War With A Mate - Episode 31: Who Did This?

Episode Date: July 4, 2025

Decisive assault in Operation Stage Two has left James reeling from some very heavy losses on the ground, leaving Andy braced for what could be a disproportionate response. Looking at some of the more formidable units in the history segment, Andy treats us to some information on the 28th Māori Battalion. An episode that…wait, what is this? Who did this?!

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Because we have your number. Hello and welcome to All The Mate with me, Andy. And me, angry. Why are you angry? I'm angry because of what you've done today. Andrew. Okay, who are you first off? My name's James, and I have a temper right now. Welcome, James. I have a temper with you. What's wrong, buddy? I have a frustration in my body. It's coming from you. Did I do something? You know you did something. Don't act all coy. Wipe that

smile off your face. Take that smile, put it in that drawer beside you. A bit of foley work. there we go asmr emotional asmr why why'd you do it shall we say what i did first well what we did as always we played the campaign for north africa we played it really hard we played it really good we made some really really good progress as always that's all we do we make great progress and we made some real strides we got through big squades of the operation stage we're in but unfortunately that meant that you were a little bit cheeky weren't you yeah i was you're fort magdalena which is your forward base for all your fighters uh yeah all all of my my aircraft that i really like or liked got overrun yeah just a just a fucking tad so i moved some infantry down

from up north yep and then the uh seven farmer division came hurtling across the desert and uh there was a bit of a scrap a bit of a scrap yeah no it wasn't a bit of a scrap i got in a lot of trouble my fort magdalena garrison as well as my three guns that i had placed there the i i know them as the the four one the one one and the two one that's that's what we call them in the biz yeah or in danger when i say in danger i mean one of them's dead completely blew them to smithereens one of my guns got a free gun you got one of them as a gun you now have that you also got some prisoners yeah from fort magdalena and the rest of them ran with their tail between their legs west westward is where they went which is not the way you want to be going because east is where you

are yeah so they're going the wrong way you came in with overwhelming force and it is by far the most devastating attack that's been so far in this conflict yeah because there's a moral adjustment between the two units there's also some sort of moral obstacle no which would usually exist no you don't seem to encounter that no so there's a difference between the moral rating which affects it uh i think that came out you had minus three i had plus two yeah so all units have a morale rating and my guys start for the most part with minus three because you know i i feel like a minus three morale at the moment so they also had that so they have minus three morale yeah and that was a divisional size difference yeah that's yeah it's a divisional size so how big the units are going

up against each other i think the morale shifted at five the unit size shifted it shifted at nine columns so yeah you had plus two morale i had minus three so you had differential of five moved it moved the column five ways in your favor the organizational size moved it another four so that's a total of nine movement points yeah and then also just the actual assault rating yeah which was 41 for me 41 for you yet yeah and yours was mine was one one yep one not not 41 just one so the the column goes from minus 17 to plus 70 plus 17 is overwhelming uh you literally overrun the enemy's position when it gets to i think plus um i think when it's plus 12 it's it's over it's overrun yeah plus 17 it's overrun and it's harder to get out of yeah that's um so you would have

done that with just the defense ratings alone everything else was just the cherry on top yeah i mean it would have been 13 with just the the modifiers so a total differential of just uh i mean yeah 49 overall is the total differential yeah and the the chart from from one end to the other doesn't go to that yeah and then i had one of my good rolls so i rolled the max damage i could do which is taking out 50 of everybody involved in that conflict so 50 means yeah half would you believe it i'm sure you guys are smart enough to figure that one out i certainly was based on the pale face that was looking over at anyone happened so 50 of everyone's gone and then you roll to see how many of them are dead and how many of them are prisoners 50 prisoners that's right so a quarter

of everybody involved in that fight is dead and another quarter are captured which means one gun and one two point of infantry yes so fort magdalena what's left of that garrison is running away to the west some of them are now in your hands so technically none of the fort magdalena guys died none of the garrison died no but my guns did a lot of my guns were were absolutely whiffed captured yeah captured or gone completely gone so and also the sgs use which i guess is the crux of why this is important yeah you mentioned it's my forward operating fighter air base so i had six squadrons there and one of them was not operational because you bombed the airstrip last time so it meant that one of them wasn't refitted

the rest of them were well on their way to being refitted i was doing those rules today getting all giddy thinking oh these guys are ready for round two come next up stage and there you go rocking up showing up in full force and absolutely decimating my garrison forcing them to the west and then you use the remainder of that movement phase to walk into the airfield and do what you erroneously did in the past but this time we know it's definitely the case you walked in there and you executed my sgs use uh yeah which means even if i managed to take that place back i don't have the men to fuel and refit those planes yeah there's uh is it 72 planes um just out of commission for you basically unless you get an sgsu all the way there

yeah so it's um it's it's a devastating thing to happen as a as a friend and even worse as a commander yeah did you start with about 200 planes uh that's a bit of a personal question i mean i can look it up uh yes so you did no i actually think i started with quite a bit more oh okay uh are we talking refitted or just in just play i was just wondering how much of the air superiority i've managed to chunk off you in general i i'm pretty sure you've taken off a decent chunk i'm going to quickly try and have a little flick over towards the uh the scenario section as we speak but uh i'm almost certain that what you've done is absolutely destroy my superiority to a pretty embarrassing degree to be honest oh no by the looks of this you have

a lot more planes i mean i'm looking at it now i've got what's it 65 70 10 24 133 17 56 10 and 9 so it's not it's not an insignificant amount that you've taken out you've taken out eyeballing that maybe a quarter which is i'm very happy with yeah i'm sure you are there's also i guess a big part of it is they're all fighters which means you know you can still bomb and stuff but your screens are probably going to be pretty pretty thin or non-existent yeah you're going to kind of have to rely on oh no scramble hopefully or or just the sheer number of bombers mean that i'm okay yeah i'm gonna have to go for targets that aren't near an airbase basically yes so that that really hamstrung my air force to a scary degree so i'm really not happy about that i put up a good fight

