War With A Mate - Episode 33: “It Was A Good Day”

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

Breakdowns, bayonets and battle planning. The guys wave goodbye to Operation Stage 2 and buckle up for the final Operation Stage of Turn One. All eyes are on the centre of the map for the upcoming engagement that is set to end the turn. The mailbag sheds new light on the Heathcliff mystery and the alternative roles within the game. Stick around to the end if YOU are a rental tenant in need of some vindication.

gentlemen start your engines the war with the mate engine vroom vroom it's purring away well here we are engines are a go they're fuelled up and they are raring straight into

upstage 3 because that's where we are ladies and gentlemen we are in upstage 3 this is the final upstage of turn 1 of the scenario of the practice run

this is war with a mate it's the only podcast in the world covering a playthrough of spi's the campaign for north africa with me james and me andy and it's just the two of us foolishly just the two of us we can make it if we try just the two of us no that's why you're meant to say you and i i know right do you know the song of course oh that's good that's good featuring featuring bill withers i found out recently bill withers who i thought was one of the answers in the pub quiz i attended last night was it not it wasn't no can't remember who it was now um marvin gaye it was marvin gaye i mean good guy i don't know if he's a good guy good musician uh yeah i thought i i made a mistake because i thought that bill withers had a goatee turns out

he did not have a goatee marvin gaye does have a goatee yeah or at least did have a goatee at some stage what's going on i think yeah yeah sexual healing and uh and on that note not the sexual healing bit but what is going on andy what happened today well we did some trucking we did the lifeblood of the campaign for north africa yes and how do you feel slow turgid boring lifeblood it is it's like if you have really clogged arteries and that blood was just thumping away trying to push past all of the the fat and cholesterol except instead of a bad diet it's just a bad brain that's causing those blockages. It is,

because once again, we were stood around the board today just waxing over the idea of maybe selling the game, getting back to a normal life. It came up. Remember how life was before this, Andy? Yeah, I had an extra day or week to do nothing. I know, it was beautiful. I had an extra

two days, because I have to edit this stupid, bloody thing. Oh, well, also uploading it really ruins my day as well. Oh yeah, clicking that button after i send the file over must be a real arduous task sometimes i can't be bothered i actually edited the the last episode in record timing you know which is why it sounds so bad if it sounds bad no don't well if they do i'm gonna block your access to the the inbox so it's fine but back to it back to it the trucks so we did we moved

around our truck convoys which was the the conclusion of this op stage we we didn't have anything else to do did we started with trucks uh yeah we finished the lander no the land combat i did my yeah i did yeah i did my last little bit of breakdown which was figuring out that they didn't have any breakdown to factor in because it was one of the units have barely moved so yes it was all it was all trucks today uh well it started all trucks we broke into off stage three which was fantastic and really feels like a big uh big win yeah that end of the turn's rumbling up it is i can see it about that i can see it's a bright light in the horizon oh wait that's your lamp just shining right in my bloody eyes oh well should have pointed that away too late now now

i can't make eye contact with you for the whole thing that's fine i didn't want to that's the most romantic part of the podcast yeah i didn't like that oh i like the pop cards to hide your face how about this thank you that's much better yeah no i can still see your eyes the white of my eyes no this isn't a good bit for an audio what we bobbing my head up and down behind the pop guard yeah um but yeah i had most of my trucks just heading down road to the front uh one of them started heading back and one of them gave some supplies to the seventh and then because they're in the middle of no man's land attached uh and that was it for my trucks yeah your trucks were actually fine you didn't really have a whole lot of drama had some oh i rolled a 66 so the worst

possible result oh sorry you did 50 of your light trucks on one of them yeah which only turned out to be uh five i think yeah light trucks have a more a higher chance of breaking down because you get breakdown points for every hex you drive over but for light trucks they add an additional breakdown point for every hex they've crossed regardless of the terrain so you end up with like another maybe 15 breakdown points which can push it into a different column of the table so they can become more likely to break down yeah definitely uh and for you getting a 66 is the worst thing to get on those tables yeah because it should have been fairly uneventful uh i think i needed like there was like a 50 chance of not having any and instead you lost 50 percent of

your of your trucks uh speaking of losing trucks how did it go for you completely fine didn't lose anything okay so we're lying now yeah this yeah they wouldn't know unless you told them yeah the podcast is about telling them what happened yeah uh i yeah i guess in the interest of that i lost quite a few trucks and got quite angry i wouldn't say angry i'd say it was like sort of episode 13 level well i mean it was early day anger all right yeah so i did break the new year's resolution slightly today i did have a bit of a breakdown both in and out of game so i i rolled on my table and i got a 66 right after you did and then i got another bad roll which was just on the threshold it was one point into uh 33 loss of trucks yeah which i wasn't happy about and then i lost

then i lost some more trucks to the point where it actually dissuaded me from moving one of my convoys some of my men some of my men might actually starve based on my spite because i got so concerned about how many trucks i was losing because and we talked about this a little bit earlier i have really made a mistake by having so many convoys i've got 50 well i had 15 convoys at the start of today at the start of the whole scenario to be fair and you only have like four or five four i now have three yeah which is a bad idea so i i went far too small scale with my trucks which mean when they break down it's not worth sending out recovery units to pick them up because there's more likelihood of the recovery units breaking down than it is to actually get these

trucks i'll lose more men out in the desert finding these trucks than i will actually regain the desert always wins the desert does it's like it's it's i see how why they built vegas in a desert now no escape there's no escape you're already broken down yeah so i i did lose quite a few trucks with very high rolls and then i decided to keep some of them put because what i'm going to do is amalgamate those trucks into other convoys and i'm going to create a few big convoys i'm aiming to have about seven convoys by the end of next turn that seems like a pretty reasonable number yeah and i think on the back of that it means i've got seven convoys to play out the final four turns which means supplies should be flowing however it does come at quite a cost

because i know for a fact next turn when it starts up because the end of the top stage is not going to remedy it the start of next turn when we do store distribution some of my men will be hungry oh so attrition will start yes what i'm going to try and do is distribute it in such a way that the ones who are already hungry don't get hungrier which shouldn't be too difficult to work but I am going to have to the garrisons are fine because they're in

areas where they don't need to worry about it too much, they have enough but yes, when it comes to some of my men I need to be careful who's not eating because some of them are already hungry I'm fairly good for stores and stuff currently I don't get how

