War With A Mate - Episode 38: May You Fight Long And Well (w/Breakup Gaming Society)

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

The guys are joined by Nate of Breakup Gaming Society as a pleasant change of pace at the end of Turn One. Touching on the ambitions of “artists”, the state of board games in the cultural zeitgeist and the existential question of when we should care about funerals. Stay SHB & D. Special thanks to Nate for beaming himself over to us via internet from shores afar this week. Check out Breakup Gaming Society for the ultimate one-stop shop covering Board Games, Hip-Hop and Booze!https://www.breakupgamingsociety.com

stop wasting your nights on a mattress that doesn't get you experience the most comfortable mattress in the world the sleep number smart bed at the touch of a button you can personalize your comfort choose firmer or softer adjust cooler to warmer and right now save up to twenty five hundred dollars during our massive labor day event hurry into your local sleep number store today Because we have your number. Welcome to War with a Mate with me, James. Me, Andy. and that's not all we have a third participant please welcome to the stage it's nate of breakup

gaming society hello everybody and uh surreptitious war game viewers throughout the world and that's what this is this is a global operation and as you can tell nate's accent doesn't sound like our accent it's different it's strange and i understand people this might throw you off a little bit but we do have a wide array of connections and nate is joining us today from the depths of the united states he is a a fellow recording artist i think that's probably how i would describe myself nate would that describe you accurately a recording artist i've never thought of those descriptors to apply to myself but i'll take it see subtle humble and brave from the go i think it's it's fantastic nate you you are the the host of breakup gaming society which is

a podcast adjacent to what we do just a little bit more structured because you cover not just one ridiculous board game you cover board games on a weekly basis absolutely uh it's three segments straight up and straight down uh board games booze and hip-hop and of course i think uh what really unites it all is i indulge myself in the autobiographical the literary the the comedic and even the melancholy as i feel is adequate and i feel like we've got a bit of crossover there because what we do is is melancholy what we try to do is comedic uh what we don't do is anything at all literary or poetic we we we try to sometimes we convince ourselves we do that but we just simply don't um it's what we do is a real endeavor in uh i think masochism and we've shown

you a little peer behind the curtain today and we've shown you our spreadsheets we've we've really given you a behind the scenes look what did you make of what we're doing there's knowing a game is nigh unplayable and like for example knowing that x number of people died trying to climb k2 then there's actually seeing a slow pan of a section of the mountain itself okay i'm still trying to absorb that yeah the the spreadsheets are something i've learned to fear every time i bring them up when we're playing the game it's never it's never easier it never gets easier it just gets harder because the spreadsheets just get more and more plentiful more and more complicated but it's got to be done mostly because we've decided to do it and we record this podcast as

a way to keep ourselves accountable we were we were very thrilled when you reached out to us to let us know that you'd you'd found us and when we listened to your podcast we found that what you do is much more eloquent in what you're accomplishing like you say you cover different segments you cover different board games and you've also been generous enough to send us over a copy of the breakup gaming society cocktail recipe booklet which is well it's quite the creation i've got to say it is pretty outstanding in what it offers i was trying to package the self-destructive course of the early days of this podcast in 2019 and 2020 and and just and distill it into a fun artifact so if what you were telling me earlier is is true then i feel like i've

succeeded you absolutely have because looking at some of the the cocktails in here so to to bring one out here onto the horizon if that's quite all right with you nate i would like to read one of the recipes because i think it's important for people to know exactly what it is i've got here in my hand oh please i'd never get tired of sniffing my own turds oh this is not this is this is unrefined art this is art in its rawest form the the first one opening up the book here is the fetid haze cocktail which is one ounce of pike's peak hill shine a generous dash of el yacetio green chili habanero sauce and easy cheese cheddar and bacon cheese snack to prepare it's to shake the shine and the habanero sauce and then strain it into a shot

glass rimmed with the cheese stuff now that comes from the mind of clearly a genius and a genius with i would say enough zest that warrants your presence here today because you clearly have as a singular of a creative mind as as we do you've have you drank these yourself or have you just imparted this opportunity onto friends and family oh i've i've uh i did not try the princess palindrome which is dangerous i made a younger cast mate try that that was the first and last attempt of that one but yes i have clothed all of that and you know in terms of the inspiration once i started thinking about the inspiration which for fellow nerds out there each drink of the first four were inspired in homage to the four ruinous powers of the warhammer universe so

i went that that the one you just cited as i was like see uh nurgle it should be green and it should feel like somebody's just released some kind of bioweapon on you so that's what happened i'm with the cheese whiz it really feels like that yeah like that is a taste sensation going on there that is it's a mix of sweet savory and alcohol which is uh three of my favorite tastes personally uh i don't know about you andy but i think we need to commit to trying at least one of these on one of the episodes i think that needs to be done oh yeah we'll also avoid the princess palindrome but we'll give some of the others a shot the princess palindrome is is hostile it's illegal depending on how you source it and yeah i wouldn't do it to myself or any

