War With A Mate - Episode 37: On The Turn

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

After mishaps, mistakes and (and occasional friendly malice), Turn One finally comes to an end. The guys are feeling bulletproof, with one turn under their belt, and no underlying health conditions, finishing the game looks like a possibility in this lifetime. To see off this first portion, they discuss upcoming strategies, delve into the mailbag to understand more about the English Language and take a trip to the past to see what on Earth is happening to Italy in the lead up to the war.

Hello. Hi. Welcome to War with a Mate with me, Andy. Hi. Who are you? I think I wandered into the wrong place, sorry. Yeah, sorry, I'll get out of here. Ooh, it's an interesting game you've got going on over there.

What's that? Oh, it's SPI's campaign for North Africa. Never heard of it. The Unfinished Behemoth by Richard Burke. Oh, nice. Do you have any food? No. Right.

Do you have any cash? No. You sure? Yep. Give me your pockets. let me let me see those pockets no cash turn them out strictly cashless these days well i'm strictly james these days and i got you fooled you all it's actually me it's it's james it's the the co-host of war with a mate um that was just a little improv bit we were doing there it was

just a joke it's just us it's not someone else no one broke in that was just for fun uh got him yeah i've probably had you guys worried for a second there no it's just us we're doing war the mate we've just finished playing again uh not the whole game unfortunately we're still going well we did finish we finished turn one turn one's over that's it it's it's done everybody we've actually beaten the first turn the first turn is fucking gone we beat it we beat it that means we can win if it bleeds we can kill it and it's bleeding it's bleeding it's hemorrhaging right now we got the jugular andy and how does it feel feels good feels like a milestone god it is one i was skeptical we'd reach but if you told me this time last year about the game i wouldn't

have known what it was i would have started a podcast yeah this is this is huge this is this is a massive leap we've finished the turn and we fair enough to have another 116 to go but that's small fry because if we can do one andy we can do all the fucking turns yeah it's gone from infinite to we've done one we've done one we've ticked it off it's over so 38 episodes per turn yeah that's not too bad it's 3 000 episodes yeah around about we can do that 60 years yeah that's fine pretty doable that's on schedule as long as medical science keeps its end of the bargain we just we can't afford to have any sort of neurologically deteriorating disease oh that's a worry yeah we can't have any sort of like degenerative uh brain function

because that's that's really going to hinder this because the game is quite cognitively demanding we'll lock it in it'll be like when people remember their hobbies or how to play guitar i don't want this to be the thing i remember i want to remember the names of my loved ones i want to remember the best days of my life i don't want to remember this he's really calmed when he plays this game just take just take an elderly me take an elderly me into the the back room of the nursing home with the full map laid out on a table and oh my god it's amazing he just snaps straight back into his old self he's just standing there yelling at a game he's so annoyed but he can work those excel spreadsheets with such a deft hand that's locked in that's muscle memory dad's

back we got him back no no i'm i'm sorry he's not really back it's just in this little pocket he's having this little pocket of lucidity so what did we do this week i guess as well as finishing the turn we did we we fucking nailed it and you um you riled me up you did yeah i had my movement uh that's how we started with your movement almost entirely just consolidating the 7th and the 4th Infantry attaching some units that were meant to be attached from the start. Yeah, your 7th

Armoured Division and your 4th Indian Division? Yes, they both got an influx of units that were detached. Quite a hefty attachment as well, because I was sorting out some of that stuff for trucks, and then you were just occasionally getting my attention and going, by the way, this stack of units, they're now part of the 7th.

This stack of units, they're now part of the 4th Indians. Indeed. And the board got quieter and quieter as all of these units got put back in the box because they're now amalgamated under the units of both of those divisions yes i i've got like four things on the map and you got rid of one of mine as well one of my counters disappeared from the map today didn't it andy yeah because i i was lucky enough to run across a an unprotected truck convoy the french motor marines whizzed in there they did didn't they and they took it and they delivered it to the set the very same trucks

that were going to be supplying the fourth black shirts that went off into the boonies out to the east yes the ones that i was using as a backstop to try and keep your forces pinned in next to fort maddalena and now that they don't have those trucks they will be making a swift trip home back west oh over the border so that is not ideal i was not pleased when you did that because there were a lot of trucks there sent you over a screenshot it's quite a bit of stores water fuel bit of ammo in there as well yeah it's a bit of everything it's a nice spread to just get almost like i was going to use that to make sure my fourth black shirts could be fine out there yes you shitbag you're a real monster andy you know that i know and i thought i was playing the

bad guys and you go and do something like that well history's of it written by the victors so well then in that case i'll get rid of this when i win that statement to the nazis that's probably for the best yeah i think they were objectively bad i don't think that we tarnished them their brand wasn't ruined by the victors they had it bad from the start they didn't really help themselves from go so you got rid of my trucks wasn't pleased about that which left me in a tough position but all in all all you've done is really reinforce your men and now i just have more men to kill because your trucks i've noticed aren't really around on the the front are they they aren't really around the border your trucks no i've been leaving them off good because that

means you're going to starve out here andy you're going to starve and die because roads are half yeah i can get to the front from like alexandria to it's all road i can go like 60 hexes not if i get my men there and then take your trucks all i need to do is stick some men on the road i mean maybe, but they can still use the bits of the road they're not on. There's no maybe about it. I'm going to show up on the road. I'm going to be a highwayman. I'm going to be a dick. And I said Dick Cheney.

That's not it. Dick Turbin. Dick Cheney is not a highwayman as far as I'm aware. The ultimate highwayman. He really brought it up a notch. He's modernized it. That guy. Pioneer. What a guy. Dick Cheney, everyone. So I'm going to

put some men on the road, maybe. Maybe I'll do that. I've actually got a bit of a plan And the plan revolves around that 7th Armoured Division Because they are We're doing a real cat and mouse game with them Real Tom and Jerry Real Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote So you want to deal with them

I want to get rid of them And then after I get rid of them, it's going to be the 4th Indian Division Oh, okay And then, you're kind of dried up Because you've put all your eggs in two baskets No You have I mean, I just haven't

Those are your two baskets I know what I have You've got a few stray eggs here and there I've got several baskets, just not at the front. Eggs as well, that's an important thing to bring up. That's your nickname. It was at times, yes. Not at times, it still is.

Commissioner Eggs. Yes, Commissioner Eggs. And that is because everyone, Andy had eggs for breakfast once, so we coined the term eggs to really teach him a lesson. Seven years ago. Yeah, it would have been roundabouts when we lived together. Yep. So that's where that's from, I had eggs once.