i launched three separate barrages however turns out they did not have enough ammo to really do anything significant so the chance i had of taking you out i think of the 30 odd was it 36 potential outcomes on the dice overall of the 36 potential outcomes I think three of them would have resulted in me pinning you and of course I didn't roll

those three results so nothing happened when I tried to barrage you, no real significant change, so that was lovely to see and then we had, it was the second rifle brigade, the Nefumblin Fusiliers

and the 1st King's Royal Rifle Corps with the infantry involved and they supported the 7th Armoured Division, which currently has no infantry assigned to it. Yeah, because I tried to barrage your infantry units so that I could essentially invoke the combined arms rule, which means that if you don't have infantry

supporting your arms, your armour, which massively reduces their capability. so if i'd got rid of them with the barrage and pinned them your tanks would have been significantly less effective i think in this case i would still have been under plus 17 because yes what you can lose from the tanks is four actual uh four assault points worth which is basically because you times it by 10 uh divide by 10 sorry 40 if you put 40 close assault points plus in of tanks they will still be able to do stuff yes so even if i had got rid of them i still would have been in a lot of trouble i just would have been in slightly less

trouble means i maybe would have felt a little bit better about it but yeah in terms of the actual table everything material stays the same if anything it would actually just mean that i have fewer targets to pick from when i do the damage i would be taking off the maximum i could do was 10 damage i would be taking off 10 of a smaller force yeah so it actually works out better that all of them showed up so i could have hurt them more but yeah i don't think well no you didn't do any losses though did you no i didn't thank you for reminding me of that didn't take out a single one of you guys there but yeah other than that sort of big lunge in sort of in the middle of the map for magdalena sort of half way up it's fairly north actually yeah i think it's probably

maybe maybe a third from the top yeah that's probably closer but up near the coast i've pulled a lot of my units back away from your big massing around the first and second libyan divisions pulled them back to city barani yes yeah you made a bit of a tactical retreat you've um you've moved your moving forward though you moved is it the second indian division fourth fourth yeah they're coming up the road they're sort of they've moved up to a point now where they will be relevant in the next op stage for combat hopefully yeah i'm not looking forward to that because they are they're big they're a division you know they've got some scary capability oh and when when you compare them to something like the what was formerly the fort magdalena garrison uh

now what a hundred men running scared through the desert yeah something like that showing up in my front door is going to be real real fucking bad news so not looking forward to that happening which it will very soon however you did respond in strong style i did i did not let that slide i moved in the milady division and i moved in the or not the fourth the second second second black shirts so i've then moved straight over to my airfield that you're now occupying with your they've headed to magdalena yes your seventh armored division and who else is it that's the second uh rifle brigade yes and then there's two because there's a stacking point rule i don't know how much we've mentioned about this but um you can only have a certain amount of units in

each hex and that depends on the hex type so you can only have six a full division i think is always five uh yeah i think it caps out of five yes so that's the seventh and then there's one stacking point of infantry which is the second and then one hex to the north there's the fusiliers and the first king's royal rifle corps but i've left them alone i've left those guys to the north instead i've come around to box in fort magdalena so that you will leave my airfield ideally and if not you will be killed there and then because the force i've brought is so terrifying that you will not know what hit you but i'll tell you what'll hit you the milady division and the black shirts the second black shirts that's who's gonna hit you and uh then you fired your your fourth have

gone i've gone nuts they have made a real push they've pushed quite a way past my lines yeah so my my fourth black shirt division i've pushed them real far east they've moved across the border into egypt along a track did they expend more um did they push themselves cpa wise there had to be a push for some of them because some of them are infantry that aren't motorized which meant that they wouldn't have been able to do that off yeah bog standard right so some of them have gone into negative cohesion yes um in fact the ones that uh well the lowest one had to go to maximum overexertion of double their CPA. Is that

probably 8, I'm guessing, of CPA? Yes, it is. Yeah, 8 CPA that they've exerted. That is rough. Yes. They went, oh, it might have been 10, actually. Maybe it was 10. 10's bad. Yeah. Are they properly supplied with water? They are

properly supplied with water. The pasta point's not getting them next turn. No, the pasta point's not getting those boys. Pasta point's also only per turn. Yeah, next turn if they don't get resupplied i was thinking they'd just go feral because they didn't get that pasta no no they'll be resupplied they'll be resupplied they'll be resupplied by your men because i'm going to come for your trucks andy i'm going to show up i'm going to take your trucks i'm going to cut the wheels off them i'm going to climb into the truck i'm going to gobble up all

your food and then i'm going to gobble up all your fuel it's interesting to have a plan that entirely relies on enemy supplies well that's what happens at war all right you go over to the enemy supplies you go hello and you you take them for your own they're mine oh speaking of trucks we forgot something uh my long range desert group are in play they didn't oh i didn't forget this because this was a bit of a bit of a whoopsie on your part not a whoopsie it's just the dice so as you all know andy's been bigging up the long range desert group for the last five weeks or something and then they rock up in the game and i'm like oh god not the long range desert group the scariest guys in the desert so they show up they appear next to my

trucks and i go oh no also this is a good convoy of mine i was very worried looking at what cargo they were carrying so when you appear on the map i'm like right this is gonna be bad also just to think that i've been doing some more uh research into possible future topics for uh uh the history segment right the long range desert group are terrifying they are not the scariest guys in these deserts i i'm not i don't even think particularly close you know what based on what happened today i believe you because they showed up and i was thinking this is this is it my tricks are done for and then he rolled on the die and i didn't realize how unlikely they are to do anything yeah they need a one or two um and then three to six if they're raiding they're very

