War With A Mate - Episode 2 : Camel Lot

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

The guys have decided that the best way to approach the game is to do so at a leisurely pace - which is a generous way to describe procrastination. A very animal-themed episode hears discussion of various desert inhabitants, like camels, hedgehogs and corporations.Email : [e-mail] Website : WarWithAMate.co.uk

yeah uh three two one we're in what did fred used to say at the start of i carly i don't know i never watched it you've watched i carly no i don't you said that like it's i've not seen citizen kane or the godfather it's a seminal piece of media you're you're in like the well not now i was going to say you're slap bang in the right age demographic i'm i'm in a concerning age demographic to be into that show they remade it on well not didn't remake it they followed it up on i think it was hbo i it surely i'm sure it is it's something adult paramount it's paramount i think paramount paramount paramount plus yeah it's got to be a plus that's a subscription service yeah you've got to pay for that yeah you've got to pay for i carly not like

back in the day welcome to war with a mate with me james me andy and not fred from my carly or any of the rest of them there's no miranda cosgrove here just us two me i'm war and andy's a mate oh we're switching it up yeah yeah one of us is the wall okay for the uninitiated which is anyone listening this is a podcast in which we are going to document our playthrough of spi's the campaign for north africa a very very long board game that's meant to take years to finish and no one's finished it yet we've got the board game we're going to play it and we're going to finish it that's the plan anyway and we're not stopping until we do so it's a pretty damn good plan yeah we did commit to this before we knew almost anything about the game other than it was

big and complicated we've just had a little session going through the rules how are you feeling now elated excited can i use two words it's elated and excited i'll allow it but you have to use one less next time i ask you for a description right okay i'll bear that in mind because this time i'm both of those things we've spent the last two evenings of our time reading through the rules extensively for the most part in silence and then giggling to each other when we realize how complicated it is but you know what after after reading through today and yesterday i am a little bit excited to play this not just to beat it but i think the game itself might actually be fun yeah i mean i've always sort of held this position right okay okay

we went into this with very different mindsets because i was thinking this is going to be horrible the whole time and you seem to think it's going to be quite fun at least some of the time well i'm i'm starting to get there we've read through some of those rules what it has done it's provided a bit of um a bit of revelation about how the game works because we said in the first recording that we're going to publish all of the the documentation as we go through sort of what our turns look like and stuff and now that we've read through the rules a bit more it seems like a lot of the game is me hiding stuff from you and vice versa yeah it seems deception and misdirection are a big part of it so we won't just be uploading everything every week don't know what

the gap will be or when it'll go out but uh we'll figure that out what we will be posting is the stuff both of us can see yeah so the actual map the board game itself as in the board that we're looking at the massive map every play session that we finish which won't be a full turn but every play session which will be a few hours each time we will take a picture of that and we'll stick that somewhere either on our website or somewhere you'll be able to see that you'll be able to see what we both see but all of the secret bits and pieces we'll keep those hidden unless people are really desperate to see in which case i'm sure you'll let us know maybe and if that is the case then yeah we'll find a way to put that out there in a way that doesn't completely fuck the game

but otherwise yeah we'll try and keep it mutual but we'll still be recording at the end of each play session yeah that's that's going to be the way we document stuff yeah and if we don't find a way to get it out before the end we will be recording all turn by turn so it might just be that in like eight years we drop every single turn and all of the log sheets and such yeah reading the rules before the hand i knew there was a lot of bootkeeping involved didn't quite appreciate how much yeah it's going to be a real herculean task just keeping track of everything but a lot of the stuff in there does refer to i've actually got a bit of a note here that it talks about needing a a lot of pencils a large supply of stamina a godly amount

of pencils with erasers but i've got a little note here that says welcome to the digital age because we have something they didn't in 1979 covered yeah that's new yeah no we excel no we don't have covered what we're fine we're not ill we're not ill we're just what a mental ill maybe for doing this is that is that a sign of some sort of mental illness committing to this i'm not maybe asking a psychologist about it yeah yeah don't don't talk to your therapist don't ask questions you don't want the answer to that's true that's true what we um what we do have though is digital devices at our fingertips phones laptops uh calculators it's bragging here um looking around what else we got that's digital lamps or lamps digital lamps are digital you can

