War With A Mate - Episode 29: The Dogfight At Mersa Matruh

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s actually 48 planes to be precise, and they’re blowing each other out of the sky! Andy and James tackle their first bit of air combat as James’ bombing run hangs on the line. Amongst this high octane action, we also travel back in time to the conclusive history segment focused on the Long Range Desert Group.

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or wherever you get your podcasts Hello and welcome to War With A Mate, with me Andy. And me James. Here it is, the moment you've all been waiting for. An episode of War With A Mate. Long awaited. well a week a week is how long you've waited if you waited any longer then you've either been living under a rock or you are stuck in some sort of time loop it's time locked that's what they always say in doctor who something's time locked it's sort of their catch-all phrase to describe something that should be going on but isn't i feel a bit time locked doing this sometimes what

about you i guess yeah not really no no okay that doesn't track then it's making progress for the uninitiated this is the only podcast in the world covering our playthrough of the campaign for north africa the best board game ever made well it's possibly the worst it's definitely one of the board games made in history yeah 1978 this bad boy was published and here in 2025 we are bringing it to the modern audience through the power of two white guys doing a podcast so you took that personally yeah well i had a conversation um only yesterday at a at a pub about our podcast about the campaign for north africa uh in general bit of guerrilla marketing yeah a bit of guerrilla marketing somebody had mentioned in passing at a pub black books which

we talked about last episode yeah and i saw that as an excuse to talk about what we're doing and i brought it up with them and by complete chance the guy who was at this pub happened to know about the campaign for north africa in relatively good detail and there i was pretending i know what i'm talking about trying to defend the integral stance of uh of malta being so important in the north african campaign and uh and this guy he raised some very good points but his stance was that Gibraltar was far more important. Which is crazy. It's crazy, because where's Gibraltar on the map?

It's not even part of the board game. If it was that important, then Richard Berg would have made it part of the game. Yeah, there's almost certainly a cupboard somewhere with a draft of the Gibraltar supply effect. There definitely is. I would love to go through his notes and sort of put it together Tolkien-style

and put together the second board game. I'm surprised you can't study this at university. Of course you can. You can study anything at university, and when this is done, you'll be able to study the War With The May podcast. What a cultural phenom that needs study. It needs something. It needs help. Maybe this whole thing's a cry for help. It's not working. No one's helping us. Shut down the mics. Shut down the studio. We need to cut this whole thing off at the knees.

You know what? We see all this, but my, what a day. What a day it's been. It's been a fun one. We got into playing combat. Finally, finally, something I've been looking forward to For a long, long time So last time you'd sent A lot of bombers to destroy The Libyan Coastal road

And I scrambled some fighters To try and stop you And then we had our first dogfight Yeah, a little dogfight Over Mercer Matruh And it went interestingly Because I committed I would describe it as going badly

But you would yes for you so should we should we have a little look at the the statistics here who was involved in the dogfight over mercer matruh uh well i had 20 20 planes overall 15 gladiator mark twos and five bellenheim mark four f's and i came in with 28 planes in total all fighters and they were they were all cr32s manufactured by fiat and all in all it was a relatively evenly matched fight stat wise yeah it was yes um because the the air combat is all determined around a pair of scores and those scores are the tack air which is a a score that's tied to the plane and the maneuver score which is also tied to the

plane and the tac air is the first thing that you work out the differential for so for example my CR-32s have a tac air of 3 and my Bellinghams had a tac air of 5 and the Gladiators had 2 so

should we use a Bellingheim as just an example for... Yeah yeah so we started with the conflict between the CR-32s and the Bellinghams and you have to take away the tac air from the enemy tac air so we end up with two different differentials which was in this instance they're four aren't they five five so i had a minus two you had a plus two yes and then you have to look at the

maneuver differential and this is the big one it is the maneuver differential is a it's a bigger number and therefore a bigger room for adjustment on the tables yes because it's also the difference between well yeah i had 30 uh for instance and then you had i had 25 yeah so that's a five difference which then rolled on a tape not rolled on a table just check on a table which is a difference of two points yes because it's a difference of five i think i think one to four five to seven yeah it is where it adjusts so we we had a look at that and then we have to determine what the overall tack air differential is which varies based on the pilots as well yes because the individual pilots can be anywhere from one to four star and we have we had pilots involved

you can't have a single six which is marseille marseille the uh the german desert ace so the the difference that we had to then determine was yet factored in it factored in the pilots and then from there we roll on a table each of us whoever has the biggest disadvantage rolls first yeah so anyone who comes out with a negative on that table rolls first and that would be for the most part it was you have to roll an 11 or a 12 and that's bearing in mind that's the two lowest rolls you can have in combination with two six-sided dice so you have to roll the two lowest in order to succeed and shoot down the other plane should that fail the other plane the one being attacked gets to roll and because they have the advantage they have to roll it sort of

averaged out around anywhere from sort of 16 to 20 for that well for this one yeah 16 to 21 um however despite the fact that for the bellenheim is that right yep despite the fact that your balenheims for the most part had the the higher number i did manage to take a few down you took two of them down two oh wow yeah that's very impressive i did i thought it was five of the others so two balenheims i managed to shoot down with my guys yeah one of my planes shot down we got attacked by two planes shot down one of them and then got done by the other yes um and then and then when a plane is shot down at the end of the combat you roll a d6

if you get a one the plane limps back into the airport if you get a two the pilot the plane doesn't make it but the pilot like ejects and walks back that's right and we've had so the way that the pilots

work is that if the pilot is a zero rating pilot you essentially have an infinite amount of zero rating pilots you have enough pilots to fly the planes it's an abstracted value if you have a plane that's ready to fly you have a pilot that can fly it however if a pilot starts to take out other aircraft starts to shoot them down then you start to keep track of that and every five planes they shoot down they gain a rating they

gain one star a level and we start with a certain amount of leveled pilots i start with 15 level one pilots 10 level 2 pilots and three level 3 pilots i'm not exactly but i think are my eight level ones eight level five level twos and one level three i think which reflects the italian air superiority quite comfortably that i have the better pilots and at the moment for the majority of the time the better planes yeah i also take it partially as um i think my planes might be bit better than yours um maneuver wise yes yeah but your pilots they've been fighting in libya for like 20 years so i guess there's a certain amount of acclimatizing acclimation yeah acclimatization yeah with the dealing with the desert

uh yeah so it means that i'm not really sure what taka is meant to abstract either it's clearly a representation of something but the fact that you've got the maneuverability of the plane and then the TACAIR rating. I'm not sure what the two... Because maneuver, it sounds like it's the ability for the plane to fly. It's get behind them, basically. Yeah, in a dogfight.

