War With A Mate - Episode 42: Fire Hazards

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

A game-changing movement phase occurs due to the revelation that James has inadvertently squirrelled away additional divisions for the whole of play so far - now on the to Andy’s Eastern territories. That’s not all that’s in danger, in an episode reviewing electrical dangers, airborne catastrophe and the risk of learning some valuable history in a new series of Andy’s History Corner.

hello hello hello hello hi how's it going not bad how are you yeah i'm all right this this drink is horrible it is that's why i've let you have it yeah this is a horrible way to spend my sunday afternoon this this drink is foul you could have warned me i did could have worn me harder you also didn't have to mix it with red cola it's bars red cola it's possibly the best soft drink i had available but it's not overcome the room it hasn't it's a it's a dark room and usually i'm a fan of room but this is let's let's go for another another dip yeah it's bad the aftertaste is like petrol well speaking of petrol we're all fueled and fired up because we've just finished yet another play of the campaign for north africa not the full

game no clarity that's insane yeah we we've had a longer uh time available today we've been playing on a weekend yeah we had five hours yeah yeah around about a nice solid five hour stretch with without interruption and we're recording and it's still light outside and what podcast are we recording we are recording war with a mate there we go and i'm james and i'm andy yeah sorry the the very overpowering dark room really got away from me though that's uh pulled my mind away from the activity at hand so yes we are we are james and andy of war with a mate we're playing the campaign for north africa the whole thing we're happy to say we've just wrapped up operation stage one of turn two yeah we got one little thing left to do because we did some stuff wrong in the past

but for all intents and purposes stage one done we need to finish the towing stuff we need to do our repair stuff yes because we got that wrong uh thankfully a fan corrected us so thank you for that and then uh yeah so we're gonna go through and do it properly uh as if we'd been doing it right from the start yes we're gonna retroactively fit all that into the repair section so we We may well have some extra bits and pieces. I definitely will because Tobruk is my repair facility and a lot of stuff broke down near Tobruk. So I'm going to be sitting pretty, going to have more resources to hand,

some tanks, some trucks. Well, that's pretty much it. But tanks and trucks, they're good. Tanks for killing, trucks for feeding. Which is somehow more important than the tanks. Yeah, it really is. So we started off today with the naval bombardment on my guys. you you bombarded two airfields destroyed one you did you took one out um wasn't best pleased

about that because i had planes there so now they have no way to fly so the sgsu's are going to have to wander them through the deserts and probably go to the airfield that is just north that you tried to destroy with your second bombardment yes which had more but just dice weren't having it yeah you fucked it you fucked it but that's fine um i i now have an airfield that i can delegate these men to go to and they can get there next turn uh yeah we've not moved any sjsu's yet no no we'll have to have a look at that come to think of it why didn't i move them in my movement phase good question i was really hoping you'd have an answer no right okay well i should have done that well we're just gonna put an assumption in that if they've flown you can't also oh of

course they returned to base at the end of the stage yeah i have to double check what order that happens in because they might not have been available to move they're just going to try and get back in a bit like where the fuck's the ester have gone oh they'll definitely be back but also if you're doing repairs and stuff like that sgsu was busy all turn for the stuff it can't do no they're a bunch of lazy layabouts i mean these sgs use in particular oh okay you got a bad one yeah yeah they're bad ones i actually would have rather you you kill them than any of the others they're bad guys lazy poor work ethic we resolved that we resolved the bombing and then i gotta go with my movement you did and i had a lot of fun with that yes because you've discovered you made

a discovery is it a discovery it is because it's new for me i i've found that i have about another four divisions that i've not been using so i've been looking at some of the guys the way that we stack our tiles because of our revolutionary magnetized picture frame system we can't stack more than three pieces on top of each other when we put the board away so we have to scatter them around the board and then put a sticky note under them so we know if there's a bunch in one hex who is assigned to it and because of that i've just kind of glanced over some of the guys when i've been looking at the map or when i've been updating like stock and stuff and stores food i've not really processed the fact that there's huge numbers in these garrisons is what i thought

they were they're not garrisons i've got divisions i've got full divisions that i've just left so i've got about four of them that i've only started moving this turn because they've been in major cities they've just been taking supplies from there so their trucks are full of the brim of ammunition stores water so they're ready to go off so today i decided i'm gonna do just that So I sent them off along the northern road Well, the gap between the northern roads Over towards you They're heading east

They're heading towards the fourth Yes, three divisions are heading along that road Yes, against one division So that's going to be a We'll see how that goes for me Yeah, just running the numbers there Three's more than one It is

It's three more than one It's a lot No, it's two more than one I get what you're going for But that's too elementary a mistake To let you get away with it No, no, it's three more. It's three more.

Okay. Yeah, it's three times more. Are you going to use that to just summon another division? Well, apparently that's what I do. I just look through the sheets and they just keep on manifesting. I could have done some disgusting stuff to the seventh if I knew that they were around. Yeah, it's very much changed the...

the, like, momentum. Not momentum, the sort of landscape of it, because you can't go on the offensive much more than you have been. And also still hold the front line. Yeah, well it seems like if you move across The 7th are going to be a bit isolated I mean, yeah, they are Because now I'm along that road

Next movement turn, I'll be able to get onto the road Well, I've got some guys stopping you I'll be on the road What I need to do is get past them My guy's at the end of the road You have to At the end of the road? Yeah

Cairo? No, at the other end City Barani That's not too bad of a problem I can get through them I'll mow them down i mean you've got what like one division yeah so you're gonna be overrun yeah we'll we'll see what happens these divisions are huge by the way yeah this feels like you know the actual

offensive yeah at first i was like how how did he do this how did he push and then when i found these spare divisions that's probably how we did it because you have a quarter of a million men and i have 30 000 but if 200 000 of them stay in a city it becomes quite even yeah well i'm going to push forward i'm going to do some real damage it's um it's vengeance really for what you did with my trucks last last time that's good and this time i i chased you down some of these truck bandits yes they uh the nefumblin fusiliers who'd they'd got the uh they've got a convoy and destroyed an sgsu last time yes um you sent the moretti division you after the trucks it was the black shirts first black shirts uh yeah so uh i ran um i took a big hit to cohesion yes you

really broke off because i i got there i instigated combat you were pinned by my bombardment which meant you couldn't engage in close assault so you were forced to retreat you you legged it up the road really made a good sprint for it at the cost of yeah as you say cohesion and you didn't did you break down at all uh yeah i got 10 10 yeah so you wish for the distance i'd gone and the hot weather was lucky i rolled an 11 yes uh not 11 that was something else but i rolled low enough that i didn't lose too much because i could have lost 50 yeah which you know either way they're my trucks and i'm going to get them back so bear that in mind yeah i will be reclaiming them as my own and you're going to be so sorry that you did that yeah but it's an interesting uh

because you're now pushing forwards but there's the seventh are on the front line at the minute but when it shifts and then these two guys are going to be uh operating behind enemy lines for a long time um not as long as you think because you you also had a little peek at what's going on on map b and i do have a lot of motorized mechanized guns ready to pop over the border to map c and when they're there you only have what it's like one infantry or something yeah it's in this group free tow or something so yeah all i need to do is pop off a few lucky shots pin you and then just let the black shirts wander on up at which point i get my trucks back Although, to be fair, if they delay you for, like, an op stage or two,

they've sort of done their job. I've got plenty of spare divisions I found out, so I can spare the black shirts. Okay. I can spare the black shirts and get rid of, uproot this issue behind my lines. I want to get rid of your guys who are darting around with my trucks and my shit. Got my shit.