fragile if they raid enemy units they can fight back yeah because it's a one or two is a success yeah and then three to six is a failure but if it's if they've got combat capability the people they're up against they get wiped out don't they uh yeah if there's so with trucks for instance if there was a replacement point in the truck yeah then they die on a six i believe wow if the trucks only have replacement points in them they die immediately on a three to six no because i don't know what's in your trucks okay so theoretically later on you could have a truck that's only carrying replacement points and if that's the case whatever you roll they die yeah because they're basically that's a battalion of soldiers they're just not they're not equipped like that

oh wow okay so i thought it was on a one or two they succeed and then if they fail the failure also kills them no they they if there's opposition to them so like if they raid an airfield with enemies in yeah then there's a chance they die but only a chance yeah if they raid a supply dump with a unit on it there's a chance but the chance is one in six so it is it's significant if you're pushing them into directly into enemy danger like that's not what they're for basically and i guess the deeper in you go the more likely that is to happen because the closer you go to my headquarters my you know my back lines yeah you further further west you go the more likely you are to encounter replacement points that are en route to the front line yeah but also i guess i'm likely to encounter

of supply dumps you've not fought to guard or yes trucks you're not as worried about guarding because once they've moved they disappear off the map but this time oh you showed up at my first group of trucks and it was a it was a fail yeah they were all freeze all three of the rules yep every single one was a a miss yeah a big failure and then they disappeared into the desert but you know what i'm not too worried about them showing back up no i think if they show back up you know what i'll say oh oh okay because they they can fuck you up quite badly if it works no i don't think they can i think it's all show i think you've been talking talking big talk for the last five weeks and then in actual practice they're not really that i think they should be stronger

than they are it might just be because i'm playing them but after researching them i do think they should be uh i guess what they are good at uh similar to the description in everything you've read so far is they are very good at getting away they can maneuver incredibly well what they're good at is surviving yes but it's just a case of i guess those raids are touch and go and the raids themselves i mean the fact that you got to three of my truck convoys in a single off stage and had a chance to raid every single one and had enough movement to then disappear into the desert again yeah goes to show how capable they are oh yeah so that that is an impressive feat and later on it won't happen in the scenario but in the full game uh when they get the sas attached to them

it's the combo of the two where they become a genuine terror yeah which i'm really not looking forward to no that's actually looking forward uh as well we had another moment today well i i certainly did where i remembered the scale of the game and how terrifying it is that i have to wait so long for help which is when you attack fort magdalena one of my guns had um two asterisks bloody hell next to their anti tank

rating which is zero at the moment but it had a two with the two asterisks and it said that in turn 63 they get a rating of two instead of zero those guns are dead

those guns were taken today I can't get more of them it's a type of gun i've captured them so could i does that apply to me um i guess if maybe the research notes end up in your hands as well and then you also upgrade them so i i suppose you know you can rifle this so yeah it does mean that there is the issue of some of my units can be a lot stronger later down the line yeah but it's much later down the line your your tanks nearly broke down On the journey to the airfield I actually rolled

I had a good A good session Roll wise Well you rolled flawlessly You didn't roll a single thing that wasn't the best you could roll Apart from long range I had no breakdowns this Upstage

They either weren't moving far enough Or I got lucky on the rolls So Worked out very well for me In terms of breakdowns In terms of everything, the Long Range Desert Group, while they didn't successfully raid, you did give me that little bit of anxiety. What did freak me out a bit is when you showed up at one of the trucks, the convoys, and tried to raid them. And then you moved it off the board again and went, right, they're gone.

And I was like, all right. And then I realized, hang on a second, this isn't the end of them. I know how much they can move. And then they reappeared next to some more trucks, tried it again, disappeared, tried it next to a third. when they failed i'll be honest i thought a fourth attempt was going to happen somewhere else so i'm very glad that didn't occur and then it disappears off into another room in my house yeah you actually went so far as to walk into your bedroom to hide the game piece whereas all i got to do today in terms of hiding game pieces was putting the the gun unit that died into a little

cardboard box that we've got that you've named the coffin yeah i've named it the coffin it was previously used for our dnd dice and now it's a what does it say on it again when we were organizing the pieces this is for cfna do not throw out and then a bunch of exclamation marks yeah because we were using that initially to organize my game pieces before we did all the all of them yeah what it was before we did all the blue tech stuff i put them into little plastic baggies and then put them in there and you had your medicine boxes yeah so they're gone poor guys and i yeah i've got a fight ready to ready to really kick off uh have you you didn't resolve the breakdowns for the movement yet did you i haven't not uh i have not so that means i have to determine whether or not

the fourth you know what the the is it the fourth no the second the ones that are engaging you they've lost a tank in the desert already before this before this yeah yeah they lost a tow point of tanks yeah so the seventh is down three tanks as well

oh wow really yeah from last turn yeah I remember you lost some tanks oh so your guys who pushed past their CPA their trucks have a

good chance of their trucks have some real dangerous especially the lights because the lights have that plus one for everything they move through don't know that they've got many lights i think they're heavies and mediums that's probably it's better yeah but it does mean that they all move to don't they yes so there's not lights uh yeah lights on taking more but less likely yes so yeah it does

mean that um it if they break down oh boring you got a got a yawn going on yourself oh very sorry yeah the campaign for north africa is a thrilling game it's like an adrenaline shot in the arm no um sorry as i was saying before wave of lethargy came over me was that if i do lose those trucks what i will do is take yours which is the plan anyway so i'll either have a lot of trucks or i'll have the same amount of trucks but they're all painted your color if you can get i can and you know the reason that i need to push for this why are you so certain you can't i don't actually get that because i boxed you into a position there they can just go backwards it's tactical if you push them further east then they are no longer going to be able to support your

