War With A Mate - Episode 51: The Sandstorm

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

This week, the guys PROMISE the weather is an important aspect of the episode. Not just that, but there's a storm of flavour in James' belly! The camels come dangerously close to becoming real and the 7th Armoured Division's return to the History Segment illustrates the massive role that prisoners played in the real campaign - all topped off with Andy's Common Ground which puts an interesting spin on feudal honour. War With A Mate is supporting Movember this year, with James sporting a truly embarrassing excuse of a moustache. For those that can give to a valuable charity, it would mean the world (plus if we hit £1,000 James will get a silly tattoo!)https://movember.com/m/15500393?mc=1movember.com

Hello! It's almost time for War with a Mate, but it's currently November, which is a good chance to do something good through the means of Movember, which, for me, currently consists of sporting a pretty embarrassing moustache. Got rid of the facial hair I did have, now I have a little bit of facial hair, and I do not suit a moustache. It's coming in alright, we'll see how it is. It's been a few days, I only shaved a few days ago, I didn't shave on the 1st of November, so I can feel the kind of stubble. It's odd having to shave all the time, but it is for a good cause. Movember is in support of the prevention of the death of young men, whether that's through the mental health crisis of suicide, whether that's through prostate cancer or testicular cancer. It's raising awareness and

money for people who really are in need of that. So I'm raising money for that. What we'll be doing is popping a link in the description of this episode i'm aiming for a raising of 100 pounds and if i hit that goal i'll show you all this ridiculous excuse for a mustache come the end of november and also committed to should we hit a thousand pounds okay you're doing this i'll even get a a war with a made tattoo something some description something silly probably but i'll i'll do that and i'm terrified of tattoos but it's an important cause it's one that i value it's close to my heart and if you have a friend or anyone you know who you haven't talked to in a while or someone you feel needs a talking to have that conversation look after your own health look

after your friend's health reach out talk to people doesn't matter how it is whatever you say whatever you do even if it's playing a very long board game for a very long time it doesn't matter how you hang out or how you look out for another person it's just important that you do but that's enough of the important stuff let's get on to the less important nonsensical stuff let's do some thank you and we're off this is it the starting gun has been fired this is war with the maid the podcast where we have starting guns oh he's firing them help me out in the edit oh no it's just gonna be duck noises so fun i love a good duck noise i think probably one of the the funniest not sounds

Yeah, yeah. I was going to say the funniest sound that's not inherently comedic when you hear it out in the wild. You hear a fart out in the wild, you're going to have a giggle. Oh, yeah. You hear a duck out in the wild, you don't laugh. But then if you put it into a situation where a duck shouldn't be, here come the chuckles. An unexpected honk. Unexpected honk. I believe that's the first Hobbit film. This is War with a Mate with me, James, a very funny man.

And me, Andy. A very funny man. We're just two very funny men, and we're here to play the Campaign for North Africa. A very funny game. Funny in the sense that it's really long. That's sort of where the humor starts and ends. It's very complicated as well, I guess, if you're into that sort of thing. That might be funny too. I'm having a whale of a time, Andy. How are you? Same. This was a goodie. This was a good session, I think. Yeah, I agree. we were weirdly came in we were pretty low energy uh you can't be doing that

i can't be doing what eating on mike i'm not eating on mike you are i'm eating off mike even if you edit it out it's distracting me now i'm just having a bit of popcorn andy okay so we came in for turn three we kicked it off yeah very uneventful naval convoy stage i agree you you looked for my guys and once again did not find them that mediterranean it's hard to find me well the thing is it's it's it's a vast open space of water and you're looking for three humble convoys of course you're gonna have a hard time doing it it shouldn't be this hard well just like your long-range desert group maybe they need to book up their ideas maybe they need to actually start doing stuff well we'll get to that because those guys are back in action