get digital lamps you definitely can you definitely can't don't look at me with that don't give me that expression of shame you can get digital lamps they did have lighting when this game was invented that's not a new thing well i didn't say lightning i said lamps but we're getting off topic you've really you've really dragged this out of place and we're not talking about whether or not they have a lightning in the in the in the 70s i know that what we are talking about is the fact that we don't need a ton of pencils and paper we can track this on spreadsheets like real war gamers would yeah and like almost everything that involves spreadsheets we think it'll make things easier and then a lot of the time will be spent handling them instead yeah that's that's why i'm

sort of stuck in this place between will it be fun or will it just be us writing stuff down on spreadsheets i think it's going to be both i mean if there's any accountants out there listening i'm sure you find filling out spreadsheets fun maybe or at least they pay you for it no one's paying us for this this is just this is sheer enjoyment just the the adrenaline rush of sitting down and playing a game for hours and hours and usually that would be fun but not this game i don't know the way it's designed it's i think it's meant to just poke fun at the people playing it yeah the joke might be on us entirely here but you know that's that's that's part of the experience If that's it, then so be it.

We'll be your jester. If that's what you want, if you want to laugh at us being fools, then fine. If that's what you're here for, I hope you're happy. We're doing it. Reign it in, buddy. Right, okay, sorry. I'm angry at what they think about me. They don't.

I'm angry at what they think. I know they're thinking it. The whole pencils thing, that's fine. I think we're going to shave quite a bit of time off with digital bookkeeping. That's a real good benefit of this. There were a few other standout points in the rules that I took some notes of. I've got one from the first page. Yeah?

That was concerning. Which is? CNA was designed as a definitive simulation. It is intended for sophisticated war games and the serious students of history. Are we either? Well, no, we told you on episode one, we're not. Well, I've got the same note here. um it's from page four and um i've got a little addendum afterwards which is just the word

lemau good band yeah no no disagree strongly um sorry if lemau are listening but uh no they are no they're tuning in the right now they're huge war game fans they are the sophisticated war gamer and serious students of history yeah that's not us we're not either of those things we know trivial amounts of history and we're not war gamers we're certainly not sophisticated we're going to be playing this at the moment i believe on your floor because it's too big to play anywhere else uh yeah yeah so that's not really sophisticated is it that's that's uh that's tribal it's lacking furniture it's primitive it's actually behind how they were in the 1970s in some they had tables back then they had they had analog lamps and they had tables and they were

they were definitely more sophisticated than we it does say that experienced wargamers will have little trouble digesting and understanding that's another quote i've got from the rules so we might have a little bit of trouble digesting and understanding the digesting we've been fine with we can digest it oh i've been having trouble digesting understanding as we've gone through the rules but they're just words andy they're just words you take in words surely you're a man of words individually yeah as you put them together they make sentences yeah they make sentences which don't always make sense to me they don't need to make sense you can digest them put them through and then your tummy puts all that together

digests it in your i've been reading wrong this whole time yeah you gotta when you when you you You want to take in the sentence, draw it in, and then goes down through the intestines. Is it the large one that comes first, the large intestine, then the small one? Like a filter. Small first. Small first? I think. That's mad, surely not.

How does it all fit through the small one first? That's like a little bit of a bottleneck. That was a weird hand gesture you just did there. You looked like you were kneading dough. Yeah, that's what intestines do. They knead the dough. They knead your food through. They do knead food.

that's deep no it's not well it's deep in your bowels it gets to the bowels, we're getting ahead of ourselves we're not even in the intestines yet of digesting this, we're still very much in the gullet we're uh

it's stuck in our crawls it's really tough to get through it's like chewing gum, it sits there for a while and then eventually it comes out, is it fully formed? maybe, is it messy? yes was it uncomfortable yes yes will it be fun maybe yeah maybe you'll enjoy the sensation i'm hoping to something new it's it's something we've not done before no one's done this before

people have swallowed chewing gum no one's finished this game what does that say about the game andy it's worse than swallowing yeah it says that in the box actually i think just on the side what else did we have here another massive standout thing it recommends did you have a look at how many players it recommends

yeah and I also noted down some of the roles that the players were going to be doing yeah so it recommends the game is for 8 to 10 players and we mentioned last time it's competitive so that's 4 to 5 players on each team

and they're meant to have different rules they're meant to take on different yeah different responsibilities within the game you have you got them noted down did you say yes i do do you yeah yeah so i've got uh first and foremost commander in chief commander in president of the team yes the man in charge the uh the one who apparently settles disputes and disagreements within the faction um so this is our primary psyche as we split yeah this is the this would be the if anything the the super ego this is the this is the the forward-facing part that you show the world that you show the team this is what you dish out this is when you say no this is who we are this is what we're about which is a strange place for me to take up because i'm playing the

axis forces i don't really want to get you are that's who i am is not the axis forces who i am is a a very different man to the axis forces during the war they were probably a lot more intelligent than me maybe they put those they put that intelligence into things i wouldn't but they had more intelligence and wisdom than i think i do here It's not. Hey, they were wrong, objectively. Yeah, because it seems like you're praising them a lot. I'm saying they were probably smarter than I am.

