War With A Mate - Episode 41: The Unreserved

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

Oh dear, was it all for nothing? A gruelling run of Close Assault and Truck Captures in Turn 2-1 has left the guys feeling cheated out of their own time, and long dormant rules-rage rears its ugly head as the frontlines and by proxy, rule reviews, are getting busier. Spirits are still high however! An episode that looks at the first War With A Mate field trip (relating to confusing stone monuments from the past), the final chapter of Balbo’s history segment and a Common Ground that sees James willing to give up any personal liberties to watch The Sopranos. The long awaited merch has finally arrived in a limited run capacity for the next couple of weeks, the stockpile can be found athttps://war-with-a-mate.printify.me

ahoy and welcome to war with a mate with me james me andy it's both of us that's it we are the sum of our parts two people two subtle humble and brave men we're here to tackle the campaign for north africa and tell you all about it we're here to document the tales the trials the tribulations the ups the downs the left the rights the all arounds the hokey-cokey of playing this very long board game it's been a good one today it's been a thoroughly enjoyable one yeah my movement phase i guess place it turn two off stage one movement phase that's right we are we're seeing out the end of off stage one of turn two um all that's left now really is my movement and some truck convoys which are very vital very important but i kind of overlook it because it

goes so fast yeah but the whole game is going relatively fast faster than i thought it ever would oh yeah although this one we did have a bit of our classic rule we had a couple of rule discussions and uh i guess we'll get to it but i i can't the combat is so unintuitive to meet the land combat you lost your uh you're cool for a moment i did you lost your rag at this uh just staring at a table and not knowing what any of it means yeah you you tapped into that that rules confusion rage i had i had a big portion of that as well when we were looking at parts of it so i guess we should dive right into it yeah some fairly standard stuff i just moved a lot of my guys who weren't on the front towards the front that's right that's right and then the boys at

the front had some fun yeah they did this is something we touched on last episode and it was my fury that really directed a lot of that conversation because you really fucked me today because you took my trucks i took more than your trucks you did you took yeah my dignity i took three of your truck convoys you did one of them was a decoy convoy which isn't a thing you did it and it worked i have had that sat there for the whole game so far waiting for a moment like this so part of my rage was a bit of a poker face last week but uh part of it wasn't because you did take some actual convoys i just knew i would have that little that little small victory in there that bit of a win took uh some convoys and two sgsus you did and they're not benign sgsus they actually are

manufacturing um some air combat oh good so they're they're gone now yeah so i guess to explain kind of what happened i in the organization phase dumped a bunch of resources in the middle of the desert uh so my guys could motorize on their trucks and then whizzed past your sort of front line uh using some of that enhanced mobility there was a gap and you seized it i did so those to they're going to die they are and i'm glad you're aware of that because just from a vengeful point of view which i am nothing if not a vengeful man in this game um i need to play my part to an extent again within the confines of the game i must stress um i i have to play the part i have to come after you yeah outside of the game for my own dignity i need to come after you i can't

allow you to get away with this in real life i feel like you'd hold it over me you'd think less of me as a man so i need to be able to right this wrong well if someone thinks less of you the thing to do is that we get really angry that's what you do you always fix people's opinion yeah you spitefully retaliate and then everyone thinks that you're really cool they think you're a strong personality so you did you you zipped up you darted straight through my lines and you shuffled your boys around and you stole some of my trucks. You stole three truck convoys, two of which were genuine truck convoys. One had quite a bit of fuel and some water. One of them had a lot of stuff, ammo, fuel, water, no stores. I don't think that, well, maybe they did have stores. You've got a

picture there, I believe. I'm pretty sure they had stores. And regardless, it's 16 trucks in that convoy so they're all they're all worth me keeping you got that there no stores no stores four water trucks four fuel trucks and two ammo trucks yeah and they're all medium trucks aren't they so yeah that's that's a significant portion of resources i could have enjoyed on the front lines but instead have been snatched up and then one truck convoy is a single light truck carrying only water and the fuel on its back which i'm just gonna point out you put it in as i guess a decoy truck it's completely out of pocket because you have men dying of thirst no no no it's completely unacceptable i have men dying of hunger i thought some of them were thirsty

boys no no no because all of the well not all of but most of the thirsty ones are in villages or burrs oh okay there's only a few that have no water whatsoever and to be fair they are guns oh they don't need water guns don't get thirsty even the guys using them apparently yeah they just drink gun juice yeah you know they're sort of like oil the lubricant for the guns i imagine they just suck that up horrible if you're not doing combat stuff you don't need water that's the rules i've been overtaking my share of water rules of the desert i thought you did the history segment andy what's what's this about you don't understand how water works that's history that's something else maybe chemistry it's history with a hint of chemistry so you took them wasn't pleased

about that but hey ho what could you do um i got a little you know subtle fuck you because i gave you a decoy convoy but then you did take an actual convoy that had a lot of stuff 16 trucks that really hurt so that took the shine off my little spiteful move um you lost 10 of your trucks in a breakdown yes because it was cumulative over several portions of movement i really pushed those boys yeah you you really got them moving as fast and as far as you could and that's actually where some of the rule discussions came in i guess before we get into that the rest of your movement yes circled around i also attacked the is it the fourth the fourth black shirts black shorts black shorts black shorts black shirts that's less frightening i mean they must have wore shorts

because i mean you don't want to wear trousers in the desert you don't but i feel like takes away from the vibe doesn't it i feel like a lot of guys have to wear trousers yeah i feel like the uniform policy of the fascist movement in the north african campaign they probably want to have a certain look about them and shorts is not the look that's very uh that's very commonwealth it is it is very that's very laid back onto it that's very i think the picture of the maori division they're wearing shorts they're wearing shorts yeah but they're doing the hacker they need a bit more flexibility yeah they're running to people with bayonets although if they were the only ones with shorts they should have maybe the shorts were a factor they should have gone

hang on a second yeah let's look at the common denominators here shorts that's it shorts and bayonets if we have those on side give me shorts and i will rule the world i believe it was rommel who said that yes it's a classic rommel quote yeah you're big into fashion yeah sorry fascist movement is what i'm thinking of i get those two mixed up you need to fix that yeah god you should see me when i try and buy holiday clothes anyway moving on you you did you try to box in my fourth black shirt division and it was a whole lot of nothing although a tremendous amount of ammo was used yeah that was the closest fight we've had by far and i think it speaks to that because the result was a big fat zero although they are in they're engaged but uh congrats yeah we had a

