War With A Mate - Episode 27: If It Bleeds, We Can Kill It

Episode Date: June 6, 2025

It’s official - the first Operation Stage (of 351 admittedly) is finally OVER. The guys make steady progress with the second Op Stage, and begin ramping up the realisation that this is a competitive game. A radically changed landscape for the second Op Stage spells trouble. What is the weather? Who goes first? And most importantly, do you remember when Olly Murs wore a hat?

don't do that to me don't ever do that to me don't gesture in my direction like that you don't like the finger guns i don't like the finger guns this is not a place for guns there's a place for peace okay we're done with the war it's over oh thank god that's it it's over guys it's peace time we found serenity in ourselves we don't need to fight i'm joking we need to fight we gots to we gots to fight we gots to welcome to war with a mate it's james here and andy and he's over there he's not here, he's not sat on my lap keep on asking keeps on rebuffing my advances

it's bad acoustics no it wouldn't be, it'd be great the echo would be all wrong the echo, yeah we need the echo just right some of the episodes do have echoes in, I've checked oh good got the echo nailed so we're all good, echo is there

echo echo oh it sounds like Andy sometimes this is the world famous podcast in which we both play spi's the campaign for north africa it's a board game and it's a really long board game no one's finished it before but we're going to finish it we're going to finish it all the way we're going to finish it real hard and no one can stop us they don't have the means they don't have the tools to stop us or the inclination or the uh they also don't know where the game is it's locked away in a secret location well it's actually it's just

to my left so if you know where i am right now you can get to it but otherwise you're done for you just you're not got a chance not a snowballs in hell no opportunity to beat us we are we're running on high because we've just played the game so hard that we finished the first operation stage not just that we're halfway through the bloody second operation stage yeah that's right people we we punched out the trucks we we did the trucks and my god did it go well i didn't lose many but i did lose i did lose some you did roll a 66 which is the worst result i did goal 66 is the highest number you can roll canonically the worst thing that can happen it's also the worst result double one snake eyes is what you want i got a snake with lots of eyes or several snakes

Yeah, so we beat up stage one. It's gone. It's in the rear view. We did it. How do you feel about that, Andy? Positive. Very good. Damn right.

We've done most of the bits now. I guess we haven't done air combat and some of the other stuff, but done an op stage, which is the repeating bit of, it's the 90% of the game. If it bleeds, we can kill it. We just beat an operation stage. We just need to do that another 350 times, and that means we finish the play scenario

and we finish the full game. Yeah. and we ran the numbers at the current rate of 25 26 episodes for us to finish one op stage that means it's only going to take us 175 years which is a reasonable project but if we take it from episode 17 which is when we really got into the nitty-gritty of this play scenario it's only going to take us 54 years gotta bring that down but yeah yeah we gotta we gotta slide that down a little bit but what it does mean now is we can take our feet off the gas a little bit and not care too much about this because it means we

just keep going. We just keep going and we try and finish it. That's keeping your foot on the gas. No, it's gone. My foot is off because I beat an offstage, Andy. So we're coasting to a stop. That's right. I beat an offstage. What more could you want? We basically beat the fucks of the game. You want a turn? Yeah, let's do a turn. Let's do a turn then. Alright, buddy.

We'll do that. Let's get the map back out. Let's do it. Alright, live session. We're going to play the game right now to completion. Live on mic. I don't have the storage space for that. I just simply don't. All the inclination. I know I've got the inclination stop leave your inclination at home andy oh i am at home oh yeah that's not gonna work then oh i'm you know i'm buzzed one because of finishing the op stage and two because all i've

eaten today is cake that's good i'm just i'm really i'm on a cake thing really loving that cake i got an iced madeira cake and it tastes like birthday cake it's great um i'm running on high i had a heel i had a high protein heel it's the black edition idris elba would be proud that i'm repping the product yeah he absolutely loves us he's not got back in touch yet because he's Probably busy filming scenes for Avengers Doomsday, I would imagine. That's why I got pushed back. Because of the Huel? Because I drank a high-protein Huel.

Oh, every time you drink one, it delays Avengers Doomsday a year. I'm a powerful man, Andy. So, to recap. Today we started off by... And it was a long play session today. We really punched some progress because of that. I started off by moving my trucks. My truck convoys.

How do you find... Because we've taken very different approaches there. I have four convoys. i have 15 yeah i have 15 convoys one of which is no longer a convoy because i've attached it to one of my groups so i moved them around it wasn't all that bad i really thought it was going to be a lot worse than it was and moving them around the the only downside of having so many convoys is that i've only got it's roughly between four and twelve trucks per convoy yes and when you roll on breakdown tables you get one of the results is 10 and it rounds up so that means if it's four

trucks and you roll 10 that's one of your four trucks if you've got a convoy of 11 trucks and you roll 10 that's two trucks that happened twice you had a lot of 12s as well i did i had some 12s as well so that was a real kick in the teeth yeah i also rolled a 33 breakdown on one of them so i I lost two trucks in that one. That was a bad one. Typically, we'd be able to fix that in the repair stage, which comes after the truck convoy stage. But it was raining.

But you can't repair things when it's raining. It was raining. Raining cats and dogs. All the animals falling from the sky, getting in the way of my wrench. It's not a euphemism. Wrenches are used to fix trucks in the desert, probably. Almost certainly.

I don't have the technical acumen to say if that's true or not. No, I'm willing to bet. this wrench is involved i put cash money on that it's a hundred percent so my my trucks they they dawdled around the desert they got to where they need to go i restocked some guys with some food some ammo a little bit of water to quench their thirst and all in all i think it went pretty spectacularly no one is dying of thirst at the moment which is great that's that's fantastic news for the guys it is it's big it's a big change the guys that i have that were starving aren't in immediate danger of starving don't need to worry about that for a little while that's good

and yeah minimal breakdown relatively minimal breakdown so at the end of that that was it the trucks were the final part of the turn to do well the upstage rather and upstage ticked off boxed off which means we moved then straight and swiftly on to the start of upstage two of turn one and you gave me initiative again i did i once again donated initiative to you so you have to go first. I don't know why. What? I don't know why you did that. You don't know why? Nope. We're just good friends. Oh, okay. I thought that's what friends do. They give each other initiative.