They did this for a living. They lost. This is a hobby for me. Moving away from that, you've also got the logistics commander. That guy seems to have a lot to keep track of. Well, the game's mostly logistics, so that feels like they're really getting shortchanged. They're getting the shitty end of the business. If we did have four or five people put on a team, whoever gets stuck being logistics commander is the unlucky one from what I've seen.

Well, you've also then got the rear area commander, which I will admit I read as the rear end commander initially. Yeah. Which is not a position... He's in charge of morale. The rear air commander. no no that what they are in charge of is arranging all the supplies and the reinforcements and because we're in this game stuck in the desert getting resources to everyone in there is massively important because if you don't do that you don't have any fuel any food any water

all the things you want in the desert yeah when you're at war and it turns out the desert is hard on equipment we had that people yeah yeah all the sand all the heat all the flies we did a bit research on the history of it yes there will be next episode we're gonna deep dive into the history oh we'll we'll get into that yeah yeah but a lot of flies a lot of flies in fact to keep with the realism what we are going to do in our first play session which is coming up very soon um andy what i'm going to do is release a cloud of locusts into your home it's not even flies it's not it's worse it's worse you've got clothes haven't you some some yeah locusts love clothes okay and i don't mean like trying them on and putting on like a little fashion show i mean they'll fucking

eat them up like gobble them up really well i don't i would love it if they didn't we're sticking to the realism but i don't know about the uh the the word is verisimilitude it means sticking to the realism of an element recreating it put that word down somewhere if you like verisimilitude remember that word when there's locusts in your pants i know you can't you're not in the room with us but you would have been able to see me not note that down yeah yeah um i've noticed that actually do you need us to take a brief pause or no i'm just not going to remember it right uh get Showing some verisimilitude about not learning the word verisimilitude

Wow, you said that two different ways in a very short space of time Also probably used it wrong Yeah, I think you were using that in a very spiteful way and that word's meant to be used only in kindness So Air commander is the next rule That's to take control of the air

So that'll be your planes your flying boats seaplanes for the uninitiated for those who haven't just spent the last two evenings of their life reading through this rulebook that's pretty air commander it's for flying stuff

and the frontline commander that's all your things moving across the ground things being men tanks, trucks artillery things that go across the ground frontline that's what that's for and it recommends having a different person

in charge of all these different faucets of the game but instead what we're going to end up with is us doing all of the work and the power probably going to our head because the talks there about the commander-in-chief settling disputes we've got no one to answer to just our own ambition and that ambition who knows where it's going to find us probably nowhere good probably playing a board game several hundred hours into playing a board game we're not trying what it does say thankfully is that there's a quote i've got here from the rules after pushing around the counters for an hour or two you should be fluent in the system and that's promising because next week we're gonna have a full day to play this yes we're getting into it we're starting the actual

playthrough next week now the the caveat is we're recording these in bulk these first few episodes first three or four episodes we're recording them in bulk we'll probably release them maybe all together or maybe with a little bit of a break in between, one a week one a week is the eventual point we'll end at but these ones we are

recording in bulk, the first few there's been a week between recordings, we just haven't released yet oh but we're recording them in bulk in the sense of we're stashing them away for the winter and then we're going to throw them all out like squirrels do okay

no that's what squirrels do they uh they bury them all away and then they rise up from the snow and they go here's my nuts have them please nourish yourselves okay uh the way you view squirrel logistics makes me confident for winning this game yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna when window rolls around during the game i'm gonna hide everything you're not gonna find it and then before you know it it's spring and you've lost it under shifting sand dunes

and there was no snow because it's the desert yes that's true actually and we haven't invented global warming yet in the 40s so it's going to be a hot desert yes this is before we destroyed the planet ah the good old days

back before we ruined it what are we like intelligent wise guys were around day well you know well you know uh yeah they didn't invent global warming don't lean in they didn't invent global warming they just did other really bad stuff but yes the first playthrough it's going to be like a full day we may even record two during that one one before one after get a bit of a feel for it so if we can learn the game after an hour or two in essence we're going to be in a really