differential of one which is not much uh yes you closed in on my guys you had the seventh armor division uh plus friends on one side there's some of the infantry that you've been recruiting for them over the last few weeks yeah they were on one side and then on the other you had um is it the rifle that was the second scott's guard i believe second scott's guard it was indeed so yes you had me boxed in both sides and i thought i'm not running away from this i put these guys out here for a reason and most importantly they haven't fired a single shot yet so they had all of the ammo that was originally prepared with them when the game started as well as a significant amount of ammo in their trucks the issue is they're on half rations which means that they

can't exceed their cpa willingly and they can't voluntarily enter an enemy zone of control you took care of the ladder by marching up on them yep so they're currently locked in and i thought right the fight is here we're not retreating we're fighting so the fight began we calculated the strengths because of the combined armor rules it meant that your armor weren't garrisoned by enough infantry for them to be fully effective yeah i got about half my tanks but yeah yeah got through uh with infantry support and then the rest of them were just a big blob of unsupported which did add a little bit but not much to my forces yes so i had 46 close assault points which went distilled when you divide by 10 of 4.6 actual rounds up to five you had two sets to break down

between the supported and unsupported which was distilled down to six yes five from the supported the unsupported became one from five i believe it was yes so you ended up yeah you could have had 10 so it meant that we were a pretty even match and the differential was a plus two because we had the morale to factor in yes the morale on my guys was a flat zero and you had a plus two my morale however was boosted i rolled on the cohesion morale adjustment table they had a cohesion of uh thankfully because of the division being fully cohesive at the moment they haven't falling apart you go from the biggest unit it meant that when i rolled on the table i needed an 11 to get a plus one a 66 to get a minus one and anything in between was flat yeah and there

i came snake eyes rolling in baby of course so that meant it balanced that differential out that little bit more so we ended up on a plus two overall that then shifted because they were on rough terrain you're on rough terrain which shifted things one left for me so a plus one overall yeah so plus one yeah so plus one is the the final differential we ended up on which i am more than happy with because in the end we fired off some heavy barrages i pinned no one with my four barrages which translated to 32 ammunition points you fired off two barrages and actually pinned one of my groups not even just pinned you killed a toe point you got a toe point and one on did i pin the other no the other one was fine yeah so the other one was fine you pinned one

took off a toe point uh which meant that yeah that's the reason i sat at what i did um it would have been close if you pinned another one if you pinned my i have a very good infantry unit in there in the black shirts with a close assault rating of five all the other ones have a close assault rating of one yeah so it's a huge gulf so thankfully you pick those out pin them took off at two point the fight commenced after the barrage the close assault and the close assault yielded nothing neither of us had any losses whatsoever zero percent although we are engaged we are we wanted to announce it on the pod um so we'll take wedding gifts we we're registered no we we um we are engaged which means if we want to move away from one another this

op stage we have to expend four capability points which i don't think your unit can do because of the half cpa and the fact they've been in a fight already so my infantry so the ones that were involved in the barrage and the close assault they have used six and if i want to disengage that's under the four and their capability is 10 so that would be everything Which means I could disengage and then not move So it's pointless to disengage And you also can't attack Not with those guys, no

Thankfully that is just one of them that can't attack Because only one of them underwent the barrage And then defended Oh, yes Which means the other ones can attack Because they will use three Yes, so I'm effectively down two infantry units if I attack you back No, because an attack is five

Yes Which would push It would be eight at that point three but they can't voluntarily use more than half no they can voluntarily use their whole they just can't exceed oh sorry i thought they couldn't use more than half yeah yeah they just can't exceed oh right okay um yeah there is something else about more than half i think that might be retreat maybe right um god i'm gonna have to double check that because i was going off yeah okay i'm gonna have to double check that but i'm pretty sure they can still attack whether or not

i want to is a very different question yeah maybe they'll just sit there on their laurels and not do anything so that was the resolution of combat they're sat there they're engaged a lot of ammo was spent a good time was had by all but no losses were had apart from me being hit by the barrage i lost a hundred men which is kind of fucked actually when you think about it so that was the end of that you took my trucks you did some breakdown uh you took out my sgsus yep the real crux of today however the majority of playtime was spent debating a single rule uh yes and that revolved around the continual movement rules hey so the way that works because i don't actually think we've got into this before on the pod is during the movement phase when the phasing player

the guy who's go it is when they are moving their guys around they can stop moving at any point when they finish moving everyone where they want to move them and position them as they wish when that movement is over if when they've moved they've finished their movement within two hexes of an enemy unit they can move again so it means they can they can play the field a little bit they can get into some tactical positions and play around with undefended trucks which is what i had if you exert a zone of control which means you're within one hex of them you just capture those trucks automatically but that would also mean you're within two hexes of them so then you can move again which means you can have a chain reaction where you stop next to some trucks

capture them and then move again which is i one of my guys did that they took two convoys yes and that was the whole debate because there is a section of the rules that says when you stop within two hexes of an enemy unit you can then move again if you don't stop within two hexes of an enemy combat unit then you can't move now that you may realize is i'm saying two different things there because part of the rules is referring to any unit any enemy unit and one of them is referring to an enemy combat unit yeah because they're both defined as glossary terms yes they're actual definitive terms they're parts of the game that are defined specifically a truck is not a combat unit but a truck is an enemy unit uh yes because a unit's anything that has cpa yes an

enemy unit is something with non-parenthesized basically anything that can attack uh outside of fairly special settings yeah anything that can yeah anything that's essentially designed to attack primarily yeah and trucks are just an enemy unit they're not an enemy combat unit so we were sat there it's in the same paragraph as well we were like what the fuck does this mean then because it's referring to two different things so we sat there we racked our brains we decided we had to make a decision call on this we had to make a ruling that will affect the rest of our playthrough which is a good 20 years possibly of our lives so it was a lot of back and forth for about an hour and a half two hours as to whether or not we rule it as any enemy unit or any enemy combat unit

is what you have to stop within two hexes off to move and then we looked at the reserve rules and it turns out the reserve rules which is something you won't really have heard us talk about because we haven't used it yet the reserve rules are designed specifically for this continuous movement rule yeah because you can put something in reserve and then sort of it's like a trap card in yukio yeah it is exactly if it's in reserve it doesn't trigger continuous movement yes it's it's sat there it's hidden but it's essentially in low power mode it doesn't have the means to move in movement phases uh it can move at the end oh no it can release at the end it can release at the end you've got it in a sort of stasis which means it doesn't trigger this continuous movement and we