Give them back. No. I implore you. I'll actually spare your men if you give them back. Well if you get them they'll surrender So you have to You actually have some prisoners of mine You're just keeping them there

They're slowly making their way back I'll be moving them You'll have to show me where they are on the map because I might go fetch them Oh yeah I will Because we haven't magnetised them because they're double sided So we've been Yeah Doing them as and when

I'm going to try and get them back I think Get the prisoners yeah fair enough i take them back at some replacement points you're welcome to try i well i'm not only welcome to try i'm gonna do it i'm gonna fucking do it i mean i recognize the pluck i just don't think it's gonna work out that way don't comment on my pluck i will my pluck is none of your business plucking now how many pluck puns do you reckon i can fit into this uh i think that was enough no i know it's enough i know it's going to be going too far but how many do you think uh you could wedge in quite a few 15 15 is too many man it's all going to be the same thing

i'm just going to be replacing the word fuck with pluck yeah in various different forms i'm counting that as one oh right okay uh no it's going to become too difficult i'll i'll think of something for next week don't worry okay it'll be my common ground so back on topic yeah the movement also resulted in a another skirmish with the fourth black shirts yeah i guess the lack of movement in that case because they're just they're engaged with each other yes on the back of the very protracted battle that we had last week where nothing happened and it was just a net zero outcome this time i was forced to fight because i can't really move away i don't have the capability the allowance in order to do so which meant that i instead fought you and upon fighting you we

ended up with the result of 10 losses on both sides yes which is interesting because i actually committed less resource to this than last time there was a bigger differential uh yeah so did i i guess because i have some guys who are better close defense than assault oh yes yeah i was bumped up so you ended up with a seven seven actual points i had four yeah and i also didn't get the morale boost this time didn't get lucky yeah uh it was minus four minus five five on the table yeah so so big big swing but we both lost 10 and i didn't really commit as much as i could i didn't commit oh i committed one gun because you successfully pinned one of my infantry yes and it also resulted in you wiping out a battalion yes that 10 made up uh of a battalion what was

left of them anyway you took off a toe point last time as well so i've ended up uh shy on numbers i've lost a whole battalion from the black shirts but we're still locked in place we're still engaged i believe oh no i think engaged ends it ends yes so we're no longer engaged but i guess i don't know i'm weighing up whether to break off from them or well the thing is yeah you've got a lot going on along that northern road so do you really want to stick around trying to fight the fourth black shirts while the rest of my divisions move that wall further east yeah i think it's a them being pinned is worse for me than not pinned as in the status but like being locked in place it's worse for me than you on account of i've got two divisions in the area you've got eight

yes my divisions do not they need to be accounting for four divisions a piece yeah they really need to get busy right now they're just fighting along with the fourth and losing equal amounts yeah in each combat which is not great so that's gonna yeah the battle at fort madalena is continuing in the form of the fourth black shirts versus the seventh armor yeah it's all spilled out a bit yeah pushing east though yeah i was a bit worried you were going to move those other two divisions from fort madalena up to the fourth so you had three on one i did consider that that was yeah i crossed my mind but my concern is i don't want to be pushing the wall too far east too quickly, because if your 7th Armoured

can then slip through, I'm going to be chasing them and you could go for the likes of Bardia or Tobruk, and I don't really want to risk that. I'd rather keep them a bit further afield, so then you're going to have a harder time supplying those guys, especially when I get my trucks back. Also, I guess the fact that you don't have the trucks, you kind of

I don't know exactly your situation but I'm guessing there's a certain amount of choice between keeping that north bit nice and supplied or that southern detachment yes i want to i want to try and keep that wall um as north as possible um speaking of south the saharan detachment yeah they moved up a bit that's slowly creeping across the bottom of

the map they are from oasis to oasis slinking along they are they're sitting pretty with resources so they're not going to be taxed too badly um breakdown's been fine for them because i've been moving them very slowly along and i'm aware that i do have to move them through a i think it's a salt marsh here so i'm gonna have to figure that one out see how how far i want to push them i think you'll have to go around it i think yeah because of the vehicles i've got i've got more than just light so i'll i'll get them moving though they are going to continue moving along and that'll be my southern advance i still i think i've got a plan for them you got a plan for them yeah does it move all the way down to the south of the map to try and tackle them nope then you

don't really have a plan i absolutely do i'm gonna try and strafe them well you don't have many aircraft because we both rolled completely dog shit on the refitting of our planes yeah that was that was embarrassing i mean mine were mainly in this sort of 40 to 60 range whereas last turn i was just rolling like 80 or 100 and i was like wow this plane refittings this i guess it's a formality nope no it's not it's it's a very important thing and it's yeah for some reason we've both ruled very lucky previously with our refits and i haven't this time and you've also taken out another sgsu so that's now i think two individual air fuels uh s strips without sgs and a mandolina is completely empty yeah devoid of sgs use and then i got yeah the one those truck

guys got as well uh yes yeah so that's that's quite a few down i have been trying to nip away at your superiority it's it's working i've got more planes though yeah so they've just shown up so i've got them noted down that's another whole squadron although i do have two squadrons of because i got 30 bellheim bombers yeah so i do have two full squadrons of bombers and i'm not looking forward to seeing them pop up yeah because i've been i've been up to this point keeping my bombers in basically one group yes you've been doing very uh very singular strikes yeah uh so maybe look into spreading that or just keep the sort of singular rolling thunder going well either way i'm gonna get my

planes back in the air everything will be fine i'm not worried and on the ground i'm definitely not worried not with all these divisions i've got got divisions for days i'm gonna move them along going to really cause some trouble over the likes of Mersa Matruh. That's what I want. I want Mersa Matruh. That's the big one. That is the... I think that's your made-up directive. Yes. So I'm going to wander over there and I'm going to take it.