others in the future well i'm afraid uh it may well be the case you do that to us because i think if i was going to try any of them i would probably try the one that's the worst because that's that's sort of what we do here at what we do the worst thing imaginable well actually not the worst thing imaginable that makes the sound way darker than it actually is we're just playing a board game guys i may be the axis forces but at heart i am a lovely person i swear i swear to god so don't possibly based on the others it's a sort of litmus test based on your initial impressions i think you have the makings of a slaneshi cultist so that's good thank you thank you now andy is the the 40k expert um andy have i have i just been praised or insulted it's it's difficult

to tell i think neither i think you've been pigeonholed i think all the gods are bad it's what type of bad you are and i think slanesh might be right for you okay i i hope that's a good thing i i truly do i think maybe it speaks to my my spirit and my uh generosity uh am i getting any he's right spirit yes generosity that's slanesh is generous in a dark way um i'm generous in a dark way i'm i'm putting this out there for the people to understand what the campaign for north africa is i think what we're doing is is generous and uh and nate you're you're very generous because you you don't just focus on board games like you say you focus on also booze and hip hop so it's a when we're talking about cocktails what you create is a cocktail of ideas

that have really come together in a pretty beautiful end result i've listened to quite a few episodes of yours now and the yeah it's it's such a unique idea how on earth did you manage to come up with this that's such a a brilliant concoction those are the three pillars of to me the perfect night uh a good beat on the speakers stiff drink in hand people having fun around the table uh and i was talking to an old girlfriend uh saying man i want to make a podcast and then i just reeled off board games booze and hip-hop and she said well make a podcast about that here we are five years later it's a yeah you know what when you put it like that it just it's actually very easy to come up with a good idea and just commit to it it's simplistic in the

the nature of it but i thoroughly enjoy it so i'm very glad that this um this old flame of yours gave the recommendation because without it we wouldn't be here i wouldn't have my defiant frog sticker that you've sent us over slapped here on my laptop next to my taylor swift red album sticker i don't have any stickers on my laptop um i've got a taylor swift one i've got defiant frog and I've got three stickers of myself which I think just speaks to vanity more than anything else unfortunately that's that's okay if if you know and I meet other creators if they don't have a little streak of that in them I don't entirely trust them exactly how else would you get this far in in this big business world with us three titans of industry there's got to be sacrifice

and sometimes that sacrifice is is being humble and we we do strive to be subtle humble and brave in everything that we do but in order to broadcast this message it's cut through the industry to be able to put out a podcast i don't think people understand the kind of shoulders you need to step on it's a brutal industry to be able to record an audio file and upload it to various streaming platforms i certainly uh tell me if you experience this when when you meet people and they they learn you have a podcast i i call what i do a show just because i think when a lot of people hear the word podcast they think of six people talking about marvel cinematic universe or or sports betting or uh true crime and and and moreover people who are dead set on driving a

certain topic and making a living at it very soon so i usually get when i say you know i do a show before they even know what i want to talk about or why they always how many downloads do you have like i don't fucking know you know what this is definitely something i'm going to take on board because i have the exact same issue and yet uh we were and it wasn't no sorry i wasn't even with you andy yes i just i presume andy's with me at all times in every location spiritually is but i was at the the pub a good while ago and had a an encounter with some strangers where they mentioned something that had been mentioned recently on the podcast and i'd uh i'd explain to them that i indeed do a podcast and immediately it was the sort of eye roll it was you know here we go a

white guy with a podcast um and they asked what it's about so i said oh well you know me and a few buddies just have a few drinks and we just talk about current political issues and um self help that sort of thing and it it was just i played directly into into their hands and they were so oh god this is going to be horrible and then i pulled the rug out from under them and went ah no it's actually about a very long board game and they were very disappointed and i think that goes to show people have an idea as to what a podcast is and yeah i think calling it a show is a good way to curb that problem because people yeah they have this preconceived notion they don't understand that what this is is essentially just it's unadulterated art and they have this

preconceived notion that it's it's going to be nonsense and i don't think i would describe a single episode of what we do as nonsense andy uh except the first maybe 15 so half but other than that yeah i suppose they did have their flaws they were mostly about everything but the game that's a good point actually yeah maybe we do a little bit of nonsense well i'll tell i'll tell the both of you uh i'll tell your listeners what i told you in our get to know you chat a few minutes ago the reason i'm here is because um you two are an excellent duet literate gracious witty ironical and doing it all in the framework of a what sounds like a hobby that suicide by hobby but also finding what from what i can tell from what i've sampled uh large pockets of surprising