didn't really understand the reserve rules a whole lot we haven't implemented them because we didn't understand how they would be beneficial and it was only after an hour and a half of debate that we realize this is the benefit yeah because the chain reaction of you getting all my trucks it also applies to sgsus on airfields that is where it comes into play because if you put them into reserve they don't trigger it yeah you can put sgsus into reserve all right you put any unit into uh into reserve sweet yeah so any unit could be put into reserve so i was sat there thinking if i read these rules earlier this would not have been an issue because those trucks could have been protected i saw how close you were to the front line i saw how these trucks would have

been fine if i did that what i could have done which would have really been funny is put the decoy convoy into reserve and then i'll lock you down for a turn yeah because continuous movement doesn't trigger and all you've got is a single truck with some water in it so we figured that out it was a lot of back and forth i i was getting really wound up over the the the lack of clarity in the rules really hearken back to the days of yonder because fuck me that was annoying because there's no explicit rules about capturing stuff that's undefended there is for trucks that's the that's the section that i'd figured out the zone of control stuff yes zone of control isn't that just in the zone of control section it is yes that's sorry their rules are in there but you

have to piece they're not yes there's not a captured equipment section apart from a little paragraph not even a paragraph like two sentences that says you can use captured equipment yeah you can use it against the enemy and it's like all right cool so it doesn't get that you have to look through the rules to figure this shit out we found another thing actually today hot weather there's another hot weather effect that we didn't realize until today yes it affects breakdowns which we i don't think was in the hot weather section possibly not breakdown table yeah we were already hot and bothered so maybe we just missed it yeah but yeah wow fuck me it was so frustrating dealing with that ruling and i i got really wound up and then when we finally found the clarity i felt a

wave of relief because i realized there are rules to specify in here but richard berg when he was sat at the typewriter that day writing the segment about continuous movement he put an erroneous combat in there but i forgive him because elsewhere in the rules it does clarify i just wish he'd pointed to it a bit more clearly but richard you are forgiven on this occasion i will not beat on it too much the new year's resolution was to not get annoyed at the game however we're in september the year's almost over and i'm probably going to break that resolution next year well if you keep it for a year exactly that's all it needs to be it's just for a year however you got a little bit annoyed andy with the combat yes with the combat i don't

know why whenever i'm having an off day or it's just i couldn't grasp it to be intuitive it's not intuitive it's not intuitive but i just couldn't like every time i'm looking at it i have to like work it out again i this might have locked it in a bit more because we went over it and i was quite frustrated but uh yeah the land combat's a bit clunkier um if there's anyone out there with dyscalculus or anyone who struggles to read graphs this table is a salient nightmare because it is the the table is completely bonkers the way it works is nothing like anything else in the game because it doesn't mirror and it doesn't work off each player has a different differential it's a single differential the table is laid out in a sort of pendulum where one side is bad for one

and one side's good for the other and that makes it sound sensible you know maybe we should put a picture of this on the instagram when we release it this week yeah and one on the website as well because it to you have to see it to understand it and it i don't know maybe we were just so wrapped up with all the other rulings that we were trying to figure out today that when we looked at it because we've done close assault before this isn't our first time but something about it today just just really fucking got us yeah and i mean it it makes sense it's not that it doesn't work and it's not that it's broken or even inherently confusing it's just looking at the thing it's just a scrambled mess you also roll one you do one dice roll and it corresponds to

three different things in the table oh god yeah you do the base 66 system you also add them for another row um yeah you have to add them together so the die roll it's it's between 1 and 66 uh getting rid of a few numbers of course because you can't get like a you can't get a anything with a 7 yeah you can't get a 7 um so you can't get any 7s 8s or 9s but then you also add together the two d6s so then you get like a 7 or an 8 and then that determines whether or not you capture prisoners or if they retreat or if you're engaged yeah there's so many different things to look at with that table it's such a jumbled mess and you were getting so wound up i was just so many so many instances of us like going like okay so it's this and then we took a beat and then it was

like no no it's this yeah and you were just sat down sunken in the chair with this look of pure detest and disdain at this piece of paper in your hand and then there was a point where you were like no we should we should do each other's rules we shouldn't do each other's rules and i was like we yeah we probably not and then i was like no hang on a minute we can we just it's the same result it's the same result but i think that also i think we should have wrote them the like the attacker rules on the attacker table but with that you're looking at it from a logical perspective of high result means good which it does in real life it does but in the game like in air combat it does in air combat high is bad no if you're rolling if i'm trying to down your plane and i

roll an 11 i down your plane yes but the higher like the range increases so if you've got a better result it's like 36 or lower yes it goes it goes up it gets easier but if you've got a snake eyes you always down a plane yeah yeah it's it's a such a i i don't like the way the game other places like breakdowns is just highest and then yeah it's not consistent across the tables oh god it's not I've got a breakdown oh my god why

I'm not annoyed at the game I'm not allowed to be annoyed at the game but if I was why did they do it like this why the fuck did he design it like this I think this game could have benefited massively from percentile dice it would have cleaned everything up a d100 rule

for this game would just fix it because also I'm willing a bet they did a shitload of research they probably worked stuff out as percentages and then shifted it onto this well it has to be percentage it's all ratio it's all yeah it's all based around scales and modifiers and then it's figured out by ruling 11 to 66 yeah all they've done is reduce the number of results but the thing is with a 100 sided die range you just have better range yeah if anything you get a clearer more granular breakdown of things and that's what this is about isn't it it's about making it as granular as possible to upset the

people playing it yeah sorry it's about realism sorry it's about realism that's what it is i mean aside from the real computer it's still i've still enjoyed this one it was good once we got down to the nitty-gritty of it it was just the moment when we realized neither of us took losses apart from my one toe point we took no losses from the close assault after the whole debacle of figuring out the table again and then it's just the moment of pause where we're like so that was nothing we just used ammo points we're both sat here in the same position on the map that was for nothing we've just we've just postured a little bit and nothing changed materially apart from we have less stuff to use

and our blood pressure went up a bit as well so that was a hell of a an experience so yeah i don't know yeah i'm running a hot little bit now talking about that one that's uh i feel like there's a zone where i read all the rules now and i've not placed them onto the game but i don't have them locked down enough and there's too many edge cases it is edge cases that's what i remember so you are still checking i it'll become more fluent but it's in that phase where it's like is it this is it that like trying to remember well close assault again it happens sporadically it doesn't happen consistently and it's been quite lopsided as well usually i think the fact it was so close on the table and this is the first time terrain has affected combat yes