men they don't have to go that far but if they go far enough that there's going to be a bit of a disparity otherwise they end up behind i know but they end up boxed in between my guys regardless not okay we'll see how this plays out no no i see how this plays out i know exactly how this plays i don't think it's going to play out the way you want it to i think this is going to play i think they're gonna be smashed to pieces and die they what the the black shirts yes yes i know okay this is not a one-step plan oh okay sacrifice a division for no reason step two well i'm working on step two no i have i i can't tell you the plan obviously but there is a material plan i'm interested to see how that plays out it's just it's kind of it's all or nothing because

they are very much gonna get i said free when we were having a cigarette before it's there are two divisions who can move in on them and what is essentially a division worth of loose units yes i know there's a lot of guys that are coming for them but that's actually part of the plan oh okay they i understand that the situation they're in is possibly the most dangerous any units been in so far apart from the elseversen garrison and the magdalena garrison uh solely because they were decimated i think that these guys will definitely be in for a rough time i think that there's a chance a good chunk of them would survive but i'm also acutely aware that they are not going to be a functional unit to the extent they currently are by the end of this plan

this plan does not end with them having some last minute hail mary overwhelming victory so i hope you know that if you decimate them then that's kind of accepted but there's going to be a big payoff if it also goes the way i'm hoping okay so watch the space for that yeah i am i am interested to see how that plays out because i well i know exactly how you feel about it because we were yes we had a cigarette before and we were having a little chinwag about this yeah and you started laughing maniacally yes i have plans for them as well you were wandering around in your backyard laughing to the skies when i was talking about them when you realized what units were around them and it was it was again genuinely chilling i think you've lost it today i think

the powers went to your fucking head and i was really genuinely worried for a moment but then i remembered that this is actually if anything just a benefit to me that i have a plan that you have a plan because the more that you try and plan around this the more surprised you'll be when you realize that my plan also exists i would love it just the you the roll's terrible 100% of the trucks break and then my guys have to limp towards your trucks otherwise they're dead then they just get pinned by bombers and they just die in the desert oh god if my guys get pinned by bombers then i'm in so much trouble and there's definitely nowhere nearby that can scramble to that area yeah we are getting into yeah it's uh i'm enjoying the back and forth now of we both

seem to have plans that are being foiled and executed and well now it actually feels like we're playing the game yeah in the sense of it's a tactical arrangement it's not just us setting up game pieces and trying to understand the rules but i mean there's been quite a bit of that today because the first hour and a half today of us um playing at parentheses wasn't actually us playing the game we spent about an hour and a half looking through a lot of comments that we had on a reddit post that we put up recently uh sort of companion to the war room hundred days recap yes so a lot of you have mentioned in the the correspondence you've sent that you found the podcast through the reddit post that we put up about 100 days ago and that

was when we'd initially magnetized the board did all that you know all that jazz and lots of people followed on the back of that so we thought with the 100 day recap we would also put a an updated post up detailing a bit of the experience so far and a lot of you who already listen dropped in some comments lovely to see you guys in the section a lot of the uh the references made there they uh they fell on demands for ponchos yes demands for ponchos deserts of our mind and of course subtle humble and brave some people who hadn't heard of the experience so far but knew of the game have uh chipped in with some comments and there was a guy in particular who has dropped in some comments that have been very interesting to read because it was all about the ship the

tactical shipping segment which as you may remember is a phantom it does not exist it's mentioned in the sequence of play but there's no rules that detail coherently how it would exist so when this guy started talking about it he gave a very detailed explanation about why he thinks it exists and there was a bit of back and forth he mentioned it being in the sequence of play and as he got further into it he has revealed that he has actually played some scenarios in fact the guy even links on the comment a link to a website of his where he's got spreadsheets which are i'll be honest much more extravagant than ours yeah much more intricate than ours um the the detriment i think it has is his are very very detailed but it seems to be you

described it earlier as a sort of a scratch and replace of it doesn't have a rolling it doesn't seem to i i'm definitely gonna spend some time looking into them because it's got all the formulas and stuff there's definitely some stuff we can live from them yes it looks like his spreadsheets perhaps you update them every time but you don't have a track of every single turn maybe which is what we want to do we want to have a record of everything however nonetheless we were massively impressed and the the it turns out overall the consensus is that the tactical shipping segment really doesn't exist in the way that the book describes it so we're very glad that we were right but we're also a little bit disappointed that it really doesn't exist we

were hoping this guy would prove us wrong yeah i think from the comment i saw he's been doing some of the stuff in the truck and convoy stage uh they were doing that in the their tactical shipping phase which i guess that is a thing with this as well is that it's so sprawling and complicated and there is issues in the rule books to the point where each group that plays it i guess is gonna be having a certain level of interpretation yes which which the game does encourage it says if there's any instance where the rules don't make sense take a common sense approach the issue is the paranoia sets in when i see something that doesn't make sense that the game's so detailed it must be explained somewhere so we spend ages fretting over it it's stuff like

the camel rules the camels you know what this guy he says he's played the game before why didn't mention the camels why didn't he explain what happens with them he's not answering the real questions uh but no what he did do is yeah he sent a link to that the the spreadsheets are very cool and the the description of on his website it seems to detail that he's played the desert fox scenario and that a year ago he started playing this situation Graziani's Offensive, this scenario doesn't look like he's finished that from what I can

gauge, it looks like that was played online which I can't imagine trying to figure that out. He did link a Discord that had a little look through Yeah, I mean that seems even more insane than what we're doing to try and play To try and play this online is almost like by correspondence

so good luck to them in that effort I couldn't do it hope they can do that but i'm having trouble doing this and we've never done anything remotely we've always done this in person i can't imagine anything being worse than trying to play this game remotely so credit to them especially if it's with strangers online the amount of i mean just communication itself like it's so underrated the fact that we know each other very well so when we're actually having conversations about this we've got a bit of a shorthand when it comes to conversations so we can navigate things fairly easily when it comes to rule