joy in all of it and it all works very well i'm a fan well thank you man that's much appreciated nate and i'm very glad that you followed the script we paid you to say that of course um and it's very lovely of you to to follow through with that uh no you know what um the sort of earnest appreciation that we've got from this is so genuinely shocking because when we set off to do this it all came from a friend mentioning the game we thought it was a funny idea to try and play the game um didn't realize really what we were getting into and the fact that we've been able to find a bit of fun within this and having people like yourself nate come onto the the podcast as a guest share your time and your experience it's been so fun finding other people

that are doing their own stuff that's so unique and singular so we're really glad that it's provided you with some aspect of entertainment and that it's been able to introduce us to the likes of yourself as well someone else who's doing something you know similar but very yeah i've never heard of a podcast that does something quite what you do so we we felt you being a guest would be ideal because you've covered a lot of board games and because you're you're about to hit 100 episodes is that right you're on 98 i believe it is yes somehow and uh yeah yeah 100 is coming up and it's a very different show than when it began but there's One of the things I typed in half as a lark on my LinkedIn description was I called myself the patriot of the small creator, but I mean it.

And I find more nourishment than ever in seeking out singular voices and trying to patch together my own demimonde of online figures where I'm convinced things sound distinct and human and resonant. And that comes off what you're doing immediately. Plus, I find that more so in the world of people who are willing to stop the world and push pieces around on the table and get to the payoff of what it means when you actually start to learn that 190-plus page rulebook you showed me. There's lots of humor in there to be had, but I think it's beautiful. You've put it far more eloquently in just a few short sentences than we ever have with hours of rambling, because what we do is tend to get frustrated at the game and then fall in love with the game. And it's nice to hear somebody take an outside perspective and put it in such a nice way, because it really does feel like we're just trying to keep our head above water a lot of the time. well there's a resonance between the the world of the the players and the the world that's being suggested in you know north africa in 1941 and that is is is how much of war is just grueling

drudgery yeah and how much of it's just getting things places like playing the game but also doing the research it's if you can get like a box full of food from one place to another you're like 70 percent of the way there when it comes to war which is kind of bizarre yeah and i don't think it's any accident that in what historical reading i have done uh that napoleon and patten and guys like that their first object of study was logistics and uh patten was a lunatic but he was also the guy who just show up in a forward position on a cold night to make sure that soldiers had food and changes the socks because he knew without that you don't have a show and and there's and there's something about your good natured complaining about the administrative burden of it i just like

because it evokes the scene i picture like these aussies you know in the khaki desert uniforms with the knee-high shorts and i just picture some guy drenched in sweat with a clipboard just yelling at some bedraggled bunch of guys with a bunch of barrels in the truck and looking at us, jabbing at his clipboard and yelling. And they're trying to get him to leave them alone

so they can go off into the desert. Yeah, that is so much of the game. It is just us wanting parts of it to make sense, wanting the logistics of it to just be sorted out so we can get to what we perceive to be the fun part of the game,

which is the combat. Or for me, it's the barrage. i love a good barrage in this game and the aircraft stuff has been a lot of fun and it is just the slog i've heard you as a matter of fact so i've got a little present for you from some of my side obsessions i've been reading the drowned world by jg ballard which was his first novel from 1962 and uh it has a bunch of characters in a post-apocalyptic lagoon after solar flares have made most of the world uninhabitable and they're down there with a military detachment taking samples but there are these very telling ballardian sentences where they not only describe something

very well but foreshadows how their disinterest in their work is preparatory to a deep psychological disattachment from everything they knew and there's a couple but i picture your play area over there in the uk there are a couple beautiful sentences from the drowned world about about the lab that dr kieran's and dr bodman's work in and i'm like i wonder if andy and james would identify with this here's the first quote they entered the cool darkness of the laboratory and sat down at their decks below the semi-circle of fading program schedules which reached to the ceiling behind the dais looking down over the clutter of benches and fume cupboards like a dusty mural i'm sorry to say that paints a far more beautiful picture than what we're doing

and and this this sentence reminded me of some of the shots you took of it seems like when you're manipulating like the ranks and ranks of counters you also have hand notation everywhere here's the second quote i think this is this is the boffo one and because you know they have notes and specimens and notes all over the wall it says Many of the cardboard screens had sprung off their drawing pens, hung forwards into the air like peeling whole plates of a derelict ship, moored against its terminal pier, and covered with gnomic and meaningless graffiti. I was wrong. This is about us. This quote is actually about us. No, that's right. That's us. We've got annotations everywhere. This is perfect. This fits us. I was wrong. There's a book about us, Andy. This is crazy. Yeah, we're going to have to look at this. Yeah, you too were prophesied by J.G. Ballard in 1962.