because i was in rough which meant that we adjusted the table at the column one to the left so that shifted oh hang on a minute i think we might have done something wrong possibly because if you shift the column to the left for me that would be different the result would have been different if i shift my column to the left i think no because we shifted from plus two i'm thinking it's two separate columns that's why because we share it it's the same axis we keep an axis same differential as opposed to planes where they work out at the same but we have our own oh my god it's just happening again you did that earlier today i'm my mind is being close assaulted i did do that earlier today i confused it earlier i'm sorry i'm gonna stop

talking about the table now that's it it's out of my mind out of sight out of mind it's over it's done how did you find the day overall good i reluctantly also say good yes i lost stuff i lost trucks i lost a tow point i lost sgs use i lost ammo i lost a little bit of my patience but overall it was progress and progress is progress which i feel like needs to become the motto of the game because progress is progress it's another step we're closer towards the end of upstage one of turn two and that means at that point we're a third of the way through the the practice scenario then we can start the actual game and we get a step closer to me winning my meal yes because that's what it's all about it's about the meal at the end well this

one's for a kinder bueno yeah but this one's for kinder bueno but i want the meal at the very end of all this yeah no yeah that's what i'm gonna get buddy no chance but while we're making a meal out of things how about we stick in our napkins and we i don't really know where the analogy was going but i'm gonna i'm gonna stop reading out the mail we're gonna eat some of the listener mail okay what you got for us we got some we got some good old correspondence is what we got we have a message from lozzy and lozzy writes hi what were the mate crew i've been thoroughly enjoying the podcast i'm on episode 15 now oh just around the time we start playing the game and i thought i'd send you a quick email giving you a backlog of listener questions hopefully

it might be answered by the time i catch up it certainly will be i've been wondering how when you become famous and begin to expand the war with a mate brand you would adopt the podcast for a live audience the off-menu podcast with james acaster and ed gamble have sold out five show run at the royal albert hall so i don't see why war of the may won't do similar especially considering that fundamentally both podcasts are about an imaginary dinner which will never happen i've tied that in perfectly i forgot that was in here when performing live do you expect it to be difficult to keep the audience engaged for the first two to four hours of absolute silence while you fill out the spreadsheets and move the talk the tokens around the ludicrous campaign for north

africa board speaking of the board the royal albert hall might finally give you the space required to set the game up actually on a table perhaps the set budget would even stretch to chairs as well oh it really takes me back to being on the floor would you consider a video feed of the board onto a large view screen on the stage or would that ruin the podcasting magic perhaps for your live performances you could get a celebrity guest on who could commentate on the exciting board game action taking place? If so, which celebrity would you like

to comment on your gameplay? Any other adaptations you would make to format it so it would better suit a live audience? Cheers, Loz. Well, Loz, first of all, you need to catch up because you'll realize that whatever waxings

of fame and fortune that we might have alluded to foolishly at the very start of this which i don't even think we did are long since gone because we are now dialed into playing this game and this is already difficult to make engaging i'll be honest i don't understand why anyone's listening to this because what we've just talked about is us getting confused about the game even now yeah talk about the stuff that we've lost none of it matters none of it matters well i guess i mean i appreciate the comparison to the off-menu podcast but again that's two very successful comedians

talking to a third famous person yeah so I guess there's a lot to unpack there I'll say this as far as any live stuff goes this is not a spectator spot then why didn't we make a podcast because if it was we

would have done video that's a good point I think in terms of people watching it yes there's a live audience for this is a very interesting concept and one that we've joked about a little bit i don't know how it would work i don't know how this would work on the format of the pod to my crippling issues when public speaking there are a plethora of issues that would come into play i i don't we couldn't play the game uh traditionally uh we would that have to be i think definitely a like maybe an air combat session

or close assault and people could watch us have a breakdown and I guess we wouldn't have any interaction with the audience for about half of the stage show because it would just be us talking to each other frustratedly in hushed tones while the audience talks

amongst themselves you know the sort of interlude between the support band and the main band where the lights are on, you get your drinks from the bar you go out for a smoke that's the part where we're doing the actual game which is eight hours and then after that we reconvene when people have sort of seen that going on in the background and then we do common ground i guess you give a bit of a monologue on

a history segment where the audience listens to you essentially read a book and then i don't know that's it i have no idea how it would work but it's a it's a very fun concept and it's very flattering that you think we could do that lousy which celebrity guest would you want yeah we need to pick out a celebrity guest that's an interesting one i'm not this isn't necessarily a celebrity guest but i think it would be very entertaining to get like a panel and it's also an immense waste of their time get a panel of people with actual military experience like if you could get like a general and an admirable did you like the commentary on like i wouldn't have done foolish move striking it just a backseat driver people who know what they're talking about i don't the

real fear i have with that though is because of how the game doesn't map closely enough to reality well not only that because i think it's quite granular and quite um realistic my concern is i'd get so frustrated with the game i don't want to snap at a general on stage because no you're correct as if i know what i'm fucking talking about shut up general no he can't yeah here you go i just throw the rule book at him you read these rules and then you tell me what's going on you weren't there none of us were there we don't know if this is okay or not the people who were there are long since gone and that's the segue into the history segment as i get beaten up off stage by several yeah former armed forces i don't want to do that but i think if i was uh i

don't know maybe let's get ian mckellen that'd be fun why not i met the guy i met the guy once yeah i'd just like to meet him so i guess i met him i met him at a bar um here in in town um you'd been doing a performance at the theater and i bumped into him after a work night out and it was actually before work night out and I missed a lot of the work night out hanging out with people at the bar waiting for the chance to get a picture with them. The guy was quite leery.

