War With A Mate - Episode 30: The War Room, Part 1

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

Batten down the hatches friends, it’s time for the guys to unfurl the battle plans and look at the current state of play. Quite the different approach this week as Andy and James reflect on 100 days of playing The Campaign For North Africa, what they’ve experienced and what the future holds.

Hello, and welcome to War with a Mate. It's me, it's James. Hey Andy. Yeah we're here. We're here for a for a big one. For a special one. Yeah we're in the war room. We are in the war room and you know what makes it the war room Andy? No. It's these brand new mics. The mic arms that we've got. The mic stands. Yeah. They are affixed to a table. They're suspended in the air and so we we got some suspenders for ourselves. We're dangling from the air in BDSM style equipment. But just because it's more comfortable. It's not sexual. Yeah it's not sexual it's um well it gives a gratification which some might misconstrue as sexual i would

just say it's platonic fun yeah it's just a fun way of being in the air yeah it's difficult to get up here if you're not in a plane or winged or some sort of wizard and since i don't have access to wings or wizards or i have access to a plane do you yeah yeah all you have to do is yeah you just have to pay the money and they let you get on what yeah yeah that's how it works you just give them a little bit of cash and go i would like to go to this destination please and they go oh go on then since it's you sounds like a scam since it's such a lovely boy you can uh you can get on so what we doing here andy we're doing a recap sort of analysis of what we've done so far it's been yeah we've halfway through upstage two we've now done or had a chance to do everything

in the sequence of play uh we've not done some stuff like patrols but i think there's enough to sort of take a step back haven't played this time and just talk about yeah what we've experienced so far thoughts i guess a bit of a review almost it's been 100 days since we officially started playing the game we did a lot of stuff beforehand that we called playing the game it wasn't really but 100 days ago we definitively started playing by starting the different parts of upstage one of turn one yes so that's really what this is it's a chance to look back this far along so a bit of a different structure today it won't be the the usual segmented aspect instead it's going to be a very thorough look back uh what we've done so far and also what this means going forward

so i suppose you've already said we are we're part way through the second off stage of turn one we're essentially smack bang in the middle of turn one yes and it's it's taken as you may remember 100 days to get this far which doesn't put us on a great course it puts us on a prediction of about 45 47 years to finish we're gonna have to trim it down but we have some some real wins in our back pocket here we've made some real real changes real strides which i think mean that we've we've got positive outlooks for the future yeah i like to think of it as we've front-loaded some of the effort rather than being very slow yes and you know what i don't i'll go mad no it's it's not it's not only rational for your own sane mind it's also correct because we started off looking

at the game wondering how to tackle it we tackled that logistical challenge first before we started tackling the logistics in the game itself so i think yeah maybe we should first of all go over our general impressions for the game so far should i go first go for it so initially daunting causing a sort of persistent anxiety that went over our heads yep uh but it has opened up a bit It feels more accessible. It's no less crunchy. No. And it's still just exhausting at times.

Every play session I'm drained. Yeah. But feels completable, which it didn't at times at the very start. No, before we started officially playing, it definitely didn't feel like a task that we were cut out for. Yeah. It's initial frustration with the rules here, which we've documented well. Yeah.

But I think we're getting the grips of them now. it's clear that there's multiple games sort of smashed together and also like the air game feels like it might be just another thing it feels like it on yeah it could have been ripped from another game it could be its own game in its own right yeah and it's been tacked on not tacked on that sounds that's a bit of a disservice it's been it's been added on pulled it on and it's it does synergize with the with the land game and the logistics game but it does feel like it could be its own independent game yeah and then obviously there's the like ghost of stuff i don't they were working on and didn't finish like yeah there's we've been the camels are famous on this podcast

but there's no reason to mention that dead camels can be transported by air there's no rules about what you can do with them it's left to the imagination feels like there was some sort of camel system that got cut things like that so yeah um but despite the confusion one the rules are fun to read i think they're well there's a lot of personality in there it's quite conversational it feels the way i see it it almost feels like a bit of an eccentric lecturer he's going over a topic and it it feels borderline condescending at times sort of like a guy who's a little bit sick of his career and he's just giving you the knowledge and he's like you know what this is kind of a waste of your time and this is exhausting like certainly talk you out of doing your phd on

something nuts yeah it's like i'm tenured i'm gonna keep this job because it's the job i'm in but if you really want to waste your time doing this that's on you buddy but overall yeah a general impression of once we've got some of the tedious stuff out the way like the bootkeeping where there's no like decisions or anything it's just like remove six percent from everything you have once that kind of stuff's been streamlined a bit uh i think yeah there is a fun game in there and i'm enjoying playing it i don't think i would have kept going if we didn't have the podcast though several times i definitely would have quit but i am glad we got the accountability tool because it is i am glad by playing it you know what so my and i i definitely echo that as well

as a lot of your other thoughts there that if it wasn't for the fact that we have another sort of another angle with this that we you know we get the feedback on it we get to hear other people's opinions on it and it doesn't feel like it's just us playing it because that would feel so just suffocating and there's i mean the amount of times i would have quit in the first few months it was i think it was mostly my idea to push this in the first place and i was i think definitely the one more willing to quit at the very start yes because i was so infuriated and at first i was like oh this is whimsical and funny but then i was like yeah but i actually need to play this fucking thing yeah it's a fun concept but then when you're the one doing it it's like a fail

video on youtube like you don't want to be the one getting smacked in the nuts and that's what i was getting i was getting smacked in the nuts and i yeah i was incredibly frustrated with the complexity of it the bad rule clarity really felt like biting off more than we could chew and then after understanding the game more mitigating setup time there is there is a fun game in there and there's there's dynamic elements um i mean personal favorites for me barrage and recently air missions so the the admin it's become manageable and now it feels like that's almost the the hard work you have to put in so that you can have a bit of play time at the end of the day yes which you know we're playing this game knowing what it is i think it's only