You're Kierens and Bodkin about to surrender to the Triassic swampy heat of North Africa. Does it end well for them? How are we going to end up? Well, in general, J.G. Ballard's protagonists, when faced with an apocalypse, they don't try to be clever and engineer survival tactics. They walk directly into the heart of it. Oh, that's perfect. We're not clever either.

so we we also just we are wonder straight so and we did just jump into the part of this game as well with no idea what was going on and and actually there's another related theme because i was curious about so i know that you told me that you're not hardcore hex encounter board gamers but you are board gamers has this has the gravidic pull of this effort eclipsed your other hobbies has it ruined your social standing what happened you know what it it somehow hasn't i think we we got into this because we had a surplus of time on our hands and it's meant that we've been able to fit this in relatively comfortably but there have definitely been moments where i've unfortunately on my side i don't know if it's the same for you andy had to sacrifice social

interactions I would probably rather have than playing the campaign for North Africa whether it's a trip to the pub with friends whether it's spending time with a significant other there's just been a lot of moments where I'm like I do need to do this so there is definitely an aspect of that suffering but not to a degree that I think this game would have for most people I think we've we've committed to it because we knew we could commit to it so it hasn't been too detrimental however i do fear that with inertia we will get so far into the game and we'll start to see the horizon where the game might be finished and it will possibly ruin my life yeah because i'm wondering so you just released episode 37 which marks uh the milestone of having

completed the first turn so i'm kind of wondering uh so now that you've got a cycle in and that we in the in the bookkeeping system that you built and documented it is up do you think the turn two can be played in maybe a trim 30 sessions god i hope so so the the benefit we have uh because the the setup andy was what sort of 12 sessions maybe there was a yeah there was a lot of getting ready to play a lot of us reading the rules and then also setting the game out and then being like this is completely untenable we have like four or five hours on a weekday and it's a two-hour setup so then there was another bunch of episodes where we came up with the magnets and stuff so yeah hopefully we speed up i mean the time between finishing up stage one and three is

about 10 episodes so hopefully it's completable in our lifetime now whereas the initial pace was we're going to finish this one right yeah because the issue is at the moment with our current pace is the yeah i'm just doing the math there if we go off to say 37 episodes 37 weeks to complete one turn that does put us at the unfortunate eventuality of another 82 years to finish the the whole game which is because of modern medicine not really a viable option i would like us to speed it up and i think organizational wise we have actually made some pretty big leaps and bounds so we should be able to finish the next turn in i don't know man i'm hopeful for nine weeks what do you reckon on that andy yeah that feels that feels like a good pace to be going

i think also we've started to offload some stuff off our play sessions so we do a lot of our bootkeeping if it's not something that'll affect what's happening then we'll do it later now because we're more confident with it which does mean we can really make the most of the time we are playing together yeah because the one thing i kept wondering i was like i wonder with all this work that i wonder if they've managed to without knowing it have already shaved 15 years off the and maybe you can finish it in 60 now i actually think we have when we when we put the magnets together for the the board so we've magnetized all of the game pieces they just stick on and stay in place because setup for the game was taken a good hour and a half to two hours which

is nearly half of the whole play time we have on the weekdays that we play it so as soon as we were able to do that we've we've doubled the amount of time that we have to play so before that it was a huge deficit that we were just sinking into further every time we played so it was really eating into the time one thing i am curious about and maybe i want to talk about the the drama of the game too because i one of my things i i dabble in war games i don't know about you you two are hobby gamers in other genres correct uh yeah we play a lot of dnd so that's probably our primary well my primary hobby is dnd with james is our dm and we play with another friend of ours mainly um so we do yeah there's a lot of dnd and then we've another game we played quite a

lot it's carcassonne but other than that i don't have a sort of wide gaming knowledge oh yeah carcassonne's beautiful you can never uh never go wrong that's one of those session games i just play it all night oh yeah it's a beautiful groove game so so your dnd guys okay that that helps me kind of understand what your tabletop life is outside of this because i don't know about you even if i know i'm never going to play the game when we talk about these deep primal attractions to things uh when i see you know some guy in virginia with you know his specialized table you know taking you over where all his counters are and where they are in the tournament they're doing when i see those maps i just want to walk into them it's not it's not historical it's not

related to any kind of curiosity about or thirst for power it's something deeper i just see it and i want it immediately like this and show me the map show a world and miniature that i can inhabit and all of a sudden everything else vanishes oh i completely get well that's what dnd captures where you can sit down and like no matter the week you've had or anything we can sort of enter this shared world but since we've started this i've started looking at like the hex encounter subreddit and stuff and like this might sound mad because we're playing this like game but now i am also like i want to play code blue i want to play battle for i now want to jump into a bunch of these other games that will also consume my life if i do but there is a pull there to like invest

yourself i think in this because the hex encounter they capture so much stuff that you can't immerse yourself in a slightly different way to dnd but i think as meaningful a way yeah it's you know it's really interesting because you know uh war for north africa and gary gygax's you know first dnd grew up at about the same time together and you can you can see maybe it's just you know and how the rule books look and how they all use that that same six point type or something but i i can't help but think that uh systems influence the one another very strongly so right now my friend an adoptive big bro noisy andrew out in australia uh a few episodes ago i talked about he's helping me learn squad leader which is from uh avalon hill game from 1977 and it's very very tactical