but i wouldn't say back in action because that indicates that they've been in action at some point rather than just some fictional force that might do something in action i guess yeah uneventful naval convoys we jumped over we've done i did a bit of my well most of my store expenditure beforehand you're gonna do it as homework yes i've now got a bit of a copy paste formula already you came across a little gem when it comes to the sheets we're using we now have a way to automate a little bit more of the water and fuel evaporation yes i've been using a google app scripts javascript oh god it's a mess but it will help in the final game yeah we said we're playing the whole game but we were allowed to use help we're not automating especially if we

make it yeah we're doing manual intervention so it counts we're allowed to do that all of you naysayers out there this is fine we're allowed to do it it's our game that's richard berg's game but we're borrowing it yeah we're having a go at it eventually he's gonna show up on the playground and take it away because it's his football and we're not allowed to play the game i'm ruining it for him we're allowed to play his game we just we can't have it for our own you know what i can have for my own andy i can have this this bag here of popcorn you know what's great i've i've found recently so there's a there's a buttered popcorn um it's microwave popcorn that i really love and they do it in a shop near mine and i found just today that they also do it at the shop

next to andy's so i've rushed there as soon as i found out that they do a lovely coffee actually this all stemmed from that lovely coffee you gave me andy it was nice coffee yeah it's a it's a salted caramel coffee and i'm enjoying a cup right now just to keep me zested up and i love it i immediately as soon as you said it was sold at the shop around your uh you know your your area popped around bought a pack while we were setting up to record and also saw this beautiful butter popcorn so now i'm enjoying a salted caramel coffee and a bag of microwave butter popcorn and it's delicious i just wish you were doing it on mic well no one can hear it i'm sitting away from the mic when i'm enjoying it okay it's better when it's warm so if i enjoy it while it's warm

i'm having the best experience and you want me to have fun don't you andy there's an hour window where we need to be able to talk i can still talk i can talk with my mouthful to you um i'll just i'll edit around it no one will know this is gonna be a short one oh no i will drag this out if anything it's gonna be longer because we'll have to break in between but anyway you were saying um when it comes to your moves because it's been mostly your moves today it's been a very big andy session not much of a james session yeah so we handed our organization phase got that sorted uh went straight into the air phase which because of the sandstorms you couldn't really uh i guess participate in uh yeah well i did have a very crushing moment when i sat there you were

working out your air stuff i started working out my air stuff determining how many bombs i had and i said to you this is probably going to be the last bombing run that i do for a long while because i'm sort of hamstrung after this and then you just told me i can't bomb and then i remembered what was going on then i recalled that because of what you did last time i can't actually do anything love a sandstorm you ruled bad weather good for me bad for james uh bad for james no apologies here yeah that's what i'm kind of annoyed about that's that's that's the gripe i've got if i'm if i'm being completely transparent my gripe is that you've kind of ruined my air stuff i'll take it that's been the second part of my doctrine fuck the trucks fuck the planes

just fuck me i guess is what's going on here well when i get fucked the land sorted yes it's sort of building towards that a three-pronged attack on my psyche so because we couldn't fly into the sandstorm and you couldn't fly out of it it basically meant the entire raf in north africa went after the uh saharan detachment didn't love that did not love that the saharan detachment that i've nurtured into your enemy space all the way to map d is now a shell of its former self granted you didn't take out too much of it permanently but you did do two bombing runs and four strafe missions yes so that's that's demanded it is kind of but i just felt the need so i dropped basically the max column of bombs on them 471 plus yes i think it was like 503 in the

end dropped them right on their heads pinned all the infantry in there and one of the guns but there was a narrow escape on the first camel kill of the game that really shook me to my core because i was looking at the saharan detachment and what they have on their roster and one of them is indeed the the camel group yeah they are there and they are the only group that you didn't hit with bombs um or strafe they're the only thing that was left completely unscathed by that and that air mission in in total yeah i was really scared we were gonna have to start finally determining what the camels do fortunately we've we've saved it for now so that's something to work out later i don't like how close it came though that was dangerous territory we could have

