War With A Mate - Episode 23: Sisyphus

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

Is this rolling? Alright, well here comes the confession…some huge mistakes have been made. The guys wrestle with some more-than-minor errors in the recent sessions. Recapping several battles, including the one for their spirits, they cope in different ways - whether that’s the tough love of accountability or the decision to curse future generations with mischief.

Hello and welcome to War with a Mate. Me, Andy. And me, James. I'm here too. Oh, Andy. How are we feeling about the game in general first, I guess, before we get into the specifics? Ah! Andy, Andy, I'm not happy with the game, again. Once again. But, more importantly,

I'm disappointed in us. Yeah, this one's not the game's fault. This is an us problem. It spouts from the game. The game is the core issue, really. If the game didn't exist, we wouldn't have reason to feel ashamed. But we do have reason to feel ashamed. My

goodness, we have made quite the mess this week well actually it wasn't this week we made we've made a consistent mess but today it's it's only just came to fruition yeah we made a fundamental error at the very start and it manifested today so as you all know we are playing the campaign for north africa we're playing a practice run at the moment the first six turns we're currently uh we're currently knee deep in the first operation stage we're doing movement and combat and we've realized a grave mistake that we've made one that has reshaped the way we've seen the game and really shook us to our core this week it has been a mess yeah turns out vehicles are fuel tanks

oh god it's so stupid when you say it out loud how the fuck didn't we realize this oh vehicles have fuel tanks they can store fuel inside their tanks their bodies their car bodies their truck torsos you can put petrol in them and they can keep it in there we have been so so naive and misguided and yeah so the issue is we've been looking at the game we've been trying to scrutinize all these tiny little mistakes that are in the rules all these inconsistencies and we missed something that was just written in the rules saying that cars tanks trucks have fuel tanks that you can put petrol in put fuel in and they have their own internal capacity we were under the impression you can only take fuel from your supply caches or the storage areas of the

trucks what we didn't realize for some stupid fucking reason is that vehicles have their own capacity within them yeah which means that a truck for example uh a light truck has a fuel capacity of eight which means it can move about 40 hexes without needing to refuel which is a lot which means they should all start with that which means we've been playing the game from the start so far with the impression that they don't have any fuel in them yet so that we've had to take it from the fuel supply the supply

caches, the supply dumps so we've just eaten into all these resources and we've also massively overcommitted the amount of fuel that we need because we didn't realise that they all have fuel already and they can keep fuel in them it's probably messed up some of our planning

with like ranges of vehicles and stuff but it's not so disastrous we're starting again thankfully and along the same lines we also made another cars have fuel tanks and guns have clips how dare we complain about this game being complicated when we misunderstand the simple stuff yeah that's a hundred percent on us yeah we were looking into it on the back of the the whole fuel tank debacle we thought have we missed anything else god yeah we have men can carry ammunition guns can be loaded with ammunition you don't just have to pick out the bullets from

the big pile of bullets you can actually load your guns with them so yeah it turns out there's another rule that men and guns tanks every combat unit can carry enough ammunition to fire once so they have their own they have their own ammunition pockets which means they should also start with that that's another thing that we hadn't done we were taking that from all of the supply dumps and caches and trucks so we we uncovered this when we were playing through and we realized that one of the first combats that we played out today we played out a combat between the it was the first and second libyan divisions on the axis side and for you it was was it the rifle battalion second rifle regiment or battalion the third cold stream guard and the king's royal

rifle company yes so they had a bit of a skirmish on the border of libya and egypt and we were doing it with minuscule amounts of ammo we're talking about a fifth or maybe less of our actual units had the ammo to fight and it was only when we came across the truck issue the fuel problem that we realized these men should also have all the ammo they need in order to fight so we we yeah we we spent a long time kicking ourselves over that but we decided it hasn't went so bad that we need to undo everything there are a few pieces that have been fundamentally changed by that which means that the chauffeurs and garrison on my side that were taken prisoner in their entirety because they had no ammo that shouldn't have happened last week but we're going to keep

that in because it's not game breaking and that's how things played out we're not going to go all the way back primarily because this is a practice run and we are trying to find these mistakes so they don't happen on the real one i think if something like this happened on the real one on the first turn we would have restarted but we would have had to we would have had to because it changes the game completely yeah it's already changed the game in that our initial supply schedules are oriented around the idea that none of the trucks had fuel already and that the ammunition is so so sparse but in reality it's not that at all so we've we've had to take that and and swallow our pride a little bit and accept that we've made the game maybe a little bit

more difficult than it would be however ultimately the game being difficult is not the end of the world we're sort of familiar with that it's more a case of we now need to really change the way that we're approaching the game going forward we need to bear in mind that people do have ammunition trucks can have fuel in their fuel tank crazy i know you know what the thing is as well we had a look at it it's not even hidden away no we one of the sections we've definitely spent time talking about before the fuel capacity one because i remember us talking about that equation yeah we have the the equation for the fuel capacity is the cpa capability so that the sort of action capability of a vehicle times no no point a fifth basically uh yeah so 0.2