good spot. And we are going to probably learn it in an hour or two because we are the target audience of this game sophisticated war gamers So the yeah so what we do have coming up is not just the actual playthrough

well I say playthrough starting to play the game but we've also got we've got guests next time Yeah yeah we can yeah so we've got guests coming on next time i mean if they don't you'll edit this out so that's true yeah so i we can say whatever we want now actually it's sort of fair game so we've got a pair of guys coming on we'll get more into it next time but they actually know

what they're talking about when it comes to the historical significance of everything that happened they can give some real context to it all so that'll be that'll be a handy opportunity for that yeah we'll be able to get people who know what they're doing so we're gonna serious students of history who hopefully by proxy will make us they'll rub up rub off on us we're gonna get some real historical context from those from those guys so that that'll be that'll be good right before we get into the actual game right before we sink our teeth in really start biting away at the game and are you gonna be using that historical knowledge do you think are you gonna try and play it out like they did like the axis forces as a losing side well i'd like to think

that the the losing side they lost for a reason lost for a lot of reasons we'll probably get into that with our guests yeah yeah very true and because this is a board game uh no uh i'm gonna i'm gonna beat you i'm gonna beat you i really want that dinner that you promised you're not getting the dinner. I'm getting the dinner. Getting the fucking dinner, Andy. It's my dinner to have. It's my dinner. What

dinner are you after, by the way? I don't know. My taste will change. Maybe there'll be a new food stuff by then. That's exciting. A new food stuff? Yeah. So you're taking me to some avant-garde experimental place that I'm going to have to fork out my wallet for? Yeah. No. Absolutely

not. And it'll have at least one michelin star and it'll probably be in another country uh right i'm not paying for your fucking flights no i'll pay for my flights you pay for your flights and my meal uh no we're gonna have to recap how the game works well we're not allowed to say a meal from anywhere in the world yeah i don't think we said anything about that to be fair we left it very fast and loose as to how it is that we actually play out the win scenario but but when i win it's it's going to be very very loose um what isn't very loose go back to the game is the stuff we have to keep track of for that it's a lot i've got a list of so there's 1600 pieces of the game that's all of your different

units your battalions your tanks all guys just everything everything that's around africa during that time north africa during that time and each unit you need to keep track of i've got a list of here cohesion level morale score ammunition stores water capability points you've got a lot of things to keep track of a lot of things that are gonna fill up these spreadsheets yeah they're gonna be busy little spreadsheets yeah and i'm sure it's i'm looking forward to one of us being like oh and the fuel's all gone from that unit i needed to do a crucial thing yeah i'm really worried that the game isn't going to end with some explosive showdown it's just a bunch of guys dying of thirst in the desert because their trucks are out of fuel yeah yeah all that you're gonna go

after my trucks i mean i am you bastard why would you do that fuck the trucks fuck the trucks that's line one of my doctrine for this you've got a doctrine yeah it's mainly fuck the trucks mainly Is it just Fuck the Trucks? At the minute. Right, okay. So you've just cobbled this together now. I wouldn't say cobbled together. That implies there's two things.

Well, you've got Fuckin' Truck, so... Yeah, I guess. Which is, I imagine, the ideal lifestyle of a long-haul trucker. Do they fuck their trucks? No. Oh, right. Sorry, I meant individual components. Yeah, because my plan is to destroy the trucks.

Right, yeah. So I think that's... I was saying fuck and truck. You've went with the original fuck the trucks. Yes. I don't know how I'd roll fuck into a battle doctrine. Because there's rules for almost everything, but I couldn't find any rules for that.

Good, good. I'm glad that's not something we have to deal with as part of the game. I mean, yeah, because, yeah. Yeah, I don't really want much of a sexual component to this. Really, really not what I'm after out of this. what i'm after is a real board game for the sophisticated war gamer and the serious student of history and that's exactly what we've got we've got both of those things we've got them

at our fingertips and i think we're gonna we're gonna horribly neglect them oh yeah we're not gonna have a whole lot to to say about history we're not gonna have a whole lot to say about board games i mean we will by the end you reckon i mean by the end we will be the world's foremost experts on this game and in the conversation for the world's foremost experts on this conflict in general. How does that make you feel? Important.

Yeah? And what else? No, just that. That's all I wanted. Vindicated. Vindicated, yeah. I guess if you refer back to this, you'll feel vindicated. No, if I refer back, yeah. Yeah, because I'm right. No, you are, yeah.