That's interesting. I mean, it's happening. We'll see. I'm on the road now. You're not on the road yet. I'm on the unfinished part of the road. You're really thinking like two off-stages ahead in terms of this road. I'm thinking an off-stage ahead. It's the next off-stage. You've chosen...

That's another thing we should mention. We've done Initiative. We've determined that you will be going first. That's what you've decided. So next offstage, you'll be going first. We also rolled the weather. Normal. We're pleased to say it's normal. We've got normal weather, so that's good.

I would have loved a rainstorm or a sandstorm. On your hexes? Yeah, sure. Why would that be good for you? Just the variants. We've just had variants. We've just had hot weather, and it was horrible. Yeah.

I was a ball of anxiety moving my truck convoy around because I thought they were all going to break down. and i did lose 50 of one of the convoys yeah your trucks are taking a beating on breakdowns well one of them lost i think it was um 25 or something in tabrook yeah thankfully that's where my repair um facility is so they'll just be repaired in this repair stage yes so i've got four trucks that need repairing there and then i lost 50 of my trucks that dropped off some supplies to the i think it's the second libyan division so they will need to be looked at they did get there thankfully they arrived on the hex so they have resupplied the guys but yeah i'm gonna

have to get them marched back up to the facility as well i need to get more trucks because you've taken quite a few i've had i've so many broken down in the middle of the fucking desert so i need to pull that back together i need to make a coherent convoy structure yeah one thing that i am relieved about is that my convoy's just arrived from Tripoli. Those guys have just rocked up. A lot of trucks. About 35, I think it is.

And they are full to the brim of all sorts of goodies. Were they when you were still doing them even? Yes, that's when we started the game. I've set them out so they don't have the best ratio of supplies. They've got far too much fuel.

Yeah, they're very generous with fuel. I just, I didn't know how valuable fuel was going to be, and turns out not very valuable. I've never had fuel as an issue. Weirdly, I feel fuel is the least important. Then weirdly for the desert

it's water. Not as important, but as in difficulty of managing it. Yes. And then stores and ammo are a bit of a... They're the hardest. They're definitely the hardest. Because ammo's the hardest to move around in terms of the quantity that each truck can move. And the amount you use.

yeah a medium truck can carry four ammo points and that's enough for a single tow point of barrage yeah that's insane yeah i do need to make sure i sort out the stores because my guys are they're they're hungry feeding frenzy is what we need oh yeah well they're gonna start eating each other it's bad that's in the rules it's definitely not it is you haven't read all the rules clearly we keep on finding new rules andy you've not read the cannibalism section it's in the logistics and air rules i'll have to look at that because i love it i love a bit of cannibalism you do that there is a bit of an ongoing bit that we have that you do that i'm battling wendigo sickness

oh you you are you are a wendigo of yourself you really are it's one of the better mythical it's not it's very bad one of the better mythical creatures i like better in what sense like cool i think like morality definitely definitely not it's an uncontrollable hunger the one who doesn't do it for fun no he does he corrupts people and makes them cannibals for fun oh right sorry i didn't realize it was a pleasure thing yeah it's part of it ah i thought it was just his name i thought it was like more of an animalistic like primal thing i didn't realize he was doing stuff for fun i think it's primal but he also enjoys it like orcas when they kill their trainers yes and then get moved around oh yeah what was the name of that orca that kept on

relocating and went into like witness protection essentially well it had like four names because they kept changing its name on the paperwork and sending it to a different sea world as if that's going to stop it from killing again we're giving you a new identity you've been absolved of all former crimes just let them go and for some reason they didn't just get another orca they kept the one that kills people well they're probably pretty hard to catch yeah maybe you shouldn't be catching them at all i mean absolutely i guess that's sort of the underlying leave them alone stop capturing orcas they're gonna kill you i don't think i would want to be around an orca especially not in the water i mean on land it's just sad it's a different kind

of bad if you're just looking at a beached orca i feel like they could still do some damage to me though i feel like i get too cocky and get up close oh well beach whales explode well that's true yeah that is true one last little fuck you to the land yeah it's quite fun that they have a self-destruct mechanism yeah uh i'm on the land i'm gonna have to explode if only people could do that in water that would be bad i guess we do it in space yeah yeah you kind of explode a little bit in space well space explodes everyone it's like land plus the land premium well that's uh that that's it's not really related to the game is it i guess no not at all i guess we've finished or not so to just check in on uh how we feel about the game

still um today it's been a nice change of pace where we've started earlier in the day i felt like my mind was much more focused i didn't come after a day of work yeah so i felt very dialed into the game felt like i knew what i was doing felt like my tactical decisions were a bit more in tune with what i need and i feel like with the divisions manifesting from seemingly nowhere i feel thousands of times more confident than i did earlier yeah this has been a not a great offstage for me it was going well until your movement yes as soon as i went oh i have more divisions by the way and then just started marching them along the north that's going to be bad for you because just the fact they exist changes everything i've been doing yeah i've

essentially just well by the way i've got double the things that you thought i had i guess we can look at the things i could have worked it out but i was just sort of going off what you were saying because we're not looking at each other's stuff well yeah i don't often wander over your side of the board so i don't actually know how many divisions you have i'm essentially in my mind all you have is the seventh armored division and the fourth indian and that's all of your men There's loads of other divisions. You set that with all the confidence of a man who's not confident. No, I've got battalions coming in.

They're not going to help. Ooh, not a battalion. I just lost a battalion, and it was nothing to me. I mean, that's an issue for you. Well, you know, it's fake. It's all a game, Andy. They're not real people. But I do have reinforcements coming fairly soon.