um and then times by the fuel capacity rating or the fuel consumption rating consumption rating yeah which should end up being the cpa of the thing basically their tanks can move them one upstage is what I've picked up from that yeah yeah so vehicles can move one full upstage people can fire one full upstage both of those can be done

from go and we just had not factored that in at all not even not factored it in we didn't realise it existed and the thing is in a game so realistic down to a fault why wouldn't it have those things you need extra

water to boil pasta for god sake oh god it's so my chauffeurs and garrison has been taken prisoner you absolutely trounced my guys in the first fight the first libyan division was sent packing because you just scared them off they were fought so fiercely that they had to retreat in the end and then it was after that that we realized the mistake which means we then played through another combat which was not go as well for me it did not and to be fair it wasn't even so much the level of ammunition you brought in more men you who was involved in that fight for you uh so i've got it the royal tank regiment yes the cold uh stream guards and the king's royal rifle king royal

rifle company the third and fourth horse artillery and the seventh medium artillery so i'd like six units there for that fight but you got incredibly lucky on barrages i did so i had the second libyan batata second libyan division rather involved in that one and they managed to pull it out the bag with the barrage so the sequence of combat it goes barrage which is where you can use your artillery to bombard the enemy and try and pin them and kill some of them as well and then after that it moves on to anti-tank combat uh anti-armor uh where you can try and take out some of the the guns and and uh and tanks before the close assault yes the close assault being the sort of meat of it where all of the men move in you can also assign tanks and artillery

to that section that's really where the the real bulk of the combat happens but in the barrage the very first portion of that i fired two barrage shots and they were with two barrage points and that's determined by the efficiency of the gun and that's timed by its two strength points. So it's dependent on how many guns you have and how capable they are. You fired with... Seven barrage points worth.

Yes, seven barrage points. I fired with one each on my two guns. Your seven barrage points came up nothing. yeah just to put in perspective 24 ammo points is what i spent on this barrage an ammo point is four tons of ammo so i've dropped 96 tons of ammo on you to no effect i fired 16 tons of ammo yeah because no yeah eight i fired eight tons of ammo and pinned two units and i and i sniped them both So both your infantry units, your only infantry units that were involved in that fight, were pinned immediately by those guns, which meant you didn't then have enough men to support your tanks.

Yes, because the combined arms rules basically mean if you don't have an equal number of infantry tow points to tank tow points, the tanks get such a penalty, they end up with no functional combat effectiveness. which meant that you then couldn't carry out the rest of that fight so the barrage is where it ended which luckily i did a hold off barrage which is another rule yeah which basically if you do a barrage point for everything other than uh other artillery on the enemy's side you can that can satisfy combat and you can not close assault yeah it's a way to sort of stalemate the enemy so it meant that since you did that you you did enough damage you held me off you didn't actually hurt anyone but you held them off enough so that no combat had to then take place which was actually then the end of your movement phase yes that's you now wrapped up for movement which means it's now

me who gets to move next week and now that i know all my men have ammo it's going to be a very different story yeah so i guess because it's the scenario we could talk to each other a bit about it my plan has been to i've been quite aggressive in this one and to be fair it paid off initially because that fight against albeit yes ammo played into it but you fought against the first libyan division yeah and we both lost five percent yeah of our of our forces that was the result on the table so we both lost five percent and i was forced into a retreat so i had to retreat back a a hex yeah so that went well for you in that you pushed my men back and i lost some men you lost a few but i lost i lost five percent of the whole division you lost five percent of the guys that

you sent in yeah so your strategy has definitely been aggression so what else has surrounded your your plan well my clan is the game sort of started with a front along the uh libya egypt border my sort of plan was well once you gave me initiative I sort of changed it I'm sort of going, I'm going to get aggressive on that border and give you a bunch of stuff to deal

with so you can't sort of get everything grouped and moving along the coast road towards Egypt, so try and keep you busy here because with it being the Graziani offensive, I know it's probably not the wind condition, in my

head the if i can stop him having an offensive as it is uh that'll be a good result for me yeah i mean that is in essence the yeah the objective it's it's for me to get across the border and get as far into egypt as possible cairo ideally yes so if i can get further along that road it's great for me and right now you do have a lot of men around there even though that looks like that combat might set you up for a bit of a bad situation in the future it's still the case that i've got a decent chance of running into some obstacles because you've got a lot of guys there so i'm optimistic that now that we know we have fuel and ammo that there's going to be a lot more combat and action yes but i'm not necessarily certain what the outcome of that will