had to figure out what the camels do today you realize how fundamentally damaging that is to our brand our whole thing is based on this it's all around oh did they finish the game well yeah probably eventually but what are the camels for they can never answer that if they answer it it's like if doctor who told you what his name is just let down whatever whatever the answer is it's not going to be satisfying it's the same with the camels whenever you find out what the camels actually are it's it's not fun anymore that's why everyone's stuck around it's been a year since we got the game andy we still don't know what the camels are for if we tell them now you're really trying to gaslight me into preserving the camels aren't you i'm not trying to gaslight you i'm

telling you right now preserve the camels gaslighting you would be uh convincing you that there's some sort of you know self-interest for you i'm telling you right now i need this i'm being this is the most honest i've been that's not good either well yeah i guess that does show that i've been quite heartless and cruel and um obfuscating with all of the truth but you know that's that's war it's war with a mate it's not have a good time that's open and honest with a mate it's a long title that would not go well with seo yeah no one wants to really hear that so yes big bombing run then i did a little bombing run because my skewers i'm definitely pronouncing that wrong are dive bombers so they strafed and bombed uh your frontline trucks

also didn't love that found that's available as an option that's fun yeah um i because we had a little um rules look over where i wasn't sure that you could definitely do that to first line trucks then you pointed out the part in the rules where it specifies specifically dive bombers can do that so there go a couple of trucks because you took out two trucks that are first line well and then you took out another two trucks i bombed the first line with the skewers who are part of the group that strafed the first line yes got two first line trucks which are the trucks attached to the unit carrying their supplies directly uh and then i strafed three more infantry things got two more toe points so i mean for the amount of investment from my air force for the the damage it did

probably wouldn't be worth it in general because they couldn't do anything else it was because uh we've had some concerns about strafing being overpowered some people uh someone emailed us about that and uh yes i think there's maybe potential for um because they do directly kill tow which no other real aircraft stuff do yeah strafing is unique because i thought i thought bombing was essentially what strafing is when we first started when i looked at how much i could do with bombing i thought wow i'm gonna really yeah pick off some two points here committed wholeheartedly realized i was just pinning you yeah and then i sort of went the other way where i was like well bombing's great because it's actually battalions that you're pinning it's

not individual toe points and then i swung back the other way when i was like oh this is strafing does what i thought bombing did yeah so then i was like right strafing is incredibly overpowered overpowered within the measures of the game i don't because we talked about this a little bit today in the relevancy of the the email that we've got and i don't think it's game breaking i just think it's powerful yeah i think strafing is a very useful tool in the arsenal of your air missions i don't think it ruins the game however when it comes to my air superiority i'm interested to see if that does some real damage in the the full playthrough because i haven't used it to its full extent for a while i use my being sort of hampered by supplies and then i've been hunting

your sgs use pretty aggressively but also for the first i think maybe the full turn the first full turn i didn't strafe no i i've solely used the fighters for um sort of screening missions yeah i guess that is also the payoff you have to choose are you going to screen are you going to hunt enemy like bombers or are you going to strafe i think if i knew at the time i could strafe i think a lot of my bombers would have went undefended for a good while right i think i just would have went sort of balls to the wall let's drop some bombs let's do some strafing let's spread out the air force because you can't cover all areas that i'm gonna hit yeah because when you defend as well and i fly planes in you have to commit to taking out a particular mission you can't take on

everything that's coming into that hex no so you'd have to pick between stopping the bombers or stopping the fighters yeah i mean i'd probably stop the bombers in most cases but i guess it's case by case well bombers have the biggest impact on close assault yeah because i can pin you and just remove a group from being present in a close assault which will reduce their maneuverability in a close assault whereas strafing i can slowly chip away and erode a force in that next close assault it won't have a massive impact but over time i'm just making your forces hemorrhage yeah you're making them smaller so yeah i think it'll be interesting to see how strafing plays out i think it's almost like a new toy at the minute where we're we are getting very overzealous out