How soon's fairly soon? I think... Upstage three? oh that's not gonna you're not gonna get there oh you're gonna win in the next off stage yeah i'm gonna have most of my true in the next two off stages that's fucking mental it's gonna happen that's insane i'm gonna have it uh i by the end of turn three i will have most of my true i like how we've talked about this war and the mistakes both graziani and rommel have made is overextending themselves i'm not overextending i've doubled my my force and i'm sending the the extra double that

i found the other the other side of it i'm sending them to mercy i guess they're free units in your head yeah i've been playing the game with half my i've been playing with one hand tied behind my back now that hand is going to start punching while the other hand holds you off at arm's length uh yeah i'm oh my reinforcement situation is not as good as i thought this has been a real turning point for you i've got two tank regiments coming in and two artillery regiments This turn That's not going to do a whole lot for you Yeah

One of my divisions is a tank division Oh good Is it infantry supported properly? Yes Oh fuck so it's not the issue I'm having with the 7th Because there's two other divisions So there's plenty of men to go around Well they have to be on the same hex

And you might not be able to stack them I can they're the ones that are stacked Oh so they're not full 5 stacks No no but the size of them is comparable to other divisions oh okay they are they are huge um and one of them doesn't have the little stripe on them but i think they should i do actually need to check uh make sure all of the pieces are correct because some of them don't have the the stripe to indicate hqs yes so i need to have a look at them make sure i've got the right units down because that was something we looked at the

very start of the game it means i might actually have to go back through the tray the counter addender and you're yeah you've not been in the tray yet have you uh no no not since we started I got everything out that I needed The poor box today had a bit of a casualty A campaign for North Africa game box I misjudged the size of my ass and sat on the corner of the box Yeah, a spatial awareness issue occurred And you, uh, yeah

You slut dropped on the box Yep Splitting it down the side, because it's a fragile box The thing is 50 years old And it just couldn't handle the weight It's not built for it It's not built to be sat on, would you believe it another crazy thing we saw um game related tangentially i suppose on ebay because we

occasionally check in and see what the game's going for these days and see if there's been a big spike or if lots of them are selling maybe we'll get ourselves a second version just in case and one of them's selling for 255 pounds which is significantly less than what ours cost so i'm interested to see if that sells i think the bid's up in a few hours if you're listening to this it's probably already over but i'm interested to see how that ends up because i mean it's in like pristine condition by the looks of it someone's gonna flip it someone's definitely gonna flip it we should buy it and flip it if only we had the capital yeah we we have no capital we we have no budget the budget was spent at the start when we got the game and the microphones yeah but that's

all we need all we need is what we have and what we have is a jolly good time and another upstage down yeah do you have a you're just continuing yeah i mean you're saying you just go for mercim a true well i'm pushing east okay whether or not mercim a true is going to be the destination i'm not sure yet but east is definitely the way i'm going i'm going to get on that road and at the very least what i can do is stop your supplies completely and starve the seventh out yeah i mean the scary thing about that road is it's been just how easy it's been me getting stuff to the front and doing convoys also means if you get a foothold on it i'm in a lot of trouble well all i realistically need to do is get sort of 10 hexes along from the start of the road on the west end

yeah and then you have 10 pieces of road you can't use for your trucks yeah so that means your breakdown value shoots up and your supply line is fractured yeah well it kind of is at the minute anyway um yeah i don't know what i'm gonna do with the seventh i it's starting to come together my little plan yeah um and having double the amount of men i thought i had has really changed the game for me does help i feel like i could have been doing a lot more from the start of the game honestly it explains why you didn't do what i thought you were doing to do because you've been quite defensive so far yes even though it's krasian he's offensive um i thought you were just doing a tactic but if you had significantly less men than you thought you

did yeah it wasn't a play it wasn't a tactic it was unfortunately me working off i was going to say faulty information i didn't look at my men properly which is you know what the thing is i've been ticking off their food i've been ticking off their water i've been making sure they're supplied i think part of it though is because they're in a city i haven't been analyzing their sheets as much i've just been making sure there's supplies in the city for them and then taking that off the supplies in the city yeah so i've not been going through them as granularly so then they've just kind of went over my head yeah and it's insane because they're huge yeah it also explains the thing of uh when we talked to the actors of war guys they were like oh graziani didn't group

everyone up and send them he like divvied and like potentially lost him maybe he was doing the same thing yeah maybe i was going to say maybe i am graziani i don't want to make that comparison Maybe I am making a similar mistake Yes We'll find out But that's been a lot of fun today I feel more confident I feel bolstered in my position

What I don't feel is this rum It's not great It's very bad I feel like I've wasted red cola You keep sipping it Like it's going to be different That is bad As a beverage

It's unpleasant to have so something more pleasant yeah you got a surprise for me uh listen oh yeah i suppose yeah that's not a surprise it's quite scheduled it's what we usually do i thought it was going to be a surprise like maybe you were going to promise not to do that extension cable thing that i walked into today i mean that's i had to you didn't have i walked in today and you had an extension cable plugged into another extension cable and when i quizzed you on why you decided to create this death trap you said it was so you could bring electricity into the bathroom at the hoover that's not where electricity should be get a cordless hoover do not bring

your wired hoover and extension cable plugged into an extension cable into the room full of water i'm or i'm not buying an expense i buying a hoover is a horrible purchase it is i agree i'm not spending more money than i have to on it but please stop putting your life in risk also the board games here if you burn down the flat then there's no way for us to play the game because it's gone unless we've managed to snipe a bid on this game that's going for sale now well yeah i'm not gonna be able to afford if the house burns down because i need to move that's a good point yeah you're gonna have to at that point relocate um probably set up shop somewhere else um but we still have to record every week we'll just have to pretend we're

playing the game let's have to i have to do it all in our heads yes and that is that's somehow even worse i think it's the only way to make this game more complicated to do it all fear of the minds i think that's how we should play it on the second run it's just in our heads yeah we'll be experts by then yeah that way we can just be you know out of the pub and it'll be i'm moving to this hex well to brook is hex c4807 bardia is 4321 oh cool only another three or four thousand well they're the important ones i don't need to worry about some random fucking salt marsh in the middle of the map one of them just stopped you doing what you wanted that was that was in the south of the map though not in the middle of the map i feel my point stance you know you have

to be precise with this andy it's a very precise game okay having said that i did find a typo in the rules today the word such had a v in the middle of it i'll let them off with that well i'm not i can't really do anything about it kind of but what we can do is yeah we'll touch into the listener mail and today we have uh we actually have a double whammy from the same person yes so both both will be it's a it's a special brought to you by jeff by jeff jeff is the one who's double whammy do you send over to jeff and they've come through back to back so we're going to read them out uh back to back and did you want to take the first one yeah greenslandian james another listener from across the pond who learned of this podcast via reddit technically a friend

who learned from reddit and just finished episode 35 i've been a casual hex encounter wargamer for many years and i ironically started in the north african theater albeit in a much much more simplistic game it was a game called africa corpse by avalon hill and it would not surprise me if it turned out that the entire process of learning and playing that game once took less time than you spent acquiring and mounting magnets to make the campaign from north africa even playable recently my son and i visited a museum dedicated to the first american first infantry division and as they were involved in the landings in algeria in november 1942 thought you might be interested in the attached photos from that portion of the museum as this portion of the