But I did ask you to go first. Yeah, but I'm in charge of the initiative. Yeah. So it's not really a good friend move. It's benevolent in a word. Benevolent. Beautiful, maybe. Some would say that. I would say that. No. No? Well, I would. I am, right now.

On the record, it's beautiful. You're beautiful. It sucks. I hit that note perfectly as well. did you notice that there's no amount of post-production you can do to make that sound good i'm gonna vocode it i just said there's no amount no amount i immediately name exactly i'll do it no that'll work so so i gave you initiative which means you have to go first in each stage and then i rolled the weather you rolled the weather and i can see clearly now

the rain has gone there it is oh my god he made a fucking song reference this is beautiful that means the planes are a go gonna get those t-birds up in the air so that means we get to do planes this time yes and gosh darn it not only that but because we sped through this upstage we absolutely smashed it i've already done water distribution as of you yep you've got yours fully automated i'm still doing mine mostly manual i need to copy the row in but it does all the calculations for me yes yes so you yours is yours is a few clicks yeah mine i i did it while you were dealing with some of your reorganization because that's another part of the stage we did we did reorganization which for me was just assigning some of my convoy to first

line trucks and for me it was i'd only did one bit of reorganization uh-huh long range desert group or i've entered the game yeah they have that part i didn't like no i didn't like the part where you made a long range desert group that are going to uh pester me for well until they get killed i suppose yeah but for them to be killed you have to roll a six-sided die every time you do a mission yeah and on a is it a six a six they die if they're raiding something that's like guarded yeah so there's a good chance that they get they get killed i mean yeah which i hope is what happens because i don't want them to be stealing my things or blowing up my things or interfering with my things don't want any of that going on so you can you can keep your long range

desert rangers group long range LD LDRG you can keep them over there on your side of the table nope they're going to be immediately beelining on your side of the map invisibly and then then you'll just have to wait

that side of the map is for James it's not for Andy it's for you and the long range desert group I'll share as long as they don't do anything bad oh they will they're incredibly proficient at doing bad things to you I was worried about that well in that case i'm not pleased at all no not one jot so ralph and the boys have shown up ray

fines and the boys voldemort is here he's in the room he always pops around when we're recording good guy good guy no nose of course as you may remember no notes yeah no notes no nose he lost the nose in the Hogwarts situation. Hogwarts situation. Ah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's bad.

So, yeah, the Long Range Desert group are about and, oh, shucks. We reorganized. We redistributed our supplies so they're all back where they need to be. All of our guys are equipped from all the supplies our trucks dropped off. Yep. And then from there, it was

We both flirted with the idea of doing some construction And then both decided not to We did, we did, we ran our thumb across its lips We breathed heavily on its neck And we whispered sweet nothings in its ear But we didn't do it Instead it got a restraining order We're not allowed to do construction

Yeah, because of the lack of resources We're not allowed to Turns out that advance was unwarranted And because of that, not at all reciprocated So we will not be building anything Certainly not for this op stage You're doing a little bit of training Yep, that's just ticking over.

Yep, so the training is done. We've ticked that bit off. And now, because there's no tactical shipping phase, because that's a myth, and you can't do your bombing on the coastline until turn two. Yes, I can't use the Commonwealth fleet to do stuff. And because my naval convoy arrived last offstage, because that's only once per turn,

that means we are now at aircraft. Yep. It's planning time. it's time to plan our missions and then send those planes out so that's what we're doing next time yep and you seem very enthusiastic about the planes i've got so many bombs i have north of 400 bombs it's too many bombs they are all going to fall down you're going to hear the pitter patter of little bombs all over your your things your roads your tracks your men your trucks i'm going to bomb your roads in places where that's going to make it difficult for you to drive

which is just not fair like on gravel or marsh or as the as the rule book described them as salt marshes not marshes no marshes with a b it's a small detail and i know that there's a lot of text in there and i know they didn't really have spell check back in 1978 but still i felt like it was a personal slight when i was reading through and after all this time when i was running on high i still read a typo i mean come on guys we're this far in you're putting typos in fix that putting typos in i presume that you know the rulebook only exists when i look at it so they're just kind of filling it as i go yeah it's procedurally generated it probably is i wouldn't be shocked nothing would shock me about this game at this point so we we're ready to do

airplanes we're ready to do all of the air stuff all the bombing all the all the dog fighting and my god it's it's great it's the lasso big chunk that we haven't done yet yeah and then after that it's back to movement then back to land combat and we just cycle through oh god we're gonna be done with this turn before we know it i hope so flying through flying through if it bleeds we can kill it it's bleeding it's bleeding leona lewis bleeding love she was in the x factor go on the x-factor i think she was in it no yeah you go on the x-factor yeah you go on the x-factor and then you were on the x-factor yeah and then you are in delusion yes yes that's right do you see ollie murs had to cancel the show halfway through poor guy lost his voice a little bit

that's not on i just that's his job just running the numbers here andy uh and and you've probably We've got the stats to hand. Olly Murs has cancelled, I know, at least one show because he lost his voice. How many episodes have been cancelled because of bad voice? None. None? Is it none? Because we're professionals.

That's right, that's right. That's damn right. Zero is the answer. Zero episodes have been cancelled because of a bad voice. Yeah. We are, I mean, yeah, some people would argue, oh, but he's doing it in front of a live audience. Doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter. He's richer than us. Yeah. He's got the resources to fix it. He's also doing it in front of a live audience. Not very humble. No, that's not very humble. It's definitely not subtle.