Not like rowdy, but just very drunk. I'm probably not appreciating the crowd of people at the bar. Well, he gave his time. He gave his time very generously as he walked out and got a picture with me. So my phone had the thing where you've got no storage left on your phone so you've got to take a picture and it won't let you.

so i was stood there frantically while his entourage are like hurry up hurry up and i'm like i'm trying just deleting pictures of me and my loved ones trying to get this picture in there and i got it i got it also the classic thing with your phone is it's never on one 10 battery that is a fun thing well i put up a i will get into this actually some of the stuff that we've been posting um this week on the instagram um i put up a screenshot earlier today of um the the website or the the shop rather and i had to crop out the sort of top and bottom to make sure that it looks aesthetically pleasing and i just saw the little one percent in the top right corner from my phone battery and i was like wow that is that is just the perfect classic it is very

on brand for me i guess should we segue into that quickly with the yes so well first of all thank you for that lozzy um in terms of live stage show god we're a long way off but um the ambition we've got it we're doing this game it's a fun idea it's up there hey one day one day guys but yes touching on that one thing we did do which is a little ambitious um we finally addressed the merch question because we've had a lot of messages come through on the instagram and we had quite a few emails that we've read out as well about merch asking when it's going to come out we've released some we've actually put it out there we're doing like a trial run it is it's going to be up for about maybe a couple of weeks and we've got a few limited designs we've got some got some got a cap

got some mugs got a jumper um got a blanket because i couldn't find a poncho we've got a bunch of other designs which with the website won't let us currently publish because we've got some sort of server issue which i'm waiting to hear back from their tech support and they haven't got back to me yet i've done like a bunch of designs not at work of course i've done a bunch of designs in my spare time and i've tried to publish them it's not letting me but if you are interested in any sort of merch a bit of a disclaimer if you're in the uk or australia or anywhere that's not america the shipping is very extortionate we do think we have a solution for that in the future yes but this is very much a getting used to the store seeing what the design

processes yes we've put some stuff out it's but we keep on trying to get it out there you've asked a lot of times and what we do want to say first is thank you because people have already within the first day put out orders which is crazy we did not expect ever to be selling merch for war with a maid that's absolutely mental so thank you to everyone who's done that as of right now everyone who has put in an order it is currently being shipped it's out there en route to you uh from what i've seen on the website so hang tight that shipping that you've paid out your fucking eyeballs for hopefully it pays dividends and gets to you soon the shipping thing will be fixed ideally in the the full rollout but if you are interested in having a look at what's going on

so limited run limited run we're gonna pop the link in the description and it'll be it's on the instagram at the moment on the story i'll need to put that somewhere so you can find it a bit easier as well so uh by all means have a look we've kept the cost as low as possible to make sure that it's going to cost you guys as little as possible but the shipping we can't actually change at the moment so have a look thank you to everyone who has ordered it's wild and yeah watch this space in the next couple of months we'll roll out something that is a lot more economic but uh yeah just wanted to really show appreciation for that because i'm mad that people have bought our stuff so if you're wandering around with your your caps and your

mugs we're we're incredibly grateful for it it's it's nothing we ever expected to happen bizarre but yeah really good very surreal um but touching back into uh the listeners and the community which is what this is about oh yeah you also have an email uh yes i do uh from uh yoni hello gents after listening to yours episode on balbo's escapades in my hometown of chicago i simply had to go see this insufferable monument for myself so this past weekend my spouse and i trundled up to the lake in search of the austrian column you won't find any signs or direct paths to it nowadays but if you know where i look you'll find a fin corpse overlooking the millionaire's yachts dock in lake michigan there behind a chain link cage and a is a decaying column on a

crumbling limestone plinth sad as it may seem at first it's nevertheless quite shocking on a number of levels first it's an old goddamn thing gotta hand it to the ancients they know knew how to build ornament ornamental columns second the fucking plinth is the most fascist thing you can imagine four fashi on each corner with inscriptions on the walls of the base one in italian and one in english extorting fascist at leon mussolini lastly just as i was given the statue of the finger five military helicopters flew overhead a reminder that our own government is actively deploying and troops into our city against our will history sure is echoey these days anyway love your podcast sorry for the downer but at least i get to live in a world with you subtle humble and brave dudes

in my podcast feed keep up the good work you're shite and matey yoni and we're gonna put this picture up on the uh instagram yes we have got approval from you um so thank you for that um first of all for sending it in and going on a little uh what were the made history field trip is awesome i'm glad that we've uh we've heard back from you with that because that's that's very fun that we've reached someone who's nearby and is able to give us some first-hand experience as to what's going on over there so yeah we've seen the picture and it's it's fantastic it's very funny um flipping the bird to the to the monument um balbo is uh by all accounts a scumbag yeah really bad individual so i i guess yeah nothing no love lost there um but the picture's

awesome the fact you went there is crazy cool um i keep on forgetting that we got so many listeners in chicago yeah because it's one of the the highest hit areas at the moment for us yeah australia and chicago so if there's anyone else in chicago it's uh it's just a bus ride away um that was another picture that was included actually isn't it yeah because there's a balbo street so uh that's got some people in it so we probably won't post it but it's just balbo's name on the like the little display of the next stop yeah so yeah it's got the balbo above yeah which is um yeah i wonder how many people are just don't know it's a guy yeah that's a good point because well i mean people would be like it's a guy's name but there's so many places even here

where it's just balbo doesn't inherit like i guess you're like people who take it every day i guess with america being such a a melting pot i imagine there's probably a lot of like streets and areas named after a lot of different cultures yeah and people from different like regions of the world whereas in the uk it's very much a case of it's just going to be like stevenson or johnson or churchill it's all names where it's like well this is clearly a name that we're familiar with it's a georgian name whereas you look at other countries it'll be like no this is this could be a name from anywhere in the world yeah or it could be a word that has other relevance so cool that you went on this field trip um and thank you very much for sending in

the picture as well uh the yeah the the ties between the past and present um in terms of history there are some interesting uh parallels in the world at the moment yeah echoey is a good description yes um history does tend to echo and yeah the state of the world now state of the world then it's dicey um so we'll uh i guess on the back of that try and stay away from the horrible nature of right here right now and we'll delve into the horrible nature of the past so we're seeing a balbo yes let's see him out quote as usual let's hear it a handsome alpine soldier a great aviator an authentic revolutionary the only one capable of killing me mussolini the day after his death wow what a salty little gig yeah so when we left him they've walked into

mussolini posing in his big office oh i forgot about that saying he's gonna declare war he goes i'm ready to uh i'm ready to invade england it's him and uh bagnoli in there and according to by bagnolio's account uh he replies to this after like a lengthy pause going you're excellently excellently you know perfectly well that we are absolutely unprepared we have received you have received complete reports every week we have about 20 divisions with 70 of the necessary equipment and training and about another 20 divisions with 50 we have no tanks the air force as you know is grounded that's to say nothing of stores we have not even sufficient shirts for the army not even enough black shirts no uh in such a state of affairs how is it possible to declare wars

war mussolini just brushes this aside uh even though uh balbo also agrees with him at this point uh mussolini said the war was as good as won by the germans already it would be over by september with the british either surrendering or that island invaded he mussolini thought of it this way he needed a few hundred dead italians in order to claim italy's share of the post-war spoils at the peace conference when he sat down and negotiate with a victorious hitler approximately 450 000 italians died in the war i mean yeah this guy had everything wrong yeah it's it's just such a bizarre view of it like even if it was that like we need a few hundred dead of our people not great i just see it really i'm i'm struggling to determine whether or not he was like