well it got pretty i was i was going to be a turn away but in the first uh op stage i kind of evenly gave stuff back which means the stores are all up but i think that's it i might go to doing stores once per turn at the end rather than the start well that's what i'm going to try and work on here i'm going to try and make sure that i can drop off the stores where they need to be with the hopes that when i get my bigger convoys next turn then it will amalgamate a little bit more so with with that being the case it's it's a big game of chess going on here i'm gonna have to sacrifice some pawns by pawns i mean maybe full divisions and it means that overall things will work out for the

better i really hope so for you but i did get a little bit a little bit peeved with the the results on the table but then a twist of fate as the trucks came to a conclusion and we finished moving them around we then moved on to the last thing to mention about my trucks i guess before we move on is that my truck convoy from Tripoli has finally arrived on the game map. Yes. They've finally arrived at the port, Nafilia. They're finally there,

which means that they are going to be moving eastward and mostly along roads. To Benghazi. To Benghazi. And they have a big capacity for supplies. They're carrying a lot of stuff. So probably shouldn't advertise that to you. Here come the bombers.

Yep, I thought so. But yeah, that's going to be a big boon. it really increases the amount of trucks it's a convoy of the size that i want my other ones to be in the end so i'm going to use that as a bit of a litmus test to see how well that kind of thing works just all break well they're on roads so they shouldn't because roads mitigate all breakdown costs still happen somehow yeah so i'm i'm excited to see how that pans out but yes after that we moved on to the start of op stage three which is um water distribution which we'll be doing during the week because it doesn't affect the next part of the game yes so we've decided because

it's pure bookkeeping we can do it whenever move through the sort of construction training attach stuff and jump into air uh which we started planning this session didn't do any air stuff though but i think going forwards yeah we're going to start offloading some of the mundane like percentage base like no decision just like remove this yeah type stuff uh out of our like limited play time yeah we've done it twice now water distribution and the second time was a lot faster so this time around i think it's going to be very easy to do at home we can just do it independently and then it means we're not cutting into play time as you said so we can then get straight on with air missions as soon as we've finished the the prior op stage and as long as

we get the water stuff done by the time the air stuff wraps up then it's fine and it won't have any impact on the game so so i guess if we run into something where it might matter it's very quick to do it for one thing that it is relative because it's quick individually it's the fact you're doing it to like 30 or 50 things yes yeah so um i guess that's kind of us we're now assigning us not at the game table now has the role of logistics commander i think yes yeah when we're at home we're logistics commanders yeah because that handles the naval stuff and the supply distribution yeah so that's what that's sort of like plan ahead stuff which yeah we can do at home which is planning ahead yeah so we're gonna have to split our personalities even further

and we're gonna have to take on individual roles depending on where we are yes which is i guess more damaging to our psyche than it needs oh yeah it's eating in the more of the week that's another thing yeah i don't know when i'm gonna do that i might just do that at work yeah on my lunch of course of course just in case any important people are listening from work and everyone listens to this that i know personally everybody hello people from james's work hello people from my work people from work so yeah we've had a a hell of a little delve i've got my air missions planned in essence same and i i think i know what you're going to do i think you do as well i think there's really not a lot of decisions for me to make i'm in a very very precarious

position um the fact you can pick initiative which gives you essentially two off stages back to back yep that threw me i didn't take that into account in planning i was like well he can move like this far and it's like oh no all of those were double them yeah well that's it because i i opened up this off stage by dropping the bombshell on andy that he won't be going first this time and for the first time in this playthrough so far i'm going first yes i'm using that to try and really really harangue you a little bit because the so anybody who follows the the instagram i've put a picture up last episode of the i think it was last episode it would have been here um which shows the precarious position that we found ourselves in

with the black shirts the milady division as well as the seventh cold street no third cold stream no cold stream guards aren't involved at all sorry it's the seventh armoured division it's the seventh armoured division and various uh reinforcements oh that's another thing during the assignment section of the organization phase the second rifle battalion who were originally running off on their own are now reattached to the seventh yeah which means i don't need to worry about less worried about the sort of combined arm rules kicking in on that uh which is the big problem they've had yes you you've mitigated that quite a bit which is a smart move you've also assigned some trucks to them i noticed uh yeah that's good that's a bit of a stopgap they needed some supplies

the trucks didn't have enough movement to get back i see i think those units are going to be moving around maybe doing some retreating which would just leave the trucks exposed so i figured this way the trucks will at least move with the division so yeah i'm not losing a quarter of my trucks which is quite likely yeah because i've got you boxed in and in this picture that we put up on the the instagram last week it shows the the current layout around fort magdalena which is the maletti division and the first black shirts and they are on one side of fort magdalena they're on the west and then your guys are to the east and then a little further to the east are the fourth black shirts yes they've dropped in behind um they're

sort of threatening the rear of the seventh and also badly placed supply dump on my part that may or may not be real um that well that's it i'm you get two supply dumps you get two to put down at the start one of them is real one of them is fake and i think that is the fake one and i think this is all a big bait and switch maybe but i guess either way it doesn't really matter because it doesn't help regardless that you are in such a bad position being caught between those two which is where i think your air missions come in i suspect that you are going to try and pin one or more of these groups i mean that's a good it's a good bet because if you pin them they're not going to be able to waltz up towards you no however however randy i've been

having a look through my refitted planes okay and you did of course um really screw me over by getting rid of the fort magdalena airfield which is a lot of what this conflict is but it's not the be-all and end-all of my air force i found out oh turns out i do actually have plenty refitted i still have a formidable force to throw out there where are they i'm not going to tell you no i'm just thinking because you said you were going to refit them and fly them back and forth from magdalena yes i was wondering i guess don't tell me obviously uh i mean from most planes can hit the middle map uh yes that's there so yeah that's the benefit my bombers are the ones that are furthest away airfield wise but i do have some fighters that are relatively close who can make it

to the fray okay so i think i'm a little bit more confident after the very end of today's play session where i've looked over what planes i've got in my arsenal and i do have enough fighters where i'm comfortable i could send them alongside my bombers and i could still even if you get through the screen i think i could still get off a very significant portion of the bombs to the point where what i want them to accomplish i think can be accomplished and of course it all is around the fulcrum that is fort magdalena that has become really the focal point of turn one i think yes definitely we're already diverging i think the actual offensive was up on the coast road for the most part um but we've dipped down i think because you had the plane so forward it was an enticing