I can tell you that for free And it's not brave It's brave I wouldn't do that That's scary I'd blast it out You would not do that No way

You wouldn't sing Olly Murs song You wouldn't sing a song Cool Can't tell you Next time he gets ill He gives me a shout I'll come to it You're the stand-in

Yeah I'm his understudy You're waiting in the wings Yeah Oh I didn't realise You were Olly Murs understudy I would have treated you With slightly less respect

I'll have to learn Any of his songs You know what I reckon if I heard One of his songs I'd go There we go That's an Olly Murs earworm

but because i'm not hearing one right now cannot picture one does he wear a hat he did wear a hat yes no i remember that god he did i think that was back in the phase in like the sort of early 2010s late 2000s where wearing a hat was kind of cool it was never cool well it was then i didn't get involved of course i wasn't cool i was sort of uh like an edgy fringe of society sort of guy like you know you look like you wore a beanie no no i've never well i have worn a no i've never want a beanie no you look like a long hair beanie kid no no i did have long hair i used to have shoulder length hair yeah you never knew me back then i'm sure you put that under a beanie at some point no no no no i wanted the world to see see your long flowing locks my long flowing and probably

admittedly greasy locks uh yeah i was i was what like 13 14 and yeah you didn't you didn't know me back then you can't we didn't meet till i was it was like 18 yeah yeah where did i was legal good on you that i've been had my peepers on you wow okay right okay that's a horrible revelation there's a guy with long hair and a beanie i'm sure i'll be friends with him in four years because of how we met that doesn't make any sense that you were there's no way that you could have been observing me from afar a far more like a farce this game's a farce i'm angry again why no i'm not it's good you've been positive all day i have well i wasn't when i first got here because i spent all of last night when i

say last night i mean from about 7 p.m to 6 a.m this morning playing baldur's gate 3 what an incredible game i mean amazing game fantastic game so then i had to get a little bit of should i this morning before i came around here on the floor and yeah i did i slept on the floor i did i did i slept on the floor it was indoors though so it's fine i slept i slept on a floor indoors and that was on the back of playing a game that's so great for so long to then come here and play this. I was not in good spirits.

Minimal sleep, not enjoying what I was about to do. Lots of spreadsheets, lots of fucking on with all these stupid rules. And you know what? Once again, it wouldn't be round. Yeah. Wouldn't be round and I had a hell of a time.

We made some real progress and now I'm looking back thinking, Baldur's Gate who? What were you complaining about? Baldur's Gate who? This has all of the... That's an insane take. This has all of the creative positivity and all of the good parts of Baldur's Gate.

Emergent storytelling, interactive characters, fun story beats, interesting and exciting mechanics, good graphics. What's the best graphics there can be? Historically accurate war units from the North African campaign in World War II. there's probably a mod to put pans around the pot possibly yeah yeah I mean I'm going again off minimal sleep and cake so my diet is

it's up there it's up there a fuel and some cake apparently so that's what I'm saying I did have some ham I made some ham sandwiches there you go it's been primarily cake it's not been just cake that was me embellishing that was hyperbolic

I'm sorry I've had like four bed lights You have your buzzed light Yep, and no food Oh nice, nice, I like it We've both had a little tipple towards the end of the game We've celebrated a little bit And I think it was well earned, well deserved

You've got to celebrate finishing an upstage Absolutely, absolutely I think it's earned I was going to let off some fireworks in your garden That's fine Oh really? Yeah Well no, because I don't like fireworks

Yeah, I don't know why you've got a phobia of fire I don't have a phobia of fire I'm very very conscious of the dangers of fire You would freak out if I had a slow cooker going Well yeah that's When we lived together and you would have a slow cooker going While we were at work I don't want to come back and find that the slow cooker had cooked the house

Which it just can't Of course it can It was just gently warming some chilli Oh yeah that's not how fires start or anything Of course it is A slow build of heat over the course of 8 hours How deadly that is Into food

yeah into food what if it thought the house was food you ever think about that i mean i'm so glad we don't live together anymore use your loaf andy you're gonna end up causing a fire i'm not to be fair that socket over there that i had my charger plugged into is coming out of the wall i don't know if you've realized that all of the electrics in this place are fucked i just nearly knocked the mic off the stand oh my god yeah the electrics are a little bit haywire in this place i've noticed but thankfully i've got this massive extension pack that all of these things are definitely all safe right next to my foot with more wires than you can shake a stick at but all in all we're fine we're safe we're safe as hell oh oh oh

probably no i haven't although there is this plastic wheel that we use for a spell radius on dnd that's by my by my side um great visual storytelling for this um podcast by the way don't don't do that i told you don't do that that's don't ever make those gestures of me don't ever point those little fingers at me so i what i was going to do there is is allude to the fact that the telegram noise was coming in so it'll be interesting to see when i edit that in for this one no don't put your hand to your ear because it's quiet probably yeah i'll cut it if it's quiet that's how it works but let's let's read some let's see what we got going bust them out what are the gang saying who we got first pelly pelly what's pelly got to say hello from california

i love the podcast i'm not entirely sure how i stumbled upon it to be honest but i'm glad i did you guys are hilarious and do a great job of making an esoteric topic very enjoyable i've been listening in my car with the top down because it's california and that's what you do and also the good people of santa barbara need to follow along hello people of santa barbara this car is yours for the taking you've won a prize a competition just get in the car and drive away oh cool so we're directly endangering our listeners they can turn it down for this part it'll be fine okay but before you he has his car stolen he does have one question uh the game is clearly obsessed with historical accuracy do you think this puts the axis at an

unfair advantage they did lose after all keep it up and good luck getting through it all pelly you've also included a picture i see that pelly of uh the dashboard of your car with the with the episode everest playing and some beautiful california sunshine which as i'm looking out the window it makes me sad yeah it's raining now it's raining and the sky is so overcast it's basically nighttime beautiful love it well pelly uh you you you make a good point so when it comes to historical accuracy i don't think it puts the axis at an unfair advantage on paper because on paper doesn't look like they really had a disadvantage uh yeah the more research i'm doing it feels like sort of globally they definitely would sort of inevitably gonna lose

probably but uh the whole war on two fronts thing really did them in yeah um four friends or how many they ended up on um but when it comes to north africa like with the enigma episode for instance that like week delay in that message and a couple of other things i've like looked into it seems like it was there's multiple moments where it could have gone one of two ways oh yeah so i think i think realistically the actual conflict was down to the commanders and their like skill i think the game will be the same which is bad news because neither of us are particularly adept at commanding anything other than each other's presence and respect that's right damn right there's a lot of respect in this room so it really does come down to how we manage

that looking at airplanes for example when we were just having a look at the end of the play session there i have air superiority um massively it's not even close you've got about a third of the planes that i have yeah so when it comes to stuff like that on paper i've got it when it comes to the the ground force that i have at the start of the game i've got the superiority when the germans show up i'll still have superiority on both land and air you have supply superiority yes which i think is gonna be what keeps that in balance until the forces sort of equalize yes you've got a big boon there in the supplies and i've got i've got basically all of the the threatening aspects that i need to be able to make a really solid push so i think yeah the game is