deluded and he was looking at like information that did not indicate that but just believed it vehemently anyway or if things really did look that positive from the axis side at this point where he was like this is a one battle already i think at that point it looked like potentially a one battle for the germans like the americans weren't involved they just blitzkrieg france but uh also like as the thing like they're telling him none of our divisions are ready yeah they don't have shirts like that's several levels below guns and equipment like yeah that's it like it's i guess yeah you guys might not all be uniformed but it speaks to the unpreparedness of the situation and if you're being told that maybe take a bit of pause and go well why not yeah should we

not have that because they there was a bit they're running on a kind of a high they've done the war in ethiopia and stuff they've been like victorious in wars over the last 10 years but there was against like less developed colonies and those wars have had a significant cost like they're wearing them down yeah so it's like yeah you beat ethiopia who had no planes you lost like a hundred like you're now fighting the british who are at this point probably the world superpower i mean yeah you're coming on the back of the first world war you're looking at a very formidable force i think it's yeah delusion it's got to be but yeah this is also like a final sort of nail in the coffin of their growing animosity between the two

of them balbo does not rate the nazis leadership at all like he meets goering and himmler when they come to visit the concentration camps he's met hitler and goebbels and he doesn't have a high opinion of any of them that's interesting yeah he has a bit of respect for goering because he's an airman as well okay only on that level yeah not so he's deeply upset by this decision he believes it'll destroy fascist italy it'll destroy his career and it'll cost him his life correct on all counts he thinks the war is going to last six months and he'll die in action okay interesting and he also believes that the germans will betray italy which does happen uh yeah yeah like for instance italy surrenders before the invasion of italy

and the fighting there's like another year because it's just occupied by germans it's like you've lost sovereignty and when they were talking about it in the like grand council of fascism he reportedly had an outburst where he goes as for the rest of you there won't be enough lampposts to hang you in the piazza fianza god by the end of the war everyone in that room is dead either executed by hardcore fascists or red partisans without trial oh so he's completely correct this is also part of the reason italy never has a nuremberg or tokyo trials because its leadership gets wiped out before the end of the war i did not know that that's that's interesting that's a very chilling like scene the idea of these people all meeting and then

before long they're all dead yeah but it's also like when we talked about graziani he got away with it he slipped through that net because he wasn't part of the grand council yes but because of that italy never had the the like reckoning yes so guys like that slip through yeah i mean we talked about that the fact that god is sort of like is his triumphant ending where he got away yeah so he's resigned to his fate but he's gonna carry on his duties he heads back to libya he's quoted as saying the situation's practically hopeless caught between the british and egypt and the french and tunisia where like slices of ham in a sandwich a sandwich analogy feels light-hearted given the circumstances yeah so we'll move on to

the events of the 28th of june 1940 the last day of his life here we go his final character flight it's unsure whether it was meant to be an inspection and a moral building moral building like attempt or there's also reports of them hunting british armored cars in the desert doesn't really matter the way it turns out he leaves dirna in two in a convoy of two savoy maturetti and sm 79 bombers doing a place on the map as well i believe i've got an airfield there and i believe these are your bombers at the minute uh yes yeah yeah one's quite piloted by him uh they're typically built for five his has nine people in it okay also neither plane has a radio aboard that feels this feels a bit like when the titanic went and this is a conspiracy theories

about it being rigged to go down yeah i actually think the titanic i listened to that podcast series about the was it tim bat from from uh worst idea of all time that's much more compelling than the conspiracy theories about his death uh balbo's death he hoped to rendezvous at the port of to brook they do get messages through to expect them but like no more details than that and just before he sets out the british uh and a bunch of bellingheim bombers bomb to brook coming from the same direction he's about to come from okay that's interesting yeah so everyone there is on like high alert because they've literally just been bombed and he's not answering the radio his plane comes in first of the two they are told to expect his arrival however the naval batteries

at the harbor including the guns on the italian cruiser the san gianno oh yes now that is a that's a name i know yeah because that bad boy is currently half sunk in the in the bay at this point it's not half sunk it's a mobile anti-air battery what's meant to happen is they're meant to according to regulations fly over this point at 300 meters in height do a 360 and then continue as another like stop check of like is this a friendly or not okay yeah balbo ignores this he flews in flies in at 700 meters and doesn't make a circle so he just flies straight in there's a variety of things that contribute to what happened next one the lack of signaling the frayed nerves from everyone there and then going back to the supply

issues most of the gun crews are under trained they also don't have enough binoculars oh god that's not a good thing so they that's very titanic it's just a spot in the sky and they don't have the equipment to be like oh that's one of our planes as a result of this confusion a single italian machine gunner let off four or five rounds before realizing his mistake this is too late balbo's biographer describes what happens next the first volley however set off an entire anti-aircraft network everyone was firing from the cruiser georgio from submarines from ships a real inferno was unleashed around the two aircraft balbo realizes he's under friendly fire at this point his plot the other plane peels off and gains altitude and just leaves

balbo is like i'm just gonna land faster no it's not gonna work opens his landing gear as he's coming down which increases drag slows the plane down and makes it a bigger target it's unknown exactly what got him it was either a shell from the san georgio or a 20 millimeter incendiary shell from a naval battery regardless of what it was it struck his plane's fuel tanks and the flaming bomber slid to its left side and so balbo's craft plummeted into the bank overlooking the harbor accompanied by the cheers of his own men who believed they'd shot down an enemy plane the plane burned for hours and balbo was only identified by his dental records when informed of his death mussolini merely shrugged

and that is balbo so balbo died as he lived with cheers as he landed yeah just an entirely preventable death it sounds on every like because when i started reading this i was like this conspiracy stuff is like i love a good conspiracy and it's like all this animosity between him and mussolini is like oh that might be it's just him not doing anything right like no radio not doing the signals like this personal glory thing just drives him it feels incredibly um it evokes a thoughts of icarus yeah it's it's the guy became too cocky it's hubris that killed him it's him being like well i'll just fly the way that i want to fly yeah and the fact that he tries to land faster is insane because all they see if they've not got enough binoculars is a craft a bomber

yeah getting closer yeah rapidly it's like oh cool so um i don't know i don't know what um level of tactics have been employed of uh the japanese and like kamikaze bombers at this point i don't believe these have been invented they've been invented yet um aircraft carriers aren't a thing at this no they're not a thing at this point yeah i'm just wondering how many like thoughts were like flying through the minds of this bomber's getting real close real fast but regardless it's a bomber yeah if any of them clocked that at the very least it's just there's so many ways that could have went differently and you talking about the guy there who lets off the little burst and just been like oh shit bit too oh oh hang on oh my god they're all firing it reminds me uh you've

