War With A Mate - Episode 28: Airing It Out

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

We have liftoff! The planes are finally in the air, and making an impact! Look at them go, glorious flight. From up here, the guys can get a good view of meaty history segment about the Long Range Desert Group's activities, some mail that walks the line between praise and penalising, as well as a Common Ground segment that is primed to save British entertainment.

What concerns you the most about the online environment children and youth are receiving and navigating today? Youth today are operating in an information environment that is highly selected, highly personalized. So my information world online looks completely different from yours. I'm Patricia Cossime, Ontario's Information and Privacy Commissioner and the host of Info Matters We hear from people from all walks of life about the access and privacy issues that matter most to them Listen now at ipc.on.ca

or wherever you get your podcasts welcome to war with a mate with me james me andy the podcast where me and andy practice kissing oh it's a good one today lots of kisses lots of good lip work i've been really zeroing in on my tongue stuff i know i've noticed well done No, we're joking. The only thing that we have fear is lip service for Richard Berg's creation, the Campaign for North Africa.

The best board game that is about the Campaign for North Africa that simulates the whole thing. That we're aware of. That we own, at least. Yeah. And it's, wow, what a beautiful game as well. Look at it.

Look at it in its frame. Elegant, majestic, complicated, frustrating. A work of art. But, I mean, we were talking about this. we missed it we missed it yeah we got a bit of a delay between recordings and never thought i would but i was like oh where's the i found myself the campaign for north africa i found myself longing for it yeah what's going on there stockholm syndrome yeah we keep saying it and oh god it is really kicking in it is it is i must say it's making the experience more enjoyable

what what wanting to play it uh having stockholms yeah it will do that by default i guess that's what that's for what that's why they made it that's why they made stock that's why your brain does that to make the board game better yeah well i mean we've had a pretty decent day today yeah it's been aircraft stuff planes in the air planes in the air fuck you rainstorm we actually got up there oh someone's playing a little bit of a jam session next door by the sounds of it okay hope that doesn't show up i certainly hope it's not copyrighted music not allowed to have that it won't show up these mics aren't that good they're just good enough to pick us up thank god i'll edit it out it'll just be white noise that's what this is anyway so we've both done some

bombing we did we both we planned out our air missions today and then we carried out most of them yes so the air missions were primarily bombing runs yes you bombed the third coldstream guard i did as a retribution for them attacking my guys they uh they did a number on the first libyan division and as a result they got i think we worked out based on an ammo point being four tons of explosives and ordnance they had 1200 tons of explosives dropped on what we worked out as 600 men yeah that's right we uh we managed to dish out well i managed to dish out two tons of ordnance per man somehow one toe point survived yes because they consisted of six toe points yeah which is about yeah 100 men per toe point and only 100 survived which i mean kind of surprising yeah

only um only 100 guys made it it's uh i mean to be fair with the amount of bombs i dropped should have been all of them i mean yeah and then uh i bombed your fort magdalena you did you did you bombed my airfield there yeah i sort of had a little look and i went oh there's a lot of planes there i'll bomb them they were all out busy but uh managed to damage the airfield yeah they were all out escorting my bombing runs and you snuck in there and you dropped some bombs you dropped a lot of bombs but you only took out one of the airfield capacity levels yeah my dismal dice rolling continues you you had a potential to take out i think four levels and you took out one yeah and the airfield has a max capacity of six yeah and the capacity relates to how many squadrons

can operate from there i had a it was full six sgs use six squadrons and now one of them can't function one of them won't be able to do what they need to but having said that i don't think there'd be a situation for a long time where all six would be ready to go at any given time yeah so it's not too bad for me but they are really costly to repair those levels it's 20 store points and 10 fuel points yeah it only takes one upstage to amend that damage but it's still the resource commitment i'm gonna have to put into that is it's not nothing no and also you can't like swap them out no you can't like get everyone ready and then be like this is the inactive sgsu now yeah it's just a hard limit on how many you can have operate yeah so i'm gonna have to fix that

at some point just in case i need full capacity but i'm not too worried i think all in all me decimating the third coldstream guards and you taking out a little bit of my capacity i can live with that i can sleep well tonight yeah i think you've got the best of that trade and then the last thing we ran up to uh did things slightly out of order because next set uh session air combat yeah next time we're going to be because i i had two bombing runs you had one mission it was solely committed to taking out that airfield and it again had uh underwhelming results if i do say so myself and my two bombing runs one on the cold stream guards and one on a portion of road yes along the north coast in a bit of rough terrain yes right next to you

Mersa Matruh. Yeah, which could really mess up my supply lines pretty badly. But you have scrambled some of your fighters to try and tackle this. Yes. And we've had a look at the numbers, we've revealed to each other what air force we've committed, and I've committed

25 fighters, you've committed 19? Yes. Gladiators and I think Boeheim? I can't remember. I think Hurricanes and something else you've got

yeah oh it might be hurricanes and the gladiators it is yes hurricanes and gladiators the gladiators are sort of my they're my most numerous plane at the minute the hurricanes are better though so there's 15

of them going to scramble to intercept and 4 of the hurricanes yes so some of your hurricanes are a lot more maneuverable and have a better attack air score than my fighters but your gladiators are worse so i outnumber you but you've still got a few guys in there that might be able to cinch this win and if so i'm gonna have a weaker air force that was that's the hope and

my hope was to lure your planes out so i could try and fight them because i thought i would really outnumber you but it's not really that far out i was hoping i'd have two to one yeah that i would have probably not i would have aborted the scramble mission maybe if i'd known but well if i'd been that outnumbered yes it was it yeah i think it's fairly evenly matched i think it can go one way or the other with this yeah i mean it might come down to pilots and dice rolls but it's not going to be like one person i think it feels pretty even yeah which will be fun to see how the the dogfight actually plays out yeah because we've got the fighters in there it'll hopefully build a little bit of immersive

storytelling, or emergent storytelling when we figure out how these pilots do. How many kills they get, how many of them are aces, and how many of them just don't make it. Don't make it home. I think that's going to be a lot of them. I think it's going to be a lot of yours. And probably quite a few of mine as well.

