War With A Mate - Episode 47: Alternate Routes

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

The air stuff isn’t always fun isn’t it? Though I suppose that depends on what happens to you during it. The guys fly through (air pun) the final air segment of Turn Two, with undeniably better understanding of the rules, as shown by their efficiency. The Mailbag certifies Andy as a political savant, while this week’s Common Ground certifies James as small and vain man. A long awaited arrival finally roll their way into a new History Segment, and as always, other things happen too.

hello ahoy this is war with a mate welcome i'm andy i'm james and we're playing all of campaign for north africa spi's behemoth it's a big game they made it or richard berg made it he was the mastermind behind it as a bit of a joke for the future and here we are in the future we got flying cars we've got universal health care we've got no disease there's been no diseases that have spread worldwide in well i can't remember how long and i've certainly never live through one no no well no one would now it's the future that would be crazy i don't everything's going pretty well isn't it yeah globally yeah this is the worst thing happening oh yeah look how privileged we are and you people have tuned in uh a crucible of your own making to forge yourselves

in the hardship uh that you seldom find elsewhere it's hard to really test yourself when everything else in the world is so gentle and delicate but we're here to help you with that we're here to be that little oasis of pain it's important for you to suffer once in a while so let's let's get out your your masochism flutes and sorry that sound quite phallic um that's not what this is about okay it's not that kind of podcast this is this is a podcast where we're talking about playing the game and we've we've done just that today we've played some of the game it was a good one it was we've we've done more air stuff today was air stuff because today was the start of offstage three of turn two we're there we are there we're about to hit the halfway turn

yeah because we're doing we're doing six practice turns if you don't remember then we're doing the game and it has yeah it's been it's been a year um it's getting close to a year anyway we got the game in november we started recording early december release and we released late january yeah so we've got a few milestones a few anniversaries yeah and we haven't hit any of them yet but we've they're coming up yeah they're in the future uh but yeah we we've handled the organization phase yeah we've done all those bits and bobs we've got a little bit of homework as always for uh our water and the hot weather means that we need to get rid of more water than we expected which is just swell i love getting rid of more of my water you know what it's i think

you're the only one who's ruled bad weather um yeah i think i'm the only one who rolled weather yeah i think oh i think you rolled weather in turn one because you had initiative yeah i rolled the sandstorm i think yeah i did it no rain rain yes not sandstorm i don't think we've had a sandstorm no we haven't no that'll be exciting but too hot weather is a bunch of normals in one rainstorm yeah well actually no what we've had is half and half yes it's been hot it's not been a bunch of normal weather's half the time it's normal yeah is that what we're actually in for is it going to be mostly not mostly but is it going to be an even split of um foul weather is the table foul weather i think yes oh um because i think in winter you can't get hot

but rainstorms are more likely and then summer hot is almost as big as normal winter you can't get hot no you sound like a pensioner's nightmare horrible i mean it would be oh yeah that's that's what gets them yeah so we handled an organization we did and took to the air oh the air the air and we split our forces mine supposedly the superior air force of this portion of history you have more planes i'll say i have more planes um and at the moment i have fewer active planes i did manage to get a bunch of supplies to my airfields over on map b last stop stage which meant i was able to have a bit more ammo available so that was good i could tap into those last drops

of ammunition for the bombers without completely um droughting myself so i flew off my bombers that was good and they've they've taken to the sky i did three bombing missions and two strafing missions and i did i sent two lots of planes up to do air protection uh above the seventh and the forth yes and i attacked one of your supply dumps um a very important supply dump yes this is the one that is behind my wall the one that's been moving up along the the northern road so that they've been all bolstered by this supply dump that i've finally got my shit together and i've finally started a good supply convoy with this supply dump as the the nexus point between them and you saw that and you thought well i'll go for that i was because i heavily committed to

attacking it and i was i would look so foolish if you'd baited me with a dummy supply dump 470 odd bombs yes well now they're in alexandria i'm just dropping them if the planes are ready and they have stuff on them may as well yeah and the thing is i don't think you'd be so concerned about it being a fake supply dump if i didn't do the fake truck thing that i've been doing because i did actually drive trucks to that supply dump and i feel like if i hadn't done the fake truck thing you would have been thinking well well this is definitely a normal supply dump he's driven trucks there but maybe part of the fact i've messed around with my trucks before made you think maybe these are all fake trucks that he's driving back and forth it was partially

that partially it's not that far from the bardia it's bardia yeah it's not that far from bardia so i was like it could be like some enticing bait and also last uh upstage i did find a dummy supply dump with the long range desert group yes so you are making them because you made that one that one was at the start of the game oh right okay yeah i got um i got two reels and one fake all right to start off with or the inverse no i think it's no it is the inverse i got two fakes and maybe two reals i definitely got two fakes yeah so yes i've put them out there um that one was real as you found out because you bombed it you committed a lot of bombs you got to the very end column you did 470 plus bombs 471 is the cutoff for the highest column 474 yeah uh which

could have destroyed up to 70 of it i think it's 75 isn't it uh 70 i think 70 yeah and then i could I also strafed the supply dump, which can do up to 30%. So there was a world where that supply dump was wiped out, which would have been nice, but I ended up getting 50% of it, which, depending on how heavily stacked it is, is hopefully quite a blow. Oh, that's something I need to check. I didn't think about this.

I just took it as gospel. That 70%, well, I say 70, the way it ended up being, it was 30 from the bombs, it was 20 from the strafe. Yeah. i don't know does that is that just a collective 50 or is that you take off 30 and then you take off 20 of what remains it should have been that i guess yeah because they were distinct events yeah i i don't know we'll have to check that because i just took off 50 taking that to be how it works but now i'm second guessing myself no that's a good point there will be some sort

of sequence of events in there where it talks about i'd expect there would be because it's so detailed because i think the way i bombed it and then strafed it the way we did it yeah um so yeah that's a good point actually yeah i hadn't thought about that the thing that popped in my head there was what we talked about last week where if you go and take ammo from a supply dump it thirds it every time yes so that that's what i was thinking there's got to be some sort of sequence some chain of command of different sequence of actions but we'll have to check either way best case scenario you've taken out 50 yeah and that's that's a lot even if it's 30 and then 20 that's still a significant amount and they were meant to be bolstered my wall by that

supply dump and you had close air patrol for the seventh and the fourth fourth indian and the seventh armoured yeah and the seventh armoured i've just left out there after the whole kerfuffle with the fourth black shirts i thought we'll leave them out there they can have a bit of a breather the fourth indian however they've been a point of contention for me in the past when it comes to air missions this was no different this is the second battle that's happened directly above their heads it was because i did try to strafe them and i sent six planes to try and do so and i'd committed pretty heavily so they those six planes were met by 33 planes and what's incredible is that of those six planes yeah six of my planes went there three of them survived

which is incredible not only that but one of the ones that were shot down the pilot actually limped back to base the plane was destroyed but he's wandering through the desert right now to get back but two of you guys who didn't have pilot ratings yet but had got shot down died uh no one of them survived he was the last one sorry yes you i knocked down three i didn't realize i knew i knocked down three and one survived i wasn't sure which was which oh i wouldn't be keeping track of a guy if he hadn't done anything in the past oh okay he would simply be dead okay i think in the main game i will just so i can keep track of these pilots who survived these horrible events and then continue to get kills yeah so one guy bit of an accolade has downed someone before he's

walking back to base and three overall got off they didn't pull anything off with that strafe the fourth indian were not harmed i did commit another 15 planes to the 16th infantry battalion And that did pay off. Yes, you got a toe point out of them. I did. I sprayed them with some rounds from the air, took out a guy, well, 100 guys. So, small victory there.