target but i may have may have got greedy may have maybe take that in two free up stages not a mad dash well it has made for an interesting situation where now the focal point of the game is fort magdalena yeah it's not what i expected but we now have some of our biggest groups in the entirety of the game map that are all focused around there yeah and we've kind of got ourselves that not so much as it could be a stalemate because last turn we held each other off you retreated knowing full well that i'd committed a lot of movement yeah so i couldn't really move any further forward without causing real detriment to my men and now i think it's really going to come down to air support because i think we're both hinging on trying to disrupt the other person

whether it's through pinning them maybe it'll affect supply lines uh there could be a whole number of things that we're going to do to try and stop each other from operating the way we want to but that's part of why i wanted initiative this time around so that whatever happens with the air combat and the air missions you can react to it first exactly which as the as the aggressor in this situation i need to because if i let you get the jump on me here you're gonna bolt you are gonna be straight out of there i do not think you would stand there and hold that fight unless you had amazing success with your bombing run i think otherwise you're likely going to run and try and get to a more fortifiable position because where you are yes you're caught between three divisions

which is already bad but I have more divisions nearby yeah so I don't think you're going to stick around I guess we'll find out because the 7th Armoured Division from what I understand of your speakings of them, they're fairly strong

so without them I feel like you really would be losing a decent chunk of your force yeah I've got two other divisions very close by which I am keeping an eye on because i have noticed they're still sticking around just towards the the northeast of magdalena

up along the coastline so i'm conscious of that i am don't think they've eluded me or my wisdom so up stage three we're in it how do you feel uh all right uh enjoying the now the thing is a bad game situation not the game being bad if that makes sense yeah i feel like a lot of the logistics of the game has started to fall away like today when i was getting a little bit aggro with the game it wasn't that i didn't understand the game it was that i understand the game perfectly which is why i can be upset at the result because now i know losing 50 of my trucks in a convoy it's really really bad yeah back in you know the first off stage for me that would have been a little bit frustrating but i don't think i would have

felt the impact as much but now it's been like we rolled high on this table it's clearly a bad result but now when you're like well now i have to choose who to feed it's a kind of i know what that translates to now and it's not even who to feed realistically for me while that is a big issue i can i can lose a few toe points of men from certain groups what i can't afford is to not arm my men no ammo is the biggie yeah i feel like we've done something wrong with the ammo because i feel like we're maybe both on the same page where ammo has become a lot scarcer sparser Scarce? Scarcer, yeah Scarcer? Yeah

There's less ammo than I would like there to be So I'm Concerned about that, so every truck that I lose I'm thinking, right, that's less ammo I can get At the front lines Yes, uh, yeah I've noticed that As well, but I think

I've got a solution for that Well, when it comes down to it We'll see how that fight pans out, but I think Next upstage We're gonna have, I think it's gonna be the big deciding um conflict of fort magdalena i think it either makes or breaks it it either becomes a full-on engagement going forward or you manage to slink away yeah i think uh i think it'll set the tone it'll set the momentum uh for probably the whole scenario i'm guessing i think so i think

this really could be the turning point for one side or the other because if you've taken out my air force but i clear out these units that you've got it sort of matches out a little bit it becomes a bit more balanced yes if i'd got the air force and got out it would be very successful an equivocal win if i'm losing a division it's not at all it's quite bad actually i mean yeah then you're losing your queen to take out a knight yeah it's it's not really worth the the exchange at that point although we do have arrivals i've got my first arrivals uh in this op stage i need to check actually i haven't checked to see if i've got any reinforcements coming in that's an important one i've got the polish battalion yes so looking at the stats they don't seem anything

particularly remarkable but it is a well-rounded gun armor infantry sort of blob they'll be good to have well yeah you seem to have a lot of these a lot of these smaller groups that are amalgamating with the bigger units and just sitting around as reinforcements which is yeah that's a good thing to have because i don't i don't have that i've committed so much to just you know i've got the black shirts i've got my battalions um that are all affixed to other divisions i don't really have many groups that are small and split it off yeah uh save for the saharan detachment yes they They have been building steam down at the bottom of the map. They are just two hexes away from Sewer,

which is your airfield with an SGSU and no reinforcements. No, the Sewer is done. You can have it. I don't think you have a choice, Andy. No, I've got a plan for the Sahara Division. Do you really? Yes. Does it involve the Long Range Desert Group?

Nope. In that case, all you can do is bomb them. No, it's fine. it's fine yeah because if they're down there i don't care and if they do if they move in a way i don't like i've got a plan to deal with them well i guess get that plan at the ready because they are motorized now yep that's they've got plenty trucks they'll be doing all sorts of stuff all sorts of stuff yeah are you planning to advance them uh east i i think they've got some utility to them so when it comes to their successful invasion of siwa next off stage

i'm then gonna have to decide where they're going next yeah i'm excited to see where that goes well you can have seaworth for now i'll have seaworth for the whole game thank you very much because i've got an ace up my sleeve andy what's that well i can't quite reveal it however there is a two-pronged plan is that camels it's not camels but that would be fun okay i'd love to use the fucking camels but i don't know how to use the camels andy you know i don't none of us do i've looked at so many people who are you know interested in the game some people who've played the game partially no one knows what the camels are for so you got a little two-pronged thing do you i do the saharan detachment is not just taking sea where they have other things that

play into them and there's also another aspect of my forces that will be maybe aiding them in some way shape or form oh okay depending on how everything plays out because magdalena is smack bang in the middle of the game map yeah so once that's decided i have a plan that may or may not be accomplishable well if you lose that middle bit they're not an issue no no they can't be resupplied yeah at that point they are so they can just enjoy their unlimited supplies of the oasis and i mean probably have the best experience of the war well what they don't need is ammo because they're just going to waltz into your airfield and win i mean they can have that yeah but when it comes to anything after that then they do need ammunition it'd be very funny if i spent all my