Yeah, you nerd. only nerds eat eggs and gaston from beauty and the beast he's not a nerd he actually he probably bullies nerds he's a cool guy yeah he wouldn't like us i've not seen that he wouldn't like what we're doing what a nerd being bullied no i've seen that lucky man because oh you have okay it's gonna say that happens to me all the time looking out of my eyes looking out of your eye using your ocular vision yes to see a nerd being bullied wow what a what a bad use of your eyesight i would use it for something a bit more benevolent yeah yeah you want to see the i don't want to see that i don't want to see my kind being prosecuted persecuted

prosecuted prosecuted oh we're in legal trouble thankfully not uh and one way we've avoided legal trouble is by using uh royalty-free music for the podcast and we put out a little suggestion uh not a suggestion sorry a poll a questionnaire on the instagram this week asking for suggestions of theme songs for War with a Mate. We've got some interesting ones. Knights of Cydonia by Muse. Incredible guitar solo. Definitely not the vibe for this podcast.

Love that song. We had no way of earning that one. That's wild. There were a few other good ones. What was that? Hip to be Square by Huey Lewis and the News. That's a banger. That's a great song.

Because of the connotation it has by being associated with American Psycho, not really sure what that was meant to be. Are they calling us crazy? Maybe. Or just sleek modern guys. Possibly, yeah. that could be it that's what american psychos are all right um read it again have another

close inspection watch the film as well christian bale what an actor that man what can't he do i mean yeah he's very good in that yeah not so good in thor love and thunder not a fan of that one i'm not seeing that i didn't bother i wouldn't bother no just yeah skip that one i have good on you boy good on you i think the next thing we have to look at is uh we've got a little bit of stuff to do towing wise to wrap up to mop up the last bits of the turn but that's a that's an at home admin task that's homework i guess if we go for an order we did the trucking as well we both did that um i did similar to what you did with your unit i amalgamated a lot of my truck convoys one of them broke down uh i lost 25 of my trucks in one of them the rest of them i moved

in such a way that they didn't actually hit breakdown threshold so they didn't have any risk and my big truck convoy from Tripoli has finally arrived on the map and they've moved up along the the western bank so they are traveling along making their way towards the east and they have quite a few supplies they've also got another unit of trucks under the convoy that have amalgamated at the end of the phase that I've got them in the same space so in organization phase next turn there'll be one thing there'll be one thing i've done that with three or four different convoys oh nice yeah because you were a bit worried they were too too scattered yeah um and i know that our sage matthew who emails in about his solo playthrough um he says that he's using a lot of

individual uh truck units much smaller ones similar to what i did but my my fear is that i'm not managing them very well because when i did move my trucks around today i realized that I haven't put stores where I need them to be. A lot of my men are going to be on half rations at the start of the turn. Which is pretty brutal. Yes. It hamstrings a lot of their CPA ability.

Yeah, they can't go past their... They can't exceed. They can't push. Yeah, they can't push. That's rough. Yes. It means I'm going to have to really play them careful. My black shirts, I believe, are fine.

I don't think that's going to be an issue for them. Both of them. Yes. Oh, man. The fourth are okay. I wanted to have them out there longer, which is why i had the trucks with them i wanted to keep them out there for essentially a push to the east yeah but now that's not viable they're gonna have to come back it's just not gonna work

but your seventh armor division that days are numbered because they're out here in the middle of nowhere your trucks are pretty far away and when it comes to actually doing anything with the seventh they're still surrounded by my divisions i've got like six divisions nearby They're well-equipped, food-wise. Food-wise, maybe, but... Like armor and water and ammo and water. Supply-wise, they're very good. They don't have enough ammo to fight off all of these divisions, is my...

Not hope, but my... Probably, yeah. To fight them off? Yeah. I don't think they've got enough ammo to fight them off. I put a full convoy into them last stop stage, which was a fourth of my trucks. Wow, okay.

And then, because I didn't want it to be exposed, so what happened to your truck convoy would happen to mine. Yes, that's a very good point. So the seventh half of them and then everyone who joined them was fully supplied. Okay, okay.

So they should be autonomous for maybe a turn or two. All right, all right. Well, I guess in that case I will have to just whittle them down. Yeah. And I do have plans to do that and I'm going to commit.

I think you might find a scary amount of resources to do so. I'm fine with you doing that. Yeah, because you think that's the only thing I have. in my uh my sleeve i have other sleeves andy i've got 10 sleeves too many sleeves i'm like an octopus with extra hands after hand surgery octopi shouldn't have hands at all but i'm sort of of the opinion the more uh resources you uh spend on the seventh for the better

yes like if they're taking your focus for a turn or two i'm happy with that well all in all andy i think what we do need to celebrate is that we finish the first turn while there's been some ups and downs. The fight at Fort Maddalena never really manifested. You took out some SGSUs. I took Siwa down to the south. I picked off some of your guys. You picked off some of mine. We've given and we've taken, and

I think we're fairly evenly matched at the moment. I think on the back of this, I can't see a clear victor emerging just yet at the end of the first round. No, I'm not sure. I thought last offstage I was going to lose the seventh. Same. I was confident. They did manage to get out, which I'm happy

about. Because I think if you had, that would have been a big swing. But now I'm a bit more confident than I was last stop stage. You supplied them very heavily from what you said. So I will actually approach them with an aspect of caution because I don't think it is going to be as easy as just sweeping in anymore. I think back when I had them flanked with two divisions, a third one right beside them as well, I could have taken them apart.

I think now you will probably be able to hold off for longer. I think if it becomes a fight now, you'll probably stand your ground. and I think you'll maybe even win a couple of those combats. Yeah, it's got artillery now. It's got more infantry to the point I'm not as concerned with the combined arms stuff. That's less of a worry with that unit because before it was one infantry,

which meant it was very fragile if you had artillery. Yes, so now if I wanted to try and evoke the penalties from the lack of combined arms, i'm gonna have to pin down a lot of infantry units it's not just free yeah which i've nearly done before because i tend to get really good with the bombardment rules yes however i can't really rely on luck i'm gonna have to actually be smart which is difficult because this game is it's taxing i'll be honest i've really fucked my resource distribution with the supplies with the the stores specifically so i'm gonna have to reevaluate that all through next turn but i'm just

happy we've made it because if we dial it out of the actual gameplay for a moment and look at it as the project overall wow turn one down yeah never thought we'd get here so a little pat on the back for each of us and i even have a little uh celebratory treat here so you work today as a an ad hoc gift i was given this strawberry flavor margarita jelly shot and i did promise that i would i would have it on the podcast and it seems like the perfect way to celebrate the end of the first turn so let me just open this up that's squirting everywhere lovely oh nice maybe you're supposed to refrigerate this yeah it's hard to get open it's very oh god sorry it's dripping on my carpet yeah sorry about that um that's that's gonna that's gonna smell because i imagine it's

very sweet and sugary yeah i feel like this is probably right it's very i think it's meant to be refrigerated yeah it just looks like a shot it's mostly liquid let me just have a little sample no it's still right so what's happened oh wow okay so all of the alcohol it seems it seems to have divorced itself from the jelly so now there's just jelly sat in a shot so i'm gonna try and figure out how to have this so if you want to fill the air andy while i uh uh yeah i guess we looked at towing uh which we hadn't looked at at all um oh my god are you gonna be sick no it's just very god i hope not oh my god i can do this so i've realized once we've got to towing the way i'm