be because i do have the numbers in some areas but there are others where i have a lot of gaps in my forces uh i have noticed in from today's session as morales are meant is huge it is a massive factor because it shifts the everything's done in columns all of the tables they get shifted columns depending on things like morale cohesion the strength of the units so if morale is bad it shifts that column massively and that changes the results of the combat it means you could go from losing five percent of your man to 25 or being completely overrun which means that you end up losing even more all of the guns or people that you held back from the fight they can also be impacted so it gets real bad if the morale is is out of whack my morale in real life is out

whack that was fucked yeah really bad oh really really bad how do we miss that man yeah it has concerned me about the rest of it but uh well it's making me think a lot now we were talking last week about the was it last week another week before about the tactical shipping rules yeah and the fact that they aren't correct or rather they don't exist and we've looked back through today as well just to be sure and they don't exist I'm certain they don't exist yeah because what we have done now is we've got

signed up for the Adobe trial to turn the PDF into a test searchable thing so we won't run into these issues hopefully because we can search it and yeah tactical shipping appears in the whole thing four times

and it's like the sequence of play and that's it so it doesn't seem to mention it So I think we've got that one right. I would say, yes, I'm confident with that. We did actually have a message on the back of last week's episode. Yes. All about the tactical shipping segment. And that was from an individual who I've just seen.

We've gone to the email, actually. Oh, look at that. Coming in hot and heavy. So it was a message from Matthew. And thanks for this, Matthew. You sent over a message asking about the tactical shipping and pointing to some of the points where it's mentioned. And just in case we haven't made it clear in the last episode,

for those that are interested, it was the case that the Allied forces can move troops with their naval convoys. They can't move supplies seems to be the issue. Well, they can. That all happens in the truck movement convoy stage. Every time it mentions moving stuff, it's in that convoy stage. not this tactical

shipping phase that doesn't seem to exist Yes, so I think it is the case that as you rightly pointed out and thank you for the message there Matthew, it is the case that we are able to ship, well I'm not able to, I can but

not through your ships Andy we are able to move troops, that part does seem to be correct but it's later on in the game whereas the tactical shipping segment seems to suggest that you can do it oh you know what i can't even act sort of smug about the game being wrong at the moment i need to you know what i need to dial it back down to subtle humble and brave we're in the wrong today yeah not richard berg not the game today it's us yeah today it's

us and that's all right we're big men we're big men with tiny little egos yes so this is fine for us to admit but it's somehow squashed those small egos even further it yeah it has it has hasn't it we we were devastated when we found this out yeah this is really shaking us to our core well it's such a simple thing it wasn't like we missed a addendum or something was weird we just missed sentences there's an actual formula as well where it tells you how to figure out the fucking fuel capacity so i think we both said well i think individually we both said we're probably gonna go away and reread the rules again yes we have to each section we do we're now going to read them at least for the first couple turns i think read them again before we start implementing anything

because we've been referring to them in like combat and movement but i think enter the organization stage read the organization section front to back make sure we understand it and keep doing that for every phase and and the benefit of today is that we have that first combat with the the one where we both lost five percent of our forces when we did it with minimal ammo and that one took a while for us to get through maybe like an hour and a half two hours yeah and then we had the second one that we did towards the end that took half an hour maybe 20 minutes yeah it was a lot faster we flew through that and that was with a lot more units engaged yeah and that one yes albeit we didn't do the close combat the close assault because of the

barrage but we had the figures already there to go that is a great sign that we we picked up on the rules we think and we flew through it then really did so i think all in all we are making some some changes that we need to but it's not going to throw things completely out of whack yeah now we just know everyone's got ammo and fuel a great change for us which is brilliant it's absolutely brilliant actual game much more dynamic because we can do stuff immediately and units can well i don't need one truck of every type of thing exactly so we don't need to worry too much about fuel we need to worry about it still but not as much as we did and we can focus more on ammo and yeah the the fact it goes in guns that yeah yeah wow wow what smart man we are

so clever yeah but i do think the combat system works well when you've got all the stuff ready for it it feels like it's i actually really like it it's a it's it's yeah you know what at the risk of uh sounding naive and positive uh i i actually enjoyed it today even though we had that massive setback and it felt for a moment like we'd absolutely ruined everything it actually turned out to be fixable we've moved forward now we've now got columns on our sheets or at least i've started putting them in for ammunition and fuel and it doesn't seem like that big of a thing because it's essentially a toggle on or off of do they have weapons loaded?