fear of operations is off the map of your game hopefully none of this will give james undue advantage once the game uh begins in any case looking forward to seeing the action at fort madalena come ahead and stay subtle humble and brave well jeff i suppose you you will have some answers by now if you've caught up which i think your other email suggests you have because fort madalena has resolved in a sense it's pushed a little further it's spilled out it has yeah it's come to a head and they're not resolved so it's an ongoing saga so when you listen now you'll know that there's still plenty to go for fort maddalena but the pictures were pretty uh interesting uh one of them is a map they gave to gis yes yeah i've got the pictures here i guess um yeah we

can pop these on for the the post this week i'd like some of just some of the instructions on the side of the map are pretty good one of them keep yourself constantly oriented and connect your experience with places which feels like both advice for war and life yeah it feels like it's a way to keep anchored in reality and also another bit of it do not mark this map it is not intended to help the hun and the other one is a german by the looks of it uh newspaper clipping africa posted as yeah yeah with a map of uh the movement of both the american and british uh troops yes that's interesting it seems to yeah it shows essentially the the northern road and the advance that you're trying to make over towards me yeah you can actually break down the game quite clearly

in fact i yeah you can see tobrook on there yeah it's got tobrook and uh tobrook derner coming from uh alexandria all the way across which hopefully i'll do in the main game i don't know why i'm always uh continuously shocked when i see anything in real life that relates to north africa and i'm like oh it's just like the game it's like well yeah james it's just the real world region of the world it's just it's just a game map 100 million people live in yeah it's not some niche reference to some pop culture that's in a fantasy world it's just africa yeah so i don't know why but i get giddy i get excited probably because i didn't know anything about the north african campaign prior to playing this but the pictures are really cool and what a what a nice

wholesome trip going off with his son to see a museum i i like a good museum trip i haven't been in a while yeah we should we should do a museum trip we should find one that's relevant let's record an episode in a museum let's see how long we can go before getting kicked out yeah i don't know that that will last very long at all i don't know if we'd finish setting up yeah walking into a museum with five meter by 60 centimeter oh we're playing the game as well oh yeah oh i see yeah we record directly after playing so we'd have to people might think it's some sort of like art project though just see if we can install the maps in a museum no we need those we can't do that it's too costly um but yeah africa core sounds like uh uh well very much in the same

theater yeah it's all north africa but it sounds like it's very much a starter game compared to this this is the if you want to if you want to be a real gamer this is what you do well i do find the fact is is a casual hex encounter war game it doesn't seem like you can casually play hex like you're casual relative to other hex encounter but by the time you've got there you're like at the far end of board games oh yeah and and to stress to you jeff you're a much more experienced hex encounter player than we are you um you're definitely much more professional than we are way more casual than you because this is our first foray and it's i think it's just so we can upset ourselves really it's not it's not because we enjoy the game in and of itself the experience is

it's taxing mentally and emotionally it's not fun we've been having fun i don't know man that's a real turnaround there's just something about it that really really tugs at my soul but the acquiring of mounting magnets was a fun part i did enjoy that enjoy the arts and crafts yeah i enjoyed coming up with a revolutionary way to play the game the only way if anything to play the game but jeff you then followed up with a second email to us and the second email reads during episode 39's discussion of pasta points and prisoners it got me thinking do italian prisoners in commonwealth custody also use extra water similarly when andy captured some italian stores on the final op stage of turn one do the commonwealth soldiers need to use extra water

when using captured italian rations this is almost certainly an extra layer of complication that isn't necessary however in the game i genuinely can't assume anything even if my cursory search of the rules revealed nothing brackets no i'm not playing i just downloaded the rules over the course of the podcast out of morbid curiosity stay subtle humble and brave and hopefully sane jeff from chicago home apparently of a street named after an italian aviator slash propagandist well jeff you're not the only one as you will uh know if you've listened to last week because it seems there's quite a few of you folk over in chicago not just over over chicago going on field trips about history is there something about the folks in chicago

what is the term for people from chicago there's got to be a like a term for chicago chicagans no i feel like in a lot of like american cities is quite like distinct and colorful names for people from particular cities but yeah i'm sure i've heard them before the thing is i can't think of any right now so now i'm feeling like that all the time i'm like oh that's this thing it's like Can you give an example? No, I've played Brains Gone Blank. No, I just know the general rule. I don't have examples to give you.

Well, yeah, plenty of Chicagoans seem to be off on field trips. You're clearly a very explorative bunch. So we're very happy to receive the pictures. And in terms of the extra rules, what are you doing, Jeff? Why are you mentioning this? If you mention it, the game will create them. I think it's some sort of ongoing magical mutation where every time we think the game can't get worse,

it does get more complicated somehow so i feel like me reading that is a bad omen it puts out bad spirits into the world and somehow it's going to change i did have a look i thankfully don't have to do that no so far from everything as long as the game doesn't actually change then no thankfully we don't have to account for that because it seems when you the italians get taken prisoner the british aren't giving them their pasta yeah that's quite a funny thing where they just go on hunger strike unless they get past it. Or their cohesion drops even further.

And it drops the cohesion of the guards as well because they're just complaining constantly. It makes escape more likely. They become feral. You know when mothers get the strength to lift a car off a baby? Oh, yeah. There's a term for that.

I'm getting real half-arsed information today. Adrenaline rush. No, no, it's more than that, though. It's some sort of strength term. It's like a thing that limits come off your muscles because you can lift significantly more and stuff, but it damages you so your brain doesn't let you do it. It's supposedly the inspiration for the Hulk.

Makes sense. It was at Kirby. I saw somebody lift up a part of a car or something off a child, I think it was. Oh. And that was the inspiration for the Hulk. Oh, I didn't actually know that. Yeah. Again, I have no source to cite.

Today, I'm just throwing shit out there, and I'm sure it's truthful. maybe we need to be more tired when we record yeah right now I've got all these facts buzzing around but no way to back them up also that is a good point I don't need water for captured stores from you yeah so they're just

eating their raw pasta or we're using far too much water for the pasta yeah there's no reason for it to be done but Jeff we thank you for your tales of your expedition and waxing about the rules thankfully no but it's completely rational for you to think that the game

is that cruel because in other ways it is thankfully not like that though well, a lovely bit of listener mail a field trip that we like to take is one into the past and last week we took a final trip down Balbo Lane

which is in Chicago and we wrapped up his story which means now Andy you'll have a completely new history segment. I do indeed. And I'm very interested to hear who this is about abc ah the the network yes uh andrew brown cunningham okay so commonwealth yes uh he's the admiral of the mediterranean fleet during this so thought i'd tie it in with the bombardments

