolutely love the the message i'm very sorry we don't have more supernatural stuff to talk about we barely talk about the game so it's a miracle that we even had dice to talk about but thank you for your your compliments and we'll keep an eye out for the ghost successor uh we wouldn't inflict having a play this on anyone who listens so if any of us die early we'll be inflicting it on close personal friends uh that's right you you

guys don't need to worry about this you're listening to be drafted no this this is meant to be fun for you we won't want to we don't yeah we're not going to put this on you this isn't your your cross to bear what we got here we've got a we got one from from david yeah david has sent over a message what's david saying hello there guys i found your podcast thanks to your little cameo on cam sandwiches worst board game 2 tournament i've been binge listening since then i'm currently on episode 11 hopefully you've actually started by the game by now although i get the feeling this might be just one big rip on the listeners and you'll not actually get around to playing it anyway it's a fun little podcast regardless and i'll keep listening until

the last episode whenever that might be keep up the good work david so thank you very much david yeah you've uh you've committed to a real long task yeah based on the the back of a little cameo so that's that's sort of on you but um i i hope you're enjoying it and it seems like you are so thank you for for listening in episode 11 you really did binge as well based on on that cameo because that was the same day yes wow yeah that was wow yeah you really burned through those so that's impressive thank you for uh listening so committedly yeah that's a must have a yeah and we do real hankering for our voice isn't a big lie we are actually playing the game although i can understand why you might not think that i've had a lot of people that i know

personally who i immediately tried to um market the podcast to check this out i'm playing a board game it's gonna be really fun to listen to me talk about it and the feedback i got from all of them and we've had it on comments and emails that we don't talk about the board game very much so i understand why somebody might think it's a joke but we are playing it we'll put out bits and pieces to prove that as we go along but i it would be funny if it wasn't the case if we were just lying that would be maybe we are maybe this is a lie

how far can we take this all the way nine years in I think people might start getting suspicious well we've had to fake board updates to the point

we are playing the game basically well that's a good point yeah it gets to a certain point where we have to play the game regardless but no David

we promise we're playing the game we promise so we will we will prove that to you in some way that we can we've got let's have a look here

we've got one more one more from Xander Xander, it's a very brief one, nice and concise If you two were in the desert during the time of the game would you eat camel nuggets to survive? Now Xander I think you know damn well

that we don't know if we can make them into nuggets However, if it were the case that camel nuggets were available we'd absolutely munch those up Oh yeah, I'd eat I'd definitely eat camel nuggets I have a suspicion camel hump is extremely tasty

yeah i know you do because you talked about this yesterday yeah at length yes it probably tastes like wagyu beef yeah that's yeah i remember that phrase yeah yeah you were talking about the hump being a really like juicy meat yeah well it's it's all fat so the thing is zander andy thinks about this all the time i will basically eat any animal once that's a horrible commitment to me i will try any animal what a nasty promise what do you mean it's not a promise it's just i don't i can't think of an animal i wouldn't try as long as it's not like directly poisonous you can't think of any animal that you wouldn't eat unless it's like directly poisonous if there's a way of cooking it and it's edible i'd try it oh there's gotta you know i don't know about that what do you mean

no i don't there's there's some animals where i'm like i wouldn't what would you not eat i wouldn't eat someone's pet dog i wouldn't eat a pet dog but i'd eat a dog what dog a dog that's not someone's dog i'd try dog where are you finding this dog there's places you can have dog here in the uk i'll travel to eat animals find a better way to spend your time stop traveling to eat dog i'm not going to travel specifically but if i'm in a place where that's part of the cuisine i'll definitely try it i don't believe that for one second you're hunting down dog you're a dirty dog is what you are a hungry dog i know oh sander you've opened up this can of worms this can of camel nuggets but in short i honestly would try them and i think they might be quite you try them

because they're a nugget form what i do quite like actually is on the email it's got the sort of little um smart suggestion for the replies and it's got three little supplies that the first reply that suggested is absolutely quest not quite exclamation point um the next is unfortunately no and the last is maybe so we've really covered all bases with that it's really helpful by ai there because you wouldn't be able to think of that without it what yes no or i'm not sure apparently not the three answers yeah

well Xander there you go there you have it we will absolutely try it and especially we will try it now if we were in the desert during

World War 2 we'd absolutely gobble those up yeah so yeah if anyone I was going to say if anyone knows

where to get camel nuggets don't tell us that actually do please email it in no give it to Andy's personal email send me exotic food suggestions

send that to him personally not at the end because when I win my meal is going to be some kind of camel based snack snack not a meal then it's meant to be a sit-down meal we don't actually talk about that banquet of various animals we haven't mentioned that in a little while actually just to reiterate for anyone who isn't aware the stakes of the game when we finish the full game the loser of the game has to buy the other one dinner pay for both of us to have

a sit-down meal so that's what's at stake here loser is buying the other one a meal so we'll be having a sit-down meal at the end of all this. And Andy is poised to have a camel-based dinner. So I'm really, really hoping that I win. Yeah. It's giving you an incentive. Yeah.