Oh, that pained you to say it, didn't it? You hated saying that I'm right It did hurt I'm having a problem with V words in this episode Really? Verisimilitude Did you Google that? No, also how would that help?

That's a good point You would still be reading the word Yeah You idiot I'm not the idiot I know what the word means It's a kind word you really said oh like you had something and then i did and then and then you felt that you

were cutting me off so uh no it's gone it's gone i was excited to hear what you know what would you like to talk about andy well is there any specific rules that have jumped out at you because there's a famous one for this game as famous as anything related to an obscure board game can be there is yeah so the so the game is really really in depth about pretty much every aspect you can think of about a war theater in north africa so vehicles can break down you have to keep track of water food all that sort of stuff for all of your units but there's a very particular one that pertains to the italian forces which i'll be taking the role of throughout the game now the italian forces not only have to keep track of the water but they need to keep track of the water for one specific

reason they use more water than any other unit because they need it to cook pasta and that's actually part of the game uh that that is i guess a bit of a loaded assumption as to the dietary requirements of italian forces during world war ii no idea how accurate that is don't know if it's just an error as a bit of a tongue-in-cheek joke but if the italian forces in the game don't have enough water to make their pasta they fall apart that their cohesion level which is one of the the sort of things you measure your units with and it makes sure that they don't just fall apart at the seams and booger off into the desert if they don't have their pasta that level just sinks into the floor so that's an example of how how granular the game gets you

need to keep an eye on your italian units making sure they get their pasta or the whole game falls apart for me anyway for you it'll be fine yeah well actually that's part i'm going after the trucks with the pasta water we're not going to have a truck specifically for pasta water we'll use the same water for water yeah but yeah the water's for everyone yeah and it's for different things but you won't have enough for the pasta it's for bathing it's that's a that feels like a waste of water to run a bath in the desert well what do you do with your water drink it put it in my car you don't have a car in the game also where are you putting water in your car the radiator cars get thirsty i don't know well you had me with radiator because i know that relates

to cars but i also don't drive so i don't know what the function of a radiator is really in a car and i don't know how much you have to water it i think a lot really maybe i don't see people doing that well no they're not in the desert so their radiators keep the water in better right so our so they don't need yeah so our cars in the uk are sort of like camels yeah they've got our cars are reverse desert cars what desert camels what so that's most camels you don't get many camels that aren't desert camels do you again we're not students of biology I don't think it's biology I think it's

Yes it is, it's knowing about a living thing That comes under geography I think No it doesn't I've just asked where camels are other than deserts and we're not sure That's a camel fact, not a geography fact Sorry, that's not its own topic of study

Camelology Camelology is absolutely not real, I'm afraid You've went too far now Andy the reason we're stuck on camels as well by the way is there are rules specifically for shipping dead camels we've yet to find what you do with the dead camels but you can move them around yeah so there is a there's a part in the in the rules where it talks about what you can do with your planes you can you can move stuff around resources you can transport fuel and food and

all that sort of stuff you know things that make sense to transport during a war yeah you want to move your fuel around you want you want to move your ammunition you want to get you know stuff to your soldiers on the front line but it does actually have rules in there where it says you can't move certain things around but you can move dead camels not living camels and it actually actually says that in the rules and i don't understand why you would need to move dead camels because i've not found any other mention of camels in the rules yet and we've read through the rules yeah it also says you can transport live camels via truck so are you just gonna have trucks full of camels driving around providing no strategic value but they must do something i mean

you can't you can't drink from them you can't like you can't milk a camel not ethically and you can't really not and you can't well you can eat camel i suppose but i don't i don't hear of people eating camel very often maybe that'll be my meal are you gonna at the end of the game if you win you want to eat a camel i want you to get me a camel meal in a michelin star restaurant so we're gonna have to go probably somewhere in africa north africa maybe even i mean that's where camels are from what we know yeah and you want me to have a camel sort of like i imagine this being like a sort of lobster situation where you go across the dunes and you go that one i want that one i want that camel there him yeah and then you use a big claw to

crack its hump open no you're thinking of um lobsters no you're thinking of the grabber machines the claw machines at haggaston castle that don't work properly i'm not where they're really loose so what they would actually do is just kind of caress the hump of the camel and then drop it back on the ground again maybe that's why they're transporting camels around maybe they're calming too oh that's a good point yeah i'm excited for the uh the camel calming mini game yeah where you boost the morale of troops by uh creating a bit of a claw grabber machine they're about to be overrun a couple of camels show up morale improves what a formula for success that's how we're gonna this is yeah this is gonna be like cracking enigma all over again