bombing uh points uh to bomb my own airfield you can have fort magdalena but i will not yield to the seawood airfield that's to be fair the seawood is a win condition fort magdalena isn't in a very technical in the like technical sense of the rules i think fort magdalena we've made it into a win condition it's more case of someone's gonna die at fort magdalena and then not just the sgs use because they're already dead you've already drew first blood there twice because we got it wrong at one point i think oh no that was a different one was it oh it was that was the one that was on map c instead of map d so he was behind enemy lines that's right yes well all in all i'm i'm enjoying the game uh sometimes i'm hesitant to say it but when it comes to sessions like today

and looking forward to upstage three i'm actually excited to see how the showdown plays i'm excited to see how it plays out i am i imagine going to be annoyed over the next few weeks as things don't go my way oh yeah because i'm going to be insufferable as well pretty uh pessimistic about this and i'm such a sore winner as well yeah you are yeah i i gloat a lot it's i can see you're gloating behind the pop shield well how about we we peel away from ourselves a little bit and instead we we listen out to that that good old telegram and we we see what other people are saying let's focus on focus on them instead yeah let's have a little look i've got one here all right let's uh let's hear it from neil all right this is a biggie but he's providing potentially

context for the uh the heathcliff yeah well that's the subject line heathcliff comic howdy y'all you've once again stumbled into a corner of my niche useless knowledge i'm talking about jeff besos but mostly heathcliff heathcliff actually predates predates garfield but he was the original orange tabby and his original creator george gatley eventually passed control of the strip to his nephew peter gallagher i wish i'd inherited a comic strip would have been nice uh the gatley strips have clear jokes plots and are generally understandable gallagher's tenure is characterized by seemingly non-sequitur data nonsense unless you know the sometimes decade-old strip that is being called back to or if it fits in the seemingly random theme of the week our pal

bezos sent you this link to the strip which you put on the instagram didn't you uh i put a picture of the actual comic on yeah which was in the middle of a beef themed week great okay so what does this have to do with your subtle humble and brave podcast allow me a pepe silvio moment here this is excellent this is genuinely impressive morocco and algeria were french colonies and transferred to the Axis forces with the conquest of France. Vichy France did not enjoy strong support within the populace and the eventual Allied liberators in Operation Torch flipped the French forces to their side

after making a high-level deal. There's a very old 18th century French nickname for the English. Rosbif or roast beef or beef. i think this is the beef in the comic now i'd love to know why you think that but but andy please continue i like the link i also like we used to be beef and now we have gamins english people are always some form of meat yeah we are we're meaty boys yeah fez is not only an ottoman hat it is also the second

largest city of morocco which was a french colony jeffy b is known for his amazon empire grown from shipping books originally to whatever you want now you mentioned that email was spent sent during the trucking episode there's a detectable link between amazon shipping and your vulnerable trucks carrying critical supplies american troops were frequently referred to as Doughboys in World War 2 due to their young age this could be the children part of the comic but I'd argue it falls

apart as the World War 2 nickname was GI so I could imagine a world in which the comic can be confusing, constructed to say the liberated North African territories love the British forces and the Allies

I leave you with some gifs, when you join on Amazon, you get an email with Jeff Bezos' laugh attached sent to you within your first week. Lord knows who thought this was a good idea. That's Mendel, by the way. Yeah, I didn't realise that. Further

reading from others confused by Heathcliff, and then he's linked to a Heathcliff of the week thing. And then finally, since you spared a penny for my thoughts, I thought I'd repay you with a stupid visual pun. Heathcliff is the enigma of our generation

and one day we'll crack it. neil so i think that's cleared it up for me yeah um it i if africa loves the beef which is us i gotta say neil um i'm suspicious of you because that is very well constructed now one of two things has happened here either we have actually found a niche of people where we've read that out in the podcast and there's someone who listens to this podcast who really delved into that and thought i actually know this makes sense to me and put this together if that is the case neil this is a stroke of genius because the way you've broke that down is uh at some points yeah a little bit tenuous but god the way you build it together the way you justify it it's sort of beautiful

you are it's definitely a pepe silvia moment and you are i think maybe a visionary now neil my alternative is he sent us the first one that's my concern my concern is bad neil bad neil neil if you've orchestrated this we're not happy the thing is we've got no way to know which means we're stuck in a permanent flux of uh both complete enamorment with what it is that you've done here or just real frustration at what you're doing here just hijacking this thing to i think promote heathcliff for all i know we're schrodinger's orange tabby cat we don't know if we're angry or impressed it's like garfield on sunday evening never collapse we for all we know you're peter gallagher you're the new owner of heathcliff and this is you decided we're going

to hijack war with a mate as a means to to try and promote heathcliff because they already talk about stupid shit which case it worked yeah it has it has this is now i think we should have clearly a weekly heathcliff segment where we go over a comic of the week i think we cannot do that but gotta say neil this is this has brought some real real enjoyment to us this is i think spectacular and we came across this actually on the way back from our holiday to budapest we were we were stood in the airport back in the uk we were uh wait no it wasn't it was when we're actually over in budapest it was in the budapest terminal it was that's right and we were stood around waiting to to get our flight which was delayed and i found this email it came through

at that point and i was showing andy to be found i think you were far too exhausted to read through it but i sat there and read the whole thing and i was amazed so i was i've been excited to read this thing since we've got back so neil whether you are friend or foe in the situation way we're very pleased to hear it and it's very entertaining and i'm pretty sure neil's emailed before yeah he has yeah so yeah um so thanks thanks for that neil whether or not you are the culprit we appreciate it so who else we got we got we got we got some more we got plenty in here let's have a little look how about how about richard let's hear what uh richard's got to say richard says dear andy and james loving your podcast which i find a refreshing and soothing change from the unhealthy

number of political podcasts i consume your good humor is grounding and much appreciated well so are your kind words richard also we're a little bit political i think we're um you know we're sort of eight years out of date yeah we we push very hard political agendas eight years in the future it's commentary on world war ii or common ground plans for a dystopia yeah i don't think people understand that a lot of the jokes we make they're very clearly leveled at uh political leanings and uh we're trying to influence people feel free to pay me sylvia yeah yeah let us know what our political thoughts are that's gonna be bad um this game has long fascinated me but with a busy job and a young family i will never have the time to play it and must live vicariously

through you guys well richard i've got a similar situation but you know here i am busy job but i'm playing the damn thing buy a copy yourself let me know how it goes uh don't actually do that No, enjoy your family. Please enjoy the family. It's worth more. I apologize if you've had this question and I've missed it, but if so, it might be worth revisiting now you're further in. According to Board Game Geek,