But TACAIR, I'm not really sure. Is it the durability of the plane? I kind of take it as it's the sort of abstract of everything other than maneuverability. So, like, quality of guns, quality of armor. Yeah, good point. Just sort of everything that's not... How it can defend itself overall.

So we had this dogfight which played out where we had to determine this differential and then we roll on a table uh the aforementioned one where it was very difficult for the disadvantaged plane to actually down the other plane however by by sheer odds and it's been a bit of a recurring theme i managed to take those odds in my favor and my planes downed six of yours in total yeah i think you rolled four 11 12s yes so i've got the stats here. So I rolled 4 11s Snake Eyes, the lowest roll you can, which in Campaign for North Africa

is often the best result, is to get the lowest. I got 4 11s I got 2 12s and I got a 14. Is that right? Yeah, that was one of the ones where you were overmatched. Sorry, 3 11s 2 12s and a 14.

And you downed 2 of mine. I did manage to kill your ace. You did. a level three pilot i had a single level three pilot involved in this my other two are thankfully safe and sound elsewhere they were involved in the um screening of the bombers that took on the cold stream guards yeah which we've figured something out about which we'll have to bring up in a sec but yes the the the pilots i had here were there was a fair amount of them that were level one and two and a single level three which you managed to shoot down i then rolled on that

table you'd mentioned where you see if the pilot survives he didn't no he did not make it he is dead the plane's gone the pilot's gone you've shot down my ace and i will come for you and that was a zero rated like unnamed pilot who i've now named edward baxter and he has one kill and i'll be seeing how he does which is yeah that's another thing we will be keeping track of these pilots as they go to make sure that we know exactly who's doing what i haven't named my guys yet who've got their various kills but i will be making a swift note of them and make sure that we keep track of them going forward because edward baxter he's in my black book all right he is in trouble well he's gonna become the ace of the desert for the the commonwealth no he's getting he's

getting done i promise you that andy that man is in grave grave danger baxter's making it through the scenario baxter is fucked i can tell you that for free yeah the name is just completely generated uh we've not picked real pilots names that field a bit not yeah it does not feel like a very nice thing to do to just kind of randomly pluck an actual pilot's name out there and attribute them to this everything is abstracted it's all just a bit of fun isn't it so we've got these guys who are uh some of them have scored kills and some of them have made it out unscathed and at the end of all of that the only way for you to then attack my bombers is if at the end of the fighter versus fighter combat you need to have more fighters than i do yes and then the

excess number you have can attack my bombers unfortunately that the opposite happened uh i have many less planes than i started with yeah and you started with the minority already yes You were already 8 planes behind me And I took out 6 of yours You took out 2 of mine Which meant in the end you didn't get to stop my bombers No, my fighter Was it called a flight?

Squadron? Squadron The squadrons limped back to Close to Mercer Matruh Yes, which is where all of this was taking place It was in the skies above Mercer Matruh And the adjacent road My bombs went off

And my bombs landed true to that target which meant i've destroyed a portion of road on grid d i've got it here d3518 which is happens to be one of the few bits of that road that goes through rough instead of clear that's right so interesting to see how badly that screws me in terms of moving things to the front well it means terrain wise if you want to go and have people repair that they will be able to take the road up to that point and then they'll have to use extra movement to go through the rough and then they have to start repairing it and repairing road is much more costly than it is to repair railroad yeah so you're gonna have to expend some resources otherwise every man who has to move over

that that space is gonna have to go through the rough which increases the likelihood of breakdown and also takes up cpa cost for that movement so it was a tactical move it's a good strike on my supply lines it was very good use of my bombs i would say yes unlike the use of my bombs on your coldstream guards yeah because we misinterpreted that slightly instead of that many toe points getting removed from a unit from the bombs that many battalion sized units get pinned yes unfortunately for you i guess the coldstream guard were one battalion so they're pinned to fuck yeah but they are still alive exactly so when when last week i was boasting about the fact that you had six toe points and i managed to take out five of them the reality is we misread the table

and how the bombing corresponds and it turns out the bombing doesn't actually take away toe points and kill people it just pins them and it's not based on like you say the toe points it's based on how many battalions there are in there the coldstream guards are one battalion yeah so i've pinned five battalions worth with those bombs and they are a single battalion which means the coldstream guards are alive and well they're just pinned yeah by was it four tons of ordnance each it was two tons two tons each and we were talking about how that seemed excessive and turns out it is it is because that's to pin like a the seven farmer division yeah you you can't kill them with the bombing run that you do with with with your aircraft so i've instead expended a shit ton of

my bombs my ammunition just to pin down your guys and it wasn't worth it it was not worth it however i think it still ties in with the narrative that your cool stream guards wronged my libyan division so that's the thing it's not always the most tactical move sometimes it's about punishment it is and the fact that you took out my ace as well you can expect the same kind of thing going forward i will still react with excessive force and i will make sure to rain holy hell down on you regardless of whether or not it's a tactical decision which sounds like a losing fight but it it happens so we we got our guys back to base those that survived and we did some refitting we did we started refilling i've i've only refitted two of my squadrons so far i've done