very historically accurate you're right with that pelly but i think the the nature of that is it plays out however it does because of the decisions we make and it's mostly how we manage our supplies that's going to be the big deciding factor and after moving our trucks around now that is more apparent than ever yeah so i would say when it when it boils down to it there's i don't think it's loaded in andy's favor it's loaded in my favor so if i lose it's going to be embarrassing i think it'll sort of swing as americans get involved and your supply lines get stretched like tor and tor so i think you'll have sort of the early mid-game advantage potentially yeah i would say that's probably like swing back to mine which sort of happened in the war because

they got pushed all the way back to El Alamein, which is, in game terms, map-y. Yeah, it's all the way on your side of the game, so if I manage to push you all the way over there, functionally, I've won the game. Well, if you push me to El Alamein, you're, like,

a successful combat or two away from winning. Yeah, at that point, it's basically just a case of, can I trace back my supply lines to where I need to, and I've won. So, if I do that, if we follow that element of historical accuracy, then I've probably won. The game, if I nature of it means i probably can't do that as easy i say as easy as they did in the war

i don't think it's as likely to happen as it did in real life but i think overall when it comes to the the the lopsided nature of the game i don't think it's going to be too hard for it to swing one way or the other i think it is a few decisions away and it's also determined by dice so that's another big thing the rules could go one way or the other so that's another big factor it's decisions that we make and the fact it's a game there is always an element of chance yeah and despite like the nazis losing uh the panzers seem to be widely regarded as sort of peak tank for this era yeah when i mean when we've had a look at the the tanks and compared them for the the sort of white box scenario that we did it's definitely apparent that the panzers

will decimate most of your forces yeah i think later on i might get maybe some american tanks or some is the shermans uh i think shermans are american yeah yeah so they look like they could probably stand their own against the the panzers i think they're very limited for me so the panzers for me so i think it'll it'll be really interesting to see how that plays out at the end of this scenario the six turns that we're doing we'll have an idea as to how lopsided the first six turns are so that means we can both plan accordingly so yeah definitely at this point doesn't feel like it's sort of it's so lopsided that you're going to be on like a death march just delaying me winning i don't feels like we both have a pretty even chance no i'd be shocked if it played out

like that so i i think weirdly enough the game might be balanced and it might work but that might also be flight of fancy because no one's played the damn thing so we'll we'll shop find out but great question pelly and thanks for uh thanks for sending it in and i hope your car doesn't get stolen if anyone is still listening if you're in the car now still in the episodes playing that was a joke so you're gonna have to drive back to wherever you took it from give pelly the car back um and uh subscribe as well to the podcast because we we say all sorts of funny things so you'll you'll maybe have a chance to steal someone else's vehicle and blame it on us ben is the next person who sent in a message and ben says hi andy and james

i just listened to the ninth episode and you keep asking for listeners to mail you so this is it this is the email the subject is also it's me your one listener so ben i'm afraid we've had a few in the meantime but we really did beg didn't we we really did i've stumbled on your podcast by accident and you've kept my attention so far so good job you brave humble subtle heroes since you've made the commitment to keep on playing through this monstrous game for a decade the least i can do is listen to the first 25 episodes of two fellows rambling about it after that we'll see, I guess. No, that's very fair, Ben. Very level-headed. Of course, I've got a question about the game. What happens when you realize you made a mistake interpreting some of the rules

later on? Will you move on, leaving the board state as it is? What if it means one of you has lost or won an important battle when they shouldn't have? What if winning or losing the whole game depends on it? Anyway, I'm listening to the podcasts that are not about SPI as the campaign for North Africa as well, so it might take me a while to catch up with the latest episode, but i'm sure i'll hear from you then greetings from the netherlands ben well ben i would say first and foremost 25 episodes in oh we're barely scratching the surface so if it's going to take a little while to catch up do you take all the time in the world because this is going to go on for like i say an estimated 54 years at the current rate so there's no pressure you're not going to

miss out on the last episode don't worry your grandkids might have a chance to listen to it unfortunately most people won't be around then because this game will give us supernatural powers but other than that sort of a painting of dorian gray thing exactly we'll be trapped within the game screaming out yeah screaming out from the deserts of the game getting hotter and hotter as the mop gets more and more fucked up that's right we will get more attractive we'll get sexy so sexier sorry it really is so when it comes to rule mistakes so anyone listening at this point probably remembers that there have been a couple of rule mistakes and in this play scenario that we've got at the moment we are happy to peel it back a little bit like a stage or two in the

game to remedy that and make sure that things don't go too hectic however when we finish this scenario and we've done six full turns which is 18 op stages at that point there shouldn't really be an excuse for anything major so if we do make a mistake like that and we realize part way through we're just going to have to stick with it we're going to have to work around whatever that mistake was and the way that we've seen it is that this is the first playthrough of the game in full as far as we're aware so this is the best that the game can be played those mistakes are part of the play experience so if there's anything major and it does ultimately decide the fate of the game i don't think we'll know that until maybe we do a deep analysis at the very end and we can

look back and see how that mistake might have turned the tides but because there's so many forces of the game between supply combat organization i i think it'll be really difficult to pinpoint a mistake like that unless it's so massive that we fundamentally misunderstood a huge portion of the game yeah the other thing i think could things could throw up is like things aren't on the hexes they should be or like something slid but we are checking we are now checking unit locations before and after we move them yes when someone comes to attack a unit the player who's being attacked is checking that unit is yes in the hex that's being attacked it hasn't like shifted between sessions so i think as well as getting a better

a handle on the rules i think we're getting a better sort of system of guardrails almost to try and prevent those mistakes before they happen yeah we're acutely aware that they they have happened there will be more mistakes as well there'll be small mistakes as we go through the main game absolutely we're gonna what we're trying to do is uproot all of the big mistakes and the fundamental misunderstandings like tactical shipping segment doesn't exist so that when it does come to the main game any of those small mistakes ideally we can look at probably a turn or two after they actually happen and we realize and we'll just have to suck it up and move on so it's because of the vastness of the game and there's only two of us rather than the