They didn't have any protection. Well, the way I'd put the air patrol over, because those two were next to each other. Yes. But I committed to the ones... I wanted to keep the fourth safe over the 16th. And, obviously, you don't know... You don't know how many planes are going to both

until it's declared. yeah so it it it paid off overall for me i think it was a small thing but i wasn't expecting a whole lot from six planes in the first place and then the other 15 i'll take a toe point for that your pretty smooth air battle as well we got through it and less i mean it was only six planes but i had to roll for 30 and we got through it in maybe half an hour yeah i think we've really streamlined that yeah i think well i was saying that when we were doing it i did take moment and asked if you feel like the turns are getting shorter uh yeah it's certainly the air combat's got streamlined i think that's simple and intuitive enough that we can just sort of sit

down and blast out a air combat pretty quick i am looking forward to when there's because it will happen at some point like a hundred planes meet a hundred planes yeah i don't even think it'll be too long though because that for the most part if that was the situation for example it's one-on-one so we just have 100 rolls to do uh maybe up to 200 rolls if both planes survive yeah but even then i don't think that's particularly long i think that's maybe an hour yeah and that's worst case scenario i think figuring out the the difference between them with the tack air and the maneuverability is relatively quick yeah that's not anywhere as bad as i thought it was going to be when we first started i always thought it would be fun i just i thought it would be really long as well i was

thinking it was going to be because it's individual planes where everything else is on an operational level i was like is this going to be very slow uh no they just made it streamlined in a way the rest of the game fundamentally isn't the rest of the game is it's a it's a piece of art um you know that's what people that's what people call it i disagree still yeah i think it's a bit of a prank but it's good fun and then i went and did three bombing runs you're really fucking up that road i am i went back to your road that your supplies come along the northern road went further east of that wall that i've got and i dropped 330 bombs on one area 330 on another both of which are guaranteed to destroy those pieces of road and then 44 bombs on a third all of them were

successful yeah all of them destroyed a piece of road that's some going well that is another 12 breakdown points if you want to drive over it yeah that's all right that not when you're going over the other pieces of broken no it's bad for tanks it's fine for it's getting to a point where i'm gonna have to roll truck breakdown but it's gonna be on the low it's gonna be on the low end but all i need is consistent low end because you have to supply these guys regularly yeah i uh i had a plan before that happened that i'm still doing that right yeah i needed to bring this up because i declared what i was doing with my bombers and i explained it was the road and you just had the shit-eating grin on your face and you said okay go for it yeah and i was

like all right so do you have any planes to scramble you said no the grin was still there the bombs went off the road was destroyed the grin remains and even now it's fucking creeping up again on your face again yeah so what's going on there man i've got a plan explain i'm not going to tell you it's wild it's actually against the rules you'll see next top stage okay okay i think you're gonna try and repair the road then i have no idea what this is i was gonna repair the road before you bombed more of it but i've changed right okay that's interesting so the the shit eating grin is about this other plan that isn't repairing the road i was gonna repair the road and do this other plan i'm now just gonna do the other plan and leave the road fucked up

that's interesting i actually don't know what this will be so okay color me interested yeah we'll see how it plays out we will uh as is the nature of the game yep and that was it for the air combat the air missions yeah we uh flew through it um sorry did you just congratulate yourself on a pun yes that's that's very me coded i thought i'd take the role no no no no we're not swapping i'm not doing a history segment this week oh then we're not doing it i see you're waiting on me to come up with one for this week right i see just spitball no to be fair we'll swap you can do common ground this week no uh yeah the air combat shaped up nicely i think turn turn two's been

an interesting one. You seem to have a lot of stuff seems to have clicked for you this turn. I've come into my own. I've understood what the game is, finally. It's only taken nine months but I think I've finally figured it out. Whereas on my end, it's really

compounded my thought that I've messed some stuff up. You do seem to be scrambling in some areas, really trying to dig yourself out of some holes. While I seem have just gotten out of the holes but they were big holes some people got left behind i'll be i'll be happy to get out of turn two my garrisons are starving andy that's good i don't think that's gonna matter because they only lose like two then four then six percent yeah i just by the end of

the scenario you're gonna be like not a lot i've lost that many yeah i just i don't want i don't want a situation where they were important and you have to go up against them and they're not there anymore do they not take any cohesion loss from starving i don't know i don't think so i think it is just a flat two point loss i'm gonna double check that we will have to double check just because it feels that you can starve them for about seven turns and it's fine yeah and they lose like a hundred guys and then their morale isn't affected well it's still the practice run i guess we've still got time to figure out what starving is yeah we just need to have a glance over that because i think you're right i just it feels i know what you mean it does feel like it's

it's cheating what hunger actually is in the real world it feels like it might be a thing where it's like one of the sub points and like cohesion or morale not in the the stores section possibly because the store section just has the like you can't attack that turn you can only use half your cpa but that's again that's only if you do half ration yeah which was weird because half ration shouldn't be worse than no ration i guess the thing is with no ration is you then also start to have that attrition but again it takes a while for that to kick in yeah i think we need to have a look at hunger uh we'll be reviewing all the rules before we start um start the main game but my i would never look at hunger and we're coming up to turn three so we will have to review hunger

rules anyway because we're going to be feeding people yep i i need to get on that by the way this offstage really yeah i need to make sure that people have food uh what i do have are because we need to also finish up the repair phase from the end of turn well offstage two of turn two yeah you've got some dice to roll don't you i've got some dice to roll we just thought we'd get the planes out the way and make it a streamlined one today and then we can pick that up next week start that off figure out what the repair was before we start moving things so we know what we've got to move. Yeah. Because I've got a lot of trucks that will come around in the truck convoy phase

that could be repaired. As well as some replacement point tanks. Yeah, that's going to be interesting, because have we destroyed each other's tanks yet, or have they been purely breakdown? You've... No, just breakdown. We've not done anti-armor. Yes.