Yes or no? Do they have fuel in their tank and how much? So it's really not that big of a thing to have to fix. It's just more a case of it changes how we plan our moves in the game. Yeah. Which is, you know what, it's a nice problem to have because it goes to show that we're now in the stage of play

where we're worried about what the actual turns look like. and they actually matter like it's not abstract i guess now it's like yeah it's not about worrying how we'll lay out the table yeah it's actually worrying about how we play the game yeah that that is a big difference one that i'm welcoming so every cloud every cloud so it's good old silver lining on this one it absolutely is i'm getting a sense for some of the other stuff as well like disorganization i think i'm starting to get a sense that that's actually much more important than i thought because when it was saying the rules were like oh you can push past the cpa i was kind of picturing that happening a lot but i think because they take turns and turns to

get it back you don't want to be pushing except in like extreme circumstances i don't know if you're i guess you've not been moving stuff around yet to get a sense of it but yeah that's all why i'm picking up and i'm looking forward to it next week i think me being able to move my men around and just pushing the pieces around i think it goes to show that this practice run was a great idea yeah because we've we've said this before we aren't experienced war gamers we've played other board games but i don't think ticket to ride or the pandemic board game which by the way anyone thinking of buying that i wouldn't recommend it the pandemic board game is oh i did not enjoy that game it's it's too and i know this sounds like i'm some sort of

board game masochist but that game was far too easy yeah it's it's unlosable cannot lose it in that game so we don't have experience with anything anywhere near this game yes this is the dramatic complicated behemoth that it is but we've not played anything like this so we're probably missing stuff that's fairly basic for people who are familiar with it i mean so the way we play dnd is like a very homebrewed at this point because one there's some grandfathered in rule misunderstandings yeah as well as homebrew stuff so thinking back we should have the one other sort of complicated long-running thing we've had going we have made some of those mistakes as well just that's a cooperative group storytelling thing rather than a competitive war game so

someone having a plus one on an item they shouldn't. It's crazy. It's not so bad when it's Dungeons and Dragons, but the idea of this game isn't to, and this sounds bad, it's not to have a fun time playing it and make it a great experience it's to finish it.

Yeah, and hopefully we do have fun playing it but also the fun for a competitive game is very different so we do need to be playing with consistent rules we both are on the same page with. And hey, we're chipping this bad boy away we're getting there and the fact that we're now under my movement phase this then wraps

up and then we have two more operation stages where we kind of lather rinse repeat and i think towards maybe the third operation stage i think it might be the case that we've actually got a really good idea as to how the game works that's what i'm hoping yeah so i i think realistically we're gonna have a very different view of this game by the time this first turn wraps up let alone the first six and then we go into the real thing yeah that's when things get real high stakes because the meal is on is on the cards so whoever wins the main game gets a meal bought by the other one so that's that's when it really comes in that's when it's big so i suppose that amongst all of this excitement we've had we've um we i suppose it'll be a bit of a switch up of format

today because we don't have a history segment we've been so engaged between being quite busy i had a busy week away i was i was away i had a little time away a little trip to myself last week i'm badly sunburned on my arm still i don't know if you saw it earlier oh yeah but yeah i'm still badly sunburned on my arm four and a half hour walk with 23 degree heat beating down didn't get any sun cream applied by the way just thought i'll just rough this one yeah you're tougher than the sun yeah turns out no the sun's real good yeah you know what i need to really live by our subtle humble and brave because yeah yeah it's not just a catchphrase it's a lifestyle yeah i'm trying to fight against the board game i'm trying to fight against celestial bodies and everything's

winning could do a little humility i know i really could this is on me so yeah because of our uh change up of schedule and today being the the just deplorable mess that it was we we won't have a history segment this week no this is instead it's just us rambling it's it's back to basics but i think what we can do is we can read some mail yeah let's do it we'll have a little look at the mailbag yeah that's i'm sure you guys will cheer us up it's gonna oh it's gonna be people just slagging us off for not knowing the rules isn't it someone's probably already way ahead of us knowing that we didn't get anything right never happened no everyone's been very nice so This is going to cheer me up, guys.

I'm counting on you. Who's first? First up to the docket, Robert. Oh, Robert, you're going to save my soul today, aren't you? So, Robert, you've wrote, Hey, I found your podcast through Cam Sandwich and have listened to every episode currently available. 19.

Goes to show how far behind we are with some of these. You even inspired me to buy a Hex Encounter war game just to have a better idea as to what you're going through. although i've made the sensible decision to actually research which ones are beginner friendly robert this is starting to make me feel worse i settle on thunderbolt apache leader can't say i've heard that one of you andy uh no i'm giving a quick gook but uh i'm enjoying it a lot although even with the relatively simple logistics i'm still running into the problem of disproportionately long prep for short battles i mean i finished a campaign

in two days not even close to your problems but still so yeah if you don't want to waste my 70 dollars keep the podcast going how's that for accountability it's a good reminder of why we're doing this i think it was needed today you know what uh robert i think what i needed there was that tough love and i think yeah you know what that's right i i i did tell you to to buy board games and to get involved in that i think anyway and and andy you as well um you're also responsible responsibility oh my god he has broken you oh my new year's resolution with this game was to not get angry at it anymore i mean that was wild and that was never happening that's true but But yes, Robert, you're right.