bloody hell, Board Game Geek, the official recommendation is to play with a team of five aside in the following roles. Commander-in-Chief, Logistics Commander, Rear Area Commander, Air Commander, Frontline Commander,

and to break that down a little bit, Logistics commander is in charge of all supplies and naval convoys. Rear area commander gets the supplies to the front and is in charge of security, reserves, prisoners, and construction. Air commander is in charge of all planes and pilots and is responsible for planning all air missions and deployment of air bases. And the front line commander executes all attacks and troop movements on the front line. And, of course, the commander-in-chief oversees all of this

and delegates things to where they need to be to facilitate each of these roles. the idea of anyone committing their life to logistics commander for board game is somewhat amazing but if you did have a team would you change these or do they make sense incidentally i was fascinated by james's recent mention of house of leaves which by coincidence i have started rereading hoping the campaign for north africa does not prove to be your house on ash tree lane staying subtle humble and brave rich here's hoping well to touch on that last point first rich um i believe it already has um i wish when i opened up the campaign for north africa there was a little booklet at the front that opened with this is not for you as a bit

of a warning however it didn't so the rule book pretty clearly says that to everyone that's a good point actually so yes um whether i'm zampano or johnny truant or maybe navidson himself uh this is unfortunately my house on ash tree lane and i'm already lost in these corridors or the deserts of my mind as i like to call them that's my five and a half minute hallway anyway everyone who is literate by the way and listens to this um read house of leaves amazing book i absolutely love it if you want to read a piece of art that is about somebody getting involved in something that is far too complex and um labyrinthian in its nature and it's not war with a mate then read that book because that is that's the best of it however to touch on your actual point rich

the the roles we've had a perfect play session to touch on these i think uh yeah we've sort of done them uh first off the thing of anyone committing their life to the logistics for the board game is somewhat mystic that is the most powerful person on the team by far everyone's doing what they might be like thinking it's like hey can i have supplies you need to know the logistics commander will essentially be in charge yes because if their plan fails then everything else fails so you will be the favorite at the table when you're talking to the commander-in-chief and everyone's rallying for some you know support from the commander-in-chief you will always be the one who's favored yeah because if your plan fails then everything else is done also you can

be like oh air commander you're being a bit of a dick oh no no fuel showed up at any of the airports well that's another fun thing because that that's why i would enjoy playing with five players because of the red tape yes i think the bureaucracy of this game would be absolutely phenomenal i think we'd get into some real hijinks really pissing off other people um but in terms of the actual rules i think they're they're spot on and i think so yeah the recommendations come from the game book itself and it makes perfect sense because the the rules i mean we we did trucking today and if we had somebody who was specifically assigned to that and then we had somebody who was the air commander it means that we would have went seamlessly from one bit to another

and the air mission would already be in progress well it would be logistics commander does the trucking phase rear area area commander handles organization phase yes air commander does that and then frontline commander does the moving around stuff so they you would essentially have one area with a few minor other things but each guy would essentially have one block of the turn and could spend the rest of the op stage getting ready for the next op stage yes which means it would be seamless and there wouldn't be moments of pause or hesitation where you're trying to figure out what to do you'd have the plan in mind you just need to have everything work in tandem and then adapt to the changing plan whereas for us we're having to do everything which means that

there's some hurdles to overcome where the momentum slows down a little bit as we're trying to figure out how we're going to tackle each stage of the game and then also how that affects our plan overall and without that being any delegation or hierarchy it means that it's all really just wrestling with your own decisions there's no there's no council you're not working in concert with other people's ideas it is just you so in terms of if we were to have other players i would definitely go with this structure i would uh and then you'd probably if you had less you'd be like like if you had two you'd have frontline and air commander be separate logistics and rear and then you'd pace them yes i think you could work with two and keep those roles and assign

two roles to each yes i think i would probably break them up having the air commander and the frontline commander as one so essentially somebody who navigates all of the i think that combat aspects that probably is the way to go but it's putting a lot of the fun stuff for one player it is it is that that's that's the issue you need to have a group of friends where someone is fine doing the the book work yes and and not really get as involved with the i think that is a big part if you were playing with less players is who likes or not necessarily likes but who's fine with bootkeeping yes who's like struggles with it or isn't like precise i guess or you need friends that are bespoke to the the game being set up the way it is so i would say yeah spot on um i wouldn't

change that one bit so you've you've clearly done your your reading there rich so um not just this but house of leaves as well so congrats good choice good taste so between that and war with a mate you're hitting it spot on and i think uh yeah i'd go with that so thank you for the the email richard thanks for getting in touch yeah we uh we've got plenty more emails in that inbox um we'll we'll get to all of them so if anyone else wants to fire anything over our way it's info at war with a mate.co.uk and they can get you an instagram at war with a mate yeah just war with a mate is the the instagram um and we also have the website which is war with a mate i would say if you're going to the website to use the form email probably i do try to check the form

but we check the email more regularly yes so that's probably the primary uh it's instagram or email yes and we'll we will read everything at some point so if you send something over unless it's something that isn't like isn't to be read yeah yes unless it's we've had some people ask questions about the game for example where it's it's it's quite granular technical yes and it doesn't seem to be one that's meant to be read it's just curiosity so if you do have anything that you want to send over about the game um or anything else that's uh not necessarily to be read we'll also happily answer it so fire that on over as well but moving away from that we've touched on our lives we've touched on the lives of the listeners now i think it's time to touch on the

lives of those in the past those that lived breathed and bled campaign in north africa yeah we're back with the maori of course we are the one the only the 28th yes quote about them to kick it off of course naturally no infantry had a more distinguished record or saw more fighting or alas had such heavy casualty as the maori battalion that's by bernard freyberg quite an interesting guy in his own right and commander of the new zealand forces during the war okay so he probably knows what he's talking about then uh yes absolutely so when we last left them they just fought the battle of crete they had their bayonet charge on 42nd street and uh they've been evacuated to egypt where they spent several months reorganizing training getting familiar with