disputes and stuff like that it's slightly different but we've been homebrewing dnd for close to a decade now so we sort of we do have that sort of framework for well this benefits one of us not the other keep that bias in mind when you're making your point type thing yes well the way we do it in dnd is often because i'm i take the role of dungeon master for our games of dnd and the the sort of precedent i'll always said if we find something that's a bit you know yes or no is that well we can implement this rule but bear in mind this rule now exists in the world so for everything that benefits the players all of the monsters and the bad guys will get to use this rule as well and i guess it's the same thing that has softened a lot of the ambiguity

it really has i've noticed that and i guess the same applies for this it means when we're having that sort of ambiguity we look at it from an objective standpoint of this will affect both of us throughout the course of a decades-long playthrough and when it comes to the tactical shipping segment doesn't exist i guess that's fine the other segment that was mentioned um in there was also the combat ratings with the division multiply plus subtract being different in every yes yeah i think we've mentioned this before as well um i guess if anyone wants to check this out it's it's um if you search it's i think one of the top posts on the hex encounter subreddit and it's it's quite good on the board game subreddit at the moment as well i'm sure

you'll find it if you search campaign for north africa then you'll you'll be able to to track it down fairly easy posted in the last few days so have a look at that the comments are are rife with interesting information but uh i don't have the guy's username to hand i also don't know if you would want me to shout him out because i don't know if he listens but if you can find his comments he's on there but thank you very much if you do listen that was very insightful and the back and forth really what it did give me that solidified it for us i guess yes like yeah uh oh is that the case when we went through and checked and had a bit of back and forth with him but uh i think that was good to to assuage our fears almost for that and good back and forth overall yeah really

interesting points made from someone who's actually played the game and it gave us i guess one a bit of vindication that we are confident enough to actually discuss the game at length with somebody online and make irrefutable points that we genuinely believe wholeheartedly are true which is crazy because when we started looking at this back in november of last year if anybody ever came to me and said i've played part of this game i think this is what this rule is i'd go of course that's what it is if you say that's what it is i don't know any better but i'm at the point where that rule book has burned into my mind and those points that have frustrated me to no fucking end i will die on i will die on a hill to prove that they are the way that i believe they are

but the the second point that that really gave to me is that there are people who've played the scenarios for this game before yes that does not the full thing maybe um very the fact that there are people out there who've played parts of the game and if there's anyone out there listening who knows anyone who's played part of the game or god the whole game maybe yourself maybe you've played part of the game please reach out please tell us what the experience was like what would be amazing as well if anybody has played this back in the era of pencil and paper i'd love to just see some pictures of like what does the like whatever paper log system look like that would be insane at the end of a scenario or a game like have you seen the pictures of the uh you know

the nasa calculations to go to the moon where they're all on paper yes the woman who did them with the like stack that's as tall as here yeah i'm like picturing that but much more pointless i'm picturing that except it's it's 12 stacks and yeah much useless information yeah so that would be if anybody has any information on that please get in touch we would absolutely love to see that and i think now that we're getting in touch with you know these people who have had experiences with it it just reminds me that how long this game has been out there has to be people who've played more scenarios god maybe even people who finished the full game yeah and hearing from anybody who's done that at this point i'm actually quite excited to hear about people who finished it

in full uh a little bit disappointed if it happened but at least we'd get to hear about experience and just see how it looks when it's played out and we had a a real positive moment today when we realized that at the moment we're averaging somewhere between two and three play sessions per op stage which hopefully if we keep that up it's it's only 11 years or whatever instead of 60 yeah that puts us at around 11 years to finish this thing which is a very realistic standpoint that's actually that means we can do it yes it's no longer something that can't be done yes and if we keep up this this this cadence this play and we'll likely have some sessions that don't have as much involvement that don't have a whole lot of combat we'll also i imagine have

some big weekend days where we can play for a lot longer i genuinely think less than a decade is doable which i'm so happy about because yeah as we were going through it i think it was a couple episodes ago it was like oh the current rate is like 60 years yeah i think it was even last week what we didn't play last week when we recorded the um the 100 day recap but we have today and it's it's changed vastly already it's spun around but i think i yeah i think it's going great it's going great very good play session today very much enjoyed it you're you're a real scumbag for doing what you did andy however i'm gonna get you back in kind i'm looking forward to you being a scumbag because you've done something i have done something but speaking of people getting in touch

via reddit how about we oh listen to that telegram blaring out oh how i've missed that sweet oh you've changed it yeah sorry it fell off a little bit there batteries are running low we've had some correspondence and once again you've all came in firing off some mighty important questions and also giving some mighty important opinions however at the moment we're going we're going great greatly into brass tacks and that is how does the game work fundamentally because of a question from martin and martin has said in the podcast you've mentioned dice rolling using six-sided dice but with results ranging from 11 to 60 plus could you explain how this works uh yeah that is a good question because it is a dice

system i've never encountered before no it's bizarre and we've played not not a lot of board games mostly dnd but with dnd you get all sorts of different types of dice loads of different types however yes uh we've mentioned the box comes with three dice and we think we may have got an extra bonus dice so you have a slightly bigger d6 and a slightly smaller one because everything is resolved by the role of either one or two yes d6s so for most things the number you get is the big dice is the tens and the little dice is the the units the unit so like a three on the big one a four on the little one is 34 um so yeah it's kind of a weird it's out of 36 but yes you can't roll a 39 for example because you roll a three on the big die you got your 30 and it only goes up to 36

so 66 is the highest number you can roll 11 is the lowest you can roll so it does emit some numbers between 11 and 66 which is something i constantly forget where i look at the scale on a table and it'll say like you know 11 to 24 and i'm like okay that's not too bad and then i remember well no that emits a lot of numbers yeah that's 17 is not there's no 17 yeah so 17 to 20 that's not actually a potential result so i see that and i'm realizing right okay that's actually it's not that great of of a likelihood to succeed on this particular role and at least a check i'm also in dnd mode still so that that's how it works it's it's fairly straightforward in essence once you see it it's just really bizarre yeah it's it's like andy says it's not a dice system