We do need to keep this going. And the fact that you've bought Thunderbolt Apache Leader, which, how is that looking? You've got the gist of it. What is Thunderbolt Apache Leader? I'm not going to be able to say. I don't know. What I can say is it's got a board

that seems to succinctly fit on one table. Oh, a little mini board then. Yeah. But I mean, yeah, if we've inspired someone to go and play a genuinely fun game instead of a campaign for North Africa, I'm all for it.

Well, I hope it's a good time, Robert. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope it isn't anything that's going to be having you pulling your hair out. I feel like my hair's going even more grey now. So, I would say... As for the problem of relatively simple logistics taking

disproportionately long time, I think that's just the nature of logistics from real battles into games it's more time than the actual fighting but yeah um never gonna find a solution to that i don't think yeah i think yeah stick with it though yeah i hope i hope you got a few playthroughs of the game maybe move on to something a little bit more uh extreme and testing if it's to challenge yourself there's a lot of other games out there that we've seen that are not as bad as the campaign for north africa but are a few steps below that i think you might actually be able to

convince some friends to get in with that isn't going to take decades of your life maybe just a few weeks or months so test the waters what i will say about all this it's it's it's at least interesting it's something to do i'll tell you that it's definitely a project it's definitely that uh all right who we got next who's next from mac yep yeah we've got uh just looking at his email it's um he sent morse code for the subject oh we didn't we didn't actually translate that tell you what if you want to read out the email i'll uh i'll get to translating the subject cool you fire that down to bletchley um let's be on the line hello um been listening for about a month and seemingly like most found your

podcast for a random reddit comment as a fan of both history and tabletop games my initial draw the podcast was down to this however i'd go as far as to say one of the things that has kept me here so long is your dulcet dulcet northern regionalized accents and general anguished uh undertones throughout the pod you're gonna love this one this one's for you matthew firstly i think it was episode 16 but correct me if i'm wrong you'd spoke about the furthest away listeners i'd like to enter the competition for closest listener who isn't your friend or family uh morpeth uh that probably will be yeah yeah morpeth is yeah that's not too far from us i was there a few weeks ago oh well there you go visiting matthew i imagine didn't run into him

but uh you don't know that me next time i might have actually yeah matthew you met him you met andy don't you remember it was a great experience um anyway uh what part if any does the allied long-range desert group play in the game and if they're not included with any particular set of rules i suggest looking at the tactics employed uh by the long day range desert group for the main game proper if they'd fit into the general rule set genuine and sincerely enjoying the pod keep it up i'll be here for the long haul too cheers mac uh thanks for emailing in mac so longer in desert group yeah a good question they are in the game uh and they're a really fun unit i think from what i've read with some pretty unique mechanics a thorn in my side i

think is probably how i would describe them because they are poised to be trouble for rommel when he shows up well one yeah they're the only guys who can possibly get rommel yes his little meep meep unit yes yeah he's doing a bit of a roadrunner thing uh what i really like about them They disappear off the board, so the other player doesn't see them. They're completely secret. Yeah, so I don't even get to see where the counters are. I get to see where they start, I believe.

Yes, when they're formed from an armoured car unit or a reconnaissance unit, you see where they are, and then as soon as they move, they disappear. Spooky. yeah but they can raid airfield supply lines supply dumps and the men operate behind enemy lines so they have different requirements for fuel and stuff so i'm really looking forward to using them to uh damage you behind enemy lines and a fun thing they can do which is also based on real life maybe an upcoming history segment here uh they pair well with the special air service

brigade yes yes who were formed in this conflict i believe um and if i'm i can't remember the exact numbers of but i believe they destroyed more planes in north africa than the raf really like on the ground yeah because they'd go on these like week-long excursions behind enemy lines and then just hit they'd sneak in with like sticky bombs and stuff and blow up the aircraft and I think they might have ended up destroying

more aircraft on the ground than the RAF did in the air for this theater that's wild so even if I don't get one soon as for the tactics of raiding airfields and stuff I definitely think

I'll be trying to adopt some of them so yeah they're definitely an interesting part of the game i know for a fact i'm going to freak out when they start causing trouble for me so that that's going to be one i'm i'm i am kind of excited to see but but i guess not see um and uh yeah see how that actually affects me i got a similar group myself but um i don't think i get as many as you i think you get two or three i think i maybe max out at three and i think you get one yeah so i'll get a similar experience maybe at some point with the i think it's when the germans show up so yeah they're in there they're in there so i mean this game's very realistic it's got you know it's got pasta and uh fuel tanks so of course

it's got the long range desert groups so we're interested to see how they'll play out so yeah good bit of history you uh you clearly know your north african theater so there is a fun bit just uh in the rules about the long range desert group well a phrase i enjoyed yeah it says although they're hidden you should write them down on pieces of paper so you can produce them in ass if asked produce them in ass if asked not in ass do not keep them there in case there's a matter of disbelief between gentlemen which is a very it's a very classy way of going you're cheating and lying yeah that's a good point you want to be fair we're documenting everything so i think that will already happen with our digital records it's a