seen lord of the rings right yeah yeah you know in uh two towers when the first guy lets the it's that but if he was aiming at gandalf and then they all fire at gandalf yeah but it's also because gandalf showed up dressed as an orc yeah but it is that one like one i think any someone was gonna lose their situation when he was here like he was he'd fucked it before he got here but it is the thing of like one guy loses his nerve and then the entire network and the sky becomes an inferno it's like the opposite of that guy uh you know the story of the guy during the cold war who was given the instructions to launch the missiles yeah but then didn't do it yes it's the inverse of that i mean much smaller scale obviously but a guy who just jumps the gun a

little bit and then it's like oh i shouldn't oh they're all doing it now anyway yeah maybe in the end i won't get blamed for this but it would seem history has still remembered this man oh they don't know i don't believe they know the guy well they just know it came from a machine gun emplacement but oh so the san uh san georgio that's on the map that plays a part in the game a pretty damaging part for me because it's blocking my harbor yeah that may be the the same vessel that actually shot down old balbo seems it's that or at the very least it started certainly contributed to it yeah wow what a what an interesting sliver of history and what a a tragically preventable death for balbo however will history miss him i i mean sounds like the people of chicago back

then may have to an extent however nowadays based on the state of the current monument um not so much now yeah i also think there's a concerted effort by mussolini to erase him i mean i wouldn't be shocked based on his mentality there was the thing he could only be mentioned in newspapers once a month that was even before he died i guess that month it was his victory and mussolini didn't give a public eulogy for him yeah that quotes from like private in fact the only public you he got several like the british dropped a reef out of a plane being like i can't remember exactly what it says but it's like uh we mourn the loss of like an aviator or something that's interesting but his enemies were more like cut up about it that that's such a strange thing about war isn't

it the the sort of admiration of the enemy it's that sort of like honorable fight yeah it's such an odd con especially you compare that to the world now and the sort of way warfare is carried out and how divorced from the sort of actual killing people are now it's like yeah it's such a strange sentiment even then as well with it being a fight against fascism it's an ideological fight it's such a weird thing to try and like process yeah so yeah that's that's odd it's all yeah just it raises all sorts of weird thoughts but his his demise sounds completely avoidable yeah and also it's the i think it's the end result of living the life he did is you like the icarus thing you fly too close to the sun one too many times because he's been doing that and

getting away with it yeah but this time he showboated in an active war zone yeah and he died yeah regardless of whether or not those conspiratorial elements at work or any any other number of factors he and his behavior did play into his own demise yeah they're like cult of action and the desire to be because like when he was 14 he wanted to go and invade albania i think it was yeah like that is who he and it's that thing of like he never grew beyond crusading or that like big flashy history stuff yeah it's always

that ego killed him it's such a strange guy very interesting bad bad guy but yeah really bad guy a lot of what ifs in his thing of like what if he had cued Mussolini or yeah

then you might have had a fascist Italy that didn't join the axis yeah so maybe you have a fascist nation survive World War II? It could have been a very different... It boggles the mind. Yeah. Makes you wonder where

things could have went if he wasn't such a smug, arrogant guy. Oh, yeah. But, we'll never know. No. We'll never know. All we know is that he's gone. We're here.

And we need to mend some rifts we've created today. So, do some common ground. and now for something nicer a little oasis in the war it's time for some common ground i'm trying the intro for common ground i'm recording maybe we don't want to be balboa and mussolini oh no we don't want to be Mussolini and German High Command We want to make sure we see eye to eye

Oh yeah However, I've got to say Andy, I'm concerned Because Common Ground's intention is to bring us together At the end of each episode So that we can go on next week And not hate each other's guts But I don't know how easy it'll be to get you on board With this week's Common Ground

It feels like you've misunderstood the assignment But hit me with it I think they should just stop Beaming adverts into our sleep What? No right hear me out this is that future armor episode so i've i've seen this before i i've seen the whole thing of like the idea of putting um adverts into people's dreams and how dystopian

it seems just before we get much further are we just making an assumption this technology exists yes so this is yeah this is under the presumption it can be done yes so and let's face it it probably can be to some degree i mean that is kind of what advertising puts stuff in your subconscious and then so i was thinking this came on the back of a conversation we had the other day about a hypothetical thing we saw and it was a shit post somewhere and it was would you take a million pounds every single day but at a random point every single day your subconscious is flashbanged and you have to watch all of cars too yes you see all of cars to play out in real in real time for you but time freezes so you don't actually lose any real life time but it happens at any point

and how many days would you do that for and we talked about this we were like you could do that for a month there'll be a bit of like psychological trauma that comes from it you don't lose any real time though yeah and that's how time works in dreams as well it's dilated in such a way that you could experience thousands of hours of advertisements and you don't lose any real lifetime why is that a good thing because right now everything is full of adverts we've we've found ourselves back along the loop of streaming services that you pay for like remember netflix they didn't have adverts now they do yeah i mean yes you can pay for the extra premium super plan where you don't have them or you can pay for the one that the everyman can't really afford

and it's got adverts again okay so we cycled back around we've got backwards okay so we need to get rid of the adverts are filtering into every aspect of our lives so you want to add them to sleep no i want to exchange them okay oh okay you didn't say that that i might be on board with get rid of adverts everywhere world everywhere apart from sleep the waking world there is no more advertisements ever okay right so selling point to the advertisers when i wake up from a dream i think about that dream for a lot of my day i'm like why did i think about that why was that playing on my mind yeah what is it and dreams are supposed to have meanings i think talking about dreams is the most boring thing you can possibly do oh yeah it's i think it's just a bad

idea it's just bland but it sits with you a dream sits with you because it's something that's been playing on your mind i mean a lot of people forget dreams pretty much as soon as you wake up yes yeah and and this is a way for it to play in your subconscious because it will dreams do and you The amount they'll have to pay for this, it's going to skyrocket. Advertisers are getting their money tenfold. Well, yeah, I assume they either need some bizarre mind-control infrastructure or everyone has, like, a helmet. Exactly. There's going to be stuff.