that's what i'm gonna use the camels for i'm gonna drop dead camels on your units that's got to be a war crime it's just one of those things that's bad but not illegal like it should be but it's not can you name another thing that's bad but not illegal i could but i'm now on the spot oh yeah yeah come oh yeah usually you're a font of knowledge when it comes to that you're full of bad but legal ideas what is a what's an illegal thing that's okay to do you reckon there's any of those um no you can't google laundering money laundering money is not necessarily an okay thing to do embezzling no and he saw a white color crime oh yeah yeah no victimless it's not it's not you're hurting the big corporations

that's fine no yeah where do you think you get your money from big corporations yes no that's true that's true we're all part of the circle of life so are camels i don't really get why we're shipping them in these aircrafts yeah we will that will be an update at some point when we figure out what the camels are for we're very excited to find out what the camel rule really means but other than that we've got we've got a pretty solid grasp on the rules and i am starting to get a little excited for it i think it is going to be a fun game to play not just a challenging game to play yeah say that and then you know in like 20 recordings time and we're just not having fun no you might be having fun i won't be having fun i mean we will we'll have fun and again the

next stage is we start playing the game but what we start doing is we play the smaller scenario so it's just a little snippet it's six turns which should be about 60 hours and yeah yeah giggle away there that's uh i i appreciate that it's not all that small but the that small little segment we're not gonna get super detailed with all that we're gonna save that for the real show the real campaign for north africa the biggie yeah we'll break down basically us get into grips with it yeah tell you who won we're gonna hold our hands through this each other's hands not just our own hands we're gonna be holding each other's hands it's gonna be very intimate it's gonna be hard to move the pieces around as well with only one hand free well one hand on your hand and then

Your hand on my thigh and then my hand on the laser pointer to point at the pieces that I'm talking about. And no hands to move them around. No, no. That's all going to be theatre of the mind. Yeah, I don't want to keep the entire thing in my head. Well, we can stop holding hands during it.

Well, we'll figure something out. Yeah, we've got to hire a third party to come in and move the pieces around. got a bit of a voyeuristic aspect going on with it yeah we should get a piece mover yeah I like that actually how legitimate an enterprise do you have to be

to get an intern or someone getting like credit for like a university course well you need to be an enterprise Andy and we're not an enterprise yet ever we'll incorporate at some point

I'm stating it categorically now we will never incorporate we will never incorporate we're never going to be part of big campaign for North Africa we could be big campaign for North Africa we are technically big campaign for North Africa well

while I say that I heard back from my guy today which guy? yesterday actually it was the guy who played the game we did a bit of research before we started playing and there is someone who is supposedly

playing the game at the moment and has been for a while he doesn't have a podcast I don't begrudge him for that but it is something we have and he doesn't and I'm just stating salient fact for the record

and we got in touch and he's willing to share a bit of information about his playthrough with his friends. It's incredibly nice of him considering how you're talking about it It is. All I'm saying is he doesn't have a podcast. All I'm saying is he didn't take the time to set up a microphone

and record every now and then. What's a weakness of character? Whoa! He was nice enough to spend his time replying to me, and you just said weakness of character.

I was talking about you. Oh, fair, fair. Got you off the hook there, buddy. That guy's fine now. oh he's fine he's fine he seems very nice he's he's actually um offered um to answer some questions about the game so we'll we'll probably fire a few of those over and hear from a seasoned veteran as to what we're actually in for so that will be a unique bit of insight that we can only really get i think from this one person so that's unique appropriate amount of mates he's playing

with potentially well from what i can gauge he was playing with a fairly big group and that's that's sort of tapered off so we got we can't really risk that because if we taper off one of us is just gonna have to finish the game on their own yeah that's gonna be sad yeah you're not actually allowed to die for the next eight to nine years because i need we need to finish this i need to finish this i promise nothing right this is going to become really awkward when it's just me playing and i still need to play to your house and you're dead yeah yeah you're gonna have to write something into your will here buddy i'll pick a successor yeah here we go i'll just you'll need to do that as well i'll just slide that pen and paper over to you there just put your

put your mark on it there you go let's see how this yeah it's a twist pen there you go right that is a piece of paper that says no thanks for that on the back of the piece of paper it is once I have devoured the last light I will pass through to the ordeal I think this is a note from Dungeons and Dragons

yeah it doesn't feel related yeah because if that's what your mark is well that's lying too of the doctrine fuck trucks, devour the last light right, okay I don't really understand what your doctrine is anymore