fair that for us to get to the fun parts we have to trudge through some of the shit yeah it is that sort of fun that you have to earn sort of like the dark souls type thing of like you're gonna fail a lot and keep bashing your head against the wall but it's rewarding when you get there it is and i've got aspects of the game that i'm i'm quite engaged in that the fact that i have you know air superiority as the axis player i get what feels like the beefier units certainly around the border conflict at the start of the game so i feel like i've got this like sort of advantage almost to to make use of so having that to you know play around with a little bit it makes all of the bookkeeping feel a little bit less stingy when i'm looking at it going well i've got more maybe

to keep track of but that's a good thing that means i've got more toys to play with in the sandbox so that's been that's been fun and it's the play in the game itself was to say it a sort of weird it's an obsession i've got i think with really overly convoluted tasks and i'm not going to be landing on mars anytime soon i'm not going to be climbing everest so playing a long board game feels like a very manageable middle ground even though it is a fucking ridiculous board game but an impressive one yeah a very impressive one richard berg outdid himself when he made this he broke the mold and like you say there's the remnants of all these are the things that he's clearly taken inspiration from these ridiculous board games of the time these big monster games

made the monster of all monsters and it's a it's a marvel it's it's just genuinely i don't know it's mind-boggling that this guy i mean there's other people involved with aspects of it but this guy really spearheaded this game um the only sort of regret i have is that when you know i finished work for the day i got a message from a friend being like oh do you want to come to the pub and i'm like i can't i've got to play the campaign for north africa i've got to go play this stupid game especially when they say that and it's you know recent weather it's just been blistering sunshine sun's out i see people going off to enjoy themselves while i'm on the walk to yours i'm thinking i could be doing that but instead i'm i'm sat indoors playing this and when it's

an admin session as well god the only saving grace is the last few weeks it's been fun aircraft stuff yeah so i've i've not felt as bitter but there's bitterness there's bitterness of course yeah overall i think it's it's been more fun now than i thought it would be at the start by a long shot yeah i was sort of expecting it would be the thing of us getting through it but not actually having fun for a lot of it and that may welcome wait we're so early that the majority of the time is it's not something measurable at all this is a drop in the ocean so hopefully it doesn't turn into you know pissing into an ocean of piss and instead it's it's actually uh an ebb and flow of good and bad here's hoping yeah um so i suppose with with that ticked off for broad

thoughts why don't we get into the experience of playing that we've had so far yeah uh do you want sort of break it down at a high level sort of logistics land combat and then the air stuff yeah yeah good way to do it uh logistics i guess we start with that because that is the game it's the yeah it's the backbone it's the everything it's the bedrock well yeah it sort of informs every other decision you might make whether how much ammo you use in a fight because you might not get them resupplied in time if they even have the ammo if it's worth doing the fight because if they win are they gonna have enough fuel to like take an objective that it runs through every decision you make in the game yeah everything is backed up by that and that decision is always looming

because you'll always be thinking if i'm going to use this do i have the supply lines to back this decision i can do it in a moment but is this going to kill me next turn yeah it's felt more i think you've maybe had a harder time with it than me just because well i have unlimited supplies at my main cities and all my units are currently basically in a line so stuff can move along it along that north coast yeah you've got a streamlined road to make use of it it's it's perfect partially because i should i should have guys down in siwa yeah that's that's a big point would add a big element to my supply line stuff but yeah i've found it not too bad to be honest I think the bombing of the roads and using resources

and the airstrips and stuff is going to sort of spike the complexity of that very soon. Yes. Well, I recently got a bomb off on part of that northern road. Yeah. Which, yes, it's just the one hex. So you can, in theory, skip over that hex and continue your movement.

But it just builds up that little bit of traction to slow down your supply lines. And adds breakdown chances. Yeah. yeah you can have all sorts of things that become yeah complexities on the back of that how are you finding it from the axis specific i guess so i think it probably is quite a bit different solely because i've got the the shipments which are the the the sort of the yeah the naval convoy stuff yeah having to have everything move over through shipments and especially in the scenario you've

got very limited shipping lanes you've only got three to pick from and of those three um they're quite limited in supplies when it comes to get them to the front line the biggest port that i have is tripoli which means that i've got to move stuff from an off map location to to the prime map areas which means getting them from an abstracted area to the westernmost point of the game map and then getting them from there to what is the front line on map c yeah so getting those resources there is a bit challenging and i'm still a little bit confused i'm still figuring out tripoli i don't really understand how it works still because i don't understand what supply cadence i should be following yeah so it's not a rule issue it's a yeah how do i like i'm not sure how frequently

i should be moving things if it should be a steady stream constantly or if i should be having waves of trucks going every few op stages and i don't think i'll know realistically for another turn or two like full turn before it sort of manifests because i don't know how it's going to impact my supplies because it feels like in some areas i've got a shit ton of supplies but i know for a fact that's going to dwindle so quick stuff like ammunition it does not feel like i've got enough ammunition and i don't know if i've just distributed things badly at the start or if it's intentionally sparse i know it is to an extent but i don't know if it's meant to feel this suffocating so i'm gonna have to review that in a few turns really assess whether or not i've

went ham with stuff like shipping of water which i think i have because so many villages and burrs are in my control i can probably make more use of that than i am so that the shipping itself as well you know you've got stuff like you've never successfully located my shipping lanes yes because that's on the strategic so i get one chance per turn to do that yes and i missed out on this one uh because of my uh dice rolls yeah so i've not had to worry about that but i know other stuff like the the tonnage effects the defense capability of these ships so i'm gonna have to think do i play around with that um yeah i think the first time you identify my ships and i have a look at how much resource i lose from that and then also how much i'm actually shipping from

tripoli um will really be an indicator for for how it works stuff like trucks that like you say that's so important and it's it's stuff like breakdown hasn't hit us massively yet but it's only upstage one that we fully completed i mean upstage one i lost 50 of the trucks in one of my convoys yeah that's it is a huge hit and you have bigger convoys than me as well actually the way i've got a sow yeah it's big it's four big convoys where you seem to have gone with more i've got like 16 sort of more reasonably sized ones well that's it you say reasonably maybe it's unreasonable because maybe i've actually i've i think i've hamstrung myself in some areas yeah where looking at it i just don't know that i've got the right amount of trucks so i'm safer from breakdowns