storing all my broken down stuff is just bad i was recording it on the units where they broke down so i need to consolidate them into a single sheet yeah to keep track of i think you've done already haven't you you've been doing as you went along you showed me yeah i've got a breakdown sheet for all of my units so every single upstage i'm halfway through this thing harder to get into than i thought it would be so my pants are so sticky so i've got a full breakdown sheet there's a table on excel and every upstage anytime something breaks down i know the upstage that it's happened in the hex it's happened in the type of thing that's broken down to whether it's trucks medium light or heavy or tanks and the designation of tank and the tow point uh value

so whether it's two points of trucks truck points or the the how many two points of tanks as well as the cargo for the trucks yes because some of them have fuel also yeah fuel in the tanks and stuff as well yeah um i'm gonna finish this last bit of the jelly here let's scoop let's scoop this in all right that's a i imagine this is a great asmr edit this out here we go here we go we got it wow thanks for that um i've never seen someone enjoy something so little uh that's bad because we're playing this game yeah that was you know what it was actually quite nice um look like you're gonna throw up i was trying to it was the thing like i say it was just sat in like a vat of alcohol and jelly that wasn't actually the celebration i thought it would

be but if anything that's very indicative of what the game is it's it's a very sweet idea wrapped in harshness and it's really difficult to stomach and it rifts on you a little bit after you you get into it at first but afterwards it does leave a sort of sweet aftertaste and it leaves you wanting a little bit more but you don't really need more no one playthrough is fine one one is fine you didn't have the jelly shot andy no i mean i'm not having any jelly shots but maybe maybe this gets played twice well it doesn't so anyway we're gonna die during the first playthrough so i guess sorry not the first play the only playthrough yeah you said first you're letting it in oh god you're getting the concept of more um but yeah i guess turn two is

coming up uh initiative initiative is actually not just predetermined i don't get to just pick who has initiative we actually have to roll for it which is and then the victor of the role gets to choose for the turn for the turn and i'm not for the is for the turn oh you got to pick for the full turn yeah so the the benefit is on your side you have the advantage when it comes to this role yes you have a bigger plus to the role two maybe i think so yeah plus two sounds right so you're more likely to get the initiative than me um do you have any thoughts i'll not ask for what you would pick but do you think you know what you would pick if you win yes who goes first i have a funny feeling it's you going first i think you've got a bit of a strategy maybe i

yeah i know what i'm gonna do if i if i get initiative i know what route i'm gonna take because I've been weighing up the offensive and defensive plays and based on the ways things have settled I do have a way to try and get back at you in terms of the 7th Armoured but whether or not that's offensive immediately or whether there's a bit of defensive play in there, you'll have to wait and see

Have to wait and see where my territory down to the south, what are the wind conditions And also I get my fleet next turn I got blocked by it being the first turn You can bombard the coast Coastal bombardments coming in

don't love that don't love that however we live we learn we love maybe do we love do you love sometimes earlier on you said all's fair in love and war after you took my trucks yep and then you said it's because you love me that's why it's fine yep i don't feel great attitude i don't feel no no smug attitude andy smug is the word you're looking for Glib, I would say. Or glib little man. Glib is good. Glib is not subtle, humble, or brave.

It's a turn thing. It is. It's none of those three, though. We're not adding a fourth word onto that. No. We're not adding a new word every turn. It's going to be a long say. Subtle, humble, brave, glib.

No, we're beating this. The game's... Hey, it's on the turn. Hey. I think that shot might have been on the turn I've had it in my backpack ever since I finished work And I don't know how long my friend had it refrigerated beforehand So

I think just a bad idea all around I agree, I agree You know what is a good idea there, Andy? I think checking what the guys are saying What our listeners are firing over What their thoughts are on this whole process They've probably not said anything about finishing the turn Because, you know, that's happened right now

But we can have a look at what they said before that Uh, yeah I've got one here, do you want to? perfect yeah it's a web form i believe this one this one is from the web form hey getting the mileage what with a mate.co.uk there's a little thing in the bottom right little contact us form love to hear you from you um so this one yeah we're getting good at that we're getting good at not doxing people hello there james and andy very much enjoying the podcast so far which falls into my favorite niche podcast genre of two guys take on an insurmountable task other notable

entries include the worst idea of all time hey and no one can know about this a podcast where we play every final fantasy that sounds good but i'm gonna check out yeah never heard of that that sounds funny yeah because that is all the title by the way well oh that's all part of the title yeah no one can know about all this a podcast where we play every final fantasy is all in the quotes for the name i love that that's that's very uh that's kind of like fallout boys titling of songs yeah i like that i'm not fully caught up yet having just listened to episode 31 and there are 35 at the time of me writing this but i wanted to speak on the bizarre dice system that this game uses oh god the trp ttrpg trochia first published in 28 18 uses a similar d66 system it makes more

sense for that game being a whimsical science fantasy RPG and I'm shocked to learn that there's a precedent for it and that precedent is an ostensibly realistic war simulation game the first 10-sided dice was patented in 1904

so I really don't understand why CFNA didn't just use that. Anyway, keep up the good work. Look forward to following the journey for the next 8-10 years and yeah, thanks in there uh that's also a genre i didn't know i liked but i guess i'm doing one and i'm like the worst idea of all time so yeah those guys are great they um they read out an email from

us about the podcast yes which was uh very very humbling that was good and it's yeah it's definitely our vibe because we um are also doing something stupid and the the dice system really attests to that it just feels like an extra like kick in the teeth that the game has the availability at the time of design of all of these different dice systems uh the 20-sided die would have been around probably uh the egyptians had them yes sorry in terms of like mainstream usage so the fact they could have had access to all of these different systems of dice and they went for two percentile just seems yeah yeah d100 would have been amazing for this it would have fit everything just makes sense everything's like percentage based really in the game well i have a feeling they went through

and did all of it as percentages and then converted it to the dice system i wouldn't be shocked i'd be like richard berg had too much spare time and yet not enough time yeah it's a weird man i also feel like there was probably the thing of uh oh richard you've been working on this for two years we need to release it i don't care how done you say it is and him being like all right here's the dice system and they're just being like we have a pallet full of d6s in a warehouse your game uses d6s which would make sense as well because apparently some of the copies of the game come with only one six-sided die it's meant to have two we've got three yeah so i don't know what the distribution of dice is none of which is enough for what we're doing i mean it is but it

also just isn't it goes to show that the game is meant to move at a glacial pace where you're only doing one roll at a time yes there's no simultaneous rolls both sides aren't rolling stuff at the same time it's meant to be the sit and roll if you play with 12 people six aside is the dice courier yes and i'm responsible for delivering the one dice to everyone and keeping track of all the rolls as well yes i don't think i rolled anything today uh i did break down i did got a 65 it was pretty bad yeah it was 65 was 25 if i rolled a 66 it would have been 50 loss or 33 losses so i also lost quite a few truck not quite a few uh two 10 and a 25 percent uh when i was moving units around oh yes they weren't your convoys whether they were just uh did you get