recommended 10 that are playing it there's going to be stuff that slips through the cracks but we are taking our time and the reason it's going so slow for the most part is because we're getting really granular with the way we're keeping track of everything we've tried to make the game as playable as possible which what we tried to make short is the setup it's putting the pieces on the ball we've tried to really narrow that down as well as the distribution of resources so that when it comes to the decision making and the stuff that we have actual control over and it isn't just sort of ticking boxes that we can spend more time on that so that hopefully will stop stuff like that from happening as frequently but realistically we will absolutely make mistakes and i think a

worst case scenario is if like we make a mistake and realize two turns later or so and it's like such a fundamental mistake that we both view it as almost like invalidating it in theory our record keeping will be good enough that if that does like that nightmare scenario does happen yeah we can roll back to any point in time in the game that's happened yes and it would have to be monumental for us to to peel back whole a whole game turn for example or a whole op stage yeah when it comes to the main game but if we think that it does fundamentally break the game and we identify it there and then then yeah we probably would peel it back if we think it's going to ruin the next seven years of play or completely upset it or make the game unplayable because we we've

committed to finishing the game and if we find something that will stop us from doing that then we're gonna have to figure out a solution it's something that we'll have to kind of cross the bridge when we get to it i do have some concerns about specifically your supplies in terms of the full game what aspect of it well you were talking about your supplies are limited in convoys yes and also both of our like trucks are limited for instance like i've got a production table so if i need to i can put effort into getting more trucks but you're sort of stuck with what comes in i do have a worry that it works well for like 30 turns or so but there's a discrepancy in the like replenishment rates and stuff yes we did talk about that yeah a hundred turns could become

magnified so i think the individual rules actually work from what i can tell what concerns me is the like ratios and the those like calculated values over time and whether they at a certain point you like soft lock or run into a yes the attrition rate of trucks from bombardments or breakdowns or capturing might mean that the the ratio at which they're being lost compared to replenished and bearing in mind there's also a cap at how many trucks you can replenish yeah so after a certain point you could capture or destroy all of my trucks in theory and then win and then that's it and then that means i don't have a supply line and that is me over that's the game done not even to the point where we can ignore the win conditions and keep playing it means i functionally can't

play because my men can't be supplied i can't move so there's there's a lot of stuff which is up to question and because the game has never been played in its entirety there's a decent chance that we run into something like you say 30 50 70 turns in where we realize the game does actually have a soft lock function yeah which means it can't be played further but that i wouldn't say so much of a mistake in playing the game. No, that's not a mistake, it's just a concern. Yeah, I think that could just be the game is flawed. Because I think the longest

scenario is 30 to 40 turns. Yeah, I think it's 35 I want to say. So I do have a fair amount of confidence that it'll hold together. I'd like to think so. For the 30-40 turn period. It's just this sort of they're like

one degree out and then you travel far enough and then you're like you're just not at your destination as it is and if that happens i guess we won't be able to see that one degree by the time we get there we won't have realized that we've been going off course for that long because of that one small mistake if it's a battle that's won or lost and because somebody uh well the record keeping stuff should be fine we shouldn't be you know miscounting ammo or supplies or anything like that or the hexes that they're in so if it is a misunderstanding

i'm not really sure what it would be that would throw a battle i'm more thinking just a yeah that built-in limitation into we are following the rules right but the rules might not facilitate the game it's never been fully play tested it's never been finished as far as you can tell so yeah those there is a worry we run into that like sort of brick wall but if that's the case and the game eventually ends because of that then that's that's the end of the game we've played it so we'll we'll find out but you raise a very good question and uh and it's it's quite early on as well ben for you to to identify that and you'll i'm sure catch up in the meantime and hear that we have had mistakes and by the time you listen to this you'll know that we've uh we've

put in safeguards as much as we can but we're interested to see how it goes as are you i'm sure i hope so anyway and we are hoping for the main game we can build a system that one automates a lot of it but two allows us to like put the stuff on like a website or something so then hopefully if anyone is like very into the game they can look at it and be like well why has this happened like from my you made a mistake here or something well yeah our intention is to make it all public so yes when we do the main playthrough when we get into the actual game we will be sharing a lot of the the map breakdown so anytime stuff moves you'll have access to what the map looks like you'll have access to ideally all of if not just some at least some of if not

all of the spreadsheets and how they sort of function how the things look how the record keeping works so then if anybody out there is a really big war gamer or just interested in how the game works fundamentally they'll be able to have a look at that and get an idea we just really need to streamline our own play first of all before we start putting it out there and chopping and changing it, we don't want to be putting something out and then updating the way it's looked at all the time because it would just

be another confusing aspect for us we want to nail how we play the game first but then when that happens, if you guys analyse the rules spot anything, then you know that's part of the fun, you might also be able to find some flaws, but all in all we'll take it as it comes

so thank you for the question Ben, very good question Thank you very much well that was that was something really making us think about the existential nature of this and the the fact that it might not be doable but they did in the past and i think maybe that's where we need to delve now back to the past yes and i believe you got it is it a new history segment uh no sort of kind of so i've been reading the book the last two episodes yes i've jumped to the end so this is going to be from like the epilogue okay more directly tied to the long range desert group which is fitting because they've just shown up yeah and then for the rest

of the book i might jump back into some of the interesting chapters down the line or my plan is primarily to just use it for descriptions of terrain and stuff as we go forward but yes we've got a history section for this week sounds good so lay it on us okay start with a quote oh yeah as always never in our peacetime travels had we imagined that war could ever reach the enormous its empty solitudes of the inner desert walled off by sheer distance lack of water and impassable seas of sand dunes little did we dream that any of the special equipments and techniques we had evolved for long distance travel and for navigation would ever be put to serious use these boys were just trying to have a nice peaceful holiday just enjoying their winter break

and they became dangerous men who would 70 years later become the bane of my life in this game yes so in 1935 he retires from the british army okay goes home to england builds a wind tunnel in his house right okay and gets to work on that book about the formation of sand dunes and deserts the physics of blown sand and desert dunes so he's inspired by his trips goes home and builds a wind tunnel in his house and publishes a book. That should have been the end of his story. But it wasn't, because

now, as a reservist, I was recalled to the army in the autumn of 1939 and posted to East Africa. It was by pure accident of a convoy collision in the Mediterranean that I landed in Port Syed awaiting another troop ship.