en masse but all in all you might because then you have the the benefit of if you then send people out to recover those trucks i only have one place and it feels more worthwhile yeah if i'm risking you know resource leg and limb to go and get two yeah two three trucks is that really worth it and then i'll have to start weighing that up because if i start to run out of trucks i'm gonna have to go and cherry pick these ones in the middle of fucking nowhere which is gonna be so difficult yes no sort of filters over time it's not a fixed answer yeah dependent on like how many trucks you get through replacement points and arriving through the schedule does that keep up and that sort of thing well you make a very good point there with the schedule of

reinforcements not something we've encountered yet that's something we'll have to really think about because then it's a it's more groups showing up that we need to reinforce with resources get them amalgamated as part of the supply lines and also just how that's going to affect us and i guess it's getting more into land combat maybe but how that affects us um but i think yeah the the attrition rates of the trucks it's not terrifying moment to moment but i think in a few weeks time that could build up to some really scary numbers which could absolutely undercut everything we've done so far yeah it's got that potential to really grind the game to a halt almost because if both of us have messed it up if both of us have i don't feel too bad

i don't think too bad but the game does sort of become a it becomes a slow burn pistols at each other being like someone give me ammo i mean that's that is still what i feel like a little bit except instead of empty pistols it's just empty water canteens and then they go but james you forgot about the fact you're in a village you can just draw water from the well and i'm like yeah that's that's fair we we um we did have a an email which uh we'll not do a sort of mail segment today i don't think but we we did have an email that highlighted once again um that we've made another mishap with water um i forgot that you know villagers have water um we'll get into that next time but uh just stuff like that where we've we've missed really important logistical

information stuff like um guns can have ammo capacity of their own um vehicles have fuel tanks yeah stuff like that that really threw off the ratio of supplies that we had at the start of the game which i think maybe it won't have a massive detriment but it feels like there's a chance it does yeah it feels like we might have overshot stuff like fuel might have went too hard on fuel but all in all i think logistics is going all right um you think overall you've you've got yourself away from danger or do you think you're still in the gray i don't at the minute have anyone who's like a turn away like no one's on attrition at the minute yeah and my frontline guys have ammo just guess it's yeah that's the thing keeping that up well that's it we need to

make sure that we we keep on top of the logistics because then we won't get to do fun stuff like land combat which i suppose if we're breaking it down high level would be the next thing to cover yeah so what are you what are your thoughts on land combat i think it's been fun yeah it's not gone well for me but uh i do think it's been fun it went well against the first libyan division yes uh yeah it's actually not gone that badly overall you made a good dent in them yeah yeah i think there's enough stuff there in combat like the steps and the decisions you make that it doesn't it doesn't at all feel prescribed i guess by it feels like the while logistics is important if you play it well you can sort of counteract that a little bit

uh with the like forward and back on the artillery guns yes who you're firing your barrages at does mean that potentially a smaller force that's well utilized can be a bigger force um that kind of thing um i mean the big thing that stands out for me in that is when my i think it was the second libyan division managed to pin down all of your infantry with guns or pin down two out of three pinned them down in the barrage phase which meant that your infantry were no longer sufficient to satisfy the combined arms rule which means your armor your tanks are completely ineffective because they don't have enough infantry garrisoning the movement to support their tanks so yeah they just become completely i mean just completely yeah useless um so if i've

got a group a smaller group that can barrage your infantry keep them pinned then i stop the advance of armor it means all of a sudden my smaller unit is fighting against somebody who can't really fight back yeah certainly it means you can delay a bigger unit until other stuff arrives yes it gives you a perfect opportunity to to wait for reinforcements maybe even pick off a little bit of it on your own so yeah i agree that you can make tactical decisions that really shift the game i mean i'm probably going to be focusing on infantry in barrages from now on if there's armor because it shuts down your armor completely yeah it seems the way to go with the sort of mixed forces how are you finding it from your perspective i guess any additional

well the biggest thing for me the biggest sort of concern that i've got is how scary the consumption rate of ammoers because barrages using four ammo points yes is it's a lot and that's per that's per barrage that's per blast per toe so that's a scary amount of ammo to be used on essentially what is the prelude to close assault because there's also a chance which my barrage went off successfully with the second libyan division it shouldn't have the numbers were not in my favor no i think you did yeah real well i ruled i think i had something like three or four results that could have got me that out of what 30 odd faces so yeah so i was i was very unlikely in in what i ruled so when it comes to use of ammunition if i was to you know blow all that

and it came up you know i was gonna say snake eyes but in this game snake eyes is the best rule you can have for some reason so if it you know if it came up all sixes then i would have been absolutely boned because then i've used up almost all of my ammo and it's for nothing yeah and then it comes to the close assault and if you've got a bigger force i'll get absolutely thrashed so the amount of ammo being used really does scare me i'm worried i've not got enough ammo going on which goes back to logistics that's also compounded by another element i think i don't know if you agree with me but i kind of get the impression from what we've played so far that unless there's a huge mismatch combat's not gonna be resolved in one clash like units may be uh engaged to each other

for three or four op stages before there's a definitive like one unit's destroyed the other like overruns them so it is sort of a war of attrition style yeah so even if you're like just about to tip the scales and you free up stages in a row like hammered them and then suddenly there's no ammo it gives them a chance to they're not pinned they can leave they can push into you because you can't fight back yeah so it speaks to it speaks to the verisimilitude of of the war in that you know you have these long engagements where these groups are locked in occasional skirmishes for weeks on end yeah and wait for supplies to garrison them so that they can then actually push forward make the move that they need to but it you know becomes the

question are the supplies ever coming and if they're not then that's it you're up shits creek without a paddle yeah and it feels like a large part of the game is uh and i guess we move on to air because i think air is probably a big part of that is or might be jumping the gun if you've got anything else but keeping trucks from getting to the front line uh whether that's bombing them maybe sending you faster smaller mobile units around the back to sort of get into enemy and try and pick those trucks off on the road which is something i flirted with um last off stage that well the first one that we did where i'd started to move units and uh i'd spoke to you afterwards where i was talking about the fact that considered moving them past