Not once. We've only done it in the practice scenarios that we did, I think. Yeah. The white box. Yeah. Because I don't think... I mean, You can use armor to anti-armor, but I've mainly been fighting your infantry divisions when I've used armor with the 7th.

And the only things I've come across with armor are the 7th because I've always went for the infantry to try and incur the combined arms and utilize that. So, yeah, I'll be interested to see if I get any of those back. But all in all, I think it's a fun start to this op stage. End of turn 2 coming up. Yeah. uh all yeah full steam ahead games clicking the games clicking the rules are now

some of them second nature some of them need a check but i think a check because they're like ingrained and they might be slightly off but not just a review but yeah i agree i think most of it's coming together especially the rules we're using yeah i need to look at commonwealth production properly because i think i should have been making truck well i should have been making trucks maybe at the start of this i don't think i could do it in the fit there's something in the scenario about when i can start but it's soon it's either next turn or i should have done on this turn to put you on the spot a bit what is the rule you feel most comfortable with if someone was to fire out right now and kind of go

tell me a rule that you know really well recite it without any rule flaws or you get shot what would it be um because i think there's a lot of rules i'm now very comfortable with i don't think i've got any real problem with the stuff we use upstage to upstage i think movement i'm very happy with i need to check the terrain thing but the actual that but that's just for the values yeah but the actual how a move stuff feels comfortable i think all the air stuff feels very comfortable i would have said air stuff i would have said bombing i'm now completely fine reading those tables that that is very very simplistic yeah all it took was figuring out how the bombing stuff works how do you get your planes from a to b um once they're there i'm very comfortable with

how air bombardment works yeah it's it's a very simple table to be fair it's not much of a brag no stuff i'm most unsure about at the moment i think would probably be maybe anti-armor now that i'm talking about it in terms of stuff i'm likely to come across this thing's like scouting that we haven't even touched on really yeah i think anti-armor because there's the vulnerability stuff oh yes good point same with guns that are in forward positions yeah which we've not really had to deal with yet but i mean for me the thing that like that close assault table just i think i'm starting to understand it but it just really didn't gel with me in terms of like work i think it's simple i think there's just something about the way i was reading it

or something but that feels weirdly counterintuitive the weird thing is we were really good with it the first i think maybe full turn or at least the first two upstages we were fine with that and then something happened in turn two where there was that time maybe it was upstage one where we were trying to figure it out and we both had a complete breakdown trying to figure it out i think we moved from like skirmishes of like very small groups to like divisions smashing into each other yeah maybe it was the stress of having to figure out everything else and then look at a table the table felt like it should have been more complicated i think that's part of it is that like there's only one value for both of you and yeah there's just something about it

that it's i'll get it but it's it doesn't feel intuitive well on the upside that's uh that's another week of it done andy we can take that one off yeah it's over we can we can put it in the desert of our mind and we can we can leave it there until next week we'll probably continue with the rest of the episode i suppose um we'll not wrap it up we should yeah yeah i guess people are used to an episode that's longer than 20 minutes of us talking about the game and then doing nothing else we tend to spiral a little bit and talk about stuff that's kind of unrelated thankfully we do have a bit of an anchor we do people sending in mail yes and for the most part it's it's usually related directly to the game and questions about the game or fun tangents fun

tangents are also good they keep us anchored in our own psyche and this week i believe we've got a little bit of a mixture we do and the first piece of mail we have is from tyler and the subject is regarding randomized democracy so this is more along the line of tangent yeah this is a common ground of mine well a few episodes ago yeah uh you point out actually episode 44 there we go greetings you two excellent gentlemen oh us you talking about us well thank you i'll take it thanks for all the work you put into such a great podcast oh us talking about us it's becoming less and less realistic i just want to point out that the common ground segment i love by the way this is capitalized common ground well it's a proper noun i like that yeah that's good that really

gives it some oomph yeah that's good segment of episode 44 about a new version that's quotation of democracy that involved randomly appointing mps from a pool of eligible voters mps are members of parliament for those who don't have a parliament um which i say that there's a lot of political terms that i read from other countries where it's probably commonplace and for me i'm just like i don't know what this is i google it and i'm like this is probably just something everyone knows um uh from a pool of eligible voters which you both rejected as obviously insane is in fact exactly how democracy in ancient greece worked the i'll butcher this b-o-u-l-e the bool yeah is that right you don't know that for sure you you're just giving me a pat on the back without

knowing what it looks correct to me the legislative body of ancient athens was comprised of 500 randomly appointed eligible citizens who served for only one year and could not be reappointed magistrates were also appointed at random to prevent cherry picking of appointees the athenians invented a device called the claritaria that efficiently randomized the available names this and a series of other checks and balances apparently work quite well to limit corruption the system of randomized appointment called sortition by political scientists was also used by several italian city-states in the renaissance and switzerland as late as 1837 i agree it sounds bonkers and ripe for corruption and paper but it has a track record of at least

some degree of success spanning thousands of years and frankly even if the result is unmitigated chaos as an american i fail to see a meaningful difference between that and my country's current system i say give it a go stay subtle humble and brave tyler well tyler there are some very poignant things you point to there uh now that we're in the far future and everything's perfect politically um i'm not sure what part of america's history you're referring to i could hazard a guess but uh when it comes to the fact that in deep history it's been used before andy maybe you're a genius i mean great minds think alike and i'm i'm up there with plato aristotle or maybe the likes of plato and aristotle back in the day would have just

ended up playing a board game for too long and started a podcast but back then there was just a vacuum of political power and people like them just fell into it and to be fair they also won politicians were they they were they would have been citizens i don't know if they ever got elected yeah i don't think they were yeah i i doubt they put together the the function of this um so i i don't know maybe maybe there's some spark of ingenuity and what you put together in that common ground maybe i just need a claritaria to remove any chance of corruption just use a you're just like random number generators online just use those they've already got them yeah we've got a claritaria we've we've got them we found the claritaria most people have difficulty finding

the claritaria but we found it so now we just need to pop that system into play oh it's it's blue humor it really is it's it's really really lazy comedy but it's it's good so yeah um i think the the fact that's been used fairly recently as well by italy of all places uh yeah italy of course very big on our historical radar yeah our present 1837 um for switzerland so europe had it going on i mean people say athens a lot of sort of thought comes from there geometry stuff then people were dumb for several like a thousand years or maybe even 2000 and then the renaissance happened again under this system maybe it's a good so you think that you're going to kickstart intelligence again by talking about this on the common ground segment of episode 44

of war with them yeah i'm gonna invent thinking 3.0 no don't don't reinvent the wheel and certainly don't reinvent it by using a hammer to make it into a square shape you should not be in charge of any political system whatsoever, Andy. I'm sorry. Why am I doing this? I love you, man. You've got so many good qualities, but leading some sort of political movement

should not be one of them. I can't allow that. I really can't. And if you get anywhere close to that, I'll have to bring you down. I'll cancel you. You can't cancel me. I can.