ah yes he's caused a bit of a bit of havoc for me today along my uh my airfields indeed and i've uh i bought this by guy's autobiography and i've been reading it for this so dedicated to the history course oh it's been a great excuse to read good stuff i wouldn't have ever thought to yeah i guess it's not your usual area i would never have bought an admiral's autobiography but it's good this guy is pretty awesome oh so he's not a bad guy uh no i'm not quite finished the book but from out of our research he's not there's no heinous beating people with dried fish or no okay that's good well at least it's going to be a slight positive change we seem to be um sort of pendulum swinging between figures of deep moral questionability and people whose books i've

read yeah yeah so start with a quote about him admiral sir andrew brown cunningham he remains in my opinion at the top of my subordinates in absolute selflessness energy devotion to duty knowledge of his task and in understanding the requirements of allied operations my opinions as to his superior qualifications have never wavered for a second that's from general dwight d eisenhower in a diary entry i've heard of him on the 10th of december 1942 oh well uh held in very high regard then by the sounds of it uh yes something to mention it won't be relevant this episode but he mentions it in the foreword of his book and i thought it was interesting and something to keep in mind he wrote this in 1951 or at least that's when it was published so he he was on the ultra

list for enigma okay but because enigma hadn't declassified by the time he wrote his book he couldn't mention any involvement with any enigma involvement so it won't be relevant this episode but that is an interesting thing about accounts from this time okay yeah so he had a little secret yeah so in his own words we'll describe the start of his life let's hear it in the early hours of january 7th 1883 there was a certain amount of ado at 42 grosnova square district of rantham means in the union of south dublin in the country of dublin i was being brought into this tumultuous world as the first child of Professor and Mrs. Daniel John Cunningham. I had been preceded by a sister and brother and was followed in due course by another brother

and sister. My parents thus produced three sons and two daughters, or in poker terms, a full house sons up. It's a good way to look at a family dynamic, through the hands of poker. so he's from quite a impressive family overall is great uh it's not as great sorry his grandfather is a reverend dr john cunningham educated at edinburgh and glasgow university he created something called the cunningham act which allowed any congregation in the church of scotland to elect a minister from any other presbyterian church from scotland england or ireland it used to be geographically linked okay which led to the first steps towards them like uniting so pretty important wow important guy then yeah yeah and then his father daniel john cunningham uh chair

of anatomy for the royal college of surgeons in ireland became one of the leading and not anatomists and anatomy teachers of his day also responsible for initiating uh postgraduate medical courses which have become a standard part of medicine like you keep going back and getting updated because medicine keeps changing yeah so quite the pedigrees from yeah so his family's really left an impact in history already at this stage yeah and uh it sounds like a very positive impact as well which is a nice change for some of the figures we've heard of so he's brought up in dublin generally happy childhood big fan of his mother adored uh had a very sweet temperament apparently his father's out quite a lot but does spend time with him one of the things his father's

the fellow of the dublin zoo so they spend a lot of time at the zoo um sounding pretty wholesome so far yeah his father because of his scientific inclination german was the language of science at the time so he had a series of german nurses and governesses and until the age of nine spoke german as fluently as english oh so bilingual as well that will come in handy i would imagine in the has to come oh yeah so he attends school from the age of eight um in dublin but he doesn't learn much so his father after two terms sends him to live with his aunties in edinburgh to go to a higher quality school quote again at this point i gave little thought to my future but i'd always been interested in boats in the sea what put it into my head i do not know but it came as a surprise

when i had a telegram from my father would you like to go into the navy the idea appealed to me quite a lot so egged on by the my aunts i replied yes i should like to be an admiral so he sort of snipes his career from age eight wow so he's really earmarked his future from from go yeah kid knows what he wants uh yeah um so he's in edinburgh for a bit edinburgh academy where he's studying is at this time starting a course to prepare children for joining the navy but it's just starting so his father sends him uh at the age of 10 to farnham just outside london for mr foster stubbington's house which is a school specially designed to prepare children to join the navy i mean the name of it sounds like it's a much more whimsical school oh yeah that's a that's

a whimsical name oh yeah that's a fun name is what that is uh so this is how he describes the school in his own word one supposes that the teaching teaching given at stubbington was really cramming we were required to perform prodigious feats of memory such as memorizing the dates of all important events from the landing of julius caesar to the ascension of james the first that's a lot of yeah a lot of stuff happens between those oh yeah i can still remember much of what i learned that the old masters were wizards at driving knowledge into the heads of the unintelligent see i told you it was a place of whimsy oh yeah it's there oh yeah and it's also crazy to hear this guy describe himself as unintelligent uh but at one point

there's a he remembers something the history master said to him which is a brutal thing to say to someone who's 11 or 12 what an extraordinary thing for so clever a father should have such an idiot for a son that sounds almost shakespearean in its cadence yeah just a teacher destroying destroying you probably your self-esteem your confidence yeah oh well thankfully you didn't shake him from his career path by the sound oh no he likes maths uh he's very good at it but he hates languages he characterized himself as lazy and says he never has to work hard that probably means you're intelligent then yes um very so at the ripe old age of 14 he's done with school uh so he joins the navy yep there we go he lists on hms britannia on january 15th

1987 eight days after his birthday the hms britannia is a ship that's off the coast of dartmouth that is the navy cadet officer training so most admirals or officers from the navy will go through it at some point okay uh it's like the next stage of education for what he's gonna be doing his placement yeah uh yeah that's a good description actually he's in a group of 65 five children split into four classes and they spent 15 minutes training together and getting educated a quote about their training the instruction was mainly technical mathematics mathematics as applies to navigation some rather indifferently taught french a little naval history at the hands of hamilton williams otherwise known as badger bill what is going on with these names

come on badger bill and of course steam signals and seamanship in all its branches seamanship was by far the most popular and in 19 uh in 1897 uh sail is still being used in the navy it's not entirely giving away to like steam and metal ships okay so he's getting a bit of both ah he's got he's got the old school going on oh yeah uh he describes it the work was not really hard and i was able to devote the evenings to requiring a certain proficiency at chess which based on how humble he is for the art of book he's probably a grandmaster i haven't looked it up but there's also you get some letters later on in this bit um one of them again a quote these serve to remind me that i went by the name meat face as a cadet

uh and i acquired some reputation as an amateur pugilist as one of my teammates wrote wrote i well remembered uh he loved to scrap a real renaissance man this guy does a lot he wears a lot of hats oh yeah uh and he talks about he remembers they used to when they got a bit of shore leave they used to go and send spent the sunday afternoon fighting in a little local quarry uh with bare fists one of his homeric fights as he describes it was with charles clement swift it ended up with us both covered in blood my blood why he became a fisticuffs with most of the term cheering us on i certainly can't remember i don't think i was a particularly quarrelsome boy he's so polite very well spoken and you know what he is he's very he's very subtle and humble