the libyan border into egypt and and thought about maybe maybe i just stick these men in go for your convoy which because i know your convoys are bigger would be a huge hit yes but in the end i thought not really worth the risk for those men but if i was to do that i think yeah like you say get a quick unit in take them out stop the supplies getting to them it's a huge benefit and yeah air combat um which you mentioned there definitely plays a big part in that yeah so i guess move on to that uh thoughts for you from the start for so all in all um i guess to counter my concern about ammunition in land combat when it comes to air combat i'm sitting pretty i was really pleasantly surprised when we were doing the refilling at the end of last session

how little ammo it takes to refit your men compared to the vast quantities of ammo i've got yeah because it's a single bombs use a little more bombs use more fighters it's just one ammo point for the whole squad yeah so that's very light compared to our infantry unit using an ammo point to fire once yes when it comes to my fighters if this isn't factoring in any of the bombers and that's good because i do have ammo on the way but if i wasn't to factor in any bombers i could refit my fighters with ammo over and over for i think maybe a third of the game yeah based on just what i've got sitting from the start point at these airfields so it's a it's a huge huge gulf between that and the ground combat but then yeah the bombers do feed into that a bit more

and i relied heavily on huge amounts of bombs from my bombers so i will have to really reinforce those numbers each plane has a rating for ammo which will be like seems to be between one and three on the whole yeah i don't think i've seen more than three and that's per plane yes so if you've got like a squad of 15 you're suddenly like 45 ammo points which is a lot when i think a heavy truck carries eight yeah yeah it's two four and eight yeah so that's that's a lot of that's like five heavy trucks to resupply that bombing run which is five heavy trucks that aren't delivering water aren't delivering fuel yeah and aren't delivering ammo elsewhere yes because again ammo is so so necessary in a war would you believe it that if you've committed it all to an

airfield yeah fair enough you might be able to drop some bombs somewhere but you know they're not going to be the ones killing ground units because we we found this out last time you know that the air support can only pin ground units they can't kill them which speaks to what it is it was a misunderstanding i think i had in my head where i saw them as almost a replacement for ground units where you can do everything you can with the ground units with air units it's just another vertical to go down but in reality it's it's it's you know it's land support it's not land replacement so being able to see that difference i think will definitely change how i use them the fact i can i know i can use them to pin you en masse means you know focus on the guys

that are you know making a big approach if i can pin them down stop them from getting somewhere and then move men in, just slow the approach, get my guys in behind you, flank you, keep your pin down. I think that's a much better use than committing all of my bombs to try and kill a small group. Yeah, I think I'm going to be mainly using them for strategic objectives, not in the off-the-game map sense, but like airfields, wells, store dumps.

Yes, supply dumps are. Occasionally maybe a truck convoy if it's like a big one. yes but yeah i think i'm they're only going to be limited for bombing ground units if uh i have a unit that's engaged and they're almost a type of support or i want to pin a bunch of units so i can't attack them like in the next movement phase but they're never i don't think i'm ever going to be bombing units without supporting a land unit objective yes yeah no i think that's that's the way to go with it i went a bit ham initially because i just saw them as another way to to attack and kill units so i thought i can get these guys off the map completely

massively reduce their toe strength and then that's my guys able to walk on past and come to think of it if that were the case then the axis superiority in the confines of the game would be ridiculously broken and I would be able to just mow through pretty much all of your forces on the front line and then just march my guys east and I think the game would be over a lot quicker if that were the case

which I think works with well that's how, the Italians had air superiority in real life and it didn't win the war I think another part is I think it's ridiculous but very fitting for the game that

plane combat is resolved as individual plane to plane dogfights it's like ludicrous because of the scale but just very fitting because of the like focus on minutiae yeah it's it's crazy that you have to yeah you've got so much to keep track of the the fuel everything individual for these planes and then you have to figure out whether or not each individual plane picks off the other plane it's fighting yeah and i think the scramble mechanics are really good thing because it means you've always got that thing in your head of like is the f is the area around this airfield is the other player likely to target it yeah do you keep anyone back can i keep them back and use them as a almost a trap or a defensive measure or do i just put all of my planes on objectives

and let your planes be like less opposed well you that's what you did in in our first dogfight you had those guys that were that was stuck near right well not stuck that was stationed near mercenary so then when i dropped a bomb on the road right next to it you scrambled them got most was it all of them that you got out that you wanted to yeah so they all showed up um and you picked off a couple of my planes you picked off my ace still devastated about that fuck you edward baxter and uh the the scramble mechanic there uh i mean while it didn't stop me getting my bomb off what it did do is mean you know i lost a few planes i lost my best pilot uh well one of my three best pilots also if i hadn't flown my bombing mission which i heavily

invested close air support on yes i could potentially have scrambled like close to 100 planes which would have changed that but then the risk is my bombers are unaccompanied and if you've put something and scramble then it just suddenly my bombers are sitting ducks and then if you haven't done something near mercenary true that's just to turn the planes aren't doing anything well the irony that we found was actually that the airfield that you bombed was actually the airfield where the guys came from that attack mercenary true so it yeah it does have these funny knock-on effects and you only took out one of the um sort of capacity levels of the airfield but there was definitely a situation where those planes get back and they can no longer be refitted

because the airfield is just absolutely ruined so that could have went very differently if you took out more of those planes got through my screen i could have and it wasn't that unlikely was four or five capacity off yes which out of six would have like crippled what is kind of seems to be your forward operating like airbase it's it's definitely one of them yeah i've got quite a few along that border and that is one of the as we've seen you know i used it there for a big mission and it paid off you know paid dividends and now i'm i'm a little bit cautious of where to keep my planes i might do some transfer missions going forward because a lot of my planes have got really good range especially the bombers so i'm not really certain i want to keep