I'll trick you into saying something on the microphone. So many things you could say. So many things. But we'll not do that. We'll stay friends. Another thing I could say is this email from jack okay yeah let's say that let's say it out loud and let's let's keep this i guess relatively on track uh hello uh noting that you're projecting the game will take you

decades to complete but real uh the real life campaign for north africa only took four years can you calculate the ratio between your gameplay speed and the real life speed of the war slow uh yeah well i'll say this a turn is a week um we're just finishing up turn two it's been about nine months so 40 odd episodes so yeah if anyone could do the quick maths right now off the top of your head you can probably put it together i don't really want to think about it i could probably get a calculator out and check i'm not keen on the idea because it's probably going to send me into some sort of spiral and i won't sleep tonight oh well you might have actually answered his next question then how does it feel knowing that you could have actually fought the whole of

world war ii probably multiple times over in less time than it will take you to play this game well jack i can barely fight this fight on a a map that i have complete control over complete autonomy and the means of all technology that i want in order to keep track of things if i was in the actual campaign i'd be dead in i wouldn't get there i i would die i think um on route i don't have the best diet anyway i feel like i'm on a transport yeah i feel like i'd be unsafe on a boat and it would kill me so i guess i don't need to worry about that too much but in terms of the the scale of it i think we acknowledged a long time ago that this was always going to be longer than the actual campaign and yeah to be fair they were doing that war 24 7 and there's

more of them yeah this is the game meant for 10 players if we were playing this 24 7 with northwards of a million people actually that'd be too many chefs is that what happened with the war were there too many chefs spoiling the broth it would be much easier if you had less guys yeah that's it just do a nice concise 10 man war and that will be fine as another four are there any other board games that take longer to play than the real life concept they are representing my best thought is a racing game something like heat pedal the merrill which is a game about cars driving two laps around a racetrack the game takes about 60 minutes but real cars could do two laps of uh silverstone for example in three minutes

uh stay brash arrogant and cowardly jack oh god no jack's from an alternate universe oh that explains everything jack he's from the dark timeline oh he's from the bad universe where the campaign for north africa was a game worth buying and playing that that's an interesting one i like the idea of a board game that's racing cars around a track yeah that sounds fun i also do like the idea of a game that takes less uh that takes longer to play than the thing it's like representing i guess in a way monopoly well it's just the model of capitalism and realistically you can lose that immediately by taking out a loan that's just far too much or just being born in the wrong place yeah that's a good point the moment you're born

you essentially lose the game and that's it the socioeconomic factors mean that it's going to be now on impossible to escape all of the crushing debt you will incur and similar to monopoly you may play for the remaining 20 30 turns but it's a foregone conclusion you will not escape they will take your money and then eventually you just stop i mean you've taken that to a really dark place well yeah but we got asked a question jack's from the barge universe where it's it's brash arrogant and cowardly i'm being just that that is something i might look into because something else like is uh when a sci-fi film like an old one is now set in the past i love stuff like that yes i really feels like it's up the same sort of alley of yeah one of my favorite game series is the the

time splitters games for playstation yeah and it's so fun playing through some of those now and how many levels are set in the past for us now and they've all got like laser guns and stuff yeah it's like in the far future of 2005 well i think yeah one of them is 2005 i think the cyber den level on the first one is is cyber den 2005 yeah and it's all a bunch of cyborgs yeah and it's like 2005 finding nemo had just come out the year prior i think that was overly optimistic on their part but all the back to the future films though are they all now set in the pass uh yeah well the only one that goes to the future is back to the future part two which is 2015 and to be fair there are some parts of that film that are probably not worth commenting on

really um there's some parallels that uh that film got a lot right unfortunately yeah um hoverboards in fact don't work on water they were correct with that completely and credit to them another sci-fi film that was set I think it was 2020 Soylent Green Oh god it was And that predicted Huel

Oh that is interesting, you've brought Huel back into the mix We haven't talked about Huel in a good while I tried one And you did, I'm glad you caught yourself there, you saved yourself because I was about to call you out for it I came into yours a few weeks ago, and what did I see?

A drunk Huel on the floor. An empty Huel. The corner shop started selling them. I was like, I'll give this a try. Because I hate the idea of it, but maybe it's implemented well. Didn't care for it. How does it feel that you've had Huel more recently than me? Bad.

We need some more Huel. I need to get back on it. Well, actually, that's good, because it means you've stopped drinking Huel. yeah i've gone to a whole um buying cheap sausage rolls thing from uh from sainsbury's now that i endorse sainsbury's i've got some in my bag actually if you want one i had some cheap sausage rolls from uh greg's uh they're good though they're like premier yeah they're not cheap really well they're i wouldn't describe them as cheap because they're good i've got in my bag right now two sausage rolls that they cost 52 pence for two sausage rolls which i think is

pretty good value for money yeah uh one of them i uh well i had a few bags at work because i buy them in in sort of full packs i'm gonna toss you a pack here there you go that's for you they are i think 27 british pork real premium where's the rest of the pork from oh uh the rest of it isn't pork andy the rest of it is pastry and chemicals but it's it's fine it gets you through the day it's um aldi price matched as well that's why it's 52 pence hell yeah i don't know what that price matching because they don't package two sausage rolls like that in aldi so uh i've got no idea what the price match model is however what i am sure of is that i am incredibly grateful tyler and jack for your emails we we love to hear from you folk and but you know the fact that these

are about the game it really helps us keep on track to an extent um if you do want to get in touch send anything over info at war with a mate.co.uk is the email address and the instagram is war with a mate we take messages on there we also post stuff on there yeah and the web form andy is it working yes i tested it today awesome the web form is working it's confirmed the website is will war with a mate got the name of the podcast war with a mate.co.uk there's a web form on there we also we've got a bunch of pictures of the game on there as well yeah we recently dumped a bunch of stuff on the gallery, so... Yeah, check that out if you want to see what the game looks like

in action. We'll be organising that a lot better when we do the full thing. There's a lot of promises for the future. We will get to it. Right now, it's sort of the Wild West. We just want to get through Sixterns and know how the game works fully. And then, oh then, we are really committing

to this. Oh, it's going to be perfect. It's going to be streamlined. It's going to be the best podcast you've ever heard. Right now, it probably already is, let's face it. What's out there at the moment? It's just a bunch of celebrities talking about celebrity stuff. Barren wasteland of content. This is grassroots shit.