oh yeah i thought that as a regime he lives up to the wolf and mate ideals yeah i mean brave as well i would imagine probably part of it so the guy's really ticking off every box so at this point because he he sails through this bit uh fairly quickly because he says anyone who's read anything about this will have like heard about their time on the hms britannia because everyone went through it as it were yeah so like every autobiography will have a bit on it so here's a list of the stuff they study at the age of uh he's 15 at this point religious knowledge algebra geometry plane trigonometry practical and theoretical and its applications they're examined uh oh sorry and it's exact application to useful problems in navigation surveying

spherical trigonometry astronomical problems navigation determining a ship's position by dead reckoning or observation geometrical and nautical problems the construction of charts the use of sex sense compass barometers thermometers and the principles of construction physical science french drawing naval history geography and astronomy so they're learning a huge amount i mean yeah i'm gonna keep with that renaissance man uh yeah that comment is correct this man is learning it all yeah so he finishes 10th in his class where despite not working hard yeah the guy's laying about playing chess and fighting people in quarries he's described as having good proficiency in the use of a sextant and an artificial harassment having paid much

attention to various branches of study uh he's entitled to a first class certificate in mathematics scoring 1171 out of 100 1500 wow a second class in french getting 510 out of 750 first class in seamanship 616 out of 700 wow that's a that's a good one yeah it seems like the things that uh brought him down were like the extra stuff like french which yeah probably not gonna be that useful he's described as uh he can apparently it's of note that he can swim that's a very handy thing to know when you're gonna be on boats for the most part and his conduct aboard the britannia is described as very good so because of this he's technically served seven months of sea time as it were on the britannia which means he'll have one month

as a cadet uh when he joins a ship and then he'll go to midshipsman which is like the next rank cup okay yeah yeah um he says i wonder to what extent my examiners perjured themselves and to who testified to my very good conduct those that mattered can never have heard about my occasional bare-fisted battles ashore on sunday afternoon so yeah he's a 10th in his class and before finishing they ask him where do you want to go it's not like where do you want to uh serve and it's not guaranteed but you have a bit of choice of preference he doesn't really have a preference but his best friend henry archer colt wants to go to the cape of hope good hope and west africa so he elects to go there as well uh and he gets it uh comes back and he gets accepted for that ship

uh so both of them are gonna head off but just before they do just the last quote my father and mother came over from ireland to see me off we spent one night in london and as a parting treat my father took us to see a new play just put on the bell of new york my parents were both rather scandalized at the dress or rather undress of some of the ladies but i thoroughly enjoyed it oh he's a randy guy as well then doesn't seem to actually be but i guess teenager so he embarks on the ship that's going to take him to west africa to join his other ship and he's delighted to find his friend henry or borden on the same cabin and they're heading off to serve in the navy in africa don't know if you know the time period but this is just before the boa war

oh i see which uh we'll get into next time oh i'm interested to see his involvement in that because that is an interesting conflict that is something i have actually studied before in uh in college yeah so that's a that's a segment of history i do know a bit about so i'm interested to see where this goes yeah um he at this point i believe is 16 wow okay so still a still a wee boy oh yeah uh well he's got his head screwed on he knows what he's doing he's uh he's smart he's accomplished he's subtle humble and brave oh yeah so he's got all the makings of a real maider.

Oh yeah, I used to be called Meatface. You forgot that. I wonder if that comes from some of the pugilism maybe? Oh, it is. It's related to that. Just the thing of forgetting that people called you that. If someone called me Meatface, I think that would stick.

Yeah, I wouldn't be able to let that one slip. Well, good old Meatface. Interested to see what he gets up to because he he's an objectively better man than balbo oh yeah so uh he takes part in a lot of very interesting stuff uh which we'll get to but uh yeah and a good book if anyone's more interested i had a lot of trouble cutting stuff down for the quick because i was read the first chapter was highlighting oh that would be an interesting bit and then i looked back and i just highlighted

like 90 of the first chapter um but this is a couple chapters in uh and we'll pick it up with the rest of them yeah well i look forward to this on our side we need to figure out something else we need to we need to trim through all of these brilliant ideas we need to ignore most of the highlighted sections and just pick one particular thing to focus on in order to find some common ground and now for something nicer a little oasis in the war it's time for some common ground I'm trying the intro for Common Ground I'm recording Maybe

Yeah Yeah And this time it's over to you Andy Yes It's your time to provide us with some Common Ground I've got one Let's hear it Sort of off the stuff I've been researching the last few weeks

But not close enough to mention on the podcast i think we should bring back zeppelins and blimps oh you know what this is coming from the same person who plugged an extension cable into an extension cable yes and then brought them into his bathroom so i'm gonna have to err on the side of caution with this one they're dangerous only if you fill them one there's the hydrogen and helium one of them's dangerous you should use the other one okay and which one are we using the safe one okay i'm gonna leave that to the air games to work out you're the ideas man not the details man because they correctly got a bad rap after the hindenburg disaster yeah yeah that's notoriously a bad blimp yeah i'm not

wanting to bring them back for like air travel in the sense of like replacing planes well that's good because that would be moronic i think they're a fun addition to society along the lines of cruise ships because they're slower i wouldn't go on a cruise ship i'd love to go on a zeppelin tour you wouldn't go on a cruise ship i don't know i might but i watched that documentary about the cruise ship that filled with shit and it kind of put me off that's that's fair i wouldn't want to be on a cruise ship full of shit but i would try a cruise ship i would be less likely to try a zeppelin or blimp see that's we're opposites there but a couple of things going for them all right i'm gonna need to hear these they're gonna have to be good they always look cool in

like steampunk art they add to a cityscape like i agree but i need to make it very clear i don't want to live in a steampunk world we don't have to go full steampunk we could it's the modern version material sciences have come a long way you i need you to know that you just did a very trump-esque hand gesture there as you were trying to justify what you're talking about sort of like palms outwards arms in like a t-rex so you're not on board with this i i mean at the moment no i think they're they're dangerous would you get in a hot air balloon uh yeah i'd do a hot air balloon what the fuck man so you wouldn't get on a cruise ship because you're worried it's gonna fill with shit but you got a hot air balloon this is gonna sound like a dumb sentence i'm more

scared of the ocean than the sky oh at least you're self-aware i'm not that scared of heights i don't like water you're not scared but the heights you're in like a you're in a very flammable i guess yeah you said the safe one but i don't know it feels like it's still and this is coming from a man i'll admit i don't know everything about zeppelins but i feel like they can like they can burst surely what are they made of well it depends the material like we've got modern materials we could build out like carbon nanotubes or whatever they put on the space show this sounds expensive as well i mean that like cruises are luxury cruise ships cost like hundreds of millions i think yeah but i feel like they're safer you don't get many cruise