i've ever come across and i don't understand why they did it this way because back then there would have been other die systems that would have worked dnd existed by then i think yeah which used all seven maybe not at the start of development oh because dnd is like 70 i want to say 77 might be wrong oh so then yeah uh campaign for north africa so yeah actually quite a bit before predates yeah um so dungeons and dragons let me have a little look here when did it come out dungeons and dragons when it come out when it start exist 74 sorry 74 it existed but yeah so yeah this game does predate it at least um well 70 yeah because this game was in development for a long time 71 yeah so yeah that's a two-year development yeah so that means that this this

game was actually already in development by then so yeah so well that explains that a little bit but it's a good question because the dice system is very confusing at first glance but when you get into it it's just comparing it to a lot a lot of tables it's 36 chance it's just yeah it's scaled very weirdly so you don't really get an idea as to how likely it is until you realize the system but a very good question martin and something that unfortunately we have to live with i would much prefer to be a d20 system or something else that makes a bit more sense uh i've got one go for it uh hello james and or andy i've been holding you to account since your collaboration with cancer cam sandwich and i've just caught up it is very interesting to

see how operational uh scale war games play given i am more used to playing tactical scale games stick to them stick to them i have a question do regular army units uh which were heavily decorated for gallantry such as the 28th maori battalion new zealand infantry have special rules to reflect their actions in reality thank you for your sacrifice your most humble subtle and brave of servants aethon so well i guess depending on where you're up to aethon it you might have heard about the long range desert group so they are i guess if you're up to here you probably have so they are yeah well andy said earlier that there may be if anything underpowered based on what they do but they do have a separate rule set based around their notoriety and there

are other units that do seem to have some bolstering to their capability sas have their own unique rule sets yes yes um commandos have their own unique rule set yes the lafayette commandos and commandos in general yes um and then also it's not a unit but you can do a flotilla raid which has special units which reflects a event in the actual war where some germans in uh i think individual like submersible things snuck into the harbor and blew a bunch of stuff up yes i got to do that raid once in the entire game yeah that'll be an interesting one when the full campaign rolls around yeah because i think that can do a lot of damage um yeah i can basically decimate a port yeah as for the 28th maori um yeah they are very

heavily decorated um they don't have special rules per se but they do in the unit characteristics uh their unit characteristic is k which means they have two assault and defense and a maximum tow of seven which means they are one of the if at full strength they are the one of the most powerful infantry units i get which is a scary thought because seven tow is nothing to laugh at most infantry units cap out at five there are one or two i've seen on mine that aren't actually in play yet that are six which are german but most are five and that is already for me a big impressive boon but when it comes to the maori division you i understand have a little bit more information andy yes for this week's history segment what a perfect tie-in yes we promise that athan was not

a plug not a not an industry plant athan is uh yeah just a very well-timed bit of correspondence and i've been looking at these fellas and scary very highly decorated uh i'll give you the kickoff quote let's hear it give me the maori battalion and i will conquer the world quote erwin rommel he's on the other team though yes he had a lot of respect for these guys he also there's some quotes of him where he talks about them being both physical and spiritual and to be wary of both so i think uh he had quite a lot of respect for them and uh researching them i could see why sorry so who was that quote to by the way do you one of his staff i believe oh sorry i think maybe he was talking to the allied forces just like trying to initiate some sort of draft trade

yeah i'm just what are the situation would you say that in no i think he's just yeah talking about how uh good they are but yeah i'm just going to issue a quick blanket warning and apology i am going to be butchering some names i'm sorry that is just gonna happen uh but yeah let's get into it um the 28th maori battalion is part of the second new zealand division uh which is a fighting arm of the second uh new zealand extradition extraditionary force during the second world war so i have both the second new zealand division in the game and also the maori battalion um the overall new zealand division was 15 to 20 000 men divided in three infantry brigades each with three infantry battalions in them okay as well as various artillery engineers

support units uh the 28th maori battalion was a specially formed battalion that was at various times attached to each of the division's free brigade brigades okay so in 1939 before the war kicks off but it's sort of in the air the uh new zealand labor government with maori members of parliament uh such as aprina nagata and various other maori organizations wanted to see a full uh maori unit raised for service overseas sort of two reasons driving this one they saw that there's a sort of responsibility to citizenship they viewed it as okay um the other is uh if they wanted to have a say in like shaping their future after the war they needed to participate fully during it they felt seems fair so a quote from a pre-nagata we are of one house and if our

peculiar uh which i think is the maori word for white european descent people okay yeah so if our peculiar brothers fall uh we fall with them how can we ever hold up our heads when the struggle is over to the question where were you when new zealand was at war so they've got this they want to get involved um it's like a sense of duty yeah and uh proving sort of themselves so they get more of a say in shaping their future going forwards pretty noble mindset yeah there was some pushback on this um but they were ultimately granted the right to form their unit um there had been a maori unit in world war one but it was a support unit focused on trench digging the 28th maori however would be a frontline infantry unit entirely volunteers roughly 70

700 to 750 men in it divided into five companies which are organized along tribal lines the tribes and or nations of the maori are called iwi so a company drawn from the northern part of the north island of new zealand uh they're called the gum diggers because of a history of uh digging gum in the area okay b company they're called the penny divers uh in reference to the practice of diving for coins to entertain tourists in their home region it's not a practice i've heard of that's pretty interesting the company drawn from the east coast region were known as the cowboys because of the common use of horses for transport in that area nice little cowboy d company which is the whole south island and the remainder of the northern island was known as the foreign legion or

the nagati walkabout and the final their headquarters unit which was pulled from everywhere in the name odds and sods i like that so after three months of training they have 681 men and they set sail from wellington aboard a famous luxury liner called the anquinita but i saw some pictures and this just looks like a french palace uh like on the sea it's ridiculously ornate um and they go up the coast of australia sort of picking people on the up on the way but one of the soldiers described the journey in the straight sort of between new zealand on australia three of the biggest ships in the world were thrown around like corks we got sick as dogs the waves were as big as hills for about four days they're meant to be going to egypt