The way this works, it'll be crazy. The access to streaming services, maybe it's exclusive to people who opt into this program. Okay. And it gets rid of adverts. It means when you're awake, when you're living, when you're alive, when you're experiencing life, you don't need to worry about adverts. and when you're asleep you're already asleep you're not losing any time it's your downtime

you're locked off it doesn't matter so put the adverts there and then you wake up and then yes it might play in your subconscious maybe you'll buy a thing or two but it doesn't really fuck our day up because that's the annoying thing for me i'm losing real life time i do get that like when you're like i'm gonna watch something on youtube and there's two like trailers that are longer than the actual video you want to watch or what happens like if you want to watch a film or a game trailer and they just play the trailer as an advert before you watch the thing yeah i mean i've just gotten to the sopranos i'm watching it for the first time and i'm watching it on an actual streaming service so you're welcome hbo i haven't pirated it but one of the trade-offs with that of

being an honest genuine man a hard-working honest guy is that i'm spending my hard-earned money on being able to watch something and the trade-off is i get adverts every now and then i thought we were past this hbo i thought we were past this big network but apparently not because i'm still being force-fed like two minutes of adverts and i know yeah you compare that to television and usually be like three or four minutes of adverts but when did this become fine again so there is something happened yeah something's something's gone wrong so get rid of that i want to watch an episode of sopranos all the way through without any sort of interruption and i will give up my dreams for that fuck when you put it like that it's an even worse idea oh sorry i'm gonna back

that i'm gonna back better because because the good thing is they can slot that in there and you can still have dreams because time doesn't matter in your sleep okay so it works an alternative i guess so because it's common ground i guess this is based on us having like dream technology right it is okay we still get rid of advertising yes but instead of advertising to us in our dreams they use our subconscious to mine bitcoin that's a different idea i like the idea of loading stuff into sleep. But you're talking about mining Bitcoin instead.

Or something useful. But advertising can go on forever. Bitcoin's finite. You can advertise stuff forever. This could be a permanent out. Andy, you wouldn't need to watch an advert ever again. It is tempting.

I don't hate it. It's deeply dystopian in a way that chills me. It is, but let's face it. We're going that way already. I mean, we live in a dystopia. Get ahead of the curve. It's just a boring one, so we might as well add some fun tech.

Yeah, fun tech. You know, you can get into the dream advertising business. I'm sure that'll be fun for creatives or crazy people. But, yeah, you know, if you're deeply evil, deeply troubled, maybe you'll want to do that. And if you just want to be a normal person who doesn't want adverts to ruin the Sopranos, then you can do this. so this is all pre-roll ads all every kind of advertising that you can think of posters

apart from i don't know maybe like some of the fun ones you can keep like the ones where it's like you know you you see an advert online it's like that was a funny one okay you can keep the funny ones actually you know what we'll have to get rid of the funny ones as well just i think to be fair we'll get rid of the funny ones too but i think this this imagine that Andy no more adverts okay I want to keep my dreams but I like the idea of focusing adverts in one place right how about

what about this your dreams have ad breaks no what about this no just no it's like jury jury you get randomly selected and it's like two or three days maybe

that's all your adverts for like the next three or four years so i get to keep my dreams and they're gone in the daytime but i don't think the ad companies will go for that yeah but they won't go for what you're suggesting they'll just add that to their current stuff if it's a swap out i think we can we can we can rig the industry to do this but i feel like if it's a lottery they can't then target ads towards people as much as they want all the time whereas with mine they can do it every single night and no one has a choice they love that i mean they like it they know people want to watch the sopranos so they're doing it to them so people

have to sleep so providing the tech there's no technology i mean if there is technology that stops you having to sleep we'll bin that so this happens because i just like sleep i don't want you'll ruin it we put it on stuff you have to do so every toilet has like a screen or a speaker in it so when you're pissing or shitting you get your ads actually you know what absolutely no absolutely because i just watch stuff on the toilet anyway yeah so that's fine instead it's just your focused advert time oh you know what fine oh god yeah that works too yeah right okay so toilets and sleep yeah and then we can use the dream technology for something else maybe a future Common Ground

well no you'd still have it in your dreams oh okay you also just have it with you yeah I'm trying to sell it to big advertising oh okay because they're listening oh okay sorry I thought you were pitching to me not oh then it's a great idea oh it's both it's both oh okay I'm pitching to you as a friend and to make this realistic

we have to pitch to them oh okay and I actually want this to an extent so because I don't want any more adverts when I watch the Sopranos Would you like me to just buy you a box set? No, I don't want to watch DVDs Because then I have to swap the DVDs Oh, okay

I don't want any interruption I want everything to be at my leisure I want immediate gratification from everything Yep, that is how things work Okay You were right I'm never going to fully join you on this one but i think there's some common ground there we found common ground put the adverts and stuff you

have to do free up the rest of your time and there it is ladies and gentlemen it's beautiful and it works and that's what this always is i'm not sorry i'm just just now picturing falling asleep and like a company's paid for it to be like this night of dreams is brought to you ad free by to shiba and then you just get to dream pre-roll sleep ads well speaking of advertising if you want to send anything to us not in our dreams but in our inbox our email address is info at war with a mate.co.uk send anything over that you wish whether it's a picture of you giving the bird to a monument to a fascist figure of history whether it's an esoteric comic strip whether it's anything in between we'll happily have a look at it and we'll wax about it on the

pod and speaking of getting in contact at some point our godaddy changed our website so there was a chat oh yeah instead of a contact form i've removed the chat bot and there's just a contact us page on the website and i think people have been trying to get in touch with us because i just keep getting emails through from the form saying i have a question uh so if that was you uh sorry uh please use the new contact form yes if you've been under the impression falsely that we were sat manning the chat 24 7 i'm very sorry that wasn't the case godaddy pulled the rug out from under us and didn't tell us they changed the contact form into a live web chat which we never have manned i don't even know how we would man that i don't know what the interface is so sorry

whoever it is that's been sending those messages or if it's more than one person um fire over a web form it's on there now uh we also have an instagram which is war with a mate the um the the merch store it's temporary it's only up for about two weeks so if you're listening to this in the far future we might have a new one by then but right now we'll have a better one but right now it's um there's a post on the instagram about us hitting 100 followers it's in the description we'll pop it in the description for this episode um if you're outside of the u.s the shipping is extortionate um and again we've tried to bring costs as low as possible it's just some fun stuff if you want to get some um it's great and we love you supporting the brand of war with the mayor

it's crazy that people want to do that so thank you if you have thank you if you will thank you you're having a look and we'll work on a bigger thing in future but um any way you want to get in touch with us or do anything relating to this listening to it we appreciate it and from me james thank you for listening from me andy stay subtle humble and brave good night We'll be right back.