of strafing um yeah that was a pretty quick air phase because it was all the missions were going to one thing yeah and again i couldn't do mine so that was uh that was a very one-sided one and yes you fire them off pretty rapid it was just a couple toe points of my men um which also took the trucks that were transporting them alongside and because you've pinned so many of my units you pinned everyone but the camels yeah and i did have a fun idea of just sending the camels off on their own i thought that might be a fun way to explore the camels but i thought let's not jeopardize my stance in the game for the ongoing meta of the camels are funny but i did think about it it did cross my mind so now they're stuck the saharan detachment can't move for this

offstage which i'm happy with which i'm yeah that was as soon as the weather was rolled we knew where that was going well yeah we had a sort of laugh at the end of last session when we did the weather because it was like the only thing attackable by either of us with planes is your guys yeah it's it's insane how unlucky they are just crossing the threshold into map d right when that weather hits that's insanely bad look but uh i'm pretty happy with it my plan is i was hoping to take more frontline trucks so they got stranded like if they didn't have the fuel and water to keep them going they just sort of linger down there in the qatar and depression and then die no i think they've got enough to go they are they're fine for supplies because their stores

were fine for this opposite well this turn yeah and water wise you don't deplete a whole lot of water there's not a there's not a ton of them i was saying to you earlier actually the ratio of trucks to men in that particular group is some of the best i've got out of all of them yeah some of the divisions that come pre-fit with a certain amount of trucks are pretty well off just because the game has kind of balanced it for me there was no room for me to make that mistake so yeah they're actually quite well off however them being pinned for a whole op stage does scupper their plan which is move as fast as you can and just bolt towards your guys with a whole upstage lost that has reduced their effectiveness in the scenario pretty significantly i think it's a

measurable difference you've made with that it's let me cleared some of the stuff off the top road as well yeah you don't need to have a worry about them getting caught midway yeah on their own all to the supply situation like i had a last truck convoy stage i was like careful to leave the truck convoys they didn't go as far as they could off because i didn't want to leave just a truck on the road where it's like oh you burn the cpa and maybe give them some bad cohesion but you get a massive convoy which realistically is the way i was looking at it when you started to strafe and bomb i was like right if they miss with the bombs and they just strafe a bit and take out some trucks then i am going straight up there taking the trucks back making up for losses and then

zip around in some of the trucks i also waxed about some of the idea of planting an airfield on map d and then flying planes over so that if another situation like this arises i've got a an air force contingency ready on map d yeah yeah so i can do some stuff there which would be limited and i know for a fact you'd want to try and take that airfield out but the benefit is i don't think you can bomb sgsu specifically you can you can bomb the airfield and reduce its capacity and if you reduce it to a point because you need to double check there's a big difference between making an air field which is multiple and an air strip

air strip only handles one squad, an air field is six, so it's vastly different, resource wise it's a big commitment, but you could bomb them, but from what I remember when you bomb them it's pretty hard to take out a lot, you can take out the planes

fairly easy, it's relatively easy to take out one or two levels, I think when I bombed Mercer, not Mercer when I bombed Fort Magdalena before i took it with the seventh i think i took out three of the six i think you did but i think that was a big commitment as well and i didn't i didn't fight back against it yeah it was all my bombers yeah at that point it was like if i split them there there's a high chance both do nothing yes yeah so i think that was a yeah i i think that was a really good air session because for me

as a spectator i got to review a lot of the damage done without getting to have my own input i think it puts it in a very different perspective when i'm not just watching you and then be like all right let's get this out the way now i'm going to do my thing in retaliation it's just sat there watching it happen and kind of going right every f every f is i'm losing stuff to this kind of effect yes this was an exaggerated one but i think it sort of put an interesting spin on it's the potential like the losses i can take or alternatively the damage i can do if i make a focused attack on one group i can really scupper them quite a bit yeah so i think it has changed the way i've seen things it's kind of been eye-opening it's just a shame it came at the cost of my ace in