So that's coming up next time. That'll be a hell of a lot of fun. And my bombing run will go off, and there's a very high chance that I destroy that portion of road. Yeah, I think the only way it doesn't get destroyed is if I break your fighter screen and, like, destroy a bunch of bombers before. Yes, but even if you don't and all my bombs drop, there is still a small chance that I don't destroy the road. I think there's four die results that can result, no, five die results.

They can, yeah. Oh no, it's six. It's 11 to 16. So there's six results in which I fail to destroy that road. but if i'm successful then it works out well and there's a reason i picked road instead of railroad oh go on railroad is a lot easier to repair than road oh is it for railroad you just need a unit with engineering capacity and it's something like a single store point or something crazy whereas road is um you need to have a specific type of engineering unit and it's a lot more costly right yeah so you need more stores so that's why i went for road yeah railroad would break a decent line of travel for you but i think you'd fix it real quick yeah also i guess the

railroad's pretty specialist it's like limited to two stocking points per turn yeah whereas the road is all my trucks my like big divisions moving up from alexandria yeah everything everything i was tempted to try and cut off your fourth indian division yes i ended up going behind them and bobbing it behind i figured we'll let them come through i'll just take them out the old-fashioned way. By failing to hit them with barrages and then missing them in close quarters combat as well. A classic. Yep, that's how

it goes. But I've enjoyed it. The bombing mission weren't as complicated to figure out as I thought they'd be. Actually very simple. It's just how many bombing points do you have and then a table. Yeah. Which is pretty much everything. It all boils down to a simple table. It's just

figuring out how you roll on that table and all the stuff that affects it before that point. That's where it gets complicated. But all in all not really that bad and then the dogfight should be again straightforward in their individual essence it's just a case of having to go through the sheer volume of these fighters 25 on 19 uh it'll be fun to see how it plays out yeah i'm looking forward to it because it seems one of the more dynamic almost or more there's opportunity for as you say like a bit of like narrative building where we can get fighter races and stuff yeah we can have pilots that stand out and we can

follow their their journey through the campaign which will be a lot of fun i want to see who stands out what historical figures we concoct ourselves yeah we're talking about giving some of them names if they do particularly well yeah which will be good i was surprised by how effective the bombing on the the coldstream guard was i know you dropped a lot of bombs bad 396 yeah but when i was sort of looking at the table i thought that was one of the like less effective of options you can have for bombing bombing uh ground units yeah yeah yeah um if you go for like roads for example you're a lot more likely to destroy roads because it's binary it's either you destroy them or you don't whereas with ground units it takes off a certain amount of toe points

but once you've committed a certain amount of bombs there's no longer a chance to miss you at least get one and i pushed my bombs the amount of bombs the sheer volume meant that the minimum i would have done is four up to a maximum of six and i ended up getting five yeah so smack bang in the middle but the die roll it was still in the upper echelon of the die rolls that i needed to get and it worked out it worked charm that's what they get for messing with my libyans and i might not be able to retreat them because we need to double check but i think they might be pinned as a result of the bombing we do have to check yes because the the bombardment i mean there's only one two point left i'd be shocked if that didn't mean that they're pinned i would i would

expect them to be pinned so i've took out a good portion of those guys and i think if they're pinned they can't retreat if they're pinned i don't think they can yeah which means there's just one toe point of guys waiting essentially to be captured at best if it's any consolation i don't think i'm going to go for them oh being candid i don't think that i don't think that's going to happen are you just happy to sort of make them ineffective and let them sort of run around well at this point i'm thinking are you really going to commit them to a fight because charge of the light brigade uh charge the thin stream yeah i don't think you should do that i think you should just send them off home no send them packing so don't know why that gets any credit what the

charge of the light brigade yeah like it gets presented as like heroic it just seems like a suicide thing well it is yeah that's exactly what it is it's hoping that you get some sort of result from it but it is more or less a suicide run i know he went for one of your supply dumps i was thinking about supply dump bombing as well the reason i didn't is because they're relatively quick to set back up relatively quick to set back up and also the tables you need to commit a lot of bombs to really hit something significant 75 is the most you can do and for that you need to commit i think it's essentially the highest number of bombs the highest bracket of bombs i think it's i think it might be 471 no yeah i think you're right 471 plus and even then you

still need to roll i think it's 61 to 66 in order to take off 75 although i am fit because like i actually couldn't get into the because i used all my bombers on that are fitted at the minute on my run and got 381 yes so that's the sort of sense of how much bombing i split is required for with mine i split it and i had 396 on the cold stream guards and i had 207 i think it was on the road yeah and that's not all my bombs either oh yeah did you not launch everything that was fed uh no i didn't no i kept them back knowing that there was a chance that they could all be intercepted and things could go completely askew yeah and also some of them were fighter bombers and i didn't want to use those yet i want to maybe read over a little bit as to how best to

use them and i didn't want to commit everything for the sake of it i wanted to keep them back and figure out if there's a more niche way i also wanted to see how effective the bombing actually plays out and it turns out very if you commit the right stuff but i want to have a look at dive bombing and strafing i want to see if i can take out some of your supply lines cause some real havoc on those trucks there's also planes that can bomb and strafe at the same time they like unload their bombs and then strafe run yes yes uh so i want to have a look at that so i've kept some back and no night missions for me for us i don't think no no i've got the capacity to do night missions but i don't think i want to do that just yet with this being the practice run

i wanted to do it sort of sequentially and almost have a go at every little bit piecemeal and then have a solid idea maybe going into turn two or three even and figure out how it looks when it's all working in concert yeah but i'm very pleased with that because that was surprisingly fun yeah and the dogfights i think will be unsurprisingly fun i think the dogfights are just going to be a great time and it's the thing i've been most looking forward to through through this whole setup that and and barrage i've really loved barrage for some reason there's just something about that that really really tickles my pickle yeah i think that barrage is adds a nice bit of depth to what might otherwise be quite a flat combat system yeah it allowing your units to