This is real working class people doing a real working class thing, like wasting their lives. It's beautiful. Realist capitalism being a worker this week. Oh, it's great. But, oh God, it's a lovely atmosphere, isn't it? We're all just having a ball. However, it does occur to me, Andy,

not everyone's always had a ball because this is based on a real event this is this is part of world war ii it was hectic to say the least it was a bit of a kerfuffle it was some real shenanigans happened and i'm still relatively uninformed on it i've learned a lot over the last year or so a lot of it through your history segments and we ended last week with abc as farewell his temporary swan song as we said goodbye to his history segment we got him up to world war ii so he's ready for a couple more episodes yeah you'll come back in the future and that means this is going to be a new history segment it is who do we have i guess the quote will give it away let's hear it now i only have

a word more to say about the desert rats they were the first to begin the 11th hussars were in action in the desert in 1940 and ever since you have kept steadily marching forward on the long road to victory through so many countries and changing scenes you have fought your way it is not without emotion that I can express to you what I feel about the desert rats dear desert rats may your glory ever shine may your laurels never fade may the memory of this glorious pilgrimage of war which you have made from Alamein via the Baltic to Berlin never die is a march unsurpassed through all the story of war so as my many reading of history leads me to believe may the fathers long tell the children of this tale that's winston churchill talking to

the seventh armored division in berlin now i knew this was coming at some point i know you've been doing some reading about them because when we started playing the game i bought a book about the seventh armored division yes the the desert rats i think it is called um churchill's desert rats the book that i've got yes i bought that i read about maybe a third of it and then i ended up stopping i reread house of leaves and and you borrowed it and at the time i didn't know that it was going to be a unit that i would encounter so early in the game i also didn't realize for a lot of the playing of the game that i was fighting the desert rats yes until maybe a month ago and that's when i realized that's actually who i've been fighting and i guess

you have really sold them short because everything i know of the seventh armor division and the desert rats is they are i mean the quote you've just read really is a testament to their capability their impressiveness and they've just kind of been fucking around in the game so far so i'm excited to hear how big that disparity is well it doesn't start great for them but it gets great the mobile force which was originally known as was formed on the 27th of september 1938 as tensions built between the axis and the british it's created because they're concerned about losing egypt because of the importance of the suez canal to the british empire which is massive it consisted of the cairo cavalry brigade made up of three armored regiments the 7th 8th

and 11th for sars the first royal tank regiment and it's supported by the third uh royal horse artillery and it had a royal army service corp attached to it and a field ambulance uh this is going to be the core that the rest of the seventh will form around but it is known as the uh mobile force at this point and it's the equipment it starts with is not great it's only mainly world war one stock so armored cars from world war one mark v1 tanks which are old and feeling the strain and the artillery is equipped with world war one era howitzers okay yeah so they're really just scraping the bottom of the barrel yeah this is a sort of pulled together thing in october 1938 It's joined by the 1st Infantry Battalion,

the King's Royal Rifle Corps, who, in our game, are currently deep behind enemy lines on a suicide mission. Oh my god, the truck bandits. Yes. Wow, you've really butchered history. At this point, the Mobile Force is actually jokingly referred to as the Immobile Force by people in Cairo.

They've got a derogatory nickname. They really are underdogs. Oh yeah. It's just not looking good for them until Major General Percy Hobart shows up. Here's a quote about his accomplishments, just to give you a sense of it. To have moulded the best two British Armoured Divisions of the war

was an outstanding achievement, but Hobart made it a hat-trick by subsequently training the specialised 79th Armoured Division, the Decisive Factor on D-Day. That's from a historian called Sir Basil Littleheart. This guy is a fantastic commander and trainer, and he whips them into shape here really interesting guy in his own right uh we mentioned the rommel funnies before the british version of that is the hobart funnies okay just an example

of that he designed floating tanks for d-day where they separate the bottom bit from the turret and put basically like hovercraft stuff in it so the tanks could float onto the beach which allowed them to use heavy armor at d-day oh wow so like a huge accomplishment um also the 11th farmer division is the other unit you trained that is another one of the most decorated divisions of the war so this guy really gets a unit into shape yeah so during the winter of uh 1938 to 1939 the division pulls itself together in cairo and he gets them slightly better equipment he gets them trained and in may 1939 they're sent to the western desert to put his ideas into practice he wants all his men to be desert wise to be able to live fight and win battles in the wastes of

the western desert the first royal tank regiment had served in the desert before in 1936 so they had um considerable experience and the 11th hussars who are prince albert's own hussars is okay and also referred to as the cherry pickers are the most experienced group they have it took time to get the division ready for fighting a desert war like equipment wise so he spends that time teaching them desert law improving their navigation skills and fitting sand filters to all their vehicles with the outbreak of war with germany on the 3rd of september 1939 the mobile division moves up to the egyptian libyan frontier where it takes a position with italy not being quite ready to join the war yet for the germans uh their field

training instead of seeing active combat the first loss the division suffers uh is actually self-inflicted when the war office retires general hobart of his command because he's fallen out with the general in command of the region sir henry wilson so he's sent back to britain and he drives away to a standing ovation from all his men this is a huge mistake uh he may have ended up wallowing uh not wallowing but he was in charge of like defense of the british isles which is more of a reserve unit okay until churchill later on is like no this guy knows what he's doing and gets them to do the 11th division and then the 79th okay yeah so they get this new general in major general michael krieger who is also good it's not sort of a toady swapping out thing they are lucky

enough to get a new good general oh right and he gets the more uh better equipment and throughout this time they start to change their names the light armor becomes the seventh armored brigade the heavy armored brigade in the fourth and the pivot group uh gains the second battalion uh the second rifle brigade you've also run into yes where were they uh they were they were the infantry unit that was separated uh when they fought the fourth the one to the south of them oh they were the ones who were flanking yes right yes i have run into them yeah so on the 16th of february 1940 the mobile division becomes the seventh armor division and around this time they also received the famous jabora divisional sign uh which is the desert rat that will give them their

name oh okay cool yeah they get this because the general krieger um sees a young local boy with a jabora in his pocket and he traces the shape of it in the sand using stones and then a picture of this is approved and drawn up by one of the troopers in the royal tank regiment who actually designs the logo and then the first badges produced were by nurses and given to the divisional hq and then they spread out and it became the symbol for this force and yeah gave them their name so he was the one who well essentially coined the name then yes uh which will go on to be because desert rats can refer specifically to this unit but it also becomes a generalized phase for anyone who fights in the western desert war is a desert rat okay so these are the the og desert rats yes

so on the 10th of june 1940 italy does join the war so four days later the on the 14th the king's royal rifle company the four horse artillery and the seven for stars capture a four capuzzo that rings a bell yeah where have i heard that before from the map but but i i yeah it's close to the border yeah that that's that's come up before um that's a that's a location i actually remember the name of while they're doing that the 11th for sars simultaneously push and take fort magdalena oh oh here it is yeah it's it's life imitating art yeah two days after this the first tank battle of the i'm gonna call it a tank battle we'll see in a second uh of the western desert campaign takes place uh the 11th facades come across two italian columns heading to reinforce uh fort