the sleeve yeah but like as that was the entire raf in north africa to kill 200 guys i think the pinning is probably more useful to like lock a plane someone down for a turn because i don't think you're ever going to be like taking a division out definitely not you know even over like two or three turns you're probably not going to get a division down to like a place where it's not functional anymore with just aircraft no not unless you're constantly dogging that and nothing else you'd have to be on them every single upstage and it's sort of a waste of your air potential at that point the division's probably doing as much good as it would by itself if it's just taking the other person's air combat yeah for like multiple turns

it's like yeah i'll pay that yeah if it's drawing that much attention it's probably worthwhile letting it die and the enemy loses their air capacity completely yeah but then because we out a roll rolled my refits uh you didn't fly anything so you just didn't need to do that so we jumped onto the movement phase yeah we went straight in a movement and you have initiative so it was over to you and not too much uh pulled the seventh back a bit yes but because of the sandstorm they couldn't go too far they've only moved is it two hexes two hexes because if they use more than half their cpa uh which the lowest guy and that's 10 um the breakdown goes up a rank yes which is i mean on the back of hot weather it it really is starting to add up all

of this breakdown stuff i was careful last off stage but if i keep on playing on the basis of i need to not break down i'm gonna i'm never gonna move so i i feel your pain there i can empathize with you but i'm i'm not sorry that they're stuck on map c because i don't like them because the sandstorm does double movement cost which kind of means it's not that my thing was to get away from them and if your guys can move half the distance then my guys can move it's the same yeah so they're like gonna be the same relative distance away. Just not quite as far

back east. Unless I push them really hard and I just gang up on you. You used to say I won't. I mean, you could. I'd be rough on you. It would. You might lose multiple divisions. I won't lose multiple divisions. You could. Also,

there aren't quite a few of them in half rations. Or not enough food. I won't lose multiple divisions. I mean, they can't even attack. Yeah, I know. yeah i think the reality is um if i if i push them through the sandstorm then they they would be devastated um yeah i don't think um it's a viable option hang on we're saying sandstorm is this not a rainstorm no sandstorm is it definitely

i have a note but yeah i just i've got this funny feeling it's a rainstorm because my wells we're gonna replenish oh my fucking god is it was it but we were talking about one sec i i i think it's a rainstorm yeah it was because you can't fly out of that either can you no i can't okay we were just excited to have a sound because i thought we'd had all the weather types now no i guess we haven't had a sandstorm yeah no i think it was a rainstorm yeah i think it was a rainstorm i think it's the same the movement stuff i did was wrong but the um the air stuff is the air stuff is correct okay well you heard it here first folks um this is this is live entertainment anything can happen yeah that's annoying why why we were both sure it was

a sandstorm as well i feel all day we've been talking about the sandstorm yeah but i've just had that that thing in my head i remembered when i walked out of here last week it had started to drizzle and i made some sort of joke about the rain and yeah that's yeah oh my god how how are we going to get through this game we are oh my god yeah we need better tracking on that stuff it's not actually changed anything other than I didn't retreat as far which I guess because I fucked it up, that's fine yeah

well I guess because everything other than the seventh for me happened on non-weather tiles well what we do have here because we've used the air stuff correctly that's fine and the movement is the last thing we've done, it's your movement

we can always go back yeah if you want to move your guys a bit extra because it will literally just be the seventh yeah because i haven't moved any of my guys um i also don't yeah because anything i would have taken into consideration would have been moot anyway so i think we've always said it's the practice scenario yeah and it's also the case that i haven't done anything else i've not yeah it's not interfered with like too much stuff oh it's not a great string of not paying attention though we need to lock in that's so fucking bad between the map being wrong on the logo and us doing this we're two for two in the last couple episodes of us fucking something up