any bombers up close and personal with the risk that they're gone because they are really my favorite aircraft love the fact i can just take away the road from you um i think it works well with the pilot stuff we just mentioned there i think that's a really fun variant rule that like good on them for including because i think it does add to it uh with the tracking your pilots and if they get i think it's five it is yeah yeah down five enemy craft down five enemy craft you get they go up in rank and i guess for us playing like you mentioned edward baxter who's a zero ranking pilot who shot someone down so completely fictional as well yeah now he's generating ace points or whatever we want to call them and there's a guy with a name who's frustrated you

so i think that's fun chance for some storytelling in there yeah and i've also got you know that sort of bit of a grudge against the third coldstream guards which is why i bombed them on the show of them because they went for the the first libyan division yeah so it is already having that sort of emergent storytelling that's yeah it feels like i'm a bit more invested than i would be if they were just the tiles on the map because when everything when every single action is fraught over and and documented so clearly we can go back and look at it and go who was it that did that again who was the guy that shot down my ace which which unit was it that changed the tide of my whole plan in the northern part of the map yeah and then if you can pinpoint who that is it's like

right i'm out i'm out to get them i've got a grudge and that that's what i've really enjoyed about the game and i was always thinking that might happen with the pilots i'm glad we had that immediately that on that twist of fate you took up my best pilot that was out there and it's it's created this this mythical figure of edward baxter and i think it will happen with units as well where some guys who on paper shouldn't win a fight at all will maybe get lucky three fights in a row and then it's like, oh, damn, these guys are going ham. Yeah, you get to build that up as well.

Well, there was my garrison. I can't remember what the town's called now. The ones that you captured as prisoners. Yes. No, I can't remember. I think it's an L, an L something. But you captured them as prisoner. um elsign or maybe i can't remember now but um you you captured them uh immediately because i

thought they had no ammunition turns out they would have had ammunition um but a bit of a mishap but in the grand scheme of things we're letting it play out because it's not going to change the tide of the war and it helps drum in these mistakes as you know things to change in future but you captured them and now they can't reform that unit but what they can do if they escape is return as replacement points so it'd be fun to keep track of them and think right these are the guys who got taken away as prisoners from the garrison and then if that unit starts pulling anything off about oh maybe it's these guys these guys have got a bit of a hand in this maybe they're getting their revenge yeah so i'm i'm loving stuff like that i think that's my favorite part of the

the game it's the well aside from barrage love barrage uh aside from that i i think it is the the storytelling aspect we've we've played so much dungeons and dragons yeah so i think the any sort of storytelling that we can find within a board game really just adds to it although this is quite different from dungeon the dragons oh yeah quite significantly um also i guess because we're playing this with the expectation that the the winner of the full campaign for north africa has to um be bought dinner by the loser and you don't have that in dnd no you rarely get a dinner yeah it's also um it's also not in the rules for anyone wondering the campaign for north africa doesn't say anything about the loser having to buy dinner for the winner um that's a that's a

house rule we'll add that to the addendum we're planning a release once we've got a better idea i think it should be the case i think at the end of all this someone needs a prize yeah i think if you've gone through all of that someone deserves something if this is just for fun what's the point because it's not fun not all the time i need to you know tell myself certainly like fun per minute or whatever thing you want to use it's not like yeah if you had to measure it by that metric it's not the spikes of of happiness and joy in this game do not average out to it being a good game and a happy experience it's we've said it before it's stockholm syndrome it's those there's little bursts of enjoyment in what is a really trudgy situation it just feels like it's elation it's not

it's just normal feeling it's normal emotion so that's uh that's a good little breakdown so far of uh i think all of the the big segments of the game there's other small stuff that we haven't really got to experience yet you got construction uh you mentioned patrols bits that will pop up as we go um scouting um sort of like scout missions the patrols and yeah the scout planes yeah that'll be interesting scouting for planes uh they released that song um elvis isn't dead um yeah i have to give it a listen yeah it's a scouting for girls is the oh okay that was the that was the joke oh sorry it's elvis ain't dead i think not elvis isn't dead that's not why i didn't get it don't worry apologies i went too formal sorry it's ain't it's ain't which is a

word that i don't know not really sat right with me and not really sure what it's a conjunction of it's no y'all it's no y'all oh thank you uh for everyone by the way who sends in an email with y'all and i absolutely love it i think whoever puts in the most y'alls in uh in the email by the end of this whole thing wins uh they win what a challenge they win you can't just put y'all nothing else that's not needs to be coherent um i might stop breaking that out in real life i might as well you know i might i might get some y'alls out there i need to find a way to get it quite comfortably in my vernacular but i'll get there speaking of getting things comfortable the game itself we've we mentioned earlier on we've made some strides at the start

to make the game more comfortable to make it a little bit more digestible and it ate into a lot of time at the first 13 or so episodes we were mostly talking absolute shit because we were busy trying to figure out a way to play the game and i think panicking for the most part that we'd started doing this and maybe couldn't even do it but we we made some real good progress at the very start the the setup for the maps we've talked about it before but having these picture frames which are backed with metal ferromagnetic material so now we can magnetize all of the game pieces stick them on it means at the end of the day we just stack these boards up and we don't have to worry about the hours of setup it was taking beforehand yeah which i think is essential

unless you've got if you're lucky enough to have a 10 foot by 3 foot space in your house you can just dedicate to it the game yeah if you've got that much void room in your home you're sitting pretty you've got a comfortable life i can tell you that because i don't have that kind of void room where i live so that was a that was a big one and the spreadsheets is another we've made some real strides with organization of the actual game tracking yeah getting formulas in for my stuff and you've sort of got like a template system don't you yeah yeah so mine is i'll i've got an individual tab for every single upstage yeah so every unit has their own spreadsheet every sort of division or garrison uh garrison um battalion um they have their own spreadsheet