but they get rerouted to south africa due to fears of the italians uh blocking the red sea and the classic bit of bullshit here when they arrive in cape town all of the white soldiers got shore leave while the maori had to stay on board the boats because all right because of apartheid and segregation so even though they've signed up to fight for these people you have to stay on the boat yeah they eventually get invited to have lunch with the mayor uh the mares to kind of like throw them a bone almost because there's like restlessness growing and they're given an hour of shore leave fucking hell and given like this patronizing like you better be on your best behavior uh but apparently the locals were great to them and like it all went well of course it's

just these racist like governors also crazy that these people are like oh i'm gonna show up here to try and fight for the future of i guess well the globe overall but also our people and by partaking in this war we can do that you better be on your best behavior we've come here to win yeah we've come to help you uh so from south africa they head up to britain uh where uh this is during the battle of britain so they pull the forces there because they're worried about a land invasion and they train there for six months uh before heading back to egypt all the way around the horn of africa again and up through the red sea to they get 300 more reinforcements and that's when they're sent to greece and they have their first engagements with the enemy okay there's

meant to be they're meant to go there and there's meant to be three divisions to hold off like the push down from the north from the germans through uh i think it's bulgaria and yucoslavia right there were only two there um so they're spread really thin um and the new zealanders including the 28th mario test tasked with defending uh the olympus pass they're vastly outnumbers and things get worse as the defenses on the northern border completely fold and the germans start heading in their brigade headquarters give the order that the passage should be held to the last man in the last round okay however the forces get so big um that they eventually get the order to come back uh so they start a sort of staggered retreat uh in preparation for this on the 12th

of april uh 1940 uh maybe 1941 the maori set up a defensive position uh and then the next morning the cavalry division which is their tanks retreat back through their position in a rearguard action which now means the 28th maori are the most forward unit okay um and there's what like 750 of these guys yeah and there's tens of thousands of like yeah two divisions flooding into this region uh yeah they're part of those two divisions fighting against them they remain in this position for five days fighting pretty much the whole time until they have to do a nighttime retreat while in constant contact with the enemy in heavy winds under a time limit because the allies are going to blow a crucial bridge up which they need to retreat oh my god so they're they're running

out of time they're outnumbered and they're fighting in retreat but they managed to get there like minutes before they're going to blow the bridge and then they're sent to from for uh for mopoli uh the board game of 300 fame the passive monopoly for mopoli my god you're really having trouble jesus christ where the spartans fought xerxes but eventually they we've draw from there and head to greece they left behind 10 dead and 81 prisoners of war but this is when uh things they go to crete next which is when operation mercury happens which is the airborne invasion of crete oh yeah first of its kind in military history and they were mainly focused on the airfields

but the maori weren't there um so they weren't initially involved in the fighting but a bunch of nazi paragliders did arrive and get in a house nearby which in the battalion diary they describe it as oh they moved out to mop up enemy vicinity in the vicinity of a beach house in the diaries of individual guys one of them mentions what happens they're fighting 18 paratroopers who are holding the house with machine guns the house is surrounded by like completely flat lined with like almost no cover as soon as they get into the open german aircraft start strafing them so they're crossing i think 250 yards of open ground into machine guns while 12 planes harass them they kill 10 of the germans and eight of the germans surrender and are taken prisoner

they then take those guys and head back to their base camp all the while being fired on by strafing aircraft they sent 45 guys out to do this they had two casualties the casualties were slightly wounded that's it god could you imagine being in those planes trying to strafe that that situation where it's like all right they're moving in that oh my god they've got them yeah oh my god they're taking them back to their camp yeah while this is happening company b the penny divers they get dispatched or leave an airfield eight miles away through the middle of the night because the commander of a company had been to the base like once so they were like you're the only guy who knows the way your company are doing it so they just set off in the middle of the night

they run into a german platoon and managed to take them out the germans surrender but it's a trick and one of the germans throws a grenade killing two of the new zealanders the maori do not take well to this they have fixed their bayonets and charge oh my god for what will not be the last bayonet charge of the war for them they kill 24 germans in a bayonet charge and then they just keep heading towards this airfield running into like pockets of resistance and just wiping them out they get to the airfield realize it's being abandoned by the allies because they couldn't hold it and i'm like oh crap so they just head back and just walk back to their place fighting germans the whole time uh to join up with their troops and uh yeah that's the start

of this is the start of the 28th mario that's the start of building their legend you know what we've had we've had an email previously about this um this particular group and we this this one most recently from from aethon it yeah i it was one that when we first heard about them i checked for them in the book and couldn't find them didn't realize how small of a group they were because i was expecting this to be a sort of division sized group when i heard about them being this sort of um quite famed and scary group of people but yeah to hear that they are a relatively small group and that they are

just actually terrifying. It's good to hear them in practice. I'm very excited to see where they go because a bayonet charge in World War II is... It's sort of not the done thing anymore. It's quite extra. These guys

make it work. And also that bit where they're running back to the bridge. It sounds like the sort of thing you would have in a video game. Or like a... The amount of different objectives. it's like oh you've got a you've got a time limit you're being attacked you've got to defend yourself as you run back yeah it's just so many odds stacked against them yeah their mission impossibling their shit and by the sounds of it they're doing it with relative ease these guys

are awesome uh there's some quotes by them i'll get into next time but they've just got a very cool attitude as well to the whole thing well i can see why rommel was uh yeah you know the fact that he had this admiration for them by the sounds of it one thing uh i will quickly mention about them before we uh hitler personally got upset about them and so did and so did german high command because after battles they'd keep finding people who'd been bayoneted or like clubbed to death and they were like this is a war crime like they were upset about how dangerous these guys were and it's like they weren't doing any war crimes they were just charging into people like brutal melee fighting but when german officers would find their bodies they'd be like how

i just love the i love the aspect of confusion that the axis forces must have had during world war ii because we've already had the description of the long range desert group appearing from the fourth dimension and then if they look elsewhere it's like people are getting fucking bayoneted what's going on in this war the north african campaign has proved itself to be a real enigma yeah amongst amongst the war i uh i'm very interested to see where these guys go but they could well be even more badass potential new favorites here yeah these guys are scary and i'm even more terrified that they're they're in this game are they in play currently uh Ooh, I don't know