I rolled all of them because I'm going to do them, so I know the percentages, and I'm just going to go through during the week and mark off the resources. Okay, right. Yes, so when you land your planes back at base, you then go through the process of refitting your planes. So refitting them is a case of making sure they have fuel,

making sure they have ammunition, making sure that you use a single store point for every squadron that you're refitting, and then after all that, you roll on a table, and when you roll on the table, it determines what percentage of that squadron which for me my squadrons are made up of 12 yours are 16 at the minute yeah and you roll on a table the most i can refit at any given time is a maximum of 70 of the squadron yes because the italians move two columns in the bad direction yeah for

the result on the refitting whereas yours do not have any sort of negative detriment no so the germans have one the italians have two commonwealth have zero and an interesting thing is it's about the planes because if you capture the italian planes and you try to refit them it still has the negative effect yeah so if you capture a bunch of my planes and try and refit them they're harder to refit apparently i mean yeah makes sense so yeah all in all we we had a very good time doing the aircraft a lot of fun doing it i really thoroughly enjoyed doing that yeah and all of them are one-on-one dogfights so you compare the you work out the tack differential you add the maneuverability and that's two planes going at it yep one-on-one and sometimes because

i outnumbered you it also meant that a bunch of your planes were being attacked by two planes at once yeah because you need to make sure every single plane has at least one plane assigned to it in battle so there's at least a one-on-one and then any excess planes i can then assign an additional one. I could, in theory, once all of your planes are covered... Put, like, five on one guy. Yeah, I could put all of my excess planes against one of your planes. So if I

somehow, you know, had an inkling maybe... Who's it? Baxter. If Baxter's out there and I think he's out there, I might dedicate 20 excess planes just to try and fucking pick him out and kill him. That's 20 dead men. No, it's not. It's not. From the Bax.

It's 20 men celebrating over the death of Baxter. there so i i could in theory do that but instead i went for a relatively even distribution and it paid off there were a few times where those guys did actually pull it off yeah and killed you because of the two-on-one and if you're defending against the two-on-one you could only target one of those two planes yes although you will go first you will so basically whoever's at the disadvantage go rolls first and your odds won't be great but you will have a chance to destroy if you do destroy the other plane

that it doesn't get to attack so if it's a one on one even if you have worse odds if you get lucky on the roll which I did then that plane's done it doesn't get its go back so I mean

I was looking forward to this and it paid dividends one because I just had a really fun time doing it and I think I would have whether or not I won and it just so happens luck was in my favour yeah well i didn't do well and i enjoyed it so oh well there we go so that means we've had a good time and we we've resolved our very first dog fight yeah and i let off my bombs and yet this bombing run we are convinced is actually right whereas the the coldstream guards they're pinned

they're not dead they're pinned which does actually pivot my strategy this turn oh okay because now that they're pinned and not dead i think maybe i do have to move my libyans to make a bit of an oppressive march towards the Coldstream Guards and actually kill them for real on the ground. I mean, good luck. I don't need luck. I already have it, apparently.

I've already been rolling fucking crazy luck. Yeah, the luck is pretty one-sided so far. But I am still mourning the loss of some of my men. However, the refitting, it's going all right. I've rolled a 70% and a 40%. That doesn't sound very good, and it's not amazing. but what you can do is the italians yeah based on how the italians can roll it's it's not too bad it was a i think it was a two and a four rolled so it works out at decent odds and i've still got

a bunch more to refit the only issue i have now is looking at the amount of water i have because the sgs use the um what is it the ground squad ground support unit yes they require water and fuel really not much though yeah but it's water it's one water point and the airfields start with such fucking minimal water that every time you're committing water usage for these guys to operate it is a big chunk i can only realistically do right right so this is the issue okay i have enough ammo in all of these airfields to resupply them like 50 times over i can i can resupply them for like 50 turns in a row because it's one ammo point for the whole squad yes so i can resupply them i've got airfields with like 200 ammo so i can refit those

bad boys as much as i realistically want when it comes to water points it's it's nearly single figures so that's just an insane disparity i need to get water to those guys desperately or my planes are absolutely boned so i'm confident that the percentages work out enough overall because i've got a lot more planes than you so if i'm refitting 40 of my planes and you refit say 70 i think we're still fairly evenly matched i may even still have an advantage yeah i think over the next few turns and i guess we'll see if it slips off over time when i'm starting to get like potentially 100 percent of a squad bag up and running to fly out against half of one of yours and yeah we'll see how it goes i think overall it's a very fun mechanic in the game uh it's up there with

barrage barrage so far is my favorite part of the game i there's just something about barrage i just love the idea of big artillery shelling the enemy yeah and i think the dog fights has a a similar aspect of being able to have a fun dynamic bit of combat so really pleased with that refitting the planes it's a little bit of admin again but we we've done this we've done the admin we've done the admin before we can do it again yeah the admin's not too bad once you've got things set up right i'm gonna rejigger my uh sheets a bit but yeah you'd mentioned you want to you want to refit yours i just want to streamline them a bit because it's a million tabs and it can get a bit much yeah whereas i'm i'm i'm very happy having a million tabs yeah

i'm i mean at the moment i've predicted i'm going to end up with something like 534 000 tabs by the end of the the whole campaign yeah which i'm fine with i think it will be a lot more than that now based on the fact that my aircraft and my supply dumps are also going to have to be changed the way i formatted them i found out today it doesn't really work yeah i've had uh the way i did the airfields as well as part of my whole thing basically i need to so i think overall it's it's going to change a lot of how we plan things but that's that's what we're doing now that's what we're doing baby we're doing the uh scenario as well to iron this stuff out for the final game and god it's working i feel strong and confident i feel god not even very subtle and