and i'll create a new tab for every single upstage which has been really helpful um it's been the case that i've got a good breakdown as to what has changed every single upstage but the downside is i've had to make sort of little notes as to what has affected each value yeah so whether or not ammo's been used for a barrage or close assault etc all these different things whereas yours is a bit more tailored yeah mine sort of rose in a table so i think i think there's probably value at both approaches i i think it's a what works for you situation rather than a um there being one like correct way as it were yes yeah it's it's definitely the case that the yeah i think if if i was to go back and do it again i'd probably do it more like

more like you have i think that's maybe a more sensible way to do it so i'll have to keep my eye on on how that works by the end of the scenario maybe rejig it uh especially for the formulas because at the moment you've got the means to implement those formulas quite comfortably. I don't really have that. Yeah, that is a big help for a lot of the stuff where it's just like a fixed

thing happens like store expenditure or water or basically any of the stuff where there's no thinking, it's just bookkeeping. You can ideally just step over that which is, I don't I don't think this game was

playable without computers i mean in in essence it was but i mean you have to practicality yeah realistically you would need the 10 players which we don't have and you would need it to be i think maybe a more regular play time or a longer play time you'd be talking like a full weekend day every every week or so which we don't have the time for and we don't have the friends for certainly not we don't have we don't have enough stupid friends yeah so we don't have those so we have to make do and it's it makes it a bit of a tougher thing to do but overall it's it's not it's not too bad especially when we broke it down by playing the scenario first which i guess to get into that a bit the scenario is it's doing exactly what we hoped

because we've had so far like a dozen live situations where rules have been deep delved or disputed or outright misread through the play and then being able to go back ensure that they're properly comprehended means that when the full play is in action we don't have that level of insecurity that would completely hamstring gameplay if we're focused on understanding the rules then we won't really be able to focus on winning the game which sort of defeats the purpose of it being a competitive game so these rule mistakes let us experiment a bit more and make some sort of tactical decisions that we wouldn't in the full game because it risks then completely undermining years or decades of play whereas at the moment we can be a bit more free flow with

that we can get a bit more experimental and and know what works and what doesn't yeah i think that's really important because yeah with the game being so long like i mentioned sewer but like in the real game if i just left the bottom of the map empty that's just like an encroaching problem forever until it's like a big diversion of stuff to undo it rather than like a small amount of stuff at the start to like hold it in place yes yeah and uh i think um when it comes to the actual playthrough um i'm hoping i'll have a much more solid grip on the tactical side of things because right now i i'm still not confident that i have a solid strategy for anything i think everything is very much upstage to upstage and if you you manage to ruin one of my plans in one upstage i

think i will just have to flap figure out a quick plan and then redo it all the next upstage yeah i'm not playing this like chess where i'm 10 steps ahead and have contingencies i've got no idea what i'll do if my plan doesn't go the way i want it to oh yeah uh but we've mentioned some rule issues should we quickly go through some of the stuff we've run into yeah so we've had a few so big one the biggest one i think is the fact that there is a a part of the game that doesn't exist yes the tactical shipping phase segment strength it's called yeah it's called different things in different parts of the rule books but it's not real yeah it doesn't exist that's another one of those i think rule holdovers i think at one point though they were gonna have it and then they

moved everything into the truck convoy stage and then didn't remove the segment from the rules yeah yeah because i would be really interested to find out i don't know if there's any way we ever could but like what does that like last sort of month before it gets sort of sent off to the printers look like almost? Is it like they knew a long time in advance or is it like someone like the CEO or someone came in and was like right you guys have

been fucking around for two years I want this out next month and then like a scramble to get it to what it needs to be or. Yeah I just don't understand how a segment of the game doesn't exist like there has to be some major

change during the development of the game. I don't think so but there is part i'm ten percent of me is willing to i think ninety percent sure it's just not a thing ten percent is like there is a chance we've somehow made it stay but yeah i mean we've searched that that's another part of the making things easier that i think's been shockingly useful as the searchable document yes because the first pdf we got was i think just a scan so you couldn't you couldn't identify individual words and you couldn't search it but then you've popped it through, you've made

a scanned version so now we can actually identify stuff, which has been a godsend, because there's been lots of stuff we need to double-check. Some units are misreferenced or omitted entirely. Several formulas are incorrect. I think three of your battalions

we got on the... Two of my divisions. Divisions, yeah. We're on the addenda asserted into the box. Yes. That, I'm glad, that would have been a nightmare one because i think they're both german right uh no i one of them i think is actually italian i think one of them is one i get from the very start oh right okay so that that from go if i didn't have that addenda that came with the the game um not part of the game but came with the

game that we purchased then i would be i'd be at a loss because i wouldn't know the the characteristics of this entire division so i wouldn't really know how to play them so that that would make for it They'd have to figure out how it would... They'd have to, like, guesstimate. Yeah, which feels like a bad idea for people who are playing the game for the first time. The in-game addenda itself, it notes that a large number of the units

are missing the markings or detail on them, which they should have. So the headquarter stripe, which indicates it's a headquarter unit. Which is a very important, like, visual shorthand. Yeah, because if you don't have that, then you don't actually... You have to look through everything.

Yeah, you have to look through every piece in the box to find that one piece. and it will be the last one that you find yes because that's that's how the world works so the yeah the the core factor is that the the rules if you read them are fine but if you start playing the game they don't actually work yeah which is a very frustrating headspace to be in and and we've we've made our own mistakes as well admittedly where sometimes the rules have been there for us to look at and we've misread them again we've got a lot to keep track of so i don't think it's it's too crazy that we've made the occasional misfire no another reason the scenario

is so important yeah yeah we need it i mean the biggest one uh biggest fuck up definitely uh guns being loaded and vehicles having fuel tanks because that really changes the characteristic of basically everything in terms of supply yes by by a long shot so the fact that some some units we thought did well like i said that garrison um on the just past the border in egypt i thought that they didn't have any guns with ammo and turns out they do because they start with it they start with enough ammo to fire once every unit does and also the fact that we thought all of the trucks didn't have fuel they have a fuel tank it's full of fuel when the game begins so we've also over committed fuel i would say comfortably we've over committed fuel yeah i'm

i don't know about you but i'm gonna be definitely at the end of the scenario going through and being like how i think like working out the rate things are used yes to help strategize for the full one because yeah but that was that affected the combat we had between the first libyan and the third coldstream guard yeah because they the third coldstream guard should probably realistically have been bired but i thought i only had enough ammunition for about half of the division to actually engage in that fight yeah but if they all did i would have been able to barrage and then also go in for a very big attack so instead it turned out differently but i think it's another one where keeping that in is a learning experience

i'll always remember that fight now as being one that really i should have won unless you got crazy lucky and instead i didn't and that's because of bad rule reading so if we keep that in mind i'll Hopefully, I'll win the next engagement of that mismatch. Some small ones, you moved your train slightly out of order. Yeah, I moved my guys via train in the movement phase, not the Commonwealth train. There's a specific stage for moving stuff. Yes.