pin other units beforehand it gives that immediate threat of you're committing a lot of forces but they could get shut down before the fight even starts yeah and you're committing forces but if the if you use your artillery well and like pin their infantry then suddenly their armor is completely ineffective and if we've learned anything from your history segments it's that it just takes potluck for war to turn and completely change even if the numbers are on your side yes uh a bit of paperwork getting lost in a file clerk's room for a week changes the fate of the world which is how i like to see those rules manifesting in my head where it's it's just someone's someone's decision or indecision has then caused a complete shift in the outcome

of that battle yeah or like when we get to the plane bit it's like oh a guy got a really good night's sleep so he's killed three other planes like yeah i'm i mean you took out two of my planes that were on the ground yes and it'll be it'll be fun to see how stuff like that manifests where maybe i've got a plane or a pilot who's done particularly well and i think i'm going to assign them to their own sort of plane it says you don't have to keep them assigned to a specific plane but i think where i can i'll try and do that just to keep a bit of a through line bit of a story ace has his favorite his favorite craft yeah and it'll be fun to see if that gets bombed at some point in the future and then we've lost this this thing that's been causing havoc throughout the war

it'll also be interesting because they require time to retrain on different planes yes so there might be a point where we get to where it's like he's in a shitty plane but he's a level five pilot so you don't want to spend the time and have him out of action for like i think it's two turns i think it is yeah like train him to use a new type of plane so you've got a bunch like state-of-the-art stuff and then like the red baron well yeah because i i got some good planes later on some of the german crafts i think are your like best ones yeah so when when when we play the full campaign and we get the the german well i get the germans uh it'll be interesting to see if i start because you can't swap the italians to the germans so they they sort of are immiscible

forces so they can't move around but it'll be fun to see if we get say a fighter pilot who's really really proficient in a less effective craft and then weighing up the gambit of do i swap him to one of the really good planes take him out of action a little bit but now he's in this this hell machine yeah is that worth the cost if a pilot gets good enough maybe it is so i'm excited for all of that to emerge i think that more than anything else will have a a real sense of satisfaction for me when that plays out excited for that very excited for that but positive feelings of the game overall still we missed the fucking thing yeah we were longing to play it something's gone horribly right i think it's gone from like going through

rules on the first like setting everything up just felt like interminable yeah like is this forever is this the full 1500 hours like not understanding our experience of the first 30 i mean if you were sit back and listen to the first sort of nine or so episodes we're having a great time but it's not because of the game no we're not talking about the game at all if anything we're sort of like yeah nauseous about the idea of playing the game and just psyching ourselves up to do it and then there's a period where we're setting the game up and trying to figure out how we'll play it and now that we're playing it i'm actually finding myself enjoying it and thinking now how to beat you rather than how to actually play the game yes in the physical logistical sense

stuff down yeah so that's that's been a fun transition and i'm wondering if it's going to have an ebb and flow of in you know five months time where we're now sick of the game again yeah and then it'll it'll perk back up i feel like we also might get the uh alternating at certain points where it's like oh you've destroyed like an entire thing with a lucky roll or like vice versa and one of us was like this game is bullshit and the other one's like i actually think it's kind of good i mean yeah i would have had a very different feel i think at the moment if you took out most of that airfield yeah because then i'd be thinking right that's a source of most of my fighters yeah are in that area so if they are now hamstrung and can't start launching

from there my air superiority which is boasted by the italians during that period is no longer a thing yeah that's what i was going for with that attack because i noticed they're all there's a lot of sgs use so if i can take them out you it won't knock everything out but fighters have much more limited range yes so you even need to move them forward and expose them or they're just less effective if they're flying off maps like a or b and fort magdalena i think is tied for my most eastern airfield yeah which means that if i push them any further back it's really going to start limiting who they can screen on bombing runs yeah because the bombers have a way better range but if i'm not attaching fighters to them then they go near your airfields which i did with the

the bombing run on mercer matruh yeah if i don't have fighters to protect them i don't really think i'm going to risk my huge swathes of bombers if i know that they're going to get absolutely torn apart by your fighters yeah it's just not really worth that risk so i'm gonna i'm gonna have to measure that up and it'll all be based on next week's dogfight yeah that will determine a lot of how that pans out pans out panzer hey there it is a bit of wordplay they love it almost well if you force it it sounds like wordplay there you go that's it's how all good artists go you just got to force it don't worry about the groove don't find yourself in there just make it happen just keep bashing your head against the wall yeah just tell people it's happening and

maybe some of them will believe you maybe some of them won't but i suppose um is there anything else that you've got to say about today uh no fun session enjoyed the air rules relatively simple and we didn't run into any rule stuff or confusing addenda yeah we we had a we actually had a pretty straight run of rule checks there were like four or five things we had to check for the bombing runs how they work we did a bit of uh flack and anti-air oh we did sorry yes we did um my garrison at fort magdalena had one rating for anti-air and you multiply that by the toe which is it's only two toe of um of anti-air in fort magdalena which meant i had the lowest rule on the table and i had a very small chance to destroy your fighters it was a 65 or 66 on the

dice yeah would have done that and i i got i think it was like 30 something yeah so it didn't pan out but it was good to give it a go used a bit of ammunition in the process and i'll also now have to commit some stores with my trucks this off stage if i want that airfield to be back up and ship shape so another thing actually come to think of it is now that we've actually used the fighters the bombers all the aircraft we'll be able to see how costly it is to refit them yes and how how fully stocked our airfields are how often we'll be able to do that without fueling them again i do now you mentioned that that is a bit of a panic i've had where i'm like i've got pretty nice like supply route sorted but it's not really taking into account airfields yeah neither is mine

my my blind panic was all about getting food to people yeah so now that i've got that pinned down i think i'm um i'm feeling a little bit anxious because my air superiority falls apart if the planes can't fucking take off yeah but i'm i'm excited to try and cross that bridge now that i'm more or less at it oh yeah but overall yeah air combat i'm in the space that i was most excited for and when that wraps up which i mean maybe i think next week we'll probably wrap it up i think we'll get through the dog fight and probably not much more just because it'll be the first time checking rules and conferring and doing it for the first time uh because it's each plane fights one-to-one so we'll be doing 22 dogfights it'll be the most rolls we've done in a single play