humble just brave you gotta do all three man i i try i try in everyday walks of life you need the humility to temper the bravery i'll be subtle i'll be subtle on the bus i'll you know i'll get on the bus and i'll um i'll i'll tap my card on the the car thing and i'll give a very quiet you know thank you you gotta keep it in your palm so it's like you're paying the bus so oh like a like a tip at a restaurant yeah sort of you know any seats in here any seats on this bus well it's a bus, sir. You can sit anywhere you want. I also like that the bus driver's calling me sir very polite, because I'm clearly being

very obstructive and obtuse. You can sit anywhere you want, sir. Alright, okay. Well, this is for you. Beep. Card declined. Do you take cash? Because I don't have any. I don't have any cash, but in theory, next time, if I bring cash,

what do you take? And if it's a no, then what am I meant to do? Clearly my card doesn't work. I've spent all my money elsewhere, celebrating my win of the dogfight over Mercer Maitreux. Just running on a bus. That's what we're doing here,

man. This podcast is always filmed on a bus. An interesting fact that not many people know. That would be cool. You live in a dilapidated bus. How sad. Sad? That's really fucking impressive. Living the lavish life that you live, all from the

confines of a bus. I guess. I guess living in a dilapidated bus might not change too much about my day-to-day well you yeah yeah you you know you're quite happy with your your home comforts yeah so put them on a bus yeah put them on a bus then it's mobile whereas if it's dilapidated i bet it's not fucking mobile i also can't drive so me neither well vehicles are stationary for me well we've got that in common you and i don't drive no in fact we've we've actually had a bit of a deterrent from driving when we had the episode with cam sandwich he

expressed intense road rage and uh the the evil that i felt in that man that day the the malice he has towards the road i'm not sure i want that in my body so i'm happy just being a walker a pedestrian that's fine by me i think the the the turns that come will be telling of what kind of road rage comes about as well because we've got more trucks coming we've got more tank movements we've got everything coming up yep the fucking of the trucks is about to begin an earnest for me yeah

yeah well put the long range desert group on the map as we've discussed they're terrifying men god they're the scariest men I've ever heard of I don't want them to be on the board I want them to just be a fucking nightmare that I don't actually have to face so they're going to be hunting your trucks

well yeah that's kind of a jam I think the the issue i have at the moment is that i don't get those guys for a very long time i don't get my equivalent until i think like turn 30 no i know you only get the german one whereas the italians actually they did also make one it just didn't do as much which i think there's a film called the english patient okay have you seen it no no i've seen the mercurian candidate okay apparently there's a guy the guy in that is the guy who found is based on the guy who founded the axis version of the long range desert group so i don't know if anyone's seen that it's about

that guy we should watch that we should i mean it's on the list we should stick that on we do yeah i guess yeah we have we have a list of things don't we yeah we have a list of things to watch that's a that's that's a different thing that's that's something else it's it's in the works we're watching things that's it we're watching things, we're recording reviews of things it's a separate thing but it's

in the pipeline for the future but I mean right now, god we're very preoccupied with this battle this big conflict, this very small dogfight over Mersa Matruh and that small portion of road that's been destroyed but

what are your thoughts overall today Andy? how did you feel today went in general good session enjoy the air combat looking forward to doing it um went pretty quick i think yeah it really flew over most of the time was like checking some rules and stuff because it was our first time doing it but i mean could be quite big chunky sessions in the future if there's more planes involved what i definitely always be fairly streamlined well yeah because it's all based around you um we have to write down the individual planes on we've we've done it on pieces of paper so we'll write down the individual planes on pieces of paper and then we'll match up who's fighting who you don't get to see who's got pilots

you know the type of plane yes you know the type of plane you don't get to see if there's a pilot you don't get to see the score of each individual plane you just sort of match them up and then you you do the battle so it'll be interesting to see how well versed we become with how dangerous each type of plane is yeah and also what kind of narrative emerges with these pilots because that's going to be for me the thing i hold on to yeah seeing how these pilots go seeing if baxter makes it through the scenario will be interesting i will do everything in my power to make sure that that man dies i'm just sending him back to cairo no i'll find it to cairo we march finally a reason for you to go to cairo you know i've been waiting for a reason to go to cairo and

now i finally got one drop everything else leave siwa leave everything else over into brook we're going all the way to fucking cairo we're gonna find dexter we're gonna make a pay for what he's done dexter is a dead man you'll get it dexter can't do anything if he's not this plane oh no he's dangerous on the ground. I would not be shocked if you make him part of the long-range desert group. When he's not flying as a fighter, he's part

of the long-range group. Oh my god, what a scary guy. You shoot him down in the middle of the desert, he just walks home. What a scary, scary man. Despite the fact there's a propeller sticking out of his shoulder. Well, that's what we've had going on on our

side. What about you guys? What have you had going on? What have you got to say to us? we've uh we've had some correspondence and it's beaming in right now as you can all hear we've had a little bit of correspondence and andy would you like to open up with what correspondence we've had uh yeah this one's from neil neil howdy gents in ep1 uh you talk about alternative uses for artillery you mentioned fireworks but is additionally used to prevent avalanches by remotely disturbing large snowpacks to trigger more controlled collapse and he linked us to the wikipedia article uh cheers neil um so yeah i actually had a look at it it's pretty cool

no i also looked at this when it first came through um i've had a bit of a i guess sneak preview of this of this message and it is it is interesting because when we i mean i just said my barrage is one of my favorite parts of the game maybe the favorite part so far dog fighting is definitely up there but the idea of there being dynamic uses for artillery is a very interesting thing especially in the desert landscape yeah i do wonder i did a bit of research couldn't find it but whether you could do the same sort of technique to shape dunes almost by getting them to collapse down from their crests and stuff i would imagine so i'm not i'm not sure I mean, I'm not the founder of the Long Range Desert Group.