the desert and also coming back up to strength because they lost sort of 350 of their 750 men maybe more on crete so there was quite a period of getting back up to full strength and training during that time they did carry out a ceremonial parade for king george the sixth and the queen nor is the queen mother but uh yes yeah and there's a very cool picture taken during that of them doing the uh hacker i'll send you maybe for the instagram yes i'll pop that up yeah they also won the fifth of august that year they had the divisional sports uh games held at the uh king farouk stadium okay i think they did fairly well i think they won the tug of war i can imagine that yeah they were then they got spent a bit of time around the suez canal they were sent there

british forces and the commonwealth were worried about um an invasion via through the soviet union down into the panama canal and stuff yeah by the germans so they got sent up there but that never materialized so they got sent back uh about a year uh about a year in total of them being out of the action as it were okay yeah before they uh head back to egypt receive orders to link up with the rest of the new zealand division assembling near mercer matruh ah i know it well yep it uh comes up and then headed west uh to the libyan egyptian border where their first task was to capture a seaside town called solemn they did this on the 23rd of november 1941 oh this will be 1940 i think but uh they took the italian garrison with only a few casualties follow-up

artillery did kill 18 of them and wound 33 including their commanding officer george ditmer i remember him from organizing the uh the charge at 42nd street i do so he's dead yes he unfortunately uh dies here ah shit i liked i liked him i liked him yeah as well as two other company commanders of theirs okay so they are they're starting to lose guys now yes they did take 247 italian prisoners in return because uh something you'll notice about them is they take a lot of losses because they're always in the action yeah in each engagement they the odds are definitely like yeah 30 to 1 or whatever yeah the exchange it should be the case that they're getting wiped out every single time yeah but instead they're taking huge attrition on their the enemy side

yeah uh that's a good chance to just to give a scale of the maori involvement in the war i'll jump ahead a bit but throughout the war 15 744 maori volunteered for the armed forces both at home and abroad the total maori population was under a hundred thousand so like wow 15 of them volunteered more than 3 600 men all volunteers served with the maori battalion the total time it was in action they suffered uh two and a half thousand casualties which when you take the hundred thousand and then you half it for men it's a staggering like percentage of them who are both volunteering and taking but also like killed because it'll be like five percent of all maori men almost what killed yeah well 2,500 casualties so not killed casualties yeah but of

like about 50 000 wow it's a huge involvement rate and huge losses they took yeah that is astounding yeah that's crazy numbers they take the town and they do hold it they're fighting like every day here they ambush a german column and then attack a column of tanks and motorized infantry during this time that goes well but uh on the 3rd of december i'm just going to jump into their battalion diary again to just give an outline of one somewhat standard day yeah let's hear it of they're having at the time so they capture the first thing in the diary is at midnight they captured some vehicles on a night raid in the middle yeah middle of the night why not they head back they go on patrol at 9 a.m they see enemies at half 10 and retreat to defensive positions

the enemy makes contact at 11 a.m they're being shelled and machine gunned up until four o'clock when there's a slight lull at that point their new commander who goes by the name captain love excellent brilliant um love it there's a little bit of a repeat here because during this lull he goes and talks to the other commanders around him okay i know what he's doing what do you think they're doing next i think that i think they're putting together uh more people and i think i think they're going to go for a charge that's right at 1700 hours they fix bayonets of course and supported by mortars machine guns and anti-tank guns they charge the attack is a complete success and they clean up the final pockets of enemy resistance they take six officers prisoner

140 other prisoners as well as killing 240 Germans to get them to start surrendering at the cost of one kill five wounded what? right no I don't understand how that works

logistically this was part of a wider battle there were other units there but they like charged in and broke one of the like flanks of the enemy that is just insane and the fact that they just went for this i mean to be fair reliable plan but what if we just put knives on our guns and run well there was this fig because the landscape like undulated but it like looked flat they got like really close

before the shot they like basically charged out of like the ditch at the side of the road from like very close but then that day in their uh battalion her diary ends with uh 2100 hours first issue of rum to the troops battalion resting until time of departure has also been a great day that's in the battalion diary it's also been a great day this and that's a fairly typical like they're fighting constantly they're losing like yeah like tiny numbers compared to what the damage they're doing but it is like every day so in december a place called gazala they also uh they capture over a thousand prisoners which again to remind you at its full strength this unit is 750 people so they're capturing more than their own unit size yeah and they're not at full strength right yeah so they're

capturing probably around twice the number of men that they actually have yeah but the italians apparently actually appreciated the being captured by the maori despite like the ferocity in battle they treat prisoners very well uh one of their one of their padres of their unit says uh these boys treat their prisoners well they give them cigarettes and food just as the word says if your enemy is hungry feed them if they first give them a drink so it's it's a fight they're like honorable off the battlefield yeah on the battlefield they will run at you to be fair it's not even dishonorable on the battlefield they just went very much within the rules of engagement it's just not expected if anything maybe it's more honorable to be like you know

what yes you can shoot at us we're just gonna run at you with knives on our guns and if you can't handle that we'll take your prisoner you have some tabs and uh we see how the rest of the war uh they're just this is a they got a series of like rules that they needed to carry out came through on the 3rd of december some of them about uh treating prisoners of wars correctly always being armed and having your helmet on and then number four rum will be issued at the company commander's discretion which i'm like we'll trust your judgment for when the rum goes out and also 11 10 is enemy clothing will not in all caps be worn by the troopers stop dressing up as the enemy the lines of communication will not be used for private

conversation that checks out that seems fair and 11 is companies will notify the hq whether private randall is present within the company which i sorry i couldn't find any information about why this guy's location needed to be updated i'm not sure if it was a one-off or standing orders what so they've got they've got their own version of the camel rules well there's just a a weird rule somewhere mixed in there yeah and i'd love to know why he was do we know anything about him i'm gonna do more research and try and find out but currently i can't find anything as to why this guy deserved a special like shout out his own rule yeah and it's also companies will notify if he should so he's expected to be roaming

just pop up occasionally that's yeah yeah that's a snapshot of like one thing but it's fairly typical uh loss to casualty ratios against the enemy and just constant fighting they were the second allied unit into libya i believe oh wow they're like very much tip of the spear yeah um and they also they looped they were part of a relieving effort at El Alamein that went round the bottom of his lines, like round led by the Long Range Desert Group, that swung

that battle as well. Oh, fuck me. Can you imagine putting them in the Long Range Desert Group? Oh, just love these guys. Just a car appearing out of the fourth dimension and then a bayonet charge when you're 1,000 kilometers behind