I don't want to pay for your... You'd probably make me pay for the plane ticket as well. I know what you're like. Or I guess. Well, I can't eat at the restaurant if I'm not in the country. So you will have to pay for the plane ticket. Well, that's some more fantastic mail. So thank you everyone for that. we've we've still got more to get through so love getting it uh yeah keep it coming it's been

fantastic keep an ear out we'll continue to respond to those as they come in uh the email address is info at war with a mate.co.uk and we've got an instagram which is war with a mate fire a message on there instead if you prefer there's also a web form on our website there's all sorts of ways you can get through very contactable yeah we're very contactable as you've proven so thanks for those i suppose from there we we have we have some common ground to hit kind of hit the ground running with it yeah let's uh let's have a moment of bonding let's and now for something nicer a little oasis in the wall it's time for some common ground i'm trying the intro for common ground i'm recording

maybe so my common ground this week yep my common ground is stop calling me when i'm on public transport i've never done that no not you not you personally okay and you probably have as well at some point i've never called you i don't want to be called when i'm on the bus or the train okay i don't want to have a phone call when i'm there okay so stop doing it how are they gonna know you're on the bus well i'll say i'll pick up the phone and i'll go oh sorry i'm on the bus or i'm sorry i'm on the train and that should be fine to say but you know how many times that i've taken a phone call from somebody when i've been on the bus or the train and i'm

like oh yeah sorry i'm just i'm on the bus and they'll be like all right okay and they'll continue to talk and i'm like no sorry that wasn't me giving just context to where i am that was me trying to end the conversation yeah i i i think this is on you because you picked up the phone if i don't want to have a phone conversation i don't answer the phone that's that would be rude though no they're calling i'm able to take the call well but i'm not going to take the call and extend it on public transport. Then don't take the call. What are your feelings when people take phone calls on the bus?

If they're next to you on the bus. I enjoy it. They're not next to you. I enjoy it. You enjoy it? I enjoy listening to people on the bus and people watching, yeah. Right, well, that's actually part of the problem. How would you feel about taking a call on the bus?

I wouldn't. I just wouldn't. Yeah, because there's Andes out there like you listening in. Yeah. Little eavesdroppers. wanting to hear what you're saying I don't want that I want some juicy goss

I don't want my juicy goss being overheard on the bus like yesterday for instance I spent no sorry Thursday spent the whole ride that's a very different day I spent the whole ride listening to two girls

bitch about someone called Lauren and she sounds like a real piece of work lauren if you're out there listening i guess andy doesn't like your friends don't like stop doxing people on the podcast oh dear so yeah what was the gossip oh apparently she's a horrible liar a liar yeah she's making things up we don't we don't like liars no no no we fibbers and untruthers that's not okay it's not okay so i'm in favor of other people answering the phone on the bus yeah but that's why that's why i don't like it because i don't want people listening to me i suppose pick up the phone i suppose but it might be an emergency

has it ever been no it hasn't so far but that doesn't mean it's not ever going to be i can't just go on the the privado of oh well i suppose it hasn't been an emergency yet one of the chances for all I know that could be my one chance to have a supernatural experience and I turn it down by not answering the phone oh you think Bigfoot's on the other end Bigfoot's not supernatural oh you think he's naturally occurring

you fool yeah Bigfoot's just around Bigfoot's just a nice guy with a bit of hair going on yeah but he has magic powers name two invisibility bigfoot's invisible that's why i haven't found him and what's the second power he has being aware of

cameras nearby he's got eyes he just knows if he's about to be filmed and then boom he goes invisible that's why he's not being found because of his supernatural powers they sound like the same power they're the same power being aware of cameras and going invisible they're complementary They're not the same power Yeah but one of them triggers the same So he's aware of the cameras And then he decides It's not like an

Automatic response, he's not a chameleon He has control over his visibility You look at me with such intensity Don't try and educate me about Bigfoot Like you know what you're talking about Calm down uh so bigfoot's so bigfoot might be phoning you so sorry yes sorry yeah this is about being on the bus um

so yeah bigfoot might be calling me i don't want to i don't want to miss the opportunity to have a word with him see what he's so answer the phone hello bigfoot no this is your bank boom hang up yeah I wouldn't hang up on the bank oh okay is that an emergency why would the bank be calling that's important yeah that's actually a good point I should probably just answer my phone

if the bank's calling it's one it's a scam which I'd like to think I could figure out during the course of the conversation when they start trying to steal my money and if it's not a scam and it's my bank actually calling with bad news like okay I picked the bad example bad news in the sense of like

bank-related bad news. They're not like, oh, I've got someone you know has actually passed away. I'm sorry to tell you. Should you be telling me this? How did you find this out? I heard it through the grapevine. I thought I'd get ahead of it. I thought we could be close. So you want it to be socially acceptable