I've not written a book about how desert dunes form. But I would imagine the integrity of a desert dune, it's mostly compacted sand. Yeah. So that would mean that if you blast it hard enough... It should break up, yeah. You can break it up. But I don't know how much cushioning sand gives.

Presumably a fucking lot. Well, it depends, because some of it's like... It's like how some snow is like the light, fluffy stuff. and some of it's, like, hard ice. It's, like, having some parts, it's, like, packed down. Well, it's like when you try and, you know, there was nothing worse as a kid, when you would wake up and you'd seen

there's been a big snowfall outside. And you go outside in the morning, you go to make a snowball, and it's the shit snow. It's just, like, this flaky mess. You try and crunch it together into a snowball. You try to power through. You do your very best. You'll breathe on it to try and harden it up.

And then you start throwing a ball of ice at someone's head. If you do do that. Yeah, that's the other way, yeah. You go the other way and it's just a ball of ice or you just throw essentially confetti at someone and then you look like a massive loser. Either way, it's too much or too little. Yeah, either way, people are going to laugh at you

or be angry at you. You've maligned your friends and family. I actually had that once. What, you maligned your friends and family? Yeah, all the time. No, me and my friend in primary school, he came around to my house and it had been snowing and he put together a snowball

and my mom had came out to join him with the snowball fight and amongst the snowball fight he must have picked up this bit of like compacted ice and he threw it at my mother's face and it was just this shard of ice that caught her in the face so that sort of cut down the snowball fight

his mom picked him up very shortly afterwards my mom couldn't my mother had been scarred by a snowball she still wears those wounds today um no i i think the the usage of artillery uh through alternative methods is a very fascinating aspect and i wish the game allowed for it to be honest but because of the restrictions of terrain we can't alter the terrain it's you know what you know what neil maybe you should have made the game because you've looked into this a lot more

than richard berg did maybe you should be the next richard but neil have you ever thought about making a very complex board game about the north african campaign of world war ii have a crack give it a go anyone could do it want to see people's versions all you need is to be willing to alienate all of the staff members at a games company over the course of six years and also use up the budget yeah but if you're willing to do all of that and bearing in mind we've got technology these days it's not going to be as difficult by any stretch so give it a go neil but in the meantime thank you very much for the correspondence thanks you got one for us i do i've got one here from emma and emma says hi guys just listened to the

latest episode 27 at present time very up to date then i love the common ground segment and totally agree that there should be more musical material out there in the world regarding even the smallest of life experiences and holidays to the biggest after all who doesn't love a good sing song emma i love a good sing song and andy i know that in the right mood you love a good sing song uh yeah if i've had about 10 vks vks goodness me i know for a fact you're a big fan of carly ray jepsen i mean yeah she's good you you're you're a big fan i remember there was an occasion where you and i had been we've been having a good few drinks and we ended up having a bit of a wander around early hours of the morning yeah we went and got cups of tea from your house and

walked around the park we did oh my god we uh yeah this was dawn had just cracked we were going past the dog walkers in a park nearby and we were blaring out songs from carly ray jepsen as the sun came up we had i had a tea i had a tiger teacup yes and uh oh my god i i wonder where that teacup is in a box i had a tiger teacup and we were playing the my phone had died we only had your phone for music yes and you only had a handful of albums and i think three of them were carly ray jepsen albums i just had one carly ray jepsen album and a single okay sorry call me maybe and then emotion oh okay sorry i don't know the albums or the eps i will have to check it out because I remember enjoying it at that point

but I was also very drunk slash nearly hungover slash the sort of liminal state of tired where everything's funny It was beautiful, it was beautiful But sorry, Emma, we're getting distracted I've recently took to writing as a hobby of mine, very good

mostly stories, but I thought I'd take a stab at writing you guys a short song to hopefully keep you guys motivated Well, nothing motivates us like a good old sing song although with no music it probably comes across more like a poem well we're also poets what we're doing is essentially poetry so let's hear it already here you go andy drop me a beat just loop that i don't want to do it it's all right we've we've got we've got some bits we can

do andy and james their love for games so strong battling in the campaign for north africa they belong they make a podcast sharing every move to complete the game the ultimate groove through long hours they push on strategizing galore their devotion to the game it's truly a war days turn into nights and the war rages on fueled by their passion they're determined to conquer on in the deserts of their mind they're not letting go stay subtle humble and brave their legacy will grow the battlefield awaits but they'll remain steadfast until the game's finale they'll make it happen that's a fact loving the podcast so far emma emma thanks emma it's it is poetry that's exactly what it is it's poetry it's art i've never had a song written about me you know

what it's art imitating art and you know what me neither that's a very good point i've never had a song written about me i've identified with songs i've looked out of a window mournfully as the rain pulls down it and i've identified with music but i've never listened to a song written specifically about me curated just for what i'm doing so that there if there's a way for us to turn this into a theme song if there's any talented musicians out there put it together we'll we'll stick it in these credits but emma it is uh well hopefully the story writing is going well and if it's not you can just write about us because this story is possibly the best story ever to be told we're stealing that from the bible

well we're not stealing it from the bible we're just competing with the bible wild hubris the longest standing against the humble part the longest most complicated story ever told we are competing against that but you're right andy you're right the subtle humble and brave was designed for a reason part of it is because i have such a great hubris because we're going to beat this game so it's hard sometimes to stay subtle and humble but the bravery is always here

and Emma, that will be our war cry we will be chanting that tonight before we go to bed so thank you very much for that it's good to know that we inspire music in the hearts of our audience just as you inspire us to play the game well a good old bit of correspondence from the guys and if anyone wants to send anything in

the email address is info at war with a mate we've got an instagram which is just war with a mate and you can also send through a web form on our website which is war with a mate.co.uk and we made a vow a long long time ago to respond to every piece of mail we get and we're still committed to it whether it's a song whether it's feedback on the game whether it's commentary on anything we say

or do or just your own thoughts about something tangentially related ideally but even if it's not even if you just want our thoughts on something else hell we'll read it out and we'll give our little two pence to it so that's how you get through to us

I've also purchased a spitfire beer what's going on I got a spitfire beer it's in theme with the episode today so I'm gonna crack this bad boy open and then I believe Andy

I can't open the I can't open the bottle it's stuck it's the bottle's stuck there we go it's open It's open. Get your head out of your hand.