any real breakdown from your truck movements today uh all road baby on the road oh god no breakdown well not all road uh all road and then that little gap you've made by pulling it but eight that's eight breakdown points and then the rest is zero so it's not enough to be worth rolling on the tables something i've just thought do you know when you're going over the road and it mitigates breakdown uh costs completely yep does that apply the light truck thing because light trucks get a breakdown point for every hex they move does it completely negate that oh good i've just been taking it as overall negation because they have is it 40 cpa light trucks light trucks have 40 cpa medium and heavier 30 if they're moving supplies it changes yeah so they could

in theory move 60 60 hexes yeah so that would be 60 breakdown points on road if it doesn't negate it completely we'll need to look at that yeah because that is a huge number breakdown because that is actually a killer on your light trucks yeah surely not if it's road we'll have to double check that no that is a good point i hadn't thought of i've just been assuming yeah road is no breakdown but it probably is no breakdown but we'll definitely check that because that could be yeah that could be killer definitely want to sort out a scenario because that changes trucking entirely if it is well what it does do is it means that my guys moving over from Tripoli when they're moving along the road on the west it hamstrings them immediately because they have

to move huge swathes of road yes for them to be viable so yeah well god you'll definitely have to check that oh good bit of fact checking then so yeah yeah it'll be 60 or 80 that can move can't remember how much cpa they have the top light trucks with supplies or 40 40 yes they can move 80 hexes yeah medium and heavy and then i think light or 20 with um like you infantry yeah yeah two points yeah but you need two truck points for one two point yeah so it's a big investment i reckon i could i could probably do that with some micros i might do that also if light trucks are going to break down on roads if we look into that and they do then they're next time going much more heavily to motorization yes my convoys will be medium and

heavy well the good thing is with uh breakdown is it happens wherever they end up yes that is a good if you're shipping men across the roads and they break down at the end of the road you've got them where you want already so yeah you might eat up some light trucks but you get your men there it's an interesting strat actually i'm gonna have a look at that because i could do with moving some of my guys from the the west i've got a lot of guns that i placed there really stupidly at the start of the game and didn't give them any way to move around didn't give them any water i think i thought you would push over west a lot faster i just completely misunderstood the pace of the game so i thought i'll put some guns here and then they've just been sat there i've recently

though uh as i showed you earlier today i've attached some trucks to one of them so now they are actually moving over to the east. I really should have done that this op stage to be honest, but it slipped my mind. So now they're still stationed there. So more guns I could have used. They've got some really fucking good barrage ratings as well. You'll be scared of them.

What I need to do is just attach in the full game I will attach them. But we went off on a tangent there. Because I've got a couple of guys who can't move. Because my I got the Polish brigade. Yes, your reinforcements. But they don't have trucks on the reinforcement chart

No And I didn't like hold trucks back for them So They're out in the boonies with Nor They're in Cairo but they can't Move Until I get some trucks attached to them Yes

Yeah That's the issue with being out in the boonies Which is a turn of phrase I've taken to saying a lot recently been seeing it like just in everyday life i mean does that mean out in the wilderness yeah okay because they are in a city oh yeah they arrive in cairo of course they do that's not the boonies at all you've misunderstood what the boonies are then andy yeah yeah you have yeah it's called gaslighting it's working oh someone who's aware they've been gaslit such a sad reality well and you've got one for us yes let's stop gaslighting people into thinking we're going to

read their stuff and actually read their stuff so yeah thanks for that email ethan yes very good that you've um you've picked up on another system that 2018 as well that game was published wasn't it uh yeah so they're still doing it now great well uh ethan um if you can stay away from those dice systems play something with better dice well from what you said it does work better in the in a silly game yeah something a bit heightened yeah well in that case you can stick with it buddy we have an email which came through our email address which is info at war with a mate.co.uk for anyone who does want to send anything we are running very dry on email so if you send something over it will be read very soon possibly not next week we might be doing something a little

different next week so keep your ears out for that but if you send it over it will be read relatively soon but this email is titled pronoun history you can probably already guess what this one's about and it's from christine christine says hi y'all there it is beautiful y'all i'm christine from the midwest of america i'm listening to the mail section of the latest episode 35 and wanted to add some history of the pronouns they you and thou oh i love a good thou it turns out that the usage of a singular third person they predates the usage of a singular second person you originally you was a second person plural and thou was the second person singular ah that makes sense so yeah i love the show it's a highlight of my week and it's clear to me you've captured

a very specific demographic because house of leaves is also my favorite book i have mark Z. Daniel Lusky's other books, like Only Revolutions, a book that can be read backwards or forwards. I really want to read that one. The 50-Year Sword, a ghost story told by five people at once. It's one I haven't actually looked into that much, but I'd probably enjoy that too. And his Familiar series, which is intended to be 26 books long eventually, and is described by him as a television series. I'm pretty sure that one got discontinued from what I'm aware. I was going to start reading it but i think it's like six or seven books in now and it got i think he cancelled it otherwise i'd be straight into that one of my favorite sections is the history section i've

learned so many awesome things and i can't wait to hear more subtly humbly and bravely yours well christine thank you for um i guess first of all bring back the literature which i'm a big fan of which is House of Leaves, and also the praise for Andy's history section, which at first was a bit of a shared endeavour, but my God, I can't compete with this man. The history sections that Andy brings to the table is phenomenal,

and I'm sure he's going to bring a brilliant one very soon. And it's lovely to hear it's a highlight of your week as well. It's wild to think that there's people out there who get giddy at the thought of us talking for an hour, a small sliver of which about the game, a good chunk of it about history, and the rest of it is the likes of common ground or me drinking a jelly shot uh the fact that people enjoy that thankfully not it's very humbling and it's very lovely to hear christine

so thank you for educating us on a bit of a bit more pronoun info because we love to learn about words we'll tell you about the history if you keep telling us about words yeah we need to learn more of them yeah so thanks you all and that is that's it for the mailbag for now um again if you want to get in touch info at warwithamate.co.uk is the email we've got an instagram which is just war with a mate and the website is warwithamate.co.uk and you can fire over a web form there if you are so inclined whatever it is we'll read it out we're not picky love to hear from you we do it's Fantastic. And right now, Andy, I would like to hear from you. Yes.

Specifically, about history. I've got one. Lay it on me. We're back with Italo Balbo. Ah, good old Balbo Baggins. An unexpected journey. Oh, he's a real bag end, this guy. Well, his journey's about to take a bit of a detour, but we'll start with a quote as usual.