That sort of translates into a lot of night bombings. Right, okay, okay. So it's a bit of a mantra for the stealth bombers of the night. Yeah. Right. Oh, dear. You know what? I think spending the last two evenings just reading through these rules

has taken a bit of a toll. Which is really bad because we haven't started playing the game yet. Yeah, but it's going to be different when we've got the pieces out and the board and we're moving things around and we're playing a game instead of doing just study and revision if i'd revised as well as i we did the last two nights in any of my actual exams wouldn't be here playing this game with you i was i was one of those people who would just sort of wing it on the day like i would stand outside the exam hall beforehand and i would flick through the book there and then and just think right the things that are fresh in my mind i really hope

they come up yeah and it got me to a place where i got just the ones i needed just the marks i needed to get into a comfortable enough place to be in the same set as my friends the next year and that's the that's the ship i sailed away on i mean that's what you're aiming for that was it mediocrity yeah having fun with mates fun with hey war with a mate look at that maybe that's where that came from maybe that i did always say that i would i would go into the exam and i would go hey what what is this some kind of war with a mate you were kicked out of the exam and everyone would look at me and go what what's he talking about this fucking guy and they go have you not revised and I go

what for war with a mate and then go no I don't think he has, no he's not revised I think he's panicking I think he's having a panic attack and that's why he's saying things that don't make any sense I think you're panicking now panicking a little bit, panicking about starting this game

but you know what, no I'm gonna have fun, no the game's it's a game, you're being very negative on the game, no one makes games to not be fun there is a suspicion from reading this that this is a large practical joke on anyone who decides to play the game right i'm right i got that as well yes you're yeah we're both feeling that there's a tone

i've never read the rules for anything really where they apologize to you multiple times and encourage you to stop playing there are a lot of parts where it says sorry in brackets and I've not actually read another set of board game rules that do that but I've also not read any other set of board game rules with multiple booklets and so many

charts there's three different booklets that are just charts yeah for you, me and another one for you there's two for me there's one for you and there's a shared group of charts for stuff like

weather things we share I mean, to give you a sense of the rulebook we've got is several well, it's 190 pages-ish and I did a breakdown

of the turns with a checklist so we can keep ourselves honest that's 158 lines long and that's Oh, is this the Excel spreadsheet? Yeah, so

that's our turn and it's 158 lines long and each line we both do stuff on yeah that's meant to take that's only meant to take 10 hours as well only 10 hours

yeah but when it's that many lines 10 hours seems really really short yeah because we looked at the air combat today very in depth that's what most cool that's what most of yesterday we got to read through like a lot of stuff today we pretty much just read we went on a bit of a tangent reading about other stuff

but it was mostly the air rules that we read today and the air combat sounds really fun yeah i'm actually looking forward to doing the air combat a lot it seems pretty there's a lot to it but it seems fairly streamlined it's like dogfights and you get to you got to pick your pilots and have like yeah individual conflicts in the air it that sounds quite cool that sounds it's very top gun that sounds like it'll be a lot of fun it'll take a lot of time but i think those play sessions are going to be really high energy ones yeah so the flash forwards were like i love supply distribution phase air phase is awful well you know what i was just thinking there i had to stop myself when i was saying high energy because the first play session we've we happen to have a day

that we'll both be off together yeah and we're going to be playing a full day of the game to get used to it but for context the usual circumstance that we're going to be playing this game is going to be when both of us have finished a full day at work we're then going to reconvene and then play the game yeah and we're going to be playing it after after meetings or long days at work and we're going to be tired and then we're going to have to sit down and play for hours of tactical

warfare and then record right after we've played those hours of tactical war gaming. Well it adds to the realism in some ways because I imagine the guys in the real war were pretty stressed as well Well they would have been stressed, they would have been tired

but probably had bad days at work But yeah, but that was their work Probably also had bullshit meetings you know what that's that's definitely true so anytime we come back from anything like that i suppose we are dipping our toes into well not even close to what they were going through no let's not yeah let's not even try and draw this let's not even imply stone yeah because someone's a coward and won't let me release locusts into their house yeah i'll yeah i guess i'm a coward you hear that folks

you heard it here first Andy's a coward how's that going to serve you in war fine I'll know well not know I'll always run away this game will just be a retreat across Africa bit of a bit of a cat and mouse game eh

no I'm just running bit of a more gazelle than lion more what else runs away really quick Sonic the Hedgehog and the... I was going to say the rings, but... Shadow the Hedgehog. No, no.