Prost. To Spitfire. Hmm. That is not very nice. Okay. Andy. Should we do some history? Surely you have some history to take us away from the present.

I do. So, I've got the last part of our Long Range Desert Group series. Let's hear it. Let's hear what those guys got up to. some accomplished men, nearly as accomplished as us So, start with a quote of course The men of the long range desert patrols

were quite a sight on their return to Cairo from a month's trip to Libya unwashed for water rations did not allow it, bearded burned brown by the sun and clad in ragged shirts, shorts and sandals. They had the air about them of a bunch of wild

eyed biblical hermits emerging from their sojourn in the wilderness so yeah uh just them coming back just a bunch of normal people then classic a bunch of average men yeah um so a bit about the armaments of and the trucks they were using and stuff like that yeah what what did they what did they pack so each patrol had roughly 10 vehicles in them okay and split between that uh each vehicle would have at least one gun but they were fitted with mountings for six to eight typically ran with two or three but always had one uh a patrol would have between them 11 lewis machine guns which are you know the ones that sort of look like drain pipes

with the magazine on top like a plate yes yes yeah so they'd have them they'd have five anti-tank rifles nicknamed the elephant gun yes i know the elephant gun and a 37 millimeter anti-tank gun which typically was on like its own wheels but they like attached to the back of a truck um they continually upgraded over time and ended up uh taking surplus guns from the raf that were typically mounted to planes and attaching them to the trucks so these guys are heavily heavily armed. Yeah, they're not just driving trucks, they're driving tanks with, I was going to say with wheels,

but, you know. So, yeah, we were over reconnaissance last time, but they also did a lot of raiding, planting mines, ambushing convoys, roaring out of the night into enemy bases

and runways, machine guns firing, sometimes destroying dozens of planes in a single raid. At one point, a unit simply drove up an open road to their objective past enemy vehicles. Since Germans and Italians utilized captured trucks, they weren't paid any attention. They just drove through checkpoints and stuff. They also specialized in guiding other forces through the desert.

so for instance in January 1941 they took three French troops over 500 miles into the desert to attack the Corifan oasis and they were also the SAS's transport until 1942 when they got their own transport so some of the stuff they got up to

in 1941 in December they ferried the SAS to and from raids on Axis airfields which resulted in the destruction of 151 aircraft and 30 vehicles and during the second raid they had on a place called Serta the SAS devised a new method of attacking parked airplanes compared to their previous strategy which was the long range desert group would sort of drive them close to the base then they'd sneak in with timed explosives and try to get out before the explosives went off right but their new tactic was they just drove the trucks through the fence around the airport went just directly down the runway at full speed all the guns blazing hurling hand grenades

out the cars and then would just disappear off the other end of the runway into the night they'd like come out of nowhere and destroy dozens of planes and kill like as many people and then just be gone in, like, less than a minute. And this is because the enemy utilised captured trucks so they can just bomb straight through and everyone's like, oh, well... Sometimes, or sometimes they just come through the desert and just appear, like Bagnall said,

from the fourth dimension. And, yeah, just two or three minutes of utter chaos and then gone like ghosts. That's all it takes, just some sneaky boys in trucks. They were also part, another use was September 1942 where they were the transport for a three-pronged attack against Tobruk, Benghazi, oh sorry four-pronged, the Jalloh Oasis and the Long Range Desert Group themselves attacked a target called Bas, which was a fort and airstrip. so 17 of their vehicles which was 47 men two patrols they traveled 1155 miles to then attack this fort one group went after the fort and one group went after the airfield they didn't manage to capture the fort but they destroyed 16 airfield uh the italians quoted it

as destroying 16 aircraft uh an italian prisoner of war from the base quoted it at 35 which is an element in all this is like a lot of these numbers apparently given by both sides are like reduced for like morale and yeah there'll be a justice based on histories written by the victors you want to make it sound better than it was yeah um so i think the italians might have lowered that or the Brits have raised it but still even if it's 16 that is. It's still a scary amount of planes

to be taken out by a bunch of guys who show up in a truck, throw some weapons out and then those munitions take them out and they just drive off. Yeah. Another operation they did which is where the raid on Rommel comes from as part of their rule set in the game was

the unsuccessful Operation Flipper which planned to kill uh general rommel uh this was the one you know i mentioned a raid that got decoded but by the time the british found out it was already on the way yes in the enigma episode that is this which went disastrously um but they succeeded in their roles here um up until may 1943 uh when the war in north africa came to an end um a long-range desert group man described leaving the desert as it's like saying goodbye to an old school master who was very severe and frightening but whom one

knew was one was very fond of so they've got a bit of a connection to the desert yeah the entire time they existed and operated in the middle east from conception to them leaving at the end of the war they only lost 16 that 16 men were killed 24 went missing and capturing over the whole three years of deep desert raiding the road watch all of it 16 men killed do we know what that's out of about three to five hundred at the peak uh each patrol was 10 vehicles with three or four men each and they had about eight at certain points i don't think they ever got above 500 but but you're looking still like less than 10 yeah and these are guys doing the most extreme like behind enemy lines raiding well they're there it's it's not like behind enemy lines in