Seizing the opportunity, I took the train to Cairo to look up old friends. So he arrives back in egypt because some ships crash into each other just more dumb look yeah that ends up changing the tide of war yeah but he's there and he goes and talks to some of his old mates and then gets reassigned to the area and he writes a three-page memo of all of his experiences and suggests forming an up-to-date version of the light car patrol that they had like pre-world war one okay the idea is this is another quote the idea was turned down angrily as though it

wasn't pertinent even the idea of driving out in the desert seemed to appall them as impossible insane or at least reckless at least reckless yeah i'm gonna go with that is accurate yeah so he's sort of just doing his standard stuff until waverly arrives as the commander-in-chief of the region okay and then he's like you know what i'm gonna i'm gonna send the memo again just to see see what happens and within an hour he's in a room with waverly alone being put at ease and invited to like tell him the plan okay so he proposes a small group of modernized light patrols would be created with like special equipment and volunteers using like the techniques he's learned to train them and applying all of these techniques and having the extreme ability

they'd go into the they'd enter libya by a back door that he alone knows of and then they'd they'd go and they'd track routes leading south to see if there's any movement of the italians in that deep desert area and waverly goes what ass waverly would you do if you were to find no signs of unusual activity without a thought i said how about some piracy on the high desert this guy's trying to create piracy in the desert yeah he's going full-on 180 i like it okay yeah at the word piracy waverly who's this like notoriously like stern like sort of rugged guy apparently just breaks into a huge grin and goes can you be ready in six weeks so waverly loves pirates he loves the pod uh and then uh uh ralph sort of replies and is like

of course but there'll be opposition and delay and waverly like gets a little bell out and rings it and his like chief of staff shows up and he's like arthur who's the name of the guy arthur said waverly bagnold seeks a talisman get this typed up for my signature right away to all heads of departments and branches i wish any request made by major bagnold in person to be met at once without question without question as well so he just gets like a piece of paper that's like do whatever the fuck you want he gets james bond's license to kill it's just i can do whatever the fuck i want in the desert yeah uh not a word he said don't tell anyone about this um and get a good cover story from the director of military intelligence and then

get on with it that's brilliant yeah and then they're off and running so three of his old gang are still in military service that he was exploring the desert with oh yeah the boys yeah so what rupert uh was in cairo at the time one of the guys so he's just like right i'm gonna grab him uh pat clayton was in tanjiki ink i don't tan it i don't know how to say it he's in the like a distant place uh and their other mate bill shaw uh is the curator of the palestine museum in jerusalem oh you mean indiana jones yeah uh both were extradited flown to cairo and commissioned to be captains within 48 hours oh my god waverly is just fuck yeah he's got a stamp book ready yeah um so they buy 30 trucks just from around town uh they go and steal a bunch of machine guns and

stuff from the ordinance office and when he's there uh a white one of the wireless radio operators and the doctor are just like can we join yeah sure what a wild thing to want to be part of as well yeah well speaking of which they they're like who are we going to get to like man this unit and for some reason the logical choice is new zealand farmers so the new zealand division they like ask them hey do any of you guys want to do anything secret and incredibly dangerous and like 250 guys like are like i'm in and they're like that's more than we need yeah this is meant to be kind of covert from what waverly was saying yeah um but they get the new zealanders in uh who he describes as tough self-reliant and responsible people with many

useful skills uh and their initial training is also them going into the desert initially and setting up like supply dumps in the debt so they do their initial training sort of setting up base camp getting ready to raid yeah and then once they're all ready on the same day the italian invasion begins two units of like the italians come across the border one way a unit of the long-range desert groups slip into the desert oh no the other way um that feels like the current game situation for us yeah i mean that is about to happen in the game yeah automating life yeah so they go so far west that they're between

Karatha and Uiyant these names are not wrong basically they're on the far they're on map like B or A okay yeah that's terms I understand finding no signs of unusual activity in the desert he turns

pirate he was waiting for this he was waiting to go pirate I don't think anyone looks for unusual activity I think they put on tricorn hats and rode into the desert. They didn't even fucking look. They had their eyes closed. Straight to piracy.

But finding no signs they, yeah, turn pirate and drive south and just stop burning unguarded aircraft in their aviation dumps. They interrupt a convoy carrying supplies and mail.

The mail and crew were captured. The trucks were made to disappear without a trace. So they fucked the trucks? They fucked the trucks and then buried them or something. The trucks vanished. I don't know how they did it, but these trucks have never been found. I wouldn't be surprised if these guys strapped fucking helium balloons to them

and just floated them up into the stratosphere. These guys are mad. Oh, it's some mad shit. So, early 1940, Graziani has 15 divisions, a quarter of a million men ready to fight in Libya. at the same time Britain's entire force is like very small because they didn't

want to start rallying troops in Egypt because they didn't want to provoke the Italians makes sense so he should win this like insanely and then this is

from his son about the impact of them so maybe a grain of salt from Graziani's son uh no from bagnold's son he writes the afterword in the book all right formed with astonishing speed and then the two patrols slip quietly into the desert graziani's invasion begins and he has all this information about he doesn't believe any troops of any size can operate in the deep desert but these guys start appearing i like this quote as well appearing from the desert as though from the fourth dimension what a scary way to describe it they amount these attacks deep in libya and

apparently graziani gets like paranoid and all his intelligence officers are like there can't be a force coming out of the desert and he's like well there is i swear to god they're out there so you're wrong but and he's like is it like a small group of guys or is it like a hundred thousand men he's like they can navigate the desert now i have no idea what they're capable of that causes apparently a lot of the indecision that's part of what like paralyzes graziani the fact he doesn't know how many of these men that there are that can navigate the desert and it's fear that you'll push along that top north road and they'll just pop up from the south like multiple divisions will just appear as if from the fourth dimension well yeah because if you're

in a situation where that's never been done before and then it starts happening the fear immediately is how many of them can do that yeah it's gone from this is impossible to i know it's possible how possible is it uh so yeah that's um i'll break down a bit more of like what they did specifically but that's sort of him forming the long range desert group it just seemed very informal well i mean if anything it just sounds like it's one man's passion project and it sounds like waverly is all for desert piracy yeah and bagnell is absolutely up for desert piracy and the fact that they i mean they go for the trucks they fuck the trucks they go for the airfields they are they are killing it and this really does speak to the verisimilitude of the game