Okay. let us take therefore this privileged elector and break his head open even if he voted for us uh never got to old old balbo no this is a bit of a flash forwards but i'll give you the context for this this is they're having an election in 1924 and uh they want to like rig the election by intimidating people at the polls so they want to beat up the first person that comes out regardless of who they voted for and shout he voted for the socialists and just beat the shit out of him to intimidate the crowd i'd love the confusion of the crowd when they're like hang on we know this guy he's he's with you very much supports you no it was all a ruse the guy's he's

a liar this guy's a fibber yeah so that's a fun insight into this man well yeah he's psychotic is is what i'm gauging from this uh yeah most likely but no not most likely he just is so we'll wind it back to when he's 25 years old um this is 19 19 1920 so he's just joined the fascists uh they're paying him a salary they've offered him a position at a bank once the fascist fight is over and uh he's national sec uh regional secretary of the party like he's got a position of power chancellor of the ex-chequer i believe they call that now yeah he's a real george osborne of himself uh they've got a different political philosophy i might say okay okay i'll hear you out i'll reserve judgment for now because he joins the action squads as part of the squadrismo movement

squadrismo sounds intimidating it does it's pretty rough in italy at this time they've just had world war one notoriously a bad time yes the king is weak just overall physically or politically yes that venn diagram is a circle yes so there's socialism and trade unions are getting going particularly in the countryside uh among farmers and stuff and the landowners don't like that and neither do the fascists so a lot of middle-class children join these movements and then also you get a fair lot of uh veterans from world war one when you say children what age group are we talking about sorry like children of landowners okay sorry i thought we're doing like a cooney 2012 child soldier no young men but not children okay okay that

because that would paint a very different picture he's a bad guy but i wasn't sure how bad yeah well if you remember he did go try and join a war when he was 14 oh so he's all for child soldiers yeah he wanted to be one back in my day we were all trying to be child soldiers so this movement uh Wasn't initially fascist, but very quickly saw eye-to-eye and these squads got sort of folded into the fascist movement. Okay, okay. And they take over a lot of Northern Italy. These guys eventually come on to be identified by their black shirts,

which will become their namesake. This rings a bell. It does, yes. I think I've heard of these guys. They're coming. So thousands of people join these groups spread all over North Italy. They're typically 30 to 50 people. uh led by former army soldiers uh to sort of take care of training and organization

and wherever socialism's sort of strong they go in and violently intimidate they'll kidnap like the local governor who's lenient to socialists or like agrees with them lovely and they'll just kidnap him or repeatedly beat him up until he just like resigns and they're doing this like all over so they're like they're school ground bullies but on a political and national scale yes i i have a feeling a lot of these guys were school ground police you know i'm inclined to believe like a natural next step i'm gonna do this professionally uh so yeah it gets so um it gets so violent around this time there's debate as to whether it's a civil war always a very intense sign of how bad things are when you need

to toss that up in the air and debate about whether or not it's civil yeah i think it's not on the level of the stroke i think it's probably technical quibbles about the definition of a civil war i guess when you've got part of the nation that's rising up and creating a splinter separatist movement i guess yeah civil war probably falls in the category yeah it's kind of weird because the combat flicks between like socialist forces and fascist forces it's not like most things where there's like a king's died without an heir or there's like the king is there but everyone in their heads is just like this guy's done we're gonna fight over like what gets built after him even though he's still around as a monarch you don't want that just to be still there and

everyone's like well when you die who's gonna win and it's like i'm still here guys come on please read the fucking room so yeah balbo joins this movement and does very well uh he's got command experience from world war one uh he's very good at organizing and uh charismatic so he quickly rises up from a local view leader to national leader of this movement where he's traveling around between different cities uh in a gradually expanding sort of range from ferrara his hometown uh organizing and working with these groups right okay his specific group called itself celibana celibano which was their favorite drink it's like it's like calling your your gang of fascist thugs stellar artois

yeah budweiser the espresso martinis that is significantly less intimidating yeah oh god here come the espresso martinis so here's the first thing he does as part of this movement just to give you a taste of what he's involved in is a a socialist in the town ends up threatening a fascist with a knife on the street after a sort of escalating argument so him and his squad go around and just shoot the guy leaving him critically injured and then they're like this isn't enough of a message uh so they go and attack the local uh socialist headquarters destroy all the furniture and steal the rest of it so they just go beat up all the guys in there and take everything i do like the idea that they went in there they're like right okay let's send

a message let's destroy all the foot actually this this chair's quite nice they've done a fucking goldilocks and the three bears this chair's too big let's destroy it this chair's too small let's burn it this chair i think i'll actually take home yeah how politically motivated was it or has he just been eyeing up that suite? Yeah, actually, shooting that guy wasn't enough. Maybe we should go down there and take some furniture from that shop. I think maybe there's a sofa that I could have,

and that'll stick it to the socialists. And we'll take Gary's truck, because it's got the biggest load bed. Yeah, just in case we need to take anything with us. So 14 socialists get arrested as a result of this, because the police are on the fascist side. Ah, yes, the instigators of the conflict have been arrested. Get the ringleaders.

Yeah, get the wrong-ins out of there. So this is the first but not the last of his operations. Operating in Ferreira and the surrounding area over the next few months, his men destroy the headquarters of ten socialist organisations within like a 30km radius. they break up strikes and worker actions violently uh stop meetings generally just sort of a reign of terror and at this point i should mention the prefect of ferrara desperately wants to stop the violence because fair uh so at one point he bans truncheons okay okay yeah why so you can't like use them to beat people up i guess there's so many blunt objects you can do that with though that's a weird thing to go yeah i get that they're designed for that but well great minds think alike because balbo fought along the similar lines okay or did he use furniture no uh he used dry fish that's not what i was thinking we are not thinking the same wavelength i'm glad i'm not on his

wavelength to be honest dried fish yeah like this how big are we talking like cod so like pretty hefty this this reminds me like it's a special way of preserving them that the italians have where they like dry them out with no salt or anything over just like low heat so it's just like a shrunken desiccated cod that turns into a club this this reminds me of i don't know if you remember when there was a terror attack in london a few years ago and it was on london bridge i think oh yes and some guy had been at some sort of like art exhibit and he came out with a narwhal horn that was it yeah oh yeah there was an auction nearby and he like ran out onto like was it tower bridge or something it might have been tower bridge yeah and just stopped him with a

just ran out with it and like essentially tried to duel this terrorist jewel of the faith mustafar style yeah that's i mean to be fair that has a an element of bravery and heroics to it what you're describing is possibly it's and it's kind of the opposite and it's pardon the insensitive pun it's rubbing salt in the wound because i know this is an unsalted fish that is just it feels like it's meant to be some sort of statement there's definitely a a level of insult to the selection hitting them with a fish yeah yeah that's pointed so between january and march of 1921 in like his first three months of joining up the fascists went in over 50 operations half of which caused serious damage either to people or property so like burning buildings people in

hospital that kind of thing they were burning people in hospital oh sorry burning buildings and putting people in hospital oh sorry i was like that is that's intense yeah i didn't see anything specifically on burnings uh of people but again wouldn't be shocked no these guys seem to have an mo of cruelty and they can clearly adapt to the circumstances so they'll be cruel however they can and the level of violence is just getting to a kind of crazy fever pitch um and the police aren't able to keep a hand on it or are sympathetic so an example is balbo on one occasion leads 40 men to venice after hearing about socialists insulting the flag which results in a 40 minute running gun battle in the streets which involves the use of grenades uh and multiple