capuzzo the first column is made up of 12 l3 slash 33 tankettes these are silly vehicles i've seen them in that do you know what they look like um these might these might be the ones remember episode three we had cappuccino machines yes we had the echoes of war guys on yeah and they kept on referring to the cappuccino machines i looked them up afterwards realized that's what i have i do know what these are i've seen them yes they're little two-man tanks with like a shitty gun and no armor yes why have you even made these they look like machines designed to kill italian men yeah so they come across a column of 12 of these accompanied by 30 lorries and a second column made up of 17 of them accompanied by 300 infantry the 11th hussars regroup and bring up

their artillery to assist and while that's happening they send two of their armored cars to attack the column and they managed to destroy two of these tankettes at the cost of a damaged car so these cars are heavily armored and more dangerous than these tankettes um well yeah it's like calling yeah it's like cigarillos yes this is not a cigar this is something else yeah they are these are two actual real tanks what pluto is to planet so what's follows is called the battle of gibra uh grba the italians form up in a hollow square which is like napoleon era tactics oh yeah great do that in the desert with your tank yeah at this square they conceal one of their four guns at each of the corners uh park the trucks in between them and the infantry are going to use

them as cover okay so that you they're using the tanks as cover uh the trucks they also hold the trucks the tanks are patrolling the borders before the tanks are sent after the british armor unsupported by artillery and infantry the british tanks which are supported by them absolutely smash them so there's some combined arms for you of course uh so now these tankettes are out of the way the british a9 cruisers start circling the square firing at them as the british artillery starts uh shelling the right flank of these trucks to expose the infantry on the tank's second loop the italians uh reveal their hidden uh artillery and start to shoot the armor and at this point the fight essentially breaks up into four engagements

one at each corner between the guns and the tanks here the tanks take out the italian gunners and the infantry routes of course and starts to flee in the battle the 11th facades destroyed eight tanks while the seventh destroyed nine of these tankettes all four guns were destroyed and they took over a hundred prisoners basically destroying an italian infantry battalion and wiping out two companies of tanks with like a reconnaissance force and it's also it's starting to uh allude to the massive amount of prisoners that were taken during this campaign yes this could have gone very differently for the italians but they made some really major operational and tactical mistakes this feels like something we've heard before yep they only had high explosive ammo

with them but not armor piercing ammo which really limited their effectiveness against the british tanks uh they had no anti-tank guns in the column why good question because that's explicitly against italian military doctrine at the time all right so this wasn't they weren't caught with their pants down they were it was negligent yes it was and then there were mistakes were all compounded by using the tankettes incorrectly and not having a combined arms thing with them right so the combine arms thing has some historical precedent here this is actually no this is this is really interesting this actually speaks to why the rule really does have some sense to it because i i've always thought this when we've been playing the game it's a not an odd thing but i've tried to

visualize it a lot about these infantry garrisoning the the armor yeah and how it would be ineffective but the fact that it's yeah this actually seems like there is a reason for it to be ineffective yeah also tanks someone might correct me on this tanks aren't great at this time as anti-personnel well i guess they're like for breaking up fortifications attacking buildings and cities but they've got like typically one main gun with maybe two or three machine guns on them which are effective against infantry but if you've got like several thousand infantry running at 10 tanks they win they win just because the tanks need support yeah no yeah yeah i guess i've always had a sort of blind spot in my mind where i was like well it's a tank if you're men yeah the tank's

gonna win but thinking about it logistically you can only take out so many men before they're just upon the tank yeah so even if they're just getting into the tank that's bad but they can also take out the gunners and yeah so this is i believe this is the first direct engagement on like a they've obviously attacked these forts but this is the first sort of two forces really coming together of the western desert campaign certainly the first tank battle while all that's happening the 11th also captured the engineer in chief of the italian 10th army they managed to get him one of his staff officers two of their lady friends who were in the car with them why are you bringing your lady friends out into the front i it just makes no sense but even more importantly

he's carrying maps because he's the chief engineer of the defenses around bardia oh my god which is important later on for the allies strategy this guy really fucks up yes this guy has yeah this this is like if yeah i was going to make a death star comparison of someone having the death star plans but it's also bringing along his lady friends just stop bringing civilians out into the front lines of the desert war yeah it's just bizarre despite their success here they don't have the men to hold the garrisons they've taken uh which is why you have them at the start of the game right okay um so they have to leave and the uh italians recapturing garrison for capuzzo despite this and the raids they're doing it's not really slowing down the

italian build-up it's sort of a nuisance but it's not a major setback but while this is happening um they were going to send more of the division's tanks forward but they decided not to to avoid breakdowns and supply issues so the majority of the seventh armored division's tanks are up at this point which left one tank regiment uh with the first uh king's royal rifle company with an additional two infantry battalions and their artillery monitoring a 60 mile section of the border big portion yeah the hussars their instructions would harass any italian probes and to attempt to delay but not get seriously engaged in an offensive okay so between the 11th of june and the 9th of september they inflicted three and a half thousand italian casualties for the loss of

150 men that seems like more than just harassing yeah meanwhile the strength of the tanks in the division rose to 70 at mercenary true active with an additional 15 being repaired from wear and tear so they're really building up their force here which brings us up to friday the 13th september 1940 when a nine-lived piece of shit called rodolfo graziani begins his defense offensive uh and that we brought it up to the start of the game and we'll find out more about what they did during the actual conflict coming up next week oh wow and that's interesting because friday 13th of course spooky date yeah next week's episode will release on halloween so the arrival of the spooky figure of graziani and his uh haunting effect on the north african

campaign yeah very fitting very thematic that's tied in very nicely but this is yeah this is a You know, that's just continually impressive from basically the time Hobart gets his hands on them to the age they take Bill in. Yeah, I've heard nothing but high regard held for them through everything I've seen and read. So I think finding out more about these will be really interesting.