the sense of their past where enemies control they're going to the enemy airfields yeah they are there and they actually play a very important role like you mentioned graziani fearing the desert what they managed to do and by moving the sas around as well is they essentially extend the front from being sort of 10 to 20 miles across to a thousand which as a enemy commander you no longer have any control as you gauged it to be so after they leave the desert they act as more typical commandos in europe um acquitting themselves well in italy yucca albania and greece uh one patrol of theirs carried out surveillance on coastal convoys on a small greek island where a patrol spent 17 days avoiding a garrison of 650 germans

um to provide the reconnaissance information but unfortunately it doesn't end too great for them and eventually um bagnold's successor jake emerson is killed and 50 of them are captured on the an island of liros off the coast of greece and when the end of the war came although most of the long-range desert group were eligible for demobilization they all volunteered to go to the pacific however the offer was refused and the long range desert group was disbanded in august 1945 there are places devoid of all life in the deep desert where the wind is weak and the sand firm in some of those places the tracks and camps created by bagnold's explorations and the warriors they inspired still remain trapped in the stasis of a

dead world. And thus ends the story of the Long Range Desert Group. And there they go. Yeah. There they go. What a fucking incredible group of people. And that is true, by the way, that last bit. Because of the nature of the desert and it being so sterile,

there are bits where you can see the tracks left from their investigations that could last for decades or centuries. Really? In the desert? Yeah. Surely it blows, like the sand being blown around surely it covers up in like the june season stuff it would be but where the sand there's like firm sand and if it doesn't rain the wind isn't quite strong enough to i'll

send you the pictures to put up because they found some there's a place called bagnold circle which is like a ancient sort of stonehenge type structure much smaller in the desert and a couple years ago some explorers were there and they found the tracks and followed them to find the tracks of three cars which would have been model t's oh god so they actually found bagnell's group well their tracks yeah and they're still there in the desert it's like how the rover on mars its tracks will just be there remain there forever yeah that's insane yeah that's genuinely really fascinating that's yeah that's wild so i think what we need to do now is schedule a bit of a field trip

to try and find the tracks of the Long Range Desert Group. And of course it will be the last episode because we'll die out there. Because we will not survive in those conditions. But yeah, we might come back to them at some point. There's some interesting individuals in there.

But yeah, for now that's the series on Bagnall and the Long Range Desert Group. And what a wrap up. I think fantastic work on this Andy. I think you've nailed it start to finish. and hopefully everybody listening has had a fantastic time as good a time as i have finding out about the long range desert group because what a magnificent group of people they

are what a scary group of men they are and just didn't know about them at all yeah i have no idea who any of these people were and all of this i mean to harken back to the start of what we were talking about earlier the the fact that i can now have a conversation with someone who's well versed in history about the campaign for north africa i would not have had anywhere near the amount of knowledge if i didn't stop playing the game and a lot of that comes down to what you've done the history segment so you should give yourself a big old pat on the back and appreciate that what you've done is you're spreading knowledge you're spreading knowledge like it's hand grenades in the airfields of the axis forces cast out by the long range desert group in the middle of the night

so i'm uh i'm interested to see what comes next but the long range desert group are a a little party that will live in my head for a long long while and without apparently without them and their success between them and the help they gave the sas uh that legitimized the idea of like essentially what became special forces so without these guys and the sas working together modern special forces as they exist just might look very different it's a very hard thing to give a proof of concept for

because you needed to be an active war zone in an impossible situation to ever try and justify it and luckily Waverley was willing he was a chance taker other British generals would have said no shut up we're not doing piracy on the high

desert but he was like go for it and it fucking worked well that's what it takes it takes it takes chance takers and it takes those that are subtle humble and brave to change the course of history and that's what we're looking at but fantastic history segment and i'm interested to see where next week goes well i suppose now that we've we've done the we've done the past we've done the present maybe we should talk about the future oh talk about what can come next in the form of common ground and now for something nicer a little oasis in the war it's time for some common ground i'm trying to intro the common ground i'm recording

maybe so common ground is i think necessary today because you've shot down my ace and i'm angry at you you killed my ace six of my yeah we need it we need it we need it the animosity is fucking there and i think yeah we we need to need to find a way to reconcile and i think that The common ground I have will do that Okay We need to bring back warrior titles Warrior titles

We need to bring back You know Andy the man who smokes cigarettes James the lovely boy Are they warrior names? Well those are Abstracted somewhat but You know the you know

Someone the such and such You need to bring those back Into society like thingy the blade or yeah exactly okay just for warriors or no no warrior titles but for anyone oh okay you need to start having people refer to as someone the something okay i think that needs to be widespread because you get a real sense of someone if you are introduced to you know this is this is derrick the bootmaker yeah but but it's but it gives a bit more of a it it harkens back to the the surnames

like smith okay but it but when you've got a you know someone the something it's a lot more impressive yeah maybe not shoemaker because there'd be a lot of the shoemakers that really now shoemakers yeah i know a couple of cobblers you're thinking of shoemaker nope you are schumacher is of course a a race car yeah he's the car go so i reckon you can you can you can stick those titles onto the back of anything does anyone get one like earning a name well i guess we have to mandate it okay that's how this works isn't it common ground we we impose our will on the world so it's mandated but everyone does everyone have one everyone needs to have one yeah so it's not like you earn a name well you have to earn it

because it's it's related to what you do does it have to be related to your job not your job but something you've accomplished okay yeah so what would ours be for example it would have to be something very niche very niche very long very stupid yeah we'd have to be you know andy and james the well we we could be the subtle humble and brave yeah we get free yeah i guess it depends on the mood the temperament of the day oh okay so you know you today you would be andy the man who lost. Does it have to be a the? Or could it be like Humble Andy?