session by far everything we've rolled so far bro yeah yeah combined yeah comfortably come to think of it so i'm yeah very hyped for that and then after that the rest of the op stage so movement combat trucks lather and repeat yeah it's it's really not feeling as overwhelming as it did now it just feels like a very very long road but it doesn't feel like one that we can't navigate yeah it is an actual road it's not yeah it's a road it's not just open desert yeah we're with a long-range desert group i wish yeah we can compare ourselves to them i think that's a fair comparison yeah we're equally brave well think what they did they they in their spare time committed to trying to explore the desert and make it a viable area to traverse yeah and we're doing the

same with this game no one has played no one's played the game to completion no one's gonna think it can be done who knows how this will weirdly synchronicity all means this applies to a war in 10 years yeah when war breaks out and we're out there and we go hang on a minute so this is just the campaign for north africa which i suppose the parallel for that would be the actual campaign for north africa the war that we're playing the game of so hopefully that doesn't happen i don't want to fight in the desert i don't want to fight at all really we'll be fighting in the water wars but it may not be in the desert that's true the great resource war that's coming yes i'll be uh interested to see how that pans out we'll be we'll be as thirsty as the the men

on my side of the map yeah yeah i'm not looking forward to that no but hey you know needs must well to brighter things eh to brighter things maybe maybe we'll check the the mailbox because i can hear that telegram blaring away in my ear that always cheers us up it does it does nice bit of nice bit of upbeat correspondence and i've yeah i'm seeing the email seeing the email that we've got here we've got an email from nicholas um titled an email hi there hi there let me just say this may be the worst least thought out terrible podcast i've ever listened to thanks nick and yes i can't help but root for you to finish the game all 100 and whatever turns started listening from the first episode good place to start just about to finish

episode 14 this is a this is generally a heroic feat for the ages and you will be immortal heroes if you actually finish a game i wish you willpower to finish and patience to avoid offering one another godspeed you magnificent bastards subtly bravely and humbly nicholas well nicholas uh you really had us in the first half there i thought we received our first bit of hate mail uh that would have been brutal we're on high and then we just got taken down a bit especially i mean to be fair if the guy's listening from start and he's only up to episode 14 we've only just started to find our feet then well we're not i was actually i think 15 is where we were like we'll put some segments and some structure in so it's like you went episode one's a good place this far

if you're recommending the podcast to someone of a low tolerance for nonsense then don't listen 15 is probably a good place to start yeah 15 is where we actually became a little bit more coherent and started to treat this as a podcast about a board game rather than just an open mic to talk about anything that we want to unrelated whether it's ben weevils or michael mcintyre i i also i'm not sure nicholas because clearly you've come into this with a little bit of cheekiness um you say here this is generally a heroic feat and i do have to correct you on that i think you mean genuinely and i i bring this up in he's clearly done this to you well it's only episode 18 that i bring that up i think oh is it my gripes about the english language being abused

so nicholas when you get to that and when you get to this especially yeah i bone to pick with you that's right not letting that one go but you know as i say you add us in that first half but it turned round and we thank you for the encouragement because even though we're starting to enjoy the game, it's nice to know that people are going through that experience of hearing us terrified and angry, mostly me, angry, all the way

to the serenity that we found here. So we will have that willpower to finish and I don't think we're even that angry at each other yet because the stakes are still fairly low for the scenario. It's just akin to Bueno. It's just akin to Bueno. But when the full game rolls round then the gloves are off.

it becomes real hectic, it becomes an actual war I'm going to stop talking to you outside the game after that oh yeah, I'm not going to be talking to you, I'm not playing D&D anymore it's on a short hiatus till we finish the game a brief hiatus we can play it in the afterlife, that sounds like a good idea

well, thanks Nick yeah and next up, you've got one there from oh, it's a repeat mail yep this one's from Sean and the the subject is the poncho guy is back with an actual question oh you started a movement

sean oh there we go hey fellas uh i'm still listening and still loving the show do you all uh foresee yourselves diving into any other war games now that you're all certified war gamers to yours love it thank you thank you uh there's plenty out there that are really cool and a lot more accessible that won't drain the life out of you also andy as a dnd player you should know to toss those traitorous dice in dice jail and grab a new set to improve your terrible rolls. Keep on fucking those trucks, boys.

Thanks for the email, Sean. Just to address the traitorous dice issue first, I would love to do that, but this game that comes with 16,000 pieces, five maps, and seven rulebooks, and lasts

1,500 hours for ten players, has three dice in the box, and only one big one and we said we were going to do it with the dice from the box which means i have no options i can't jail the dice as much as i want to yeah we're trying to keep it as as close to uh as close to the actual game as possible the the verisimilitude needs to be maintained and yeah we get three dice and there's a little point of contention here because i've been everywhere i've been looking up stuff about the game people seem to be referring to having a

single six-sided die which can't be right because it actually says in the rule book that it contains two yeah but we've got three yeah and the thing is it's not like whoever we've bought this from because the game is fully packaged original the only thing that came additional was some printed out addenda from 2007 yeah but the the fact there's three dice but they're all uniform they're all the same dice i wonder if some box has got one dice and some box has got three dice and they were meant to have two you know what i wouldn't be shocked i wouldn't be shocked if somewhere along the production line the the dice fell off and then people were just randomly throwing them into the boxes haphazardly and some got more some got less some got none

yeah so we're trying to commit to it which is why andy's cursed yeah but yeah i'd love to jail him but uh can't you have a dice jail as well i have a dice jail on a dice dunce chair you do you do yeah you've got a lot of dice related accessories because you've had ways of punishing my dice you've had a history of bad dice rolls in dnd sometimes so uh yeah so we've got we've also got a shit ton of dice we've got i've got a full it's like a ziploc it's like a handbag and yeah it's like a makeup bag yeah and it's full to the brim of dice yeah you've got a coffin full of dice yes you've got a little uh little coffin i've got i've also got a sort of um like a cardboard treasure chest full of dice we've got so many dice for dnd styled differently some that i think are inherently lucky