fun phrase it is i mean the game is uh littered with fun bits and rule books if only we read it properly uh we got here we've got um next one is from kate and uh the subject line is ask the void for an email and they shall deliver well thank you void the email reads hi andy and james i've just did episode 13 of the podcast and hopefully by now you have received an email but if not hello we have indeed kate we have indeed i'm here to meet the desperate plea for the void to speak back to you via email here's a question following the common ground that cats should be evicted and start careers as pest control specialists it's an andy classic how do you feel with the progress made by the uk government that gives renters more rights and accessibility to gasp

home pets in these accommodations personally i think a sane response is a positive one but knowing this doesn't fit into the cat should be free agents policy you're workshopping i want to get your perspective best wishes kate p.s i hope this email also gives you the relief that there are in fact women slash non-binary people in the audience and it's not just men who enjoy absolutely rubbish games and PSS, found the podcast via Cam Sandwich worst board game of all time cameo

Keep It Keep It? I'm not sure if that's Keep It Up or if that's Keep Your Board Game or, I'm not sure but I like the ambiguity. We'll do both Well I suppose we'll defer to you

first of all Andy when it comes to the cat point because it was it was your common ground back then all about cats being municipal property yeah uh what do you feel about the uk government having to uh enforce landlords to be a bit more lenient towards pet ownership i mean it's good oh i see uh favor of renters rights in general um this would affect that though you can have it you should be able to have any pet you want in your house while the cats are at work until they've earned their keep again they're not pets it's like you can you should be able to have a dog in a house you're renting there should be

some steps to jump through if you've got like a zebra okay yes we're moving it to the exotic working animal section that's right if i remember correctly your issue was that cats have a societal debt to repay yeah they've had it easy for too long that was it yeah so it's not a case of you think that they are inherently unownable or someone you know should never have them as a pet but there's a currently a debt that needs to be paid by the cats yeah and once they have get them in get them in there yeah so i i think yeah maybe it is the case that um the government is onto something but maybe they need to implement some steps to bear in mind that there are certain animals out there that have been either pests or freeloaders

perhaps yeah and if that is the case they should maybe give a little back and in return that they're being given some incredible rights so i think it's only fair for them to maybe give us a little too yeah so no i i think um it's definitely a positive step we've uh we've lived together before yeah we've had some pets in those homes uh against my will uh yeah i've had a i've had a goldfish in one of our one of our former homes uh no his name was and he um yeah yeah god rest his little goldfish soul i miss him i miss him and uh and because at that place we this links to renters right someone would come to view the property every like three days because he was trying

to sell the house for a year. It was so bad. So you'd, because we weren't allowed pets, you'd have to hide him whenever someone was going to come round. I did. I had to put him in that, in the sort of corner of the room where the wardrobe

was. And I used to leave the light on for him so he had some light. Because I feel like that room was just like a little box that I lived in. It wasn't really a bedroom it was a space under the stairs it was i felt like i was harry potter yeah and then we had a well i i again i had a a hamster yes which again i came home to and there was a hamster there yeah yeah and he was fine he was quite quiet apart from the fact that his wheel that he would run on

was incredibly squeaky all night yeah yeah yeah so he wasn't quiet at all and then when we moved our landlord was very strict and at one point as you may remember that time when our landlord thought that we had a bird that was when they came around for the inspection when we were moving out and the fire alarm the smoke alarm had a low battery so it was doing the low battery yes it was like where's that bit it was it was her husband who came in i had he was like what was that noise i was like oh it's the it's the smoke alarm it's a low battery he's like oh it sounded like a bird i was like no no it's it's the smoke alarm he's like it sounded a lot like a bird i'm like yeah maybe you did all right but it's not a bird i do like he asks you a third time

and it's like well the third time seals all there is a bird in here yeah i am bound by the ancient mystical laws of fair creatures if you ask me three times i have to admit to the secret bird that we have here this is after he'd done an inspection of the flat as well with us there Yeah, I am curious where he fought the bird. Yeah, so if you are listening, former landlord, we didn't have a bird. We just hadn't replaced the batteries in the smoke detector. It's actually

much more detrimental to your property because one of them burns them down and it's not the bird. And as well as that, on your point, Kate, that the relief that there are in fact women and non-binary people in the audience, if anything,

it just troubles me that there's even more people listening to this and putting themselves through this all are welcome there are no no no borders or boundaries in the deserts of our mind except the limits of your own sanity and attention span so anyone is welcome to commit the time to listen to this i just i wouldn't necessarily say it's a good way to spend your time but yes we uh we're very proud of a diverse audience because what we're doing is so subtle humble and brave it attracts people of all creeds races religion and location i mean we've got people all over the world listening to this sometimes sometimes