They don't chase after each other. What? Sonic the Hedgehog has a gun. He's got an actual gun. I thought... Wait. I thought that was Shadow the Hedgehog had a gun. Did I not say Shadow? No, you said Sonic the Hedgehog has a gun. I'm going to have to listen back. I'm sure I said Shadow the Hedgehog.

Sonic... You're editing this, but there's going to be a very obvious cut where he just goes Shadow What are you I said Shadow the Hedgehog

Has a gun Okay Not Sonic I wish I had him In my army No Disclaimer Shanna

Shannick Shannick the Hedgehog Shannon Shannon the Hedgehog Have you ever done that before Where you google your name And then the Hedgehog I've never googled my name

Ever No Just google Just google Andrew the Hedgehog And it will come up right now With a bunch of fan art of some sort of... By the way, I encourage everyone listening

to try this right now. Google your first name and then The Hedgehog and it will come up with horrible fan art of... I'm going to do mine as well. Mine's alright. Really, is it? There's this cool guy who looks like Shadow when he's got a green coat on.

Mine is... I've got one here. He's in a kilt. He looks pretty trendy. I couldn't pull off a kill personally this just hasn't worked these are all sort of fine pictures turn off safe search ah

there we go turn off safe search yep there we go gonna have to stop that there to be fair I'm connected to your wifi thanks buddy so anything untoward that someone

has drawn previously about James the Hedgehog now it's it's imprinted on your digital footprint not mine great i can't wait to get targeted ads based around james the hedgehog there shouldn't be any targeted ads about what i've just seen other than i guess kilt sales because so no matter kilts i mean easy access easy access for what exactly i assume running around really quick yes leg mobility running Running as fast as Sonic the Hedgehog I don't know about you

But I think I've run out of things to say about the rules Because there's a lot of them But We don't want to just break them down I will say I wasn't expecting this There's a lot of stuff happens Hidden from the other player

We mentioned it at the start But that is an element that's got me kind of excited Is the Bruisers, counterfeits lying to each other yeah being liars to each other that'll be a lot of fun I feel like what we really need to do is really test the metal of our friendship

we need to see if we can really drive a wedge between each other because I think we've had it too good for too long I mean there's two of us we could very easily end a friendship I guess yeah one of us could actually just choose to that's it

get out of my house I'm out I'm leaving now that's it I'm done I'm done I'll stick around to play through the game and then that's it Just 8 years or so Yeah Give it another 8 years and I'm done

8 years, trip to eat a camel Never talk to me again I'm leaving you out there Canceling your flight with 2E on the way back Mostly because I'm saving you if anything from that That song they always play It's

Darling hold my hand sing more of it no but I need to identify that's all I know because they play that bit and then I just mentally tune out it starts playing and then it's like white noise from there I'm just angry

just see red which I think is actually part of the colouring of their brand so I see what they've done there they've really got you and then I feel blue and that's also part of their brand blue and red eh blue and red

pray common god jesus christ the colour of the sky and the colour of blood yeah colour of yeah yeah you know what I think

two days of intense research on the rules is indicative of some well earned rest we've got a day in between recording the next one with our guests we'll take it to to rest up well yeah sleep recuperate and then we'll return with

our guests in tow they're going to tell us a bit about the history we're going to do just enough research for dun and kruger to kick in and make the interview worthless yeah yeah we're going to try and chip in as much as we can and be overshadowed by their presence and then after that the next step is play the game play the actual game play the actual game it's got to be done eventually

yeah we can't keep putting it off we just got to actually play it well I suppose we'll check in next time we'll let you know how we're doing and you'll hear from some friends of ours and we'll

speak then, we'll chat to you then yeah warofthemate.co.uk there might be things there there will be by the time this is up yeah by the time this is up there's going to be stuff there there'll be an email address and you can send anything over there

just send anything doesn't really matter what ideally it's relevant and if you're trying to get us to pay attention to anything in particular we'll try our best and if you want money from us we don't have it so don't try and scam us

not worth scamming because we don't have any we're gonna be scammed we're unscannable we have no fins

for you but that's it that's it it's like the end of Ferris Bueller are you still here no no

that's it we're done never mind doing the cut signal like we're done we are this is the post credit scene

Thanos final end of myself Good reference.