because it's absolutely nailing the menacing nature of the long range desert group because when you made them in today's session yeah i immediately was worried because i know that capability their actual capability points yeah 50 yes which means they have more movement than any other unit apart from planes apart from rommel rommel's the only unit that matches that yes um and oh fuck no rommel might be 40 you know rommel might only be 40 years actually because he can be tracked down so yeah it goes to show that these people can get behind enemy lines they are scary and this whole sort of analysis paralysis situation that you've described there for Graziani I feel like I already had today when I was thinking right I've got my planes I've got

this movement ahead of me for this off stage but now those guys are in play I need to be careful what is actually in range of those guys yeah so and I think the mechanic captures them well of they appear and then the second they move they're just gone and they could be and they also they only resupply once a turn and they can do so by just driving through things so you have no concept of where they are until they appear, which mirrors that really nicely, I think. It is. It's a terrifying thought, and I think

the game does them justice in that they are such a scary force that just appear. To the point where I am actually worried about them. They're one unit, and I know for a fact they're going to cause more havoc than a lot of your guys that are out there. Well, the SAS are going to show up,

and they historically team up well together. i don't like that uh and another few things weirdly um we'll go into them over time this theater had a lot of like like rogue or private army type things like the sas or the long range desert group where they were just very experimental groups let's give a couple of like resourceful guys the leash they want and see what they do which i think because it was an unconventional theater and because there's not a huge civilian population they felt more comfortable like letting those guys off leash a little bit and it seems to have been very effective yeah it does feel like

it's very wild west it feels like letting these experimental groups form and just see how warfare plays out in such an unnatural environment for war because the fact that it's it's in such an uninhabitable space and you've got all these guys who i mean these guys in particular who've figured out a way to navigate it vocationally yeah and then you've got other groups that sort of emerge with the support of higher-ups who clearly know that it's experimental hence the you know keep it hush yeah but the fact it then pans out and you've got the likes of the sas who become and are still now renowned for being incredibly resourceful and even though the long-range desert group was dissolved after this war there's a specific detachment in the sas that sort of have a

spiritual successors that specialize in like super mobility in desert environments so that lineage has continued it's just been folded into the SAS as well you know what when we found the game I didn't

know anything about the North African campaign other than it took place my great granddad who you know what I wish I asked him more stories about it now because he was in Libya and egypt and it's like the stuff i could ask him now would be so interesting at the time i was like it's for me it was not ever part of the war that i thought was this crazy environment and i also

had no interest in sort of history or war yeah so i never asked but now i'm like god i'd love to know those stories yeah so now learning about this like i never thought i'd be interested in history in this area of the world the more fascinating it is it really is it's the first war in a desert basically in human history

because before that armies would occasionally march through it like Alexander the Great went to Siwa and like spoke to oracles and stuff there but they weren't fighting a war there just the logistical challenge of moving people through the outskirts

of the desert these guys navigate precluded conflict so this was this is like a very unique bit of world history that I was just completely unaware of. Well until we have a war underwater I don't think there's going to be something that matches

such a game changing element of fighting in such a strange environment Well that's the Battle of the Atlantic with subs and stuff Well sorry yes you're right it has happened, it does actually happen That's a fascinating thing as well yeah so it it's it's been awesome and credit to you for the the reading the fact that

you've managed to take the the works from this book and spin it into something that's digestible and also engaging for me i don't know if it's just because of the game or if you've got some knack for it but i'm enjoying it thoroughly so i'm interested to see where these guys go yeah but my my what a time what a time oh before that should we do some bonding some bonding all right I know what you're asking some eye contact some hand holding is that what we're doing here

oh he's doing the fingers alright now we need common ground because I'm going to get real angry otherwise and now for something nicer a little oasis in the war it's time for some common ground I'm trying the intro for common ground I'm recording

maybe yeah so common ground this week is my responsibility what you got for us common ground is a chance for us to put together a scenario that we we have to find a agreement on we have to come together and because we've had such a great time but you did do the whole long range desert group thing um i do feel like we need a little bit of this so i think i think we should have songs for more occasions you've got songs for birthday you got a happy birthday okay you got a happy birthday and then you've got you know christmas songs which are broader in their nature um you got a bunch

of them but we should have songs for more occasions what occasions are you thinking of like um uh like when you get married or a funeral yeah there's not really a specific sort of marriage song is there there's not no you've got like the sort of um I don't know what the piece is, but it's the, you know, the wedding song. I can't even think of it now off the top of my head. It's like the tune. But yeah, you know the one I mean. That one.

Yeah. But you want a more... I want more. I want a funeral one, for example. Like, you know, we're putting Jeff in the ground. We're putting Jeff in the ground. Jeff died because he thought he was better at sledging than he actually is We're putting Jeff in the ground

And everyone just sort of sings that at a funeral Yeah, yeah, and it sort of brings the mood up a little bit Okay Or if it's like a really sombre one, it could be like a different song It could be like a more sombre one I quite like this So, what else can we do? You've got a new job, there's a song for that

Yes, new job song Basically, everything that you can get a card for in the card factory every occasion there's also a song for it yeah so yeah uh new job or leaving a job yeah or moving house having a grandchild having a grandchild having a kid there's a good one a song for when you have a child but they just bursting into the delivery room and your family singing a song while you're trying to give birth yeah i want like a um you could have one for the when the baby comes out and get sort of introduced for the first time yes a baby should be born into the world into music sung by you know what barbershop quartet that's what we do for the the birth song oh you you have

like a specific like barbershop quartet for the ward yes yeah and yeah they're on staff they're employed you know what this is this is also creating jobs yes that actually this ties in quite nicely um there was a conversation i had yesterday with uh with some people from work about the the fact that there should be i've completely lost my train of thought completely lost my fucking train of thought that's gone that's absolutely gone don't point your fingers at me oh my god i'm gonna lose it even further uh oh sorry that was it yes so there was a guy in america um that was in uh someone from work had seen some video and some guy in america was a professional happy birthday singer okay yeah and apparently the job is and i know there's quite a