well i think that's good to hear that though yeah a good meal segment and i think good pick-me-ups i think that is the kind of thing i needed to reinvigorate my spirit that little bit okay i think it was uh just wanted you to know that there's a lot of people out there from all different backgrounds that are really rooting for us because they either live very close to us or they've bought a board game yeah or they disagree with our views on pets and whatever it is i think we needed this today i think this was us regrouping yeah this was us getting a little bit of respite a little bit of r&r and realizing that this mistake doesn't mean that we're bad at the game well it it does it does by definition but that's not going to stop us

no we're going to keep pushing that rock up that hill absolutely this sisyphean task that we've taken on requires an audience it does it requires a bunch of people go look at that idiot pushing that rock up that hill we haven't quite understood the idea of absurdism we uh if anything it's more voyeurism it would seem that we've become into if you're not watching us play the game does it make a sound yeah that's better not we've got the mics turned on so i suppose one thing that we do have left to do is to find some common ground oh yeah and now for something nicer a little oasis in the wall it's time for some common ground i'm trying to intro the common ground i'm recording so what are we looking at today it's your common ground i do have some common ground

and what is that because today i feel like we have been unified already in the mishaps we've had in the game yeah but i feel like just something to really close this off and bring this all together as a nice round circle where we're all together in this what is your common ground we should be building confusing huge stone monuments should we now yes and when you say we do you mean us me and you or do you mean as a society as a civilization civilization okay okay i'm i'm gonna need a lot of context to this one okay basically it's a society-wide prank on future archaeologists and historians right so we are the sphinx in the middle of kent of a random bloke's head not a famous guy on like a tapir's body and we just leave that

there with no context for future generations to figure out what's going on hinges under car parks pyramids for guys that never existed you know fun stuff like that you're talking about i think gaslighting our descendants yes um i would like to know your motivation andy because that's that's kind of demented i'm gonna need some real good rationale it's fun did you just shrug did you just fucking shrug that's not an explanation okay one yes if no one has any hope of being remanded because history will be entirely fake they just focus on their own lives instead of like legacy building well how are they going to know that these are fake who how's who gonna know the future they're not they're gonna think they're

real then they are going to worry about legacy yeah but you can make a fun different one but that doesn't change people wanting a legacy they're going to think oh god all these people had legacies this guy who had his this is for us now for the builders as we'd be known so so our our generation our civilization yeah as we are now you think we should forego the idea of being remembered or having a legacy individually individually yeah because as a civilization we're going to become a funny bit yeah we're going to become a joke well it's like we've got to look after the environment for future generations or no one's going to see my giant pyramid covered in a made-up language so so what if we just littered the earth with pointless confusing

monuments with pointless crap and then in exchange for that we get what to realize that no one will remember us anyway and the future will have a more vibrant fun view of what was going on i don't think you realize how dangerous of a president you're setting for two people who are playing a stupid fucking board game that goes on forever and recording a podcast about it every week yeah i don't that's bad for is that what this is is this your silly monument if you just gave the game away is this what you're doing it's some ways yeah is this your silly monument is this your kent sphinx yeah just this is what you see this as you're trying to you're trying to create complete erasure of legacy kind of

The thing is, I was thinking, no one really knows how the pyramids were built. No, we went over this. We went over this in a previous episode. But we'd use diggers instead of slaves. So we're going to use a JCB instead of nations of slaves. And then actively cover up the build site so there's no evidence for future generations. So we're going to try and stump them. Yeah.

So then they can have fun theorizing. Yeah, but then they might just do what we have done now and go, oh they had slaves or aliens a lot of people think that yeah they do think that but it was slaves last time and i feel like they might they might go to slaves again this time that might be what they think they might that is bad yeah i don't really want to be misconstrued as someone who was all right with slavery for the sake of building silly kemp sphinx or a stonehenge or any other kind of henge really doesn't really matter what kind of henge it is

I don't want any slave henge to be built under Tesco's car park I think we can agree with that Right, okay, we're getting somewhere I like the henge Yeah, I get that you're after a henge, okay, fair enough I'd also like to take artifacts from one place

and put them in like a layer of soil sediment which doesn't match or in the wrong location Okay Okay, so if we have to settle on one. The Kent Sphinx. So it is the Kent Sphinx that you're going with.