and blessed some that are cursed definitely a couple but but we can't use them we can't um and i guess back to the the main point sean about would we dive into any of the war games i guess first and foremost we're a little busy a little bit preoccupied with this one and also we we don't have uh an interest so to speak in in war games so before this we weren't thinking well let's jump into a war game this one looks hard yeah this wasn't uh how do we get into war games that we've messed up but i know we might play some side stuff at some point down the line to help maintain our sanity but it'll be this is the primary thing throughout well we've got we've got a few waxings of additional projects which are

under development which we might look at rolling out sometime in the future. Just some stuff that's adjacent to it. Try to add a little bit to our repertoire and also amongst that another thing I suppose to update now merch. I'm still looking at

getting that perfected because we designed some people were asking about it we put together the designs we found a place that will produce them but the shipping is just absolutely egregious was like double the price of the items which is outrageous yeah it was like we because we brought down the pricing to the minimum that the the store would allow us but the shipping was just so egregious you'd be paying it was something like i think it worked like four dollars fifty for a mug

but then the shipping was like 25 dollars i remember one of them it was like 27 quid for a jumper and then 34 quid for the shipping yeah which is feels bad so we're slowly working towards of solution for you guys yes we are we are delving into that we just don't want to be shilling out something that you have to pay an arm and a leg for just to get it there so yeah we've got that we've got um yeah some of the bits and pieces in the works but when it comes to other war games i unfortunately think when it comes to anything of this scale not that there is anything else to this scale we'll probably be sticking with the campaign for north africa but other board games who knows we might you've wanted to play a round of risky rats at some point rap rat rap

rat yeah i want to play rap rat ever since cam sandwich popped out in this tournament i've loved the idea of playing that so maybe not war games but we will be delving into some other games um but i'm sure there are much better uh a lot more fun war games to play out there and yeah we'll look into them and maybe discuss them a little bit but i don't think we've got the time to play them we're just we're just too busy and it took us long enough to get this one down yeah to be fair when we found out about it we really we really dived in the last thing i need is to be like oh i'm gonna do this and then it to be like oh no that's a rule from like the war in the pacific or some other game oh god can you imagine oh the the cross game confusion would be

insane and also oh i can imagine as well getting the pieces mixed up at some point as well yeah so unfortunately i don't think that will happen however we are very here to happy to hear from you again sean and um and i hope that you you've managed to talk your partner around into allowing you to wear a poncho because i mean they're beautiful poncho day is on the way remember yeah next year no two years i think two years from now it's 2027 yes i'll have to double check on my calendar yes but yeah keep uh keep your eye out for that so as always some grand correspondence if you want to send any in info at war with a mate.co.uk and we've also got an instagram which is war with a mate fire a message on there um we also take carry a pigeon and um if you do a smoke

signal we might catch it if it's during recording and uh um anyone who can communicate telepathically through dreams don't yeah don't do that that's that's kind of fucking weird um that's that's sort of breaking the the parasocial wall i don't think you're allowed to do that we're not that close so don't go my dreams bad fandom well thank you all and uh i suppose now it's it's time to to travel back again and i've got no idea what you've got in store for me for the history this week in in andy's history corner oh but i'm excited lay it on me what we got we're moving from uh libyan sands uh obscure book i ended up reading to the long range desert group themselves who I intended to do several weeks ago

before I got distracted. I mean, it was a relevant distraction. Yeah. So, start us off with a quote. The problem is to make yourself so much master over the appalling difficulties of nature, heat first, cold, rain fatigue, that overcoming these,

you yet have physical energy and mental resilience to deal with the greater objective, winning the war. That feels very apt. Yes, a quote from an unnamed member of the Long Range Desert Group You've got to keep them secret Yep And I hadn't told you this yet, but their unofficial motto

I'm not going to do the Latin, but it's Not by strength, but by guile Oh, I like that a lot Yes That very much fits their germ Yes So, just a bit of an overview of their activities Not necessarily in chronological order, but just to give you a sense of it

First off, it was a very unique unit at the time for a multitude of reasons but one of them is the commonwealth at this time organized units by the country of origin right so like i've got the indian division the south africans australians they would all be separate okay and in very rare cases a british officer would be in charge of those colonial units but even that was quite rare whereas in contrast the long range desert group ended up being made of new zealanders south africans indians and brits so it was a bit of a melting pot of a unit compared to the rest of the british army at the time right so they just mix and match depending on who was best suited yeah so it started off with new zealanders and

then they brought in brits and south african and rhodesians and then indians um so yeah it's a another unique element of it one of their primary missions though is something called the road watch okay so in november 1941 they move uh to siwa as their base of operations ah the oasis yeah i know it well and from there the entire time they're in siwa siwa they would watch the road between tripoli and benghazi which is 1100 kilometers of deep desert away from siwa yeah i mean on the map they are the other ends of one another one is the very top of the map one is the very bottom head and one's the very edge of i think d and one's a yes yeah yeah yeah so they do this in free rotations so a patrol would go out there which would take 10 days they'd relieve a group

and have a 10-day watch on the road and then be relieved after 10 days and make the 10-day journey back to siwa so at any one time there were three patrols somewhere out there somewhere out there as part of this rotation so they'd get there this is five miles from the marble arch okay so yeah very far over yeah and they'd hide their vehicles a couple of miles from the site of the watch and then each day before dawn two guys would like sneakily make their way camouflage towards the road i think within a couple hundred meters so very close then relative and they'd watch the they'd watch the road and make note of any units like vehicles moving down supplies and they'd stay there all day making notes of it and radio them back so the allies knew