for you to just pick up the phone and go, I'm busy. Hang up and they'll call you back. We're not, I'm busy. I want to be able to say, I'm on public transport and for them to go, oh, okay, that means no phone calls. I want that to be the standard okay i want somebody to pick up the phone and go i'm on public transport and for the norm to be oh sorry i'll call you back okay fair enough if you're in your car and

you've got a hands-free that's not too bad that's distracting because you're in there with people that you probably know quite well if you're in a car with them but public transport any andy could be eavesdropping so like lauren here has become a victim you've come onto your podcast here you've You've abused your platform to call somebody out, call her a liar, say that her friends are bitching about her. Yeah, you are, and you're sending a nasty message. Putting that out into the ether, into the airwaves. Names were changed for anonymity. I don't think they were.

Change them in post. No, I won't be changing the names in post. I'm going to change the names to your national insurance number. You shouldn't know that. I'll figure it out. I'm in your house, I've been somewhere. Bet you're right, it's somewhere. Is it under the table?

You carved it under the table. God damn it, he's on... He scratched it underneath, like he's in school. So where do you sit on this common ground, Andy? Yeah, I'd think that's fine. So set up a thing. You just say, I'm on transport, and they call you back. Maybe say, when will you not be on transport?

And then you say, I'll be off the bus in half an hour And then they call you on the dot Half an hour? As you step off the bus Where are you going? About half an hour away I'm just about done with your smart retorts, Andrew Common ground has not worked as it should

No, we've at least agreed on the core element of it What we haven't agreed on is Bigfoot I mean, I'll bring some stuff next week I'll do some research No, don't bring Bigfoot to the next common ground. I won't agree with you. Oh, okay. It just won't happen.

Keep Bigfoot out of this. You see what you've done, Joe? You've brought the supernatural into this house and it's causing issues. Oh, the supernatural is... It's going to haunt us now. What supernatural monster would you most want on site for the Desert War?

Oh, okay, okay. This is an interesting one. This should be a new segment, by the way. Which supernatural monster are we putting in the desert? Email in. No, you can't make this a segment. Oh, a segment. We'll collect some and we'll go through them.

It's already crowded and not really about the game. We'll do a tier list. So, when it comes to supernatural beasties, well, you don't want the Kraken. I can tell you that for free. Not in the desert. Oh, you can have it along the shoreline. Mediterranean.

Messing around with Tobruk. Yeah, maybe. fucking up Benghazi's ports. I think the Kraken could do a real number on my supply line. But apart from that, I'd probably have to go with the Oompa Loompas.

I don't like it, but they are supernatural creatures. Yeah, they are. You're just going to have them make chocolate? No, no. There's no chocolate accessories in the desert to make. Oh, okay. You just want small orange men running around.

I think that they've got a way to facilitate violent hijinks through song and I don't think that there's a weapon in the 1940s that can counter that No, you do see you look up to the dune, you see a bunch of small

silhouettes and the song starts and you know you're done and you know you're going to die in some zany way So yeah, I think I'd probably bring the Oompa Loompas into the into the desert war nice I think they'd cause

they'd cause mass havoc that's a good shout who's your pick Quetzalcoatl sorry Quetzalcoatl well I don't know

Sir Mayan God you're bringing a Mayan God into the desert war in North Africa I think he's like he's their Ragnarok kickoff he's their end of the world guy oh well that's cheating

he's supernatural also isn't that bad for everyone because I presume you're saying this from the perspective of if you were the respective side

that you're playing in the game who would you bring? And you're bringing a doomsday guard. Yeah, that's fair. It's a bad shout. Yeah, mutually assured destruction, man. I mean...

Maybe an Anubis? No, I don't think any guard really should be brought into it. Yeah, I've punched too high. One, it brings the question of faith into the open, which, that's going to cause a lot of issues. And two, they're far too strong. I think the Rommel piece might be overpowered if you're bringing Anubis.

So yeah, to answer the question earlier There's a Rommel piece and an Anubis piece The Anubis piece is represented by a little urn That you put internal organs into So It's just an operation board On the side next to the Rodolfo Graziani mousetrap

We're going to try and find a way to amalgamate Every board game into this game It's not complicated enough well we've sort of got away from common ground a bit there i think uh yeah that that that's a good one i get it not wanting to get calls on public transport yeah yeah i think i think that's i think that's a done i think we've actually covered everything today we've covered the game we we've covered good old monday we've done some mailbag stuff and then we've talked about Buses and Bigfoot and

Canoebas All the classics Light as a feather Alright, I don't know if there's anything else to say Stay so humble and brave Yeah, there it is I suppose if

if Anubis was to show up I don't think I'd be bothered Wow, it's a real palpable sense of defeat Goodnight everyone Watch out for the spookies Night night