combat with lots of tables i'm looking at the tables like this does not feel far off from the first player's manual or dungeon master's manual i ever held 1980 yeah well the first the first ones were like chain mail and stuff for dnd but i kind of got the impression they were playing those war games and then they started to tell stories about their units and making a narrative and then they're like this is easier with one person to like control but they definitely grew out of the same like space and like a lot of the older dnd is very crunchy in the way war games seem to be and uh when i'm looking at the the tables you know on squad leader that determine certain deterministic things i'm like this is taking me right back to advanced dungeons

and dragons when i picked it up in you know 80 81 and you've got all the books and i do and i do believe you're right i read somewhere in an article on a book a book a site slash magazine called analog game studies journal it was someone talking about the history of hex encounter games in america and i believe gary gygax was originally part of a big war gaming group that's one of the things that the author mentioned if i remember would not shock me the guy is uh yeah quite skilled so gaming wise we we definitely have a a mixed experience all of us coming from different walks of the board game life and when it comes to the board games you've covered nate is there one that stands out as a favorite i think uh this is one of the things it's it's situational

right now the last time i had to rank my top 10 and keep in mind i'm a very slow player in regard to most tabletop media people your average board game reviewer is inhaling a couple dozen titles trying a couple dozen titles and writing up several a month i don't do that i wouldn't want the hobby if i had to do that uh i like to dance with my partners longer but number one right now thunderbolt apache leader okay okay not what i've not what i've heard of what what does it tale it's part of a solitaire series of air-based uh modern war games from dan verson games and it was made it for me in game heaven well from from what we've done so far in the campaign for north africa the air combat is

something i enjoy so who knows maybe it's something i'd i'd enjoy a slice of as long as andy's not playing with me because when it comes to air combat andy tends to ruin my fun occasionally by fighting back i'm the the nerd i know just let me shoot you down andy i don't understand what the problem is you don't really understand the spirit of the game i fear i thought you were gonna let me shoot you down uh ah so it's a communication problem yeah this is how relationships break down yeah i actually have heard of thunderbolt apache leader before one of our someone emailed in and said they got inspired to buy a game based on listening to us and it was thunderbolt apache leader so i'm very glad to hear we inspired them to buy a good game

it's it's fantastic i can't tell it became my muse i've written something like six longer blog posts about it and i keep writing it up it's it's full of thrills and comedy and uh and boy it it's a solitary game so but the nice part about this is boy after you gents get your arms around this there isn't a single hex encounter game in the world that will intimidate you i think part of this i don't even know if we'll be able to play anything else after this one because at that point arthritis and dementia may have said and solely because of how old we'll be but also i i feel like for me personally i think i'm going to be one and done with this i don't know that i can do anything after this everything else will feel maybe a little bit too simplistic it's like going

from playing chess to playing rock paper scissors um which makes me sound a lot more pretentious than i like to think i am but there'd be there'd be no point it'd be like yeah raising a kid playing you know all of wagner for him and then throwing tiktok music at him it wouldn't work it's a beautiful analogy uh i'd like to think that this is a child that we're raising in a sense um andy and i are co-parenting uh war with a mate and we're very we're very proud parents but the child does misbehave yeah i'm on the other end i keep half jokingly saying when we finish uh we need to run it back as me as the axis and uh james is the commonwealth or we're going to play something else equally complex but uh yeah james has not enjoyed that uh line of thought no i've uh i've been full

of vitriol whenever you mention that andy i don't know if you've noticed that uh whenever you mention that i become quite frustrated um it's real it's real anger is what you're doing when i do common ground becomes more important uh keep it on the same page but yeah i think we've reacted differently to it but i think we both over the last few weeks turned a corner from deep frustration and what the hell to oh no this could actually be fairly fun to play as well as the fun being around it um it has it's really bizarre that we actually find some fun in that and part of it we do take a leaf out of your booger with that name because we'll pop on some music in the background usually it's sort of a bit of a girly pop mix on spotify just something

to keep everything light and bouncy and we'll have a drink or two during the game so i suppose if we were to take a a slice of breakup gaming society and and transpose it onto war with a mate for for this one if we had a drink of the week i think mine last week was a a trio of bottles of out of date smirnoff ice and when i say out of date i mean they went out of date in 2021 and i've been sat in andy's fridge for a while i bought them a good while ago not long enough that it was reasonable for them to be that out of date but out of convenience i thought i'll drink these i'll get them done and i googled is it safe to drink out of date smirnoff ice when it's been five years old um turns out yes you are allowed to do that so my drink of the week would be that