No, I think Humble Andy might be. I mean, then you just sound like a bit of a downtrodden guy. Oh, there's Humble Andy. But maybe that's what the name needs. He doesn't really say what he means. They all have to be impressive. He goes to restaurants and he doesn't ask for sauce

because he's too nervous. That's not what even Humble is. That's what Humble means. It's when you go into a restaurant. egomaniac but he doesn't want extra sauce he won't ask for it because of his humility

because of his fear I kind of like I think it should be more limited I don't think everyone should get one it's like vikings I think had like named men it would be like the guys around the the y'all or whatever

who'd like earned a name that would be like almost a rank where you get your name and you're like a named man. So you've just got Peter's at the table and then you've got... Like Derek the Shiv. Yeah, that's cool.

Derek the Shiv is cool. That just sounds like a guy who stabbed someone once. I mean, he very well might have. But I don't feel like that earned his title surely. But you could have Gavin the Spectre.

I don't know how you'd pull that one off though I do like the idea of making job titles more epic and medieval so how would you go about how would you implement that in modern society dead air

you see the thing people are doing stuff they're not like fighting battles and stuff because like the the ghost of kiev or whatever the fuck it was called got one because he was in a war so you can hear the name in war it's it's very easy because you're killing people you you are inherently a scary person but i guess day to day it becomes more difficult but i i want i don't know maybe i want maybe i want war is that what's going on this is game really seeping into my mind that much i just want conflict constantly i just i just want i i don't know i think i just want things to be a little bit more exciting no i like it i do like it uh yeah i'm gonna agree to this but not everyone

not everyone yeah and just the accomplished yeah or you do something like bad you you want to give it to bad people not like bad that way like if you shit your pants you're like derrick this year or Kieran the pan-shitter, yeah sorry, that's targeted, that's the one I know psycho it's vague enough that it's fine, it won't actually affect that person

but do not go hunting for Kieran do not hunt down Kieran the pan-shitter the man made a mistake once He shouldn't be maligned for the rest of his life. But it should be his name. It's a title.

It's a title. I would be James the Lovely Boy, and you would be... Why would you be the Lovely Boy? I've been called it before. That makes you sound like a jiggle-o. I would take that. Then it would be James the Generous. Why would you be generous?

I would be a generous lover. Oh, okay. That's all money. Well, for cash, yeah. Hey, if you're going to pay me money, I will be very, very generous with my time and my, you know, everything. Okay.

And you would be? Andy the Soul. No. Just Andy the Rock. Dwayne. Dwayne the Rock Johnson. You can't take that. I'm going to compete with The Rock for his name.

Oh my God, is this where we're dropping the WrestleMania law? that's right this week Andy is going to throw down with Dwayne The Rock Johnson I'm very excited for the Andy Heal arc that'll be good yeah I'll have a match of The Rock at Wrestlemania for the name

he enters The Rock he leaves Dwayne Johnson you've taken it from him I've taken his name you're going to be in the live action remake of Moana just a guy who comes pushes him off a boat what can I say except uh yeah yeah i would absolutely watch a moana remake with you as the mo out mo the maui

role i would watch the i would watch that i'd definitely nail that i think you would you'd add a particular charm to it it would be massive cultural appropriation because he's oh people would be furious because of you know cultural appropriation and me doing a bad job well i mean Yeah, I don't imagine you would be able to encapsulate everything that Maui's meant to be. I mean, I can't sing. I think that's part of it. I mean, you're not Polynesian.

That doesn't help. It's actually an act of detriment. It's whitewashing to the worst degree because you're getting rid of somebody who fits the role for a lot of different reasons because he's been in the film already and yes, he has the heritage that allows him to fill that role.

you're neither of those things you just want to fight him at Wrestlemania and then pretend to be Polynesian I don't want to pretend, I just want to take his name there's nothing inherently Polynesian about The Rock I think there's something very bad about beating someone at Wrestlemania and then taking

their identity though Triple H never did that yeah he used to be called Paul and then he fought Triple H what do the H's stand for by the way? Hunter Hearst Hemsley. Really?

Yeah. Is that actually what it stands for? Yeah. Hemsley? Yeah. He used to be like a posh character and then he wanted to be cool. Like he used to come in

with tops and tails and stuff. Wait, what? Really? His character used to be like the Connecticut Dandy and he'd like wear a suit and talk posh. Hang on, what?

And then he rebranded as the Game Triple H. How the fuck do I not know about this? I don't know. I mean, I'm not big into wrestling, but I know that you're very big into wrestling. I enjoy it, yeah. That's crazy.

Was it Japanese wrestling you used to show me where it's just absolutely extreme? Oh, yeah. It's like another level of violence. Where it's not like a choreographed dance and a bit of performative art. It's just people actually really fucking hurting each other. Yes.

I actually quite enjoyed that, though. Yeah, that's more fun. I mean it's just a blood sport at that point you know what they would have warrior titles Ray the Mysterio I guess people do have warrior titles they're wrestlers

yeah like you just said happy Hemel Hamstead or whatever it was called happy Hemel Hamstead we gotta wrap this up we're going insane I just I like the air combat I think it was

I think it was a jolly good time I think that's Yeah, I'm happy to be here, man. I'm happy to be here. Happy to talk about Hungry Hungry Hippo or whatever the fuck it's called. You know what? I think we'll call it a day there, folks.

What else more can we say than everything we've already imparted upon you as just objective wisdom? But if you want to get in touch, you know the ways. It's info at warwithamate.co.uk dot co dot uk is it yeah yeah of course it is that's yeah that's how emails work info what the mate dot co dot uk uh what with the mate dot co dot uk is our website and what

with a mate is the instagram and we're very happy for everybody that we hear from everybody who gets involved it is a little light in our journey so thank you for that reviews good or bad we appreciate them all we like to hear what we're doing right what we're doing wrong and if there's anything we can do in future we'd love to do it so i think from our side i am james i'm andy stay humble and brave oh god and stay away from here here be dragons good night We'll be right back.