No, I don't think the second New Zealand is In just yet Because if so, I'm sorry to say I will go for them first If they are, they'll be in Alexandria At the minute But they arrive in North Africa later So I think they might be one of the

Later arrivals Well, based on the journey you've described them having Going up to Britain and then back round But yeah, I will have to go for them first And the downside is as well I know that if they ever beat any of my men in combat i know that they get bayoneted or clubbed to death i feel like they should have a special rule where they just don't use as much ammo

ammo usage is halved for all of the maoris well yeah i'm uh i'm very very excited to see where these guys go well we we'd have to quickly have a look at something because you've just showed we just had a quick break there right after the history segment and and you've just showed me something i'm bewildered by turns out we've had a direct message on the website and i don't understand it so somebody's sent over a message and it's from supposedly jeff bezos which i'm doubting slightly because of the content of the message but it's the message text all it is is i need james to see this heathcliff comic without context and i linked to an image just a big piece of beef wearing shorts and a fez with a b on it surrounded by children

and it says children love the beef buddies can i can i see the comic again what the fuck is this so there's a there's a cat looks like a cat with a little hat on I don't understand what this is what the fuck is this it looks like it's recent and the kids are cheering children love the beef buddies

what is this who sent this in who are you Jeff Bezos did not send this this non sequitur comic so i guess we're asking for some context yeah you know what i guess right okay so a bit of a different approach this week then i think our common ground has to be what the fuck is going on

here so i'm gonna i'm gonna make this the image on our instagram for this post i mean of course because i need to understand what this is so right okay can you get right any interpretation from this. I'll let you have a look over it, see if you can figure it out. I'm gonna have a look and see if I can find this comic. Children love the Beef Buddies. What is this?

Do you search that? I'm gonna search it. I'm gonna have to search it to find out if we need to scrub this whole segment. If it's something particularly... Oh, you got a big spider on your wall there, by the way, buddy. Oh, yeah, there it is. He's crawling around. cool cool

so I've searched this and nothing is coming up my top result says why do children love to play in the freezer genuine question right I don't understand what it is that we've been sent I don't understand what's going on

this is this has absolutely sent me down a what the fuck have we just received what is this okay guys I'm putting out a bounty alright anyone who's listening if you can find out any information

on what this is please explain I you know I hate stuff like this I hate not having any context to something I don't know why someone would send this to us and why me as well why me specifically i don't know anything about heath because heathcliff heathcliff's a character in uh withering heights yeah but heathcliff i've just searched there

it's some sort of like comic series it looks garfield adjacent i i don't understand what this has to do with the podcast so we'd love to know what's going on there i don't understand this oh my god um right so i'm gonna make this the the image we post every week on our instagram war with a mate we we put up a post to release each episode so this week i will be posting this picture of this comic as part of it if anyone can look at that and figure out how that relates to anything when did that message come through 5th of june yeah if anyone can figure out how on earth that relates to anything we've said or done i will i'll you know what i'll be happy i'll be happy i don't understand what it is it's just a bunch of kids worshiping a chunk of meat with a

fez on what does this mean jeff bezos has really sent us into a tailspin it's not jeff bezos it might be it's not it's um it's someone who's committing some sort of psychological warfare against me have you done this andy is this you're doing you're trying to call me off my game it's so it's so out there and i don't like that it's targeted at me either also this does not set a precedent don't send me stuff like this i won't i won't often read this out this isn't going to be a regular segment where you send me some stupid shit and i coding I asked everyone to decode it, don't do that but if you can't figure out what this is

please do I'm honestly, I'm scared you're genuinely troubled I don't know what's going on what the fuck, beef what have we talked about, beef related I don't know man

well, fucking nothing I guess, first of all 5th of June what have we um so it was the the latest one we would have released then was the the trucks we're talking about trucks and shit well uh oh my god i don't know how anything could oh my god this is this is a nightmare this is a genuine nightmare fucking hell i'm in a genuine loss for words right I we're going to have to call it there

we're going to have to call it there who's done this this has done the job of common ground it's really brought us together in confusion it has whoever you are if this is actually Jeff Bezos I guess

now I understand why he's so rich if this is actually jeff bezos uh i guess thanks for listening i don't agree with your business practices and i don't agree with what you're doing to me right now but thanks um just a little bit of a disclaimer by the way don't use our website for that that's not what it's for that's not what the web form's for it's not a sand confusing pieces of art sorry art's a very generous thing for this uh right i'm gonna i'm gonna head off now i'm gonna go home i'm gonna try and figure out what this is okay uh i need to that's fair i need to think about what's going on right now all right

stay so humble and brave guys yeah i'm gonna go i'm gonna go see what's going on in the desert to my mind and i'll i'll get back to you in a in a little while any questions info at war with a mate.co.uk or the form on the website or the instagram uh fire them in uh instagram is war with a mate website is war with a mate.co.uk yeah info war with a mate.co.uk is the email address and it's for questions it's for comments it's for information and opinions prompts for the history segment yeah it's it's for that and it's not for heathcliff comics it's not for heathcliff heathcliff comments uh comics and it's it's not it's not to be targeted at any one of us individually either don't oh this is don't do this this is a pandora's box of nonsense oh no this is

this is where it falls off well have a good night's sleep i know i won't peace out thanks for listening We'll be right back.