ships going down what about that guy that crashed the one in italy i i don't know i can't speak to that or the one that filled with shit cruisers aren't that safe you gotta leave the one that's full of shit i think that was safe it was just unpleasant yeah but you can just if the toilets go out on your zeppelin you can just land it you could i mean i guess so but you could just pop overboard into the dangerous ocean i was talking about on the zeppelin oh yeah you just pop pop out a window you know squat out the window cruise ship you pull into port yeah zeppelin arrive at a city you skydive into the city while it's landing right you're just listening don't ever try more exciting than a cruise ship i'm doing the trump i think this is a bad idea

i'm starting to think that because the hand gestures that it's making me do right so you now want me to skydive into a city you don't have to you could take the slow way down what's the slow way the zeppelin just lands i just think it's weird we had a method of transportation and we just gave up on it completely yeah but why because we found a better one of them crashed we we found a better way to do it for planes have their advantages yes for long distances yes you don't want to do a zeppelin tour of europe that sounds slow as fuck it's it's a tour i'm not saying these are i'm not saying we should add them back for transportation convenience it's a luxury that i think we need uh so you're right okay so you're not replacing air travel in

general so it is just it's optional yeah it's like how it's the same way like boats are now where it's like if i want to get to america i'm not taking a ship okay okay um right well it's going to be expensive so i guess for this luxury uh commodity what are we going to be what are we trading off what are we getting the money from this what are we getting rid of in order to do this oh i'm not saying this is a government scheme it's a private like so your dragon's deading it i guess yeah i just think there's a hole in the market my concern is there's going to be a hole in the zeppelin andy i mean but planes crash fairly regularly not fairly right i mean yeah they're the safest form of transport sorry say that again into the microphone

planes are the safest form of transport yeah there we go i'm gonna put a little quote sound effect on that one as well except for maybe zeppelins what are you talking about there's only been one big zeppelin crash it was just so bad we stopped doing it entirely the hindenburg disaster is to zeppelin travel what chernobyl is to nuclear power but they're both good things they just had a bad pr moment a bad pr moment okay right i i i mean nuclear power i'm all for and i think maybe it did get a bad rap from chernobyl okay nuclear powered zeppelin right we're doing something really bad here this is not the direction to go in you're getting me further away from the point okay don't just hear that i like something and

then try and put it in the zeppelin okay that doesn't that doesn't make it work better for me What do I need to convince you of to get you in a Zeppelin? Or at least let me get in one You can get in a Zeppelin And if this is going to be privately funded And it's not going to replace planes No no And it's just a bit of fun

Safe fun Then I'm willing to allow this Also they will work in Europe Because They're a bit wind dependent Yes But tether it to a train No

Have the train pull it Andy, take yes for an answer, this is worse So you're not, okay If it's not replacing planes And it's privately funded And I don't have to get on one Then I'm fine with there being Zeppelins All over Europe

That's good I just don't want them crowding the skyline too much You don't Sorry, you're shocked at this You need to get out this steampunk mentality i'd like to just be walking around them like oh cool a zeppelin that sorry you think they're the site you don't want to use them to see the sites you want them to be well i'd like to take them but they're also just there sort of spicing up the view that oh okay okay um i guess this doesn't

need to be about me understanding why you want it and what you find pleasure in with the zeppelins you've at least justified why it's safe for them to be around. Whatever odd pleasures you find in looking at Zeppelins, I guess is your thing to unpack. Okay. So I guess that's something for you to do in your own time. Okay, so when Zeppelins come back, I won't be getting you a ticket. Don't get me a ticket to a Zeppelin or skydiving.

And don't plug in your extension cable to another extension cable and take it into your bathroom. Well, I wouldn't do that on a blimp. Would you go skydiving? No, I wouldn't. What is this? Of course I wouldn't go skydiving. I think I can get you up there.

You can't. There's nothing that can be done to get you to jump out of a plane. No, there's not. I say that with great confidence that you could never get me to do that. I think, therefore, you shouldn't be allowed to use paratroops in the game. What the fuck is that?

No. Absolutely not. That's not how that works. You shouldn't be asking your men to do anything you wouldn't do. I... That's it. That's the end of the episode. It's done now. I feel like this hasn't been common ground.

It's been uneven ground. It's been shaky ground. It's thin ice is what this segment is. All dangers that are avoided by being in a Zeppelin. No, it's not. oh you keep your zeppelin talk to yourself we oh we forgot to mention um yeah transition out of this yeah just before we we wrap up in frustration um if if you do want to send us a message uh we read out emails um

so send them in to info at war with a mate.co.uk we have an instagram which is war with a mate we update it each week with um a post for each episode put some pictures on it's very lovely um and uh we have a website which is um whatwethermade.co.uk there's a web form on there yeah uh we've replaced the chat with a web form so we fixed that yep that's fixed yeah we also dropped about 50 images on there yeah so if you're interested in seeing some of the uh pictures of the board yeah they're not particularly structured at the minute but were sort of they're there um yeah so if you want to have a look peek at what the game looks like um by all means check that out we when we play in the full game when we finish the six turn practice

run we'll be updating it with um a very structured update of what the map looks like every single play session if we start doing that now it's it's too late in i think for things to be tracked well and we're still figuring out the logistics of how to update that in the right way um one thing we do still have um going at the moment is the temporary merch store which has uh all sorts of fun things we got some got some mugs some caps some jumpers after after high demand for us to put it out it's still on there we're gonna have it until taking messages of instagram for if someone wants something yes we'll add it so we'll we have a very wide variety of things at our disposal to produce so if there's anything that you are interested in a particular piece of clothing or

accessory or mouse mat or anything you can think of we can probably put it together for you so um drop us a message if there's anything in particular and it's gonna it'll be up till about the end of september and then we're gonna find a more long-term solution because the shipping on that at the moment is kind of an issue we've brought the cost down as much as we can for the actual items but the shipping we can't actually do anything about and we're gonna work around we can we do have a solution but we have a workaround for it time to set up yes so we will be fixing that when we've rolled it out permanently um and thank you to everyone who has bought stuff it's insane that people are buying war with a mate stuff genuinely bizarre in like an awesome

way yeah so thank you for that everyone um who who's done that that's much appreciated and that i think pretty much wraps everything up into a neat bow uh yeah so uh thanks for listening stay subtle humble and brave just like gold cunningham yes little humble and brave and just when you're in the deserts of your mind watch out for those zeppelins because they are dangerous fare thee well

and goodnight We'll be right back.