i'm not sure if you've got an alternative nate one that isn't poison it's so when it hits peak summer heat i i don't i don't need flavors i just need temperature and a buzz so i my fridge is full of michelob ultra beer and i i sit on my couch with my laptop and i just finish them one after another like soda pop and hurl them across the living room till the end of the night so right right now i am not trying or doing anything fancy sometimes you don't need fancy you just need like you say something nice nice chill relaxed palatable just something to get you through cool down in these hot days we've had some pretty hot weather in the uk the last week or so it's vanished now now it's back to being what i imagined you would probably presume the weather is

over here nate uh it's it's bad it's poor it's probably going to rain it's flirting with the idea of rain and it could well pour down on my way back from andy's today i'm probably going to get drenched but i welcome a bit of cooling off and i i'll pop on some tunes when i walk and i suppose leading into that do you have a recommended track of the week that i could listen to on my stroll back so this one's actually gotten legs the i'll just forward the track of the week from the most recent one episode 98 it's i i'd recommend surveying it in context of its album but if you want mood it's murder by contract by depth charge that is one i'm going to stick on because i have listened to most of your most recent episode i was way late at work so i didn't

get a chance to to listen to it fully but i'll listen back i'll pop that on and i'll ideally get some some joy from listening to it because i've been listening to a lot of the same stuff on repeat recently i find i get into that trick uh quite easy i just listen to the same stuff over and over um and i'll i'll be having a bit of a long public transport journey today so i need to break that up i had a oh god i had a real kerfuffle i think i've already told you about this andy but my journey into work today my commute i was waylaid by a a penalty fare because i lost my train ticket and didn't realize until an inspector asked me to brandish it so i've been hit with a 50 pound fine so i'm kind of annoyed with public transport at the moment so a nice bit of music

will maybe soothe those ilk it it's it's not it's slow paced but it's not it's not nice you know what you've i don't know if you're talking about the campaign for north africa all the track of the week i think that there are tracks t-r-a-c-t-s of your game where murder by contract would easily easily function as the score um it is full of dread and it was a depth charge he just died last year i found out he was a very influential and pioneering uk trip hop producer and dj and he really had his own sound and i would recommend exploring a lot of the tracks from the album that came off which is called lust 2 and um he he really had an atmosphere around what he was doing and also if you do i feel like i need to address this because i think if you do

episode 98 you'll also hear me shit talk dnd which i didn't realize and so so so let me clarify ahead ahead ahead of time and then that is uh you know i got to thinking about this because i know people who play role-playing games and i don't they play dnd and i don't like categorically i celebrate anything that gets people off the phone around the table and making these nights whatever the vehicle is however uh i i take a lot of pot shots at dnd because of its massive consumer presence i guess yes and and and the fact that and i'm not saying this is true of you and i this i've experienced this a lot i know people who play a lot of indie role-playing games

and sometimes i bought a couple a few years ago because they were so cool and the people i run into they don't know of anything other than dnd so i got frustrated and i vented but let me let me know that that's not directed at you nor should it nor should it be a commentary on any of the truly uh you know the joy of your sessions well i i get where you're coming from though because there is a lot of media now that really hones in on dnd and i think it's it's a great gateway game i mean that is i think fundamentally the reason we got into this in the first place the fact that me and andy have played dnd for close to a decade religiously we play it week in week out i think really gave us the confidence that we could play this and it worked as yeah that sort of gateway

into it but i also feel like this there's got to be other games if we didn't pick this silly game to play there's probably a ton of really thoroughly enjoyable games we could have got into with that as speaking to our board game acumen so we could have done something better with it dnd could have been a stepping stone and some people do just sit in with dnd and they're definitely missing out on better games but i feel like it's rich of me to say when i'm playing the campaign for north africa with andy and we're we're having a real mess of it sometimes we could be playing something much more fun so i i get where you're coming from nate and i don't hold a a hatred or resentment for what you said but i do feel maybe there is only one way we could bring

this back together and i think that's maybe for all of us to find some common ground and now for something nicer a little oasis in the wall it's time for some common ground i'm trying the intro now that is what they call in showbiz a beautiful transition that was deft thank you thank you i might add that to subtle humble and brave deft might be another thing we have to add into there and uh we we did speak about this briefly nate and um you've been generous enough to concoct your own common ground idea for this week i understand yes it's a a life rule that i came up with a few years ago that i you know how we all live by or claim to live by certain maxims or aphorisms whether we do or not is another thing

but i i quantified a formula i have for making decisions as a middle-aged man and i want to invite you to maybe it doesn't fit but to consider it okay let's hear it let's hear it so it's a rule regarding funerals oh okay and you know uh that i i have to think about this i'm i'm going to turn 56 this year i'm at the point where i could die people i know could start dropping dead and and me being the high-handed uh solipsistic crank that i am it's like how many weekends am i going to have to give up going to funeral yeah just before you jump into this this is quite funny for getting into your late 20s it's a similar thing with weddings yeah that's like people are starting to get married it's like am i gonna