Well, the fact Churchill, who despite what you want to say about him, is a fairly legitimate historian in his own right and leading the country through this war, is describing them as having a story unmatched in the history of war is very impressive yeah that's it the guy if he's giving an accolade to something he probably means it from the point of they had an influence yeah and a significant one and again i feel like and this is again coming from a layman who knew nothing about the north

african campaign when we got the game um i don't believe the north african campaign is a part of the war that is held in the the sort of typical annals of history where it's spoke about a lot so for a unit to be as heavily decorated and recognized it really speaks to what capability they brought to the conflict yeah i think that's a thing of it being sort of not taught at least in schools with us because there's some the 28th maori went through there the second new zealand went through there who are gonna get an episode at some point are very impressive one of them is the only person to win two victoria crosses in the whole war yeah so we're talking about people with like real accolades some really very impressive units in the uh yeah the western

desert campaign and obviously it's where rommel made his legend as well so i think there is stuff that sort of leaks out of it but i agree i knew nothing about it before we started what's i was going to make a weird um point there of it seems like a lot of the people listening have a lot of knowledge about all of this and and drop it in thing is i bet a lot of the people listening are probably quite interested in this portion of history yeah probably why they came across this in the first place yeah so i guess i'll drop that comparison and that's a that's a non-comment but it is a really interesting theory and a very unique theater yeah which is why you get the sas from here and the long range desert group and they're trying weird things as well well yeah yeah

after when you're you're dealing with an environment that's been seldom fought in with this kind of warfare yeah sort of fought in for the first time on this mechanized scale because deserts were something you went through to have a fight you didn't fight in the desert and and this could also be very uninformed but i i'll say it as well maybe never again was there ever a war like this in this environment there's been obviously wars in this kind of climate but for in this specific it's sort of a weird portion of history where it's fully mechanized warfare but it's not quite you know we're not talking like drone warfare yeah we're not talking about the kind of technology available now in modern war it is somewhere between yeah i yeah i'd maybe have to look at

well i would have to look into that more to give you a good answer but uh there's also the thing of like a lot of the wars we consider to be happening in deserts now and like the middle eastern stuff that like i remember in the ralph bagnell's book uh living in sands he goes there's two types of deserts yeah i remember that and i think this is the one that's happening in the second more extreme type of desert yes this is like middle of nowhere desert this is yeah complete waste like i think very few conflicts happen like 200 miles from a city yeah like it's a weird you are such a vast space they're fighting in whereas like the fighting in europe is so dense it's urban for the most part i guess maybe the distance the pacific theater

might be comparable where the dangerous vast environment is the ocean yes rather than the desert but the third type of desert probably yeah the two comparably dangerous environments potentially yeah it's yeah it's it again it just genuinely interests me it fascinates me and it terrifies me and sometimes it's scary when we go from playing the game and it's fairly light hearted because we're just doing spreadsheets and not really enjoying a lot of the game

and then enjoying parts of it and that's the conflict we have and then I learn about the history and I'm like yeah this was real I was going to say this isn't Monopoly we've just touched on the fact that's also dark and real we've also seen Jaboras oh we did

we saw them in Budapest yeah in a Budapest zoo not quite the common Gundy no they were cool but I guess another weird link into Hungary since we're mentioning it the name Hussars

was the Hungarian light cavalry and the British co-opted the name for its light cavalry which then became tank regiments so like the 11th Hussars and the 7th Hussars and stuff that name traces also to Hungary

all roads lead to Hungary that's what they say the roads they're long, they're winding and they involve both of us you and I Hungary did and this game does

and the conflict will for the foreseeable future we will spend I mean if you take about how long we've known each other now by the time we finish this most of our time knowing each other we'll have spent playing this game.

Yes. Which means we need to stay friends. We do. What have you got for me? You know what's coming. It's 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. common ground is the segment in which we need to find it we need to be able to get a place where we can agree where we can drop the conflict of the game we can just find a topic to agree on no matter how difficult that may be and i've i've come prepared as always for my week because we

alternate it's only fair and i i have a an idea for common ground the common ground is that the bus driver should be thanking me I shouldn't be thanking them okay you're gonna have to do a lot of work to get me to agree with you here what I've had a few bad experiences on the bus recently

okay so this is I guess one of the more I wouldn't say selfish and indulgent common ground ideas but I would yeah but that's why we need to agree on it eventually Andy so

the issue is we've got that celebrity in the corner who's completely misunderstands everything that's the issue with having a celebrity guest on every episode and they've been quiet up until episode 40 odd and now they're

trying to pipe up in the background as if they've ever got the bus they don't have a mic for good reason after what they did I think that was a media PR crisis but we'll not get into that so why should we scorn Bus Drive? you know i think there's just a little something about when i go to get on the bus and i go to get on and there's this weird tension when i ask for a ticket so i had a situation not

too long ago where i got into the bus and i said and i hadn't gotten the bus for a while at this point by the way we're talking years i get um i get the train for the most part and that's that's easy because you go to a machine you buy the ticket and the ticket is sort of you know what area you want to go to you buy the ticket you get on and occasionally you'll get it checked depending on whether or not inspectors are about but that's sort of it just to say you're saying this is easy the last time we tried to get a train together we got a bus because the train didn't work that was no it's not that the train didn't work we couldn't get the train the train was not Because it wasn't running.

Somebody died on the tracks. Okay, I didn't know if we needed to say that. So we couldn't get the train. It was a tragedy. So we got the bus as the alternative. Okay, but yes, trains are easy and they work properly. Yeah, they are, for the most part. I guess in Britain, trains aren't necessary.

I guess we're getting off topic. Trains are bad. If I had to say thank you to a train driver, I probably also would maybe have some contention with that. Okay, yeah, but we're getting sidetracked. What's the problem with buses, then? So I went to get on, and yeah, trains are easy, but you go to get on the bus, and I said,

can I have a day ticket, please? And they went, why do you want a day ticket? And I'm like, do you usually do this? Do you usually question the validity of me wanting to buy a ticket? So I was like, well, I would like a day ticket. And he went, well, why? It's more expensive. My first thought was more expensive than what exactly? Yeah.

Because you don't know what my journey today is going to look like. I could be getting 15 single tickets, and that's going to mount up to surely beyond a day ticket. Yeah. Isn't a day ticket cheaper than two singles? Yeah. So it turns out, no. At the moment, it is cheaper to get two singles than a day ticket.

A day ticket, your savings really come from three or more singles. But I didn't know that. Apparently, you didn't know that either. which that's completely fine isn't it it's fine to not know how much economic value you're going to get from a day ticket yeah because you see when i get the bus to work i get two singles because the i kept losing the date that that's a that's a fun other angle you've got on this but i like it it all plays into the bus meta okay so i i then say okay well what what is the can i have a return ticket then well the people behind you yes and there's like a full bus of people watching you

they're all that's why i hate this okay that is why i hate the situation that is what really puts me on edge here because it makes me feel like this this bus driver and i need to be very clear here this is not all bus drivers i bet there are a ton of bus drivers out there that are just absolute saints just lovely people and they don't want to inconvenience anyone they're probably just going about their day but after this event i've got the bus more this isn't the only time i've had issues with with bus drivers okay but in this instance i then say well i'll have a return ticket and he said we don't do return tickets so now i'm in this awkward position where i'm like well i feel like you're asking me to ask you well what are the tickets and but i'm not going to give