deaths apparently balbo's in the thick of it just grinning the whole time like loving it the authorities eventually arrive to break it up and you're like awesome he's going to jail now the captain of the guard wants to meet balbo uh so they can like stoically shake hands in silence and then both walk away from each other why i don't even if you're on his side what he's done isn't like it's sleight of hand it's not a cool thing that he's done he's not managed to turn things around with some very clever move no he's just grenades in the fucking street having a gun battle in the streets so i can't imagine that no police officers were harmed uh i don't have it up but i mean almost certainly they were if there's a gunfight that lasts for hours and the grenades

are being used there has to be casualties in the police force yeah they did break it up so there must yeah yeah i imagine to break up a gunfight you don't just kind of run in the middle and go guys guys come on yeah it surely involves some sort of countermeasures yeah so someone got hurt and again neither side really respects you because they both want to overthrow the state you work for yeah so you're not you don't have a huge amount of leverage but to give a scale of the damage in the first half of this year uh in the po valley which is about an hour from ferrara there's 726 acts of destruction carried out by fascist squads some of the things included are 17 newspapers and printing works 59 residential homes 119 chambers of labor 107 cooperatives

83 peasant leagues eight mutuals 141 socialist or communist sections 100 cultural clubs 10 libraries or theaters 28 unions 53 clubs and a university in the first half of the year get destroyed so it's like you can see the thing of like this is a civil war like the thing is there's also no clear pattern to it like those institutions you've listed off it's not like they're going after one particular demographic well i think it's leftists kind of in general it's a lot of like people who are trying to organize from like the workers perspective yes okay yeah so that yeah i get what you mean yeah they're not going for particular buildings so to speak it's just anywhere where they can try and find their target yeah like the newspapers i think would have been

specifically printing probably like socialist newspapers or pamphlets good point yeah they wouldn't have just i don't think they were like let's just destroy things for the sake of it yeah it's somewhat targeted it might have a modicum of intelligence to their plan yeah it's targeted violence that ends up looking like it's got a bigger effect i guess so by may ferrera is no longer socialist all of its leaders have given up uh fled or been killed balbo during this period is arrested once for illegally owning and possessing a pistol by the end of the day a mob arrives and surrounds the prison which um led by his action squads the police end up releasing him because they don't want the mob coming in to get him and he's given a new pistol which the mob

of crowdfunded for him. Don't crowdfund handguns. Don't crowdfund guns in general. I think that's a fairly sensible rule. I mean, if you're going to GoFundMe now, that's got to be one of the rules. I've not looked, actually. Maybe they missed it.

A loophole. Read the small print, guys. You can get yourself a gun. I do not endorse that. Do not do that on the back of this recording. That is a bad idea. just need to put that soundbite out no it's important by the back half of 1921 the level of violence has expanded even mussolini uh is desperate for it to end despite it being

a successful strategy for him uh so he offers a peace pact with the socialists balbo is very very against that as well as many other leading fascists and it ends up causing a schism where Mussolini ends up submitting his resignation as a bluff but Balbo actually wants to call it uh so he goes to this guy called D'Annunzio uh and is like hey do you want to be in charge of the fascist movement now uh we want to get rid of Mussolini and this guy says no in a very funny way uh he says he doesn't want the job and he claims he first had to consult the stars but it was on a night that was notably overcast yeah i've had a little look and um the stars they've said no you've you've been indoors the whole time man what's going on yeah they said no

yeah i i asked them and they said no just say you don't want to do it that you know what that is it's when you ask your pal if they want to like come out for like a drink on an like an evening and it's like oh maybe i i don't know uh possibly just say no yeah i just don't want to go don't say you're consulting the stars when you don't fucking see the stars but at the same time i'm glad he said no yeah so it was probably a quite a potential what if moment if that guy because i don't know that much about him so who knows what would happen well based on and this is a fucking wild thing to say it sounds like Mussolini is maybe the more merciful option for the socialists at this time yeah and that's a scary thought well we will definitely have a Mussolini episode down

the line but uh like he's a big admirer of Lenin he writes for socialist newspapers early on in his life he actually wants to bring the socialists into this movement because it's still sort of coalescing and forming like its principles are kind of up in the air so they're a prospective ally for him yeah which alienates the guys in his movement who love beating socialists with fish yes but because no one else will take over that's a valid candidate uh they sort of acquiesce to mussolini don't accept his bluff resignation um but this does start the sort of a rivalry will start to form between mussolini and balbo which uh culminates in tragedy from what i understand for good old balbo baggins yes it's not gonna end uh it's not gonna end nicely for him but they do

sign this pact of pacification on the 2nd of august it doesn't really work because which era is this sorry uh oh sorry this is 1921 21 oh wow so still very early on yeah this is all within a year of him joining the party oh god i had in my head this was quite a bit later oh no i'm it's going to accelerate it a bit but this is sort of laying out what he's doing uh and then yeah so the violence continues in the countryside anyway it does dim a bit um but then the pact again gets entirely done away with uh uh something called the third fascist congress on the 10th the 7th to the 10th of november that year so wow that's a short tenure yeah it's not a it's not a long lasting armistice that's wild yeah this event is also where the fascist movement goes from a

movement into a party right form the party party italian for party uh party ito uh national fascista the national fascist party and by the end of the year it has over 300 000 members christ that's a lot yeah uh in may of the next year so may 1922 uh 22 yeah uh balbo becomes a member of the national directorate of the pnf uh so he's high level in the party okay and at this point even he starts to pull back on the violence interesting because he wants to focus on training recruiting and equipping his men for the moments the fascists take power so he's gone from wild violence in the countryside to preparing for a queue that's that's worse it's worse again it's sort of the i'm going to target violence on one point he's just refining that to

rome he's getting ready to like scale up yeah which is yeah that's a scary notion uh which he eventually does on the 28th of october 1922 which is the start of a several day period called the march on rome mussolini puts together a quadrum for it to run this so like his four guys who are going to be in charge of this yeah because uh he's not going on the march oh mussolini doesn't go interesting uh he doesn't go in this high risk plan yeah wild so this will probably also get its own episode at one point uh but for our purposes they're successful and it's primarily down to him at one point the other guys want to like they spook and want to uh accept the first offer the king gives them uh and balbo is just like screaming down the

phone like i'll fight to the last bullet i will accept nothing less than mussolini in power like just go ballistic uh and sort of holds the whole thing together which is interesting because he was ready to accept Mussolini's resignation yeah well the thing is I think Mussolini would do whatever he could to acquire power and I think Balbo might be like a genuine fascist ideologue yeah it seems like he's got a sort of zealous belief yeah so he's because he's like trying to live up to a lot of these like fascist principles of like the strong man and the like heroic hero narratives they like use whereas Mussolini's just using those narratives yes so he will fight for the cause but at some point Mussolini will be unworthy in his eyes