like take some time off for like four or five weddings this year it's it's really it's really burdensome and anyway i came up with a formula and uh it's basically if somebody i know dies the rule is if the time spent traveling to attending and traveling back from the services exceeds the amount of time that person and i have spent face to face in the last 10 years i don't gotta go i actually just genuinely like this as a rule of thumb because the best part about this is this translates not just to funerals but to the likes of weddings or other events that means if you because a wedding can be like a full-on weekend it can be yeah you could be looking at sort of two or three days even between the travel and the actual occasion so yeah the

thing is you probably spend a bit more time with people who are getting married than you will of someone whose funeral you're attending but again that that's all about scale and ratio so i think this formula you've put together here made it actually has some legs to it i'm struggling to pick apart a real solid issue with this i actually quite like it yeah if we haven't so much as had lunch or anything in the last in the last decade uh i'll add a comment to the facebook memorial post and then i'm moving on no i think that's my only point of disagreement was what kind of what james has said is this is a more of a general life rule of if you want me to attend any event if the effort going to the event exceeds the effort we've both put into our friendship

i'm just not going absolutely and you know i found and maybe you'll find too there's a liberatory aspect to this about defending your whole calendar and i actually had a corollary to the rule which is that everybody in your household or just you if you live by yourself which I do you get to pick three to five holidays which you don't have to be bothered with anymore and they're gone they're off the calendar it's like they never were because I don't know about you I'm an adult I don't need state themed activity days I'll decide when my holidays are thank you I agree I think there's nothing better than just taking some time off and doing nothing with it and just having that available and ready to go and that could be at any point you don't

need to have it around these occasions so when people are draining your time by getting married to the love of their life or having the audacity to just die i think it's important to not sacrifice your own agency why why should you spend your hard-earned time as a living person who's not going to the wedding to get married it's not really for you to trifle with i think that we should encourage more defiance i think there should be quiet uprising against these social norms i don't think we need to be a biden by this absolutely there's there's all sorts of ways you can just be clear i don't know about you sometimes i'll i had this series of moments where i was perfunctorily like an automaton attending these things and and realize about

it you know what you know what happened first was halloween yes i've dropped halloween as i think the first thing like i'm not excited about halloween anymore i don't do anything for it it's not one of my holidays i was married to a woman who did and i realized the third or fourth year is like this all makes me anxious i i'm going into fall hibernation mode i don't want to think of a costume and i and i don't want to stand in a room with a bunch of drunk mid-20s people in costumes i i i hate all of it and um outside of you know standing at home giving out candy that we do although we never got to do the idea i really wanted to do which is just turn all the lights off and you take a big like family-sized can of chili and you just put a spoon in it and a

note that says one bite per kid oh no i like that a lot i think that'll really curb them next year as well it stops repeat visitors year on year because we don't want to go to the chili house or it's like we plan the chili house for halfway through with a little energy boost it's like you can't eat your chocolate but we'll have some chili uh get you around right not not when uh two doors down there's the people who leave out a row of cooling cornish game hands i uh i want to be i want to be known as the chili bucket man that sounds like a good way to spend halloween the thing is i actually like halloween i enjoy it i've got a i've got a soft spot for it i will tend to get a costume and and and go out in my costume i think it's it's good fun for me

maybe I haven't crested to the excitement yet. It's still, it's still there. Maybe I just like to, I just want to be someone else. Maybe that's it. Maybe I'm just not happy with who I am. And that escapism is the only real solace I find once a year. It's not stimulating enough being a part-time Italian general. I would say that does have its perks. however i do feel slipping into that as an escape might have some unwanted consequences i feel like i might start to maybe slip into some values that aren't really things i'd like to have held up in

high regard i mean yeah their tactical efficiency was apparent however they weren't very nice men and i'd like to think of myself as a lovely boy so i i simply can't be an italian general from the the world war ii conflict in africa i don't know that it would i would that would be brilliant a costume competition you've got the mandalorian or like superman or whatever then you're like i'm rodolfo graziani i feel like that's a very slippery slope because i feel like that's one step removed from just dressing up as a nazi at a party and the fact is i'd have to explain it of people and then when i'm done explaining who i am they'd go all right okay why you know it's it's interesting in terms of how other people see something which you're doing which you regard as

theater you know i i uh because i'd had such a good time with thunderbolt apache leader i bought a gmt game called um storm above the reich where you play you operate um a lift off a squadron of of foxwolves and you're you're basically screwed you're trying to curb the waves of allied bombers that start showing up in 1943 and and uh some of your pilots are like 10 and the and i and i wanted it because i was so intrigued by the the air war concept i was like this is neat the there's almost a role-playing aspect to it because i want some of the details from your game stand out as your pilots level up you name them they they get different skills planes get damaged you have to you have to recruit in new people and always there are just these