the front line. They just appear out of nowhere and they're just running at you with a knife it's just it's over it's over there's no way you can counter that just the fear itself you'd shit your pants yeah these guys are just becoming cartoonishly effective yeah i can now fully i don't there's no hyperbole to rom or go if you gave me these guys i'd take over the world like i mean yeah because of the the yeah the nature of what the axis forces were trying to do compared to the the commonwealth forces if they were used as a a conquest tool yeah then i can see them doing some real fucking damage well blitzkrieg is all

about hitting fast like putting force into a like a point and like tip of the spear imagine if the tip of that spear is the 28th marie what it's the bayonet is the tip these guys are fantastic and they are they're sizing up to maybe be as scary if not scarier than the long range desert group in certain aspects i think it's the long-range desert group are always scary if you're like in north africa they could be anywhere they could be anywhere that's why they're scary i feel like you know where the maori are because it's where people are running away from or you've sent a thousand men somewhere and they didn't come back but they also scream out perform a hacker and then run at you so yes also they're not they're doing hackers and war chants while they do this stuff which must

be so scary yeah if you don't know where they are you've got your eyes closed and your ears plugged you've also you've never seen a hacker before that's a good point like you've not been like oh it's that thing from the rugby it's like why are those giant men like doing that because they're gonna kill us yeah or capture us and give us cigarettes because they're actually nice blokes well scary guys but uh fantastic fantastic guys well andy we've been we've been bewildered we've been scared we've been elated we've been thinking and now after all of that time to take us home time to get confused time for some common ground and now for something nicer a little oasis in the war. It's time for some Common

Ground. I'm trying the intro for Common Ground. I'm recording. Maybe. Yeah. I mean, this is an easy one we can both agree on quickly. Oh, thank God, let's do it.

I think baths should come in more sizes, like, more often. Right. Okay. See, the thing is, I know you like a good bath. i love a bath i haven't had a bath in it must be north of like 14 years now gotta have a bath occasionally i do wash um i just i shower i shower yeah and for the longest time when we lived together we didn't have hot water for a good what six seven months stint uh it was the

full time we were there um you're thinking of the first place oh yeah yes we didn't have it for a yeah because we didn't want the landlord to come and murder us in our sleep yeah the in i just said the address yeah the first place we lived the um yeah that that place uh the water um broke quite late on but then we moved to our second place and the landlord was just a freak because he came in we'd been there what like four four five days like it was definitely it was less than a week it might have been two days we'd been there very very short time and we were asleep and the the layout of the flat as you it was a ground floor flat you'd walk in through the front door uh and i had a hallway to the right was the living room and to the left was was my bedroom

then further down this hallway to another left it was your bedroom and we i woke up um i was drifting off to sleep it was like 11 p.m and i heard a key in the door and i was like i'm sure andy's in bed though what is this so i went to the front door and opened it and there's the landlord and he stood there and there's somebody else another man who stood halfway up the the path like in the shadow yeah just shadowy figure and i'm like hello and the landlord's like oh hi um i i thought you might need some plates and i was looking at the guy he didn't have any plates in his hand neither of them both the house were empty these guys are just stood there and i was like no we we don't need any plates there's already some here and we

brought some as well and he was like oh okay um never mind then and he just walked back up the path and i'm like what the fuck it still boggles me to this day what he was trying to do because he had no plates and even if he did have plates even if he had the most fucking beautiful plates in the world even if he had a collection of weather spoons plates with all the floral designs lovely things why the fuck is he bringing them at 11 p.m yeah on like a tuesday what's he playing at and not knocking on the door either he's just coming in i think he must have forgot we were there or something i think he might have yeah maybe thought that we were still moving in and we were still like between places getting everything set up and i i don't know i i because

i'm like was it something nefarious was this guy you know was he a bad guy well i know he was a bad well we do know he's a bad guy some conversations i had with him when we moved out you had a real bad time with the man was unreasonable yeah this is the common ground is our landlord was fucking horrible because when we moved out yeah just going off a massive tangent here so when we moved into the place in the main passageway the main hallway a beautiful cream carpet yeah beautiful oh that's another thing i was i was talking about the light bulb both the floor and ceiling was fucked top to bottom he ruined the layout of this place you walk into the front door of this flat and it's a cream carpet as you can imagine the thing

gets dirty over time even if you put down a mat you know you've got socks general wear and tear it gets dirty over time we're two guys as well you know we weren't like you know dirty but we were you know we used the hall yeah we walked we used our feet to traverse the land so over time this carpet got a little bit dirty and when we were moving out he was like you need this professionally cleaned and we're like all right we got it cleaned and then he's like well this isn't clean enough we're like yeah yeah it's as clean as you're gonna get pal it's it's as clean as a cream carpet's gonna get after a year of use and the cream carpet wasn't new either by the way so as well as that you walk in front door this this passageway there's a light bulb no lampshade

or anything it's the most fucking ornate intricate light bulb you'll ever see it was an edison bulb the size of a basketball hanging down so it was at head height it was enormous it was fucking huge and it didn't light anything it didn't the filament was like so delicately woven throughout the bulb yeah and it was yeah it burned out very quickly there was one in every room apart from the kitchen and bathroom of the same design and they burned out so quick and then when we were moving out he uh he was like well you need to replace the bulbs we're like of course yeah we've already replaced the bulbs we've not been living in total darkness and he was like yeah but you need to replace it with this bulb from it was like 35 pounds it was from some specific shop and they

were 35 pounds a piece for a light bulb and we were like well no we've given we've given you the light there's light bulbs here yeah they were the energy saving cost effective ones that actually light up a room and we're like yeah you've got your light bulbs and this guy was like no you need to buy these ones which we didn't of course we didn't that's insane because the light bulbs are the one thing you're responsible for as a tenant why would he spend the money on that so so this guy decided that would be that would be fine to try and get us to do and he was also trying to say that the toilet seat became loose as we left this is just a fucking agony and session about our landlord the the toilet seat became loose as we were moving out as well not broken