yeah that's not great um but that's that's what the game is that's what the game is i think that's what people need to to understand i know they do i know everyone understands and they they appreciate what we're doing here it's a gargantuan task we're taking on andy now this is one where the having the extra players would be helpful to remember the weather yeah well that's i to be fair i don't even think that would help if if two people forgot the weather 10 people can forget the weather i literally have a thing with the weather we've rolled for each turn i just didn't check it add that to the the old list in the head of what to do at the start of a turn but yeah i guess anyway the rest of my movement uh was just moving things up to the front uh the seventh royal

tank regiment and the second royal tank regiment arrived so there they got some trucks and started firing up towards the front and i guess we'll get to more of your movement next turn we'll get the little capstone just the seventh but yeah yeah so they'll move a little bit further yeah well at least my saharans weren't massively impacted by this weather mishap if i found out that we'd absolutely destroyed the saharans for no apparent reason that would have that would have been a rollback probably but all is well it's just you know it's just a little bit of you know go with the flow it's it's all very fluid moving uh that's that's how this it's art and it's art it's like a bit of salted buttered popcorn no i'm good you sure yes you want me to throw a bit

into your mouth no i bet you could catch a bit in your mouth we're not doing should we try that now no no i think that would make for great audio podcasting stop ruining the podcast i think it's the kind of thing i think food asmr may be the way to go or i guess failing that we could check the mailbag that's better let's do that well not only have we got the mailbag but we also popped out a little message on the old instagram while we were working away today because at first it looked like it was going to be almost an entirely admin filled session because we had all of the store distribution we had all of the usual start of turn mishaps and misadventures hijinks it turned into something much more but we did

have some people pop in some messages because we asked if anyone have any you know any questions pop them in we also asked for people's favorite words and we did leave it fairly short notice we only have a couple but to address them we do have um someone has submitted one of my favorite words is woggle woggle is w-o-g-g-a-l the only thing i could find is a similar word spelt slightly differently which is some sort of scarf worn by girl scouts now i'm not sure if that's the thing that was being described yeah but that that's that's a favorite word it's uh i i've got to admit it's one i've not heard before so i can't really speak to it hopefully it's not bad i hope no i hope it's not a bad word it's a funny sounding word

yeah i guess some of the bad ones are but we're giving the benefit of the doubt since i found that it's a girl scout scarf so that's that's what i'm taking it to mean okay um and the other question was what are your favorite units in the game um oh that's a good one um i think one of my favorites i think because i've done a history one i really like the concept of the long range desert group um as a unit in the game uh just the dice rolls haven't been particularly great although we did missed that i did deploy them this uh turn to attack one of your supply dumps and truck convoys you did so they got 10 of it that's why we forgot it they actually did something today yes yes the long range desert group took out 10 of my trucks no one one truck one truck and 10 of what's in

the supply dump an interesting thing we found is that when the long range desert group are raiding a truck convoy you choose the cargo i choose the truck type yes so you chose a um a truck with water in over a truck that was empty because those were your two options and i chose the light truck with the water in because it's the only one that had water in so it was a fairly easy decision to make but it's nice to know the split yeah when it comes to that sort of thing so that was that so they have contributed finally we were alluding to it

at the start and then got sidetracked but yes I think just the idea of them being invisible dropping in and out it's a cool concept

is a very cool concept I think another favourite for me is one because I'm doing the episode history stuff so I've been researching them and also they are

my sort of big heavy hitting guys it's probably the seventh uh they've also of my unit so far probably done by far the most yes whether you measure it in the damage they've dealt or just the distraction they've been to everything i'm trying to do they have been i think they've been the most talked about unit of yours i think easily yeah i think second place maybe the fourth indian but the fourth indian has all come up the road and been positioned at the end of it um but they've not had a fight or anything whereas the

seventh had two or three fights uh fought magdalena and then another one later on yeah they've been a very present force so even if you just take into account the the presence they've had it's been the most significant of all your units um i because on the the flip side my most present units have been the black shirts when it comes to that that fight around madalena although i don't know if this is cheating a bit but my favorite piece is one