curtains of b24j liberators you know flying in box formation with overlapping fields of fire waiting to just shred you and i was like this sounds fun except you know within the world of war gaming that's absolutely par for the par for the course but you know i had a young friend who works at a coffee shop around here last year he's like what are you playing and uh i told her i just got storm above the reich it's a world war ii air war game and she was like yeah kill the nazis and i was like yeah i realized that this person would not understand that it's okay to play within the within the tabletop world as the germans and not condone or want to try on or represent anything they do but as a role as a costume some people will not read the subtleties in a in a theatrical

sense and they'll and you're and you're right and it would i think it'd be fun to dress as weird paramilitary figures from the 20th century but boy in today's climate it's just not anything you want to even try yeah i fear i may have to stay away from that i'll probably have to stick with yeah maybe the mandalorian i've done that before he doesn't have much of a troubled past during the second world war i think although pedro pascal is sort of in the firing line at the moment as well so i don't know maybe maybe graziani and pedro pascal are a little bit too similar in today's climate maybe i should say getting cancelled it was getting cancelled and they both committed atrocities in the north african desert from 1940 to 1941 yeah i was like the mandalorian i'm like

i was going to try to insert him into your last by the way very good historical breakdown of the the early days of the black shirts in italy which was instructive i was trying to jam the mandalorian somewhere into that story the mandalorian was he in 37 or 38 was he from messina i forgot um uh all i know is that he uh he attacked uh socialists with frozen fish i know that much well that's the mark of a good bounty hunter and uh i think uh just to circle back to there's something i think i need to tack on onto my funeral rule that is you don't have to be literal or dogmatic about it it's the right rule for me at my stage in life the real thing is to is to use it and make some kind of heuristic for looking at your life and saying

this is my time you don't just get it and i think there's lots of different ways to do that that maybe wouldn't make you oh boy will you help me out what's the word for a misanthropic old codger who who lives in the desert you don't have to do it my way but there are ways you can clear out your calendar and let unstructured time just breathe and i like what i find there well what we are incredibly grateful nate is that you've taken some of that calendar some of that time and you've dedicated it to us today because it's been a genuine joy having you on after listening to the stuff you've put together and the ways you've described our podcast the very dare i say romanticized image of us it's been really lovely to hear us through your perspective

and to chat about the woes and wonders of this endeavor that we're going through. And it's nice to have that support, really pushes us on into God knows what in the future. And I would highly recommend anybody who hasn't already, check out Breakup Gaming Society, a very, very good podcast with a good breakdown of board games, booze, and hip hop.

We only cover one of those and it's the same board game every week. So if you want something that is more holistic and still very, very well done, check that out. Please come back and listen to us still. But yeah, we'd recommend that. And thanks again for the cocktail recipes because they might kill us. But I mean, something's got to kill us eventually. Just remember, you can come to our funeral as long as it's a very quick journey that's about an hour long.

yes if you feel like having your journey or your uh funeral services for no reason at all in the vicinity of starkville colorado i'll show up fuck i might even be sober well in that case that's where i'm gonna go andy where you coming along we're gonna do a double funeral thing no this has invited a very enjoyable concept for me which is instead of a destination wedding it's a destination funeral i've never i've never been to hawaii but maybe i want to be buried there maybe everyone has to come over oh and you have to make and you have to hassle everybody about what dresses they're wearing and it's and and you're dead so you're not accountable for any of it that's way better than the idea i walked in the door they can't be angry

you can't speak ill of the dead so I think they can be angry can and will well you're not going to come to my funeral in Bali James no Andy I'm not coming to your funeral at all

I need someone there yeah but I feel like the whole adage of you know the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime you know i don't want to get caught well that's the beauty of a destination funeral it's far from the event but no that that's very good because you could architect a funeral that would be so passive aggressive aggressive like you could say you know maybe you would be in in orlando you know near one of the disney resorts except you dictate that the entire thing be like puritanically somber and there's like no good food and everyone has to read like books they don't want while you just

sit in your casket and chuckle but depending on the direction of the wind you can hear people on space mountain like yeah hour four of of mandatory meditation you get this and everyone just decides that finally that they hate you as much as you hated them and boy that could be a really good vacation i i um i like i like where you're going with this andy well on that on that somewhat poignant beautiful and i'll admit andy kind of frustrating note um because i don't want you to have a destination funeral um i i think i think that just about does it for us all i think we've been a trio of insightful philanthropists and pioneers of the industry and now to all of you listening it is time for us to bid you adieu to wish you safety

in the deserts of your minds and I just I liked the sign off from your episodes I just wanted to echo you with the Colorado version may you fight long and well thank you we absolutely will be fighting long and well and all

of you listening fight long and well in the deserts of your mind and Andy stay subtle humble and brave ham right and deft as was put earlier by Nate everyone fairly well good night sleep tight Thank you for listening.

We'll be right back.