most likely it's like that kind of follower yes well yeah yeah it's very much yeah like you say he's an ideologue and mussolini is a pragmatist yeah speaking of mussolini's pragmatism when this is all over the quadrumvirate uh get rewarded uh all except balbo so the other three guys who pussied out and wanted and would have failed get publicly recognized by mussolini and he publicly snubs balbo as he's like coming to power um but his role is kind of undeniable so he gets like locked into the grand council of fascism which is like their government and cabinet uh the members of the quadrant for all four of them will have a lifetime role so no matter what like department he moves through or if he like quits he'll always be part of this

council yeah he's tenured yes that's a good way of describing it yes he's tenured into fascism ah what a bad man uh on february 1923 he gets put in charge of the voluntary militia for national security or the ms mvsn uh the black shirts and he's sort of responsible now mussolini's put him in charge because one he did a lot to set them up now they're in power the violence isn't useful for them it's counterproductive for their like we're gonna bring order and peace thing yeah so he needs to like redirect these guys so he starts giving them like more official uniforms they're not quite a part of the military yet but they're like militarizing if that makes sense yeah yeah And they'll do a lot of guarding, like, docks or trains or...

They're now guarding important stuff. Got an upgrade there. Yeah, it sounds like they are very much scaling up rapidly now to be more and more integral to actual government. So, on the 21st of November, Balbo does have to resign as the leader of the Blackshirts after a newspaper releases proof of him directly giving orders to beat up anti-fascists and pressure judges oh would you look at that

the consequences of his actions yeah um well he has to lose leave office because he loses a defamation suit against the newspaper and that makes him look weak because they're in control so the only way he like loses the job is if the party are like we need to get rid of him because of public pressure and apparently he sort of Barbra Streisand's it wow he's really shit the bed on this one

so he becomes the undersecretary for the national economy after this, he's still involved but Mussolini's trying to keep him a bit of a low profile that is until he gets given the job of minister of the air force

and will pick up what he does with that uh next week yes uh i i think i know where this one ends but uh yeah so far he's having a real struggle towards the end there yeah he's a it's come off the rails towards the end yeah he's he's like a very good guy to have during a during a rise to power as like a guerrilla movement you thought you're then in power and he's a charismatic leader you're like i need to keep this guy out of the spotlight yeah because he is he will be at many times thought of as the heir to the heir apparent to mussolini like if fascism hadn't fallen in italy and mussolini had like died of like a cold or whatever that's a bizarre bad example but you know what i mean uh in that

case he would likely have become the next leader um yeah or have been a front runner for it i mean it very well likely would have collapsed for crabs in a bucket trying to get it but he was definitely prime position well yeah it sounds like he has all the trappings of somebody who's more extreme but still follows an ideology that's been set out by mus like you say musulman he's more interested in the power but that would that would potentially set history up in a very scary way if that pragmatism leads to a vacuum which is fascism shaped yeah and then balbo just steps into it and it just becomes a zealous movement because italy could be a very different situation at that point well i am he's a very competent leader yeah which mussolini by all accounts isn't

militarily so it would be very interesting to see what competent italy would have done in world war ii because i i went to italy a few years ago and i was on a tour bus we went from uh rome to uh positano which is a decent journey away so we're on the coach for hours and the the um tour guide who was meant to just be a sort of tour guide of like uh the trip there and back and given some history and stuff and she gave like some context on rome some of the foods to try and then on the way i think it was the way back for about two hours she was talking about world war ii and talking about italy's role in it and how there's this like malign view of italian leadership during the war and how the italian people i'm not sure how biased this was on her viewpoint but how the

italian people look back at it with so much disdain and now i'm like god i wish i was there now because i'd be thoroughly interested it was really interesting it was very engaging but i didn't have any context to it because before playing this game i was not really invested in war history whatsoever no me neither and now i'm like god that would be such an interesting thing to listen to now i feel like i actually have questions yeah so it's a shame but yeah it speaks to what this alternate world could have looked like if balbo had become this this air and that had manifested into reality where he did take the seat of power or this other guy takes it as a puppet essentially yes because he's the guy in the back room being like you should take this job yeah balbo's the

broker yeah would it have been a puppet thing uh it sounds like it would have because it sounds like balbo is so dedicated to his belief yeah that he would have i think that the reality is that guy would have been a puppet and he would have by the sounds of it based on his temperament And if he had been pressured in that moment, might have caved later on, which I feel like ends up with him being beaten to death by a kibbeh. Yes. Mysteriously disappearing before the ascension of Italo Balbo.

He fell out of a window and then was killed by a fish. Yeah. Classic defenestration and then aquatic-themed death. Classic political death. It happens. It happens to the best of us. Well, what a slice of history you've given us. it's it's nice to know that things didn't go the way that balbo wandered however that's not to say

things didn't go atrociously for italy and indeed europe in the years that follow yeah i will say in terms of that thing just before we leave in you're saying in terms of europe just like when we were talking about graziani like himmler and i think it was gearing went to visit the camps oh and they took inspiration from yeah a lot of this is like the squadrismo uh you know the brown shirts for the nazis that were there like street level violence yes a lot of this will be based on what worked in italy and what didn't yes it sort of happens 10 years later where they like that worked for them that didn't and you'll sort of notice if you know much about the nazis they got rid of the sa the brown shirts and replaced them with the ss because

their street level violence thing had got to the end and hitler had come to power so it was time to stop it yeah and i wonder if they looked at what happened with balbo and the pressure he put on mussolini and hitler was like i don't want any of that and it's part of the decision to like destroy them which is interesting because you know hitler by all accounts uh very driven in his ideology so it yeah it makes you wonder how much of that ideology was held back or how much of it was stifled by the the fear of being overthrown did did you know did he move more pragmatically because of this it's i think like every other history segment that you've done so far it shows this weird butterfly effect of all these people right time right place or i guess

wrong time wrong place that lead to these knock-on effects where someone else looks at it and it changes things massively yeah would hitler have ended up in a situation where his power structure is faulted massively if he didn't already have this template to look at yeah it really does make you wonder the italy was the sort of how to do a fascist coup it was the first one so if you're doing one you're like well that's all i can really look at and i guess franco spain by that time but that hadn't worked out well yeah that was a very botched job botched oh well it's uh it's interesting to see that uh hitler and balbo had some common ground smooth in what is possibly the most jarring and insensitive transition to common ground

i say we get into it let's get into it 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 Andy, it is your turn this week

for Common Ground and as everyone knows Common Ground is the section of the podcast in which you and I reconfigure, we realign, we reconnect by finding some topic to discuss and find a common ground, an agreeable point on. Because I think, if anything,

at the end of the very first turn, it's a very good time to try and do that, to bridge that gap and come back together ready and refreshed for the next one. So there's a lot of pressure on you here. This has to be a great one because otherwise it sort of shatters the visage completely. So Andy, take the stage.