few people who listen to this that are in america and i don't know how how accurate this is in in the states how i don't imagine it's a very prevalent job but at sports events it'll be someone's birthday and they'll they'll sing happy birthday to individual people all right and that's something i hadn't heard of before and i also don't know how reliable this is it's something that was brought up fleeting in conversation but it's just come up in my head there so the fact that there are these people who have this job i just feel like in the uk we don't have that kind of culture no we're very anti i feel like we'd see someone loudly saying and i'd be like what's that guy's problem i feel like we're very anti-showmanship yes i feel like we don't like

to celebrate it would be good to put a bit of fusion that's it you know barbershop quartet when you're when your baby's born you buy a new house uh you got a duo group oh okay you know that they're they're there to you know do a bit of you know sort of leather jacket gang from like the 50s they they show up um yeah i mean most people i i understand would probably go a gang at my new house but it's like a 50s gang it's fun yes yeah it's a good it's it's it's it's friendly it's nice it's like are we only doing songs for positive occasions no well i said funeral you know yeah i don't know you must think funerals are positive uh i guess i did say that but i do like the idea of like oh you've been sentenced to court the big band has

shown up to do the you're going to prison song oh yes prosecution that's it the prosecution should have one closing arguments or if you basically already in your case the big band do a like your free song the vindication song yeah that's what you want yes you've been vindicated you've been absolved of all your crimes you were actually innocent the whole time you didn't commit fraud in fact the judge no longer announces it they hand a bit of paper to the band and then they either play the incarceration or the vindication song i like the idea that the jury have to do it actually that's a good idea oh they have to they're spending all their time in the room deliberating trying to get like their harmonies right yeah yeah they're in there and

it's like all right so first of all do we think that all of the evidence points towards the fact that this man is a murderer and also who's gonna do the tenor yeah who in here is the soprano so we need to figure out figure out which note all of us can hit yeah so they sort of harmonize a little they harmonize in both music and also in their opinion of justice yeah i think that's that's a beautiful way for the courts to operate through song i mean yeah it worked in it worked in les miserables didn't it yeah they freed france yeah it's still free from what i understand yeah right now you can go to france and everyone's like they're just out there yeah and that's because of songs they're out there in the streets they're singing they're still singing the songs

it's on broadway they sing about the i've not seen les miserables i don't think um they they sing about bread and they sing about anne hathaway and they sing about freedom maybe they sing about the fact it's it's quite a long movie it's yeah and and on stage i imagine it's longer but they have an intermission so it's allowed to be longer yeah so we're doing we're doing positive anything that's in a hallmark card now needs a new song yes and anything in the public forum yes anything where there's a jury of your peers there should also be some singing i like that like an election song just make all these events more an election song would be fantastic each each political party should go these are our policies and also we've got a good

a little ditty coming so when you know this might be too much of a diversion it might have to be its own common ground down the road each political party should have its own sing-along song it specifically has to be sing-along and if they're in power that's the national anthem yeah no i like that i like that a lot that's a good way to they should be changing national anthems more often because then if the majority of people have voted for a particular political party yeah there's no reason for you to not sing that yeah i get you know national anthem fair enough that's just kind of there i didn't get me saying that you didn't get me saying that the people didn't choose the national anthem but if you voted for this political party you've also voted for their jingle yeah so

when it comes to that you gotta sing it you gotta and it means we can put a lot of the like weird non-politics like appearance stuff that's now just eurovision exactly you've put it into a song it's all the identity politics that's now what's all about the music yeah it also i think will um it'll really hamstring stuff like the x factor you know what we said earlier leona lewis on the x factor now it's going to be a lot of people trying to position themselves to go into different verticals are you going to go for the courtroom singing or you i guess for that you'd have to be a professional juror which isn't really a job um for good reason i suppose i'm going to That's just a judge.

It's a judge without a jury. It's Judge Dredd, I guess is what that is. And I can't imagine Judge Dredd bursting into song. Carl Urban in the Judge Dredd remake, dropping a few bars, spitting bars. That might actually be a musical I watched, if they did a Dredd musical. That would be very good. I can imagine singing a lot of Korn. Not Korn-y music, but Korn the band.

I can see that happening. I think this is just a slam dunk. Yeah, no, I'm all in favour of more songs. More songs, more music out there. We want to spread joy in the world, people. That's what we want to do. That's what we're doing right now. This is sort of music.

We should have a War With A Maid song. We'll have a song for when we finish. Yes, there we go. Finishing board games is a song category. We'll have... Finishing this board game should be. Should be, yeah. It's a really long one.

Goes on for 54 years. Yeah. Oh, I'll work on a song then. so one of us gets a meal and we'll both be doing a little song at the end probably nice yeah oh well if anybody has any suggestions for the type of song we should sing or or write the song send it and we well we we won't credit you we won't credit you let's get this no we will we know we won't credit the person who's doing it we'll um uh we'll steal it we'll steal it for ourselves i was hoping to get some songs and it feels like after that we won't no no well i'll edit this bit

out this bit's just me and you this is now off the record this is a scheming yeah this is a bit of scheming stuff because we i think we probably cut like an hour and a half of each episode off from when we scheme i mean yeah we're constantly scheming we are it's just one big scheme yeah the fact that all of this is ai generated as well we're not even here yeah perfect the perfect crime but it will get us into the vault of the bank of england oh of course yeah that's what that's what this podcast is for we'll also yeah we'll be the ones who sing the interest rate has increased song and then we'll have the you're going to prison song when we get caught no we'll get the vindication song we've been vindicated and all of you listeners you're

vindicated because now you can go to bed easy knowing and i presume all of you are going to bed right now you're driving your car time for bed you can all go you can you can go back to your families you can let them know it's all going to be okay it's all going to be okay there's going to be music in the world it's going to be happy everything's all right they finished the first op stage we can rest easy we know it can be beat the game the game could be finished and their family will go what are you talking about the podcast i've been talking about constantly occasionally infrequently i've been mentioning it offhandedly sometimes i'm pretty sure i took my headphones out and it played a little bit of it before i could pause it when i came around last

week our podcast that just sounded like two people talking about thunderbirds is that the one you're talking about yeah that's the one that'll be the one well folks uh andy i've not got anything else to say to them uh stay subtle humble and brave that's the line that's the line god bless and stay safe out there watch out for those songs and if you go to prison remember there's a little waiting for you in the future that little jingle is on its way good night We'll be right back.