Yeah, it's a five-eyed version of a random guy will have a raffle on the body of a tapir. Okay, okay. Will water erode it a bit so they can't age it properly. All right, okay. And then we just leave that alone for a few thousand years. To be fair, if we just sort of let global warming do its thing, the water damage

could just happen I guess there is a bit of nihilism here as well I don't know if we're going to be around as a species so maybe the next species that comes along let's confuse them so you're also anticipating an extinction event

or as going back to the stone age or anything it just means, and people will be invested in having a continuity of history but this isn't continuity this actually interrupts history it causes massive blank spots only if we lose the like documents explaining it

so are we damaging any other part of history by doing this for all we know this is exactly what happened in ancient Egypt but then the it's a prank guys got burned in the library of Alexandria so you are do you believe this it's one of

the possibilities that the pyramids were a prank andy it's important for you to understand that the pyramids were not a joke they weren't a bit no look at me the pyramids aren't a joke they're real okay you understanding i understand they're real do you understand why they're real why they're around yes and how are they around because they're big stone monuments that couldn't get destroyed how are they made maybe slavery maybe skilled craftsmen right they can both be the same thing i guess they can take skill harping on the worst part of this i am i don't want to be part of history that's remembered

as being a slave master all right not make it we're not using slaves yeah we're being misconstrued is that i want people to remember me for what i am okay so what can we bring this to what so huge stone monuments that aren't confusing um no because that's right the thing is i'm not against the confusing thing i think that's a little bit funny okay so you're fine with the destruction of history you don't want people to think it was via slavery yes i think it needs to be so small stone monuments yes not very impressive okay yes yes something not very impressive you know what i did when i was in school i used to get pictures of nicholas cage it was a particular picture of nicholas cage i remember it and i would print it off en masse in high school at the printer i would

use all my printer credits at school to print off these pictures and i would stick them to the the window of the school bus yeah and then we would also a group of us would um leave them in sort of desk drawers and stuff um and there was also someone else who would leave you actually knew um would leave uh origami swans in the desk of teachers drawers uh drawers of teachers desks rather um one doesn't fit in the other um and i think something like that something where it's it's but global it yeah it's repetitive it's constant okay and we just leave lots lots of small things okay i'm fine with that so you're fine with confusing history and archaeology i'm fine with confusing people okay that's okay you just don't want them to get the wrong message i

don't want it to look like it was nefarious okay i want them to go what what is going on here this is more puzzling puzzling yes whimsical maybe whimsical is perfect yes whimsical is what history should be okay we should get rid of all of the bad bits the problematic part we should no that's not that's not scrub history of bad things um we should sprinkle in some fun things amongst the bad so that you can acknowledge the bad happened but you can also look at these funny things and go that's a bit silly yeah what's going on there why is that happening why when did they have time to do that amongst all the bad things maybe it's not all that bad maybe there's hope So you're fine with large-scale artifacts, they just can't be too big?

Yes, yes. They can't be industrial. So you want quantity, not quality? That's right. I've always said that. Okay. I mean, look at the podcast. We've already adapted that. Okay, so we've found some common ground here. we'll destroy history but in a way that doesn't make us look bad we'll destroy history but in a

harmless way in a funny way okay it's not going to be a rager of the bad it's a prank it's a joke it's a practical joke on anyone in the future well we could all back that is that what is that what the game is i do think it's a prank by richard burke for future generations yes so we're getting into the spirit of that and we just became part of this cycle is that what's going on here is that what's inspired you i wonder what messed up richard the pyramids maybe pyramids richard berg wolf of a mate the wolf covered in confusing artifacts it's the pipeline wow that is one hell of a domino effect wow it's like the twilight 9-11 meme the what have you not seen that no is it not twilight where 9-11 inspired a band that

inspired twilight that inspired 50 shades of gray so people say it's it's a meme oh wow you've seen that one no i haven't i'm gonna have to look into that one so the so the 9-11 attacks inspired nine indirectly inspired 50 shades of gray right okay no i haven't yeah i'm gonna have to look to that one. That's a wild take. I'm also going to have to confirm that's true. If you've just made that one up to confuse me, then that's also crazy. There's a little nugget in the podcast. Well, I think

we've, wow, we've really, we've recouped our losses today. We've managed to, I think, come out the other end of this as R.E.M. would say, shiny happy people. Because there was a moment

where it looked quite dark today. It looked like we'd made such a big mistake that it might set back dozens of hours of progress but i think in reality this was a a minor setback and a learning experience and through today's somewhat out of routine episodes i think we found that our purpose is still here yeah and we're getting there and i think we can comfortably say that when it comes to the future of this we're not going anywhere this will never end this will happen this will go on forever so for anyone listening you will never hear the end of this we will keep going tune in every week yeah because when we push the boulder at the top we then need

to flip it so i play the axis and you play the commonwealth that's right there is no end for this you don't need to worry about this ending anytime soon doesn't matter how many mistakes that are made it doesn't matter how confusing or frustrating it gets this is going on forever you will always have this to listen to this is going on forever I promise it's fun that we've voluntarily constructed our own hell

we have, but they're all listening they're all listening well, I think on that note wait until next week because we'll be back then, and the week after that and the week after that etc oh, thanks for listening and stay subtle, humble and brave

and you'll hear us next time I promise you that Fare thee well and good night