everything coming out of tunisia and tripoli towards benghazi okay they had eyes on it all which i guess makes sense as to why you get to see my movements because you've you've got eyes realistically the whole time yeah and at night they'd move closer to within 30 meters of the road and continue observation identifying vehicles by their silhouettes or the noise of the engines oh god so so impressive yeah one of the long range desert group describes being on that watch as you'd look at your watch at 11 p.m you'd look at it again four hours later and it would be 11 15 that's just but shockingly despite close calls including once where the guys the germans made camp around the two guys who were hiding there at night oh god that's scary despite all of this

in the like three years they were running this they didn't lose a single man or vehicle either to the desert or the germans i'm not sure which is the one i'm more impressed that they managed to evade death at the hands of it's insane that they um manage it um but things didn't always go right for the long range desert group of course um on new year's eve 1941 a patrol ran into the auto safari unit of the italians who were a similar idea although less effective they ran into in in the gelb shelf valley uh one long-range desert group men was killed three were captured and three of their trucks were destroyed the italians lost five three were wounded and one truck was abandoned and the long-range desert group patrol lost their rations headgear and

footwear in the initial attack losing footwear seems like maybe the most damning part of that oh yeah because the vehicles were fucked so the four survivors of the long range desert group set off on foot with a two gallon uh container of water and a jam of jar between them intending to walk 290 miles to the nearest allied camp through the desert led by a guy called ronald joseph moore who was a kiwi uh and three other guardsmen john easton alexander winchester and alfred teague they ended up having to leave alfred teague behind on the fifth day after he convinced them to leave um because he was suffering internal injuries oh god so they leave him behind with his share of water but they didn't realize at the time the container he used was like poisoned the water

so he couldn't drink that water oh god yeah so the other three continue the next day they get caught in a sandstorm oh they do find shelter but there's no food or water there only motor oil so they bathe their feet in motor oil to toughen them up god that's so metal yeah and then continue on the next day now at this point um teague is continuing just much slower and he arrives at this shelter which again no food or water um but he does light a fire uh to keep warm and just like complete chance a french patrol sees it and so he gets picked up oh god for all yeah i was gonna say how do they know this happened because this man dies, I presume, but gets saved.

Yeah, and he tells them about the other guys and French planes go looking for them, but there's no tracks because of the sandstorm, so it's just they're east of here somewhere. Yeah, needle in a haystack. Yeah. A plane does miraculously spot them and drops food and a bottle of lemonade for them.

They don't see them. food and when the bottle hits the ground the cork bounces out and all but half an inch of the lemonade disappears into the sand no so they're somehow still going on the 12th day john and alex over the course of day collapse into the sand moore just moore keeps going the sort of agreement seems to be like we're not going to slow anyone down it is it is a case of some men left behind yeah um so this they've gone 210 miles across desert with limited water a jar of jam and a little bit of lemonade so eventually they get found and this is where this gets crazy to me uh you know john easton that i mentioned yeah he did that march with a bullet wound in his throat

oh what yeah they rescue him they manage to give him a few drops of like sweetened tea which he gets down he comments i don't usually take sugar with my tea with a smile and die shortly afterwards oh just again just metal lines just yeah it's like something from a film where you'd go that's not believable yeah so incredible last words yeah um they find alex winchester next semi-delirious but he's able to make a full recovery moore continued on had continued on further ahead he waved at the rescuers as they approached but continued walking he was described as clear-headed and normal despite the shrapnel in his foot which he'd done that walk on how i don't know what's wrong with these people he had shrapnel in his foot

and then he's described when they rescue him as he's said to have been slightly annoyed to have been stopped so close to his objective because he believed himself capable of doing the remaining walk i believe him i 100 believe him he suffered no ill effects afterwards what do you mean no will affect the man's got shrapnel on his foot he's just walked he's barefoot as well yeah because they lost all their foot gear yeah yeah so he's barefoot with shrapnel in yeah i mean the sand getting in there that must be yeah just i mean i mean being uncomfortable is probably the least thing they don't need to worry about being uncomfortable of course they're uncomfortable but it's just i i can't fathom now he walked and he was annoyed when he got picked up he's like

you've ruined my like challenge to myself i mean i kind of get that like if you got that far it's like well i want to do the last bit as well but i mean i i 100 believe him he could have done it oh yeah uh and he got the distinguished conduct medal for that of course and was mentioned in dispatches of course the man's a fucking legend because i found a a libyan newspaper not a libyan a newspaper from Australia that was describing all this and it's just

all of it is so casual about what happened like just the fact he's like no I'm gonna keep going and he's annoyed and it's it's insane so that's some of the guys in the long range desert group and that's a fuck up of theirs

yeah that's them having a fuck up but then turning around and going right well i guess now we now we walk it off in the most literal sense possible yeah that quote about like mastering the elements to continue fight a war they're just living that like that doesn't even sound like mastering the elements though that's just fuck the elements we're walking instead yeah barefoot with shrapnel in the desert yeah because during the day as well i mean that sounds gotta be fucking toasty oh yeah so i wonder if maybe that helps like maybe calluses over the wounds or i don't know and the fact one of them did 12 days with a bullet wound in his neck

but yeah he had a little bit of lemonade so you know he's all good just insane so yeah i'll do a bit about their raiding and stuff next time but that's just a bit more of a characterizing the long range desert group i think i respect the long range desert group now too much to try and engage them in comp not that i can't really engage them in combat in the game yeah but i i sort of don't i revere them to the point where i don't really want to try and tackle them because they're just too scary and too impressive i mean i'd never heard of them before this game it's now a hundred percent clear why they have their own rules yeah they're borderline unbelievable yeah they they sound like a made-up group i mean and some of the stuff they get up to in the raids

is insane like but uh yeah that's what they get up to when things go bad and they have to walk back yeah with a bloody bullet wound in his throat as well it's just incredible um but you've got that and then you've got uh it was monty as well wasn't it you got shot in the lung yeah like these people it's one of those things where i just presume like if i got shot in a non-vital area and i was out there i'd probably be like right i'm dead i'm just gonna i'm gonna have to just give up here certainly trying to go home yeah i'm over yeah and if someone shows up to rescue me i think my pride completely dissolves yeah on site and i just get in the car yeah i'm certainly not annoyed but the thing is as well it describes it as being clear-headed this isn't some guy who's