This is a business idea. This is a thing I'd like to exist. Okay. Dig rooms. dig rooms yes dig as in dig yes rooms yeah or so basically i don't know about you the last few times i've been to a beach which is rarely i get i get a lot of joy out of digging holes you know what i i'm already on board for this because i have been to beaches a few times with friends usually when i was like sort of 17 16 17 you know drinking underage going to the beach yeah

yeah i i get that yeah well in my case i was with my family and they were swimming in the ocean or sunbathing and i was digging a bigger bigger hole to sit in and i just had a lot of fun so it's like an escape room or axe throwing or something you just go somewhere and you can just dig for like an hour and then they'll like fill it in after you leave and someone else can come in it's just like a fun calming thing i mean digging it scratches an itch it does you know what i think first of all i i'm on board with a lot of this by the way there's some specifics to drill out okay to dig into if you will but i think first of all i want to explore maybe the psychological element you've explained there what is it about digging that really scratches the itch of someone's

mind what is it that gives you that catharsis at the end of digging a big hole i don't know but it's very real i mean you can see the hole you're like i can see i've done a thing there's nothing abstract about digging a hole there wasn't a hole and now there is one i i wonder maybe i worry as well is it the idea of digging your own grave is it i don't think so maybe for some people because i because it's the idea of digging a big hole and getting into it yeah is that not bad i'm sure freud could take a run at that yeah but i don't trust freud someone more reputable we covered freud in episode five he's uh he's questionable uh he's got some um i don't think we're gonna call freud in on this one but we can call me in what about young what about a third

archetype the mole man i don't mind young i think we can probably find an archetype in here uh but everyone likes to dig a hole yeah i mean yeah i come to think of it no you've got you make a good point you've got your swimmers you've got your bathers and you've got your diggers yes diggers i feel also have their sort of pseudo counterpart the builders yes those that like to build a sand castle or some sort of very intricate sand dog yeah sand artists yes sand artists yeah they're the more refined builder but we have libraries serving the readers we have swimming pools serving the swimmers where's urban dig sites for those people who like to dig that's a good point because unless you become a professional digger and by the way

an actual mechanical digger takes the fun out of this massively oh yes you want to be wiping the sweat off your brow you want to be sticking the shovel in the sand after a job well done in the big mound of dug up sand and then you want to climb in yeah it is a grave thing i don't it's not because it's also the digging of the hole even if i couldn't get in it i'd enjoy digging but and answer me this because you're trying to decry what i'm saying here would you feel more or less satisfied if you looked at the hole and you realized you couldn't fit in it well then i've got to make the hole big so this is my point it is about being able to fit in the hole well it's a sign of a good hole but yeah i guess yes but why why is that the measure of a

good hole why does it have to be measured on whether or not you can fit inside it maybe it is lusting for the grave i think it is man well so you want to have a room that's a funeral simulator well when you put it like that i guess yes yeah you don't have to do any of the embalming or anything like you know macabre yeah it's just the fun part yeah it's it's the grave digging and then if that takes off next step is an allotment but instead of growing plants you just have a big bit of if you can dig a bigger hole in for like a month so there's more room yeah it's a bigger area and they're not going to fill it in for the next guy yes like a cemetery i want to dig a masquerade you've really ruined this for me it was a whimsical digging a whole

thing i'm on board it's incredibly morbid i'm on board but what we're talking about is digging a cemetery i think you want to work as an undertaker maybe i do it's your common ground you're not happy with your job and you want to be an undertaker maybe over the course of this podcast we'll finish the game and i'll become an undertaker well you heard it here first folks this is episode what 38 uh 37 and at the end of this the whole endeavour, you will be a very accomplished Undertaker. Yeah. And I'd be so

proud of you, man. I'm just going to become an Undertaker. Because the thing is, those holes have to be big enough for a body. And then some. Yeah. Body plus change. Yeah, but, you know, if they say if you do what you love, you'll never work a day

in your life. Well, that's good. Do you want a jaunty graveyard keeper? do you want to be like visiting a loved one and see a man who's incredibly fulfilled digging a hole while he hunts i love seeing people who love their job oh okay i think that's very satisfying it no yeah wherever you are i don't think that people need to be sad because they work at a graveyard oh as long as that's the case i were i was when i was younger i must have been like six or seven i was in hospital for an operation um it was uh it was it was fairly inane um nothing nothing insane but i was i was there and there was a lovely pediatrician he was bald and i remember

at some point he made a remark um he was this bald guy and he'd said oh well if the if the the needle hurts when they put the you know what is it that they put in your hand when they they put like the anesthetic into the general anesthetic oh they're like plug thing yeah actually a valve it's not a stint uh stent maybe yeah i know what you're talking yeah whatever they put in he was like look if it hurts you can pull all my hair out and i was like it's funny guy because he's bald yeah so of course you can't do that nice guy but i'm like this guy also would have had to deal with like really gravely ill kids yeah but he's still got a whimsy to him yeah i guess and it's like that's a bad job to have to have in those moments when it's like

really serious but if you can still power through and have a good time with it what a guy yeah and a gravedigger should be no different yes fair enough he's not going to have the good times there will always be a body but it's always a bit a bit of celebration are you on indeed looking up uh undertaker jobs yes all right i said it's a joke but i can see the reflection in your glasses you are searching something what are you are you searching the salary by any chance yeah 22 or 44 grand a year 22 must be like an apprentice yeah that's entry level entry entry level hey all bodies go in an entry level so yeah i don't think you even need any qualifications well you know what this this could be something that helps with that what's your

experience i've been to the dig room a lot yeah spent a lot of time in the dig room i'm a passionate of amateur i've worked on my craft well there we go maybe the dig room is actually a force for good it's going to help people be satisfied with their role as a grave digger i'd also love to see the equivalent like you know the work night out in an escape room where it just doesn't go right yeah just that but people yelling that's the digging goal the thing is there's no strategy why are we doing this because you'll have like three people into it and the rest of them are like we can't let dave book the holiday party anymore so your concern is more that it's going to be a case not necessarily that people aren't going to um escape so to speak but they're going

to be questioning why they're there in the first place yeah i think it's a it's serving a niche it is but i think this this niche is quite universal people yearn for a grave whether it's their own or to dig for someone else i think maybe we need to fill that void i am there with you andy we fill the void by creating more voids in the ground yeah in the dig room dig rooms and maybe I'm going to become an Undertaker. Well Andy, I dig it and I think there's going to be many more

holes dug during this whole process. We're going to be digging our own graves to an extent because it's going to be a very long journey to finish this game It is. However we're one turn down there's only 115 to go 116 to go

and at the end of that at the end of that it's plain sailing so I guess on that note from me, I've been James I've been Andy stay subtle, humble and brave

and in the deserts of your mind, watch out for those holes because people are digging left, right and centre but we will talk to you next time when we pick up with turn 2 and we continue the campaign for North Africa goodnight We'll be right back.