I think I just got excited to use the train. That's fair. I mean, trains are cool. Yeah. And also, I wanted to see those guys go so far. yeah i did realize you were flicking the pieces across the ball that wasn't very cool launching them across homebrew room it's like tiddlywinks yeah the train is actually just the hand of god flicking a unit and that's where the train landed is that what happened

yeah wow the war is scary hardly they both landed in this material intact as well yeah stacked yeah they weren't well they got big oh yeah oh wow that's pretty cool it's a train that makes things big you're thinking of milkshakes oh yes milkshakes and bones not trains and soldiers yeah so it's high high protein huel is what does that we can't pollute this episode with fuel chat of course we can this is a recap on everything that's come before so he will have to be involved uh a couple of the ones uh pinning from bombs as we mentioned you can't kill with bombs you can pin with bombs i wasted a lot of my bombs based on that so that wasn't wasn't the smartest move but hopefully it pays uh pays off when it comes to the the movement and combat segment i

hope it does i can probably decimate those guys now i think it's probably a waste of bombs but it's not a it's like an over commitment not a huge detriment i don't think uh i guess we'll see if you have trouble resupplying the bombers and stuff but it doesn't seem to be too big a thing no i think it's just more i've blown a lot of bombs that i probably shouldn't have i could have maybe split that across two or three different targets and still had a comfortable result pretty much the same yeah yeah and on different groups as well so i'll definitely be reassessing that one as well as when it comes to air stuff as i mentioned earlier we had an email reminding me that a lot of my airfields are in villages or burrs i don't need to worry about the water

there are wells there so i can forget about water being a problem thankfully that's happened during the refilling so that will change how i look at refilling stuff i won't be as nervous um and i think the biggest mistake that we've probably made so far is playing the game at all uh yeah it's all right at the minute it's gone through that this is the worst idea we've ever had to it's not too bad just one of the bad ideas that you've had uh and concerns yeah yeah got a got a few of those i think um my concern is probably one of us dying before we finish the game um that's that's the big one but what about yourself any any specifics that stand out i had a few but they've been sort of ironed out by the scenario there's just the one left that i guess is the big elephant

in the room because the game's never been playtested or finished which is just i think i've mentioned this before but will things slide into unplayability like do you does the breakdown rate overcome possible truck replacements or will the like shipping break down because you can't bring enough stuff it like basically i'm just worried about the like long-term stuff in the game not working outright and as sort of soft locking ourselves at like turn 100 yeah does the does the attrition of the of the trucks in the end because of breakdown result in a huge disparity in the numbers because you only get so many that come in so if you end up in a situation where you you ran out of trucks then you will find yourself in a position where you can't supply the men

you'll have to like get them to sprint towards the nearest safe area and then i guess you just wait out the end of the game yeah which would be a pretty anticlimactic way to play out the final 30 turns yeah so that is yeah the concerns that the unforeseen stuff from actually doing the full game but scenario wise i don't have anything it reminds me of um i don't know if you've seen it where in minecraft if you go further enough like far enough out in the game like all the way to like the edge and you just keep on going keep on going the game starts to sort of break down a bit and the chunk generation starts to fall apart yeah i feel like that's what this game might have where they might reach a certain point and the game can't actually account for everything yeah

it doesn't render anymore the trucks are gone they've ran out yeah so i think i agree that's probably my big concern i don't think there's anything else i'm worried about i don't know if it's trucks i don't know if we're gonna end up with no planes each yeah something could run out is something limit because in theory other than supplies for the commonwealth everything else in the game is limited yes so it's if those yeah which also includes the means of moving those unlimited supplies yes your your method of moving them around is limited so i think that that's positive that's positive uh we've been positive the the pod it's positive yeah we've been keeping it positive we have and it's been going well we've we've had some we've had some good developments

especially since not just the last 100 days but since episode one it's changed a lot and it's been a good little journey we've had yeah a lot of it thanks to feedback from listeners and oh definitely you guys letting us know what you like what you don't like what works that sort of thing well that's it thanks for for helping guide us on that but yeah well we came into it with this being you know the accountability tool to make sure that we're putting this out there you know maybe a few people are interested but for the most part this is to make sure that we are putting the word out there that we're playing the game so that we can't really stop because otherwise we've wasted our time and money on getting this thing set up yes and then we're just we're just in a hole and we've

wasted at this point months so we can't really back down now and there's already a fair few you guys listening and we've we've added stuff like the the email feedback which like you just said there andy it's a fantastic way to get you know an idea of what people like people seem to really enjoy the history segment which you've really taken the reins on and i mean i've enjoyed it i've thoroughly enjoyed it there's been you know we've got a few bits uh you know some of the silly stuff is still definitely around and i think that's just baked into who we are we sort of pushed a lot of it back into common ground we saw yeah that's a sort of valve which is for healthy we need that valve we need to be able to talk absolute crap um but for the first like 13

episodes it was it was just unadulterated chaos and it was it was tangential to the game to an extreme whereas now it's at least some of the silly stuff it's related to the game and you guys have helped steer us in that direction because we we were off the rails a little bit we were yeah we needed that and you guys have helped nudge us back over you're like the railings in a bowling alley you know at first i look at it and i go oh really we need the rails up and then i'm like yeah but this way i can actually hit the pins so thank you for letting me hit the pins um the history segment's been great graziani montgomery enigma long range desert group uh it's been a lot of fun getting to learn about that sort of stuff because it's not the kind of