suffering the delusions of heat stroke or something this is a guy who set off to get back and was nearly there just just let me go it's like those people in marathons who they get towards the end they're just you see them sort of like falling over but they just they power on through i guess it's that but dialed up to 11 it's just complete mind over body oh that yeah uh this this i've just it's crazy how many insanely impressive people yeah and i've just been looking at one small thing so far really like we did the graziani and the monty and then i looked at the long range desert group and that's like oh ralph bagnell and then mua here and it's like this is one tiny group relative to the overall yeah and i i get

that these are a particularly impressive group in general but even so it just really does not it boggles the brain i mean yeah i've part of the the fun of this as well as learning about the the people behind the game not in terms of richard berg yeah um the people who the pieces represent oh yeah so finding out more about that i've got no doubt that there's probably some incredible stories between every single unit in there but it's just a case of how many of them are documented yeah and how far we can get to but it just seems to be anywhere you you dig a bit there's it's a rich vein yeah the the desert is vast and it has many treasures buried in it outstanding outstanding oh i'm sort of in awe at these people but they they are going to

caused real havoc for me so i need to temper that a little bit i need to i need to remember that it's not it's not all good it's not all good for james not for you not for poor james i'm excited to get them moving i'm excited to run away from them excited for rommel to show up in the road runner his way around them all because it also when i was reading it i was like oh cool i've got like an invisibility thing the thing you don't think of is the range because yeah the sheer distance they need to supply once a turn in theory they can do that six upstages apart which, after what we've learned about them travelling the desert, makes sense

Yeah, give them a little drab of lemonade and they're fine Yeah, they've made a thing so their car doesn't, their radiator refills itself. Yeah, all you need to do is give them a drab of lemonade, blow their foot off take away their shoes, shoot them in the throat and they're on their way Oh, also

just the losses for that raid as well, by the way the Italians took more severe losses there they triggered the ambush imagine ambushing a group and they just walk off afterwards yeah but they've got no shoes and we've shot some of them yeah they're actually making it out yeah terrifying people i don't think i'm equipped for for tackling any of it no well the the fear the fear it's here the fear's here but there's a way to get past it andy

yeah we can get some common ground common ground and now for something nicer a little oasis in the war it's time for some common ground i'm trying the intro for common ground i'm recording oh i love that love that sweet jazz do you like jazz andy no i think it's racket yeah i know you do we had an extensive conversation yesterday about jazz yeah i want to take you to a jazz club and you don't want to go i mean that is that is the crux of it yes you are going to come to that jazz club with me you and i were going to sit there in our in our suits we're going to be smoking our cigars listen to jazz and be i clearly don't understand what the jazz audience is consistent of no because it's not guys have cigars and suits it's old people yeah well you know old

people are allowed to wear suits are you discriminated are you ageist i guess they're actually more likely to wear suits to go yeah i think that's a i think it's a trendy style is that what your common ground is that old people can't wear suits no all right well let's hear what it is okay i've got a plan to help the bbc out okay is it that we take over all of their radio channels not quite okay then i'm gonna be confused so people are paying their tv license less than this now because basically it's 170 quid a year for a substandard streaming service equivalent oh i guess for context for anyone who's not in the uk which a lot of you aren't from what i understand the um yeah in the uk you pay a tv license which is a monthly or annual fee it's what

is it like 110 pounds a year something it's a lot and what you kind of get and it essentially just allows you to watch if you watch live television in the uk you need to pay for a tv license and if you watch any bbc programs whether it's live or not then you have to you have to pay this this license fee otherwise they send around uh ineffective bailiffs to your door to come in and you tell them a piss off yeah they'll come to your door if you don't pay and they'll ask if they can come in to see if you're watching live television i really don't understand how anyone gets caught by that i don't understand how the bbc has the money to hire these people to show up at your door to ask if they can come in to see

if you're watching television, I guess, there and then. I don't know how they ever catch anyone else. This is a plan to help them make money and help with some programming. Alright, maybe we can fix it then. Okay. So it's a raffle. I'm thinking maybe 20 quid per ticket?

Okay. There's six winners per year. They get eight episodes of TV that they can do anything they want with to produce and put out or they get to make television so you win the raffle you can do a quiz show you can have a crack at putting a drama on and you get eight

you get like eight hour slots to put them out in and just random people from the public get a chance to put stuff on there common ground over yes oh this is absolutely right up my street oh this is exactly andy this is exactly the kind of hijinks i want okay this is what i want from the world okay i want raffles where i get to make television yeah so you'd buy the raffle wouldn't you oh fuck yes yeah a thousand times yes yeah you know what i could do with six episodes of television you know how much time i could waste six hours oh i would i would churn out such unadulterated crap it would be insane so what you're doing with say you win the raffle then oh god my mind's swimming oh you said quiz i want to

do a quiz show but it's gonna be like bad this is gonna be really shit it's gonna be just the most obscure trivia and the prizes are gonna be just bad oh yeah i'm i'm talking you're winning you're winning a holiday but it's like a bad holiday um or you win uh like a sheep or like an animal you really can't care for so you have to give it to like a place that can care for it um the questions aren't fair um oh yeah quiz shows up there i want to make a drama which i also want to see people put their like their passion projects passion projects just up on and i reckon you get they get a bit of help they get like a producer and a like cinematographer guy so there's a bit of like a team for each winner and then you can have a sort of you know

they're like when they're in the house and the x factor and stuff yes so you get the the winners have their program and then you've got a separate sort of reality tv program about people who are completely unequipped for it trying to make a prime time tv show which is kind of what the bbc already is yeah i want everything to be i'm going to make a bunch of dramas that are just really really close to infringing on existing ip of course yeah i just want to find existing dramas that exist that are beloved and i want to i want to create a you know i don't know if you've um actually you might have seen this i think we might have watched videos about this because the in between us is a fantastic british sitcom yeah um is it a sick yeah it's a sick yeah definitely