him the satisfaction so instead i say well i'll have a day ticket please and he says well fine that'll be eight pounds and i go okay fine that's expensive and he rolls his eyes as i pay eight pounds towards this this this company this system he's part of i'm giving money into this organization that he's part of and he's upset about it he's angry and i don't know why i don't know what i've done wrong i don't know what the logistics of this are i found out afterwards that a single is is two pounds fifty yeah so if i'm getting two singles which by chance i was for that day i'm getting two singles i'm getting a journey there journey back five pounds it's less than the eight pounds so he was going to save me money with a day ticket the thing is i don't know that

and he knows i don't know that i asked for a day ticket does he say that to everyone who buys a day ticket every time someone buys a day ticket does he say why do you want a day ticket that's wild in what other profession do you do that does someone ask to buy something and you go i get upselling this is not upselling this is down selling well that's him being a he's looking out for you i don't think it is not in a way you liked but he's trying to save you some money i'd like to think annie i can read social cues to a degree and the way he was talking was not someone who's looking out for my best interests this was a man who had it in for me okay and i don't know why because i definitely haven't met the man before because i hadn't got buses in years

and then since then i've had more of these situations where i uh and i i get i imagine this is fairly commonplace across the world anywhere where there's buses where there's some sort of um like bus card or pass or i was gonna say loyalty card i don't know all the terms for buses i don't like them but instead of tapping your debit or credit card on a contactless payment there's a like a bus card you can yeah yeah whatever brand it is whatever it is wherever you are and i i asked for a ticket i went to pay contactless and it said tap card and it was there immediately and i put my card on and he went no not yet and i was like oh okay it said tap card i was just thinking internally why did it say tap card so then i went to do it again and i was again

too fast and he went no not yet and he's getting more annoyed and there's again people behind me and i'm i'm sweating now i don't know what's going on i'm like why is my card why am i not being allowed to tap my card and well i got onto the bus afterwards on my third attempt it did actually pay um because i came up with the price 250 paid for it sat down person i was with said yeah that's for the the bus card that's when you've got the card and you you tap that down first and then it takes on the the cost onto your card your bus card yeah i'm like right okay but i don't know that and i know that this bus driver does this day in day out this is their job they probably get sick of people who are inept with buses but by the same merit it's always going to be someone's first day

on the bus it's not fair to chastise them it's not i'm not trying to make that job inconvenient i'm trying to get on the bus and go somewhere and i'll always be courteous i'll always get off the bus i'll say thank you even on those instances i said thank you do you actually have a similar thing with the buses when i get them from outside of here yeah because there's a lower rate if you don't go quite as far so if i say oh i just i want to go into town they'll be like where and the first time i started getting buses again once i moved here i was like town why does it matter why does it matter and then i was like oh i'm going here and then he's like oh that's less you know it's like no i didn't but again they're looking out for you they're saving you money

yes i suppose they are but why does it have to be a battle why does it have to be passive aggressive the thing is the amount of back and forth it took between the well why do you want that there's no such thing as a return ticket they could have just easily said by the way a day ticket is eight pounds two singles are five pound and i go oh sorry in that case i'll have a single i'll get another single later so i'm thanking these people i'm getting off the bus i'm being courteous but i feel like just just a little bit of humility maybe that's how we balance this out just a fucking hair would be nice, just a little bit of

give back I just, I want, maybe not maybe we'll spin it, maybe I don't need a thank you, maybe I just need courtesy I just need to know that they don't hate me I just, I can't deal with getting on a bus and feeling

like I'm in the wrong because I'm not I'm just getting on a bus a lot of places in europe you don't get on and talk to the driver at all that feels worse like they're halfway down the train and then you just tap the card when you get on i don't know that feels like do you have to go past them when you get on no they're like doors are oh in the middle yeah right okay see i would feel bad if i was walking past the driver and i didn't acknowledge them at all yeah that's i feel like that would be rude yeah

because you're going right past the person doing it same way if on a train you have to like get on the other and they said cockpit that's not what trains have if i had to get on at the cabin and i wasn't saying anything i'd feel rude yeah but i i don't know there's this disconnect where do you sit on this i've come around a bit because when you first said it it was nuts i don't know i feel like you shouldn't applaud you i had to go i never said applaud thank okay i'd i'll also say that they shouldn't have to thank you but uh yeah i guess it's i do agree with the thing of if you've not taken a bus for a while you don't know the like bus rules exactly it's and you know what the thing is as well

where the fuck do you find them fine the bus rules oh yeah there's no like like trains it's fine you can usually look online they've got like sort of sheets of like you go from this zone to this zone you buy this ticket where there's not that for buses you have to deal with the interaction on the bus and in what situation do you have enough time and comfort to go onto the bus and ask the bus driver there is no situation in which that's not going to end with a passive aggressive comment yeah this this isn't on the drivers this is on the bus companies also i think the ones with doors in the middle of trams not buses oh fair enough which is somewhere between train and bus yeah yeah i get what you mean um it is a weird experience getting on the bus when you don't

know what you're doing and you just as an adult being like please help me yeah i just want public transport to be fine i just want to be able to get on i'm i'm saving the planet here you know i'm doing a good thing objectively i think i think that should just be at least not praise that's crazy but acknowledged I should be let off a little bit for not knowing the bus rules is what I'm saying I just want to get on the bus

that's fair yeah you've actually got me round I do think the common ground could be that bus rules should be less opaque okay I'll take that bus rules should be less opaque yeah it's not on the drivers

the company shouldn't be delegating it to the drivers yes the responsibility should not be put on the drivers they're there to drive a bus, that's their job that's what they're getting paid for, they shouldn't have to explain it visibility of the bus rules would solve all of this yeah, you've got the timetable and then you

yeah, timetable, this is what you need to pay to get to this area it's got how long it'll take to get to the places that's wrong by the way, it's a lie but it should also have how much the ticket costs well, I came down my street after COVID

and they not COVID but for some reason the bus oh the buses went on strike here a while ago and then I knew everything was back to normal when I was walking down my street and I saw

four buses with the same they're the same number like they're on the same route they are meant to be 15 minutes apart all visible coming up my street at the same time having a like stop

and then everyone who's waiting for the bus gets on the first one but people want to get off the free behind it so they have to stop anyway and I just walk around the street going there's four buses there like

everything's back to normal well you know what they say Andy you wait for a bus and then two come along at the same time but for now you'll have to wait until next week for the next one to come along because unlike this week you know

this week we, well I guess last week we saw two episodes posted at the same time it's the same episode twice you don't have to listen to it twice, there's nothing extra there's nothing special no there's not, don't put that in people's mind there's not, the same episode appeared twice on Spotify and everything else

we don't know why, and we can't fix it we objectively can't fix it unless we delete the episode, we can't fix that but next week it will be one episode this week is one episode we don't know why that happens let's not promise anything that's a good point you could be listening to this twice again but what i am saying is goodbye it's good night it's farewell thank you very much for listening stay subtle humble and brave and stay safe getting on that bus to drive through the deserts of your mind i wish they'd advertise

We'll see you next time.