just it became loose from the fixture which meant we should pay for a whole new bathroom that was his logic yeah he said we need to pay for the bathroom that our whole deposit was going to be taken away so that he could replace this bathroom and in the end turns out the guy didn't even register the deposit with the deposit protection scheme and yes that's partially on us we were young we were naive we didn't really understand the consequences of this but it did mean that we lost about 700 pounds because in the end god knows what happened to that money maybe it went on some new fucking plate who knows he probably lost it as well so um to go back to the point um baths um yes baths you you love a good bath yeah well everyone

like 99 of that it's the equivalent of like a single bed uh yeah that's i think that's fair i think you should be able to get like a king-size bath more commonly that's way too big no because you see the thing about a bath isn't to get clean it's to like have a nice bath in i i do i do appreciate that that's part of why i don't have a bath really because if i'm like i need to get clean i'll have a shower i've never really found the catharsis in having a bath never really had that personally i don't know but you want you want room to really wallow i can see that i kind of get where you're coming from with that because if i was into baths i'd probably want that if i went to a swimming pool i wouldn't want like a tiny swimming pool where it's just like a narrow lane

i can swim up and down barely turn around and i'd want a big one so i do understand that aspect of it and i you know what yeah i feel like i'm maybe not very well equipped to to argue back because i appreciate where you're coming from yeah and i think it's pretty simple i think it is and we've also just touched on some other stuff that we clearly needed to just get off our chest he would have made us buy a bigger bath he would have now if you're listening right now fuck you the only time i've been outwardly angry and yelled at a person probably in the last five years is at him to be fair i remember that because you had uh you you were waiting around i'd left i got the last of my stuff you were waiting to hand over the last key and he made us hand over

the key a day early as well yeah and then he said i've got tenants moving in tomorrow how dare you leave it this dirty and one we had it cleaned and two i would just lost it i was like we're doing you a favor like it's illegal for you to move someone in tomorrow what the fuck are you talking about yes we paid rent we're still on the tenancy agreement you can't move anyone in and if you do you're gonna show up at 11 o'clock anyway yeah you're gonna try and drop off plates and then he refer to my mom as my woman oh that was so gross that was so cringe oh yeah when your mother showed up to help us move and he dropped that line yeah oh i can't remember the context but it was like ask your woman and it's like come on man that's get get a grip see the context and never say that

regardless of the context no one's your woman come on freak yeah honestly this guy was just a a strange fellow and i i'm glad to be rid of him yes real glad to be rid of him i've had i've had a few nice landlords since yes we had we've had a few i was going to get onto the landlords at the next place they were fine when they not when they thought we took um when we moved out what was it the there was a filter above the stove oh yeah so this guy was doing the inspection it was a couple the landlords and it was like a husband and wife and they thought when they were inspecting It was the fume hood above the... Yes, the fume hood

above the... They thought we'd taken the air filter. Like, which would have been required as like, unscrewing stuff. Like, removing it from... It wasn't like a slide-out. Yeah, it was screwed in. And he pulled it apart, and he was like, you've removed this filter. And I'm like, that's so specific.

You've looked for the... You know it's missing. And I can only imagine they're expensive. Oh, yeah. So that's why he was doing that. That'll be like, that's the deposit it reminds me of that bit in friends when um when joey's fridge breaks and then ross shows up and joey shoves ross into the fridge and then he's like oh you broke my fridge you need to pay for a new one and he's like how do you even know it's broken it's like i know what breaks my fridge that's what this guy was doing he's like oh let me have a quick look around what's what's

missing you've taken the air filter out what are you talking about of course we haven't done that they also were turning the route oh yeah we were moving out and they were like they were like oh where are you going and you were moving in with someone else and i was moving in by myself and they were like oh you're moving in by yourself would you be interested in this property that costs literally 10 times more a month it was like a fucking manor house combined i think it was four and a half grand a month for like a 17 bedroom like manor it was insane and i was like i don't know what they they must have thought very well of you they clearly looked at you and you're like yeah so this guy james he's he's moving in with his girlfriend at the time and um and andy he's

moving into his own place but there's something about this andy guy that makes me think he's fucking loaded yeah so let's try and peddle this rich and they they were also trying to find issue with us so i'm like that's that's landlords for you though i think maybe yeah maybe between the baths and the fact that landlords are usually bad i guess that's a fair common ground i mean yeah i can agree strongly about for them bigger baths fewer landlords how about that well it's a sign for a march well you know what everyone um if you're out there and you have a bad landlord we feel for you we do and when it comes to baths um if you can't get a bigger one i suppose get it just make sure you got hot water and if you don't remember

your landlord does need to fix that so get on to the landlord or your letting agent um or whatever legal body there is to make sure that is the case because you deserve to be warm. Plus if you're leaving a bad place don't leave an upper decker but do fill the toilet cistern with chicken bones so they flush their toilet with chicken stock

This is a fun And for the record we haven't done that I talked about that recently with a third friend of ours A third friend? We were going to do it at a hotel That's quite a funny place

Was that when we were on holiday? Why were you going to do that in Budapest? Because he had 30 chicken wings in a box in his room. Oh, I forgot that our friend ordered a KFC to the hotel, and it came with, I think, twice as many wings as he ordered. He got 30, and it came with, like, 50. You would just go back, and you would graze on them. Yeah.

So he was like, I'm embarrassed to bring these out to the bin, because, like, the hotel concierge and stuff will see it and I don't want to leave it in the room. So I just put it in the system. Well, it was, you know, as most hotels where they were like, oh, can we help you with your bags? And I was like, oh, I'm all right, thanks. I was like, I don't want to put this guy out.

I was like, no, it's fine. It's my suitcase. I'll carry it up. And then afterwards when we got up, I was like, oh, was he, I showed up because he would then want a tip. Yes. And that's probably what that whole thing was. And instead I was like, no, I'll do it myself.

I'll do it myself. No, we're self-reliant, mate. And then they were like, ah, cool, selfish bastards. Well, I think, yeah, it goes to show that even people like us can be in the wrong. People who are... Very occasionally. People who are heroes. Yeah.

Well, to all you heroes out there, if you need to get in touch for any reason, if it's to drop a question about the game or Heathcliff or anything else, the email address, again, is info at warwithamate. Instagram is warwithamate. And you've got warwithamate.co.uk. And I've been James. I've been Andy, stay subtle, humble and brave and be careful in the deserts of your mind

because who knows what kind of landlords are lurking around there but other than that I guess it's time to say goodnight sleep tight and we'll see you next time bye bye We'll see you next time.