um and uh the u.s uh remake of that is maligned and i've watched it's just really bad it's it's objectively crap yeah because you've got some like the u.s office which it's a spin on a uk television show which ended up becoming its own thing in its own right boomed very successful i want to i want to make more us in between us i want to find beloved shows oh and ruin them and it won't be branded the exact same but people will know it's a clone and they'll get really really angry but i wouldn't i wouldn't the fucking raffles i'd say that i'll add this in as well because i'm just tweaking the raffle now because i've already got you you can resurrect any bbc property that's not been touched in like 20 years so you couldn't do like doctor who but if there's

something do you want to bring back bamzuki i want to bring back that oh uh oh actually i was gonna i was gonna say black books which is an incredible sitcom but i think that's just because i want more of that program yeah because that's a great show but i i don't know i would actually just ruin that that's beloved i absolutely love that program i'm not gonna touch that okay can can we make a rule that you can't touch that okay yeah there's the raffle but you you can't do black books yeah black books is off it's off the books it's it's off the books completely yeah if you if you do that you're in my black books uh what kind of quiz show would we put together oh we put going in on a raffle ticket well i presume you're going you're splitting it 50 50 with me aren't you the

price yeah so we get four episodes each of disjointed that's so much better oh but it's episode one three five and seven are mine you have two and they're just completely separate that's actually a better way to do it come to think of it we uh so for this raffle the people who win they don't get them consecutively they get it's eight random people's episodes and the bbc then has to figure out how to create a season of television with these eight disjointed ideas it's like when you they fold the paper and you have to draw the horse or something across the like you pass it around yes yeah it's it's the the chinese whispers of of putting together a television show so i reckon that just solves the bbc's fun most people but it's expensive compared to like a

lottery ticket or something but you are getting a tv show out of it my mind is just going to be a buzz all night now with what i would do with this and i know it's not real but i am going to fantasize about this for months on end i know if the bbc want to nick that as an idea that we can talk yeah and touch it for one for me um oh i mean what what else could you do with that the can bandits maybe that the what can bandits it's so it's going to be a television program it's a it's a drama it's like a thriller drama and uh it's about the can bandits yeah what are they so bandits yeah so that they're they're a fictional race of people um they're like a like a species they're like little like goblin people okay and they go around and they they infest cans

with different things so like sometimes they'll put like uh like a swap like soft drinks into their own cans and sometimes they'll put like bugs and stuff in them oh okay um and it's just going to be sort of uh like high octane action they're getting all sorts of scrapes and cabers and then it cuts to prank show type footage of someone drinking a can with whatever they've put in it in the animated section yeah but it's not it's not real obviously it's it's it's all fictional but it is um it is like a like a thriller yeah um because then they have to the government have to figure out how to get rid of the can bandits yeah so i think um episode episode one we're going to cast um kiefer sutherland as the the chief chief can bandit you can reach out the bbc will help

you get kiefer yeah kiefer sutherland's got a band as well so they can do the soundtrack well you're doing you're bringing kiefer into your project pretty heavily it's Kiefer Kiefer Sutherland that's his name apologies Kiefer don't call him Keef Keef Sutherland sounds like a snooker player

well you know historically the can bandits are not fond of of snooker it's not going to be one of the episodes of can bandits yeah they are they're big billiards fans don't talk about snooker to the

can bandits yeah i guess another advantage of this is it shows people what genuinely bad tv looks like compared to what they're complaining about yeah the bbc churns out some um absolute crap sometimes but then you've got some real gems broadchurch that's fantastic yeah really love that program i would uh i would love to see more of that but again maybe one of the raffle winners nails it and they get an actual tv show that would be good i just think it the thing is this falls into the trap of everything like um well like you mentioned x factor that's a big issue because the x factor when that was around um it tends to be the case that you get these people who win they got a christmas number one they get a record label record deal and it tends to be the

runner-ups well here's the more successful they're the showrunner on the show so it's not really a vehicle of a personal frame because you're just going to be produced by that's a good point how many producers do you know the name of so it's not like a fame clout chasing thing i mean yeah to be honest the only producer that immediately sprung to mind is a man a criminal yeah which is what we both thought of the same guy and he's not yeah yeah the thing he's most famous for is not being a producer of things yeah apart from just abhorrent crimes um so yeah i think you're right there you get that little bit of anonymity as well yeah actually that's a good point you you don't get the credit for it this isn't a vehicle for personal fame or to get instagram followers

or something yeah this is just to to get the can bandits out on the airwaves yeah you've just got a project because i feel like quite a lot of people have an idea and i'm like how the fuck do i get this to someone enter the raffle well that's it that's what we could do then we get we get the the raffle going and then it's just it's stardom from there for for the the actors for the cast the crew and you just slide into the the anonymity and you get that satisfaction when you go to bed yeah close your eyes and close the peepers and and have a good night's sleep and that's what i need andy i need a good night's sleep because i haven't had one in a good a good week you seem a little tired i am i've been very tired i've been i don't know what i'm talking

about with the cam bandits i mean i'm sure it's gonna be art but i don't know whether that's just silliness, it's just, it feels like silliness for silliness sake, and that's not what this should be, Common Ground should be it's a serious directive on how to bring us together and fix the world I'm very sorry, I'm officially foreclosing on the Cannes Bandits

it's been cancelled so, sorry everyone we're going to have to call Cannes Bandits there and coincidentally, we're also going to have to call the episode there that's actually it, we're going to have to cut it there because I need my beauty sleep because

being really good at this board game isn't enough. I need to be beautiful as well. So I need my beauty sleep. But Andy, you're already a beautiful man. So you don't need that. You can stay up all night. Yay!

Well, I guess that's it. What an Andy climax. We started strong and now I'm just done. Okay. Well, stay humble and brave, guys. See you next week. please warwithamate on Instagram

yeah it's warwithamate on Instagram and it's info at warwithamate.co.uk and don't send us hate mail please break my little heart yeah you know the drill, settle humble and brave fuck the trucks, get those ponchos out

stay safe in the deserts of your mind goodnight see you next week We'll be right back.