thing i had any interest in before playing this game neither did i to be honest but you want to start enjoying it yeah even when i started playing the game i wasn't interested i was like yeah the game will be interesting maybe i'll learn a bit through the game uh i've learned a lot more through your history segments and i have the game but the game also has provided a little you know i'm falling in the trap that i did in the very first episode saying the game all the time i listened back to the first episode earlier today um i say the game a lot so i've clearly brainwashed myself into doing that again but uh also uh i based what got me looking at the long range desert group was an email from you guys so if you know of any interesting people or units or events uh please

fire them over and uh well we've got 10 years of stuff to do so we'll definitely do it yeah we'll do it the same way we promised to read out every every email get through it all um we'll do the same when it comes to stuff like that if you've got an idea of something that could be interesting we'll hear you out in it and some of you guys had mentioned the long range desert group and we we took that on board and i thoroughly enjoyed learning about it so thanks to thanks to you guys and thanks to andy for putting that together and looking forward to the future we're going to continue to try and make it a little bit more uh interactive in the sense that we're going to be putting more stuff out there that could be used to understand how we're playing the game so when

we finish the scenario the the game plan is we'll have at that point standardized sheets where we can keep track of everything that we're not going to be changing the format constantly so then we can update the sheets and put them out there on a weekly or bi-weekly basis however often and then let people actually follow the game through the way we do which means you can also try playing it yourself if you want i wouldn't recommend it that is what we'd also like to uh i guess if we're pushing through this path uh others have before obviously but uh we would like to make it easier for anyone mad enough to try and have a go at this who follows us so we will yeah once we're comfortable with our addenda once we think the sheets work and we find a good

framework we're definitely looking forward to sharing uh that with you guys we'll be the straw that breaks the camel's back it'll be uh a hell of a camel to break and we're sick of camels not knowing what they do but we we think that you know maybe there's someone else out there that could give this a go at some point maybe someone else is stupid we'll be like the four minute mile no one had ever done it they didn't think it was humanly possible then that guy did it and like five people did it in the same year or something so we'll be that guy for this game we'll be the inspiration of a generation i like that we'll be heroes we are we are kind of like heroes i like that yeah uh favor plans as well we've got some sort of very ambitious digital

plans to make tools and stuff to help us out yes and on the other end some incredibly lo-fi ones like i'm gonna get a stick and basically make a ruler that's specifically sized for the hexes so we can do air travel routes easier yeah so both ends of the spectrum there yeah some of it's some of it's very unimpressive but hey putting the map and picture frames on paper it sounds a little bit a little bit low tech but god it's a lifesaver same goes for stuff within the podcast um guests have been a lot of fun we've had two so far um two episodes of guests episode three some of that historic background when neither of us literally knew anything yeah those guys were great as well and if they were on now it would have been a very different story

we would have actually been able to i think engage with a bit more instead we were just sort of sat in awe and asking vaguely related questions and you know bless they took their time to come on here and we didn't know what we were doing yes so echoes of war by the way great channel it's basically the history segment but that's their whole podcast and they better researched yeah they know what they're talking about they haven't just found out about it so check them out i'd definitely recommend it and episode 25 of course we had cam sandwich great guy cam was a lot of fun a big board game fanatic got a youtube channel that breaks down the most weird and wonderful when it comes to board games and had a great time waxing philosophical about the game with him

and i think it was the well we saw one of his videos from when we were thinking about doing this but then fans got in touch about him yeah yeah loads of people if you're listening and you think of anyone else who you like listen to who might be interested in talking to us about the game or good again fire them in yeah point point us in their direction we'll uh we'll we'll drill in we'll we'll pester them we'll we'll see if they want to get involved in this uh this dirty business so that's that's also on the horizon we'll we'll scope out anybody who might be able to shed a little bit of insight on what we're doing or maybe someone we just want to point at this and go oh look look what we're doing it's silly and they can go this is this is silly it's

very silly it's what we're doing to you guys and you're still listening so what does that say about you uh and i suppose the last point is just a uh a thank you to everyone who is listening whether it's uh people who knows personally and our friends who we've managed to corral into listening to this uh apologies to all of you uh i know you're listening and to everybody on the other side of the world and uh all the way in between you've you've made this experience so far a little less torturous um definitely a lot more entertaining torturous it's yeah i mean some of the stuff you guys have come out with the poncho uh debacle that's that's been interesting um we've had some some real corker communications come through and it's interesting that it's it sparked

so much intrigue and so many weird and wonderful characters out there clearly engaged with it so thanks for taking the time to to listen to this and hopefully hopefully you stick around for the long haul because you've got to find out how it ends you've got to find out how it ends you're on this right do you know yeah this is actually where your accountability tool pay your spotify subscription make sure you've got us subscribed on youtube that's right accountability tool is us yeah we'll keep an each other on us yeah that's it yeah it all soon it's been a it's crazy so thanks guys yeah we're loving it so far uh the game sometimes uh the podcast always though yes so that's that's more or less all we have to say for this uh very first segment of war room

sorry uh there's there's no common ground for anyone who was hoping for unadulterated stupidity but it'll be back in its its prime form next week as will all of the other bits and pieces some history some mail regular regularly scheduled programming but we're going to do the sort of more focused just on the game check-ins yes at any sort of big milestone them out at various milestones to I think I can maybe eye one up for the end of the full turn yeah probably the scenario

yeah definitely the end of the scenario so yeah you guys you keep doing what you're doing fuck the trucks and we'll handle the dirty work down here at the table and we need to get out this this bondage gear as well yeah that's going to take half an hour to extract

ourselves from these swings yeah I'm really sweaty in this as well get out I can't I'm trying to it's difficult well Andy say the bit stay subtle humble and brave guys

thanks for listening fuck the drugs and I'll see you out there in the sweaty latex bound deserts of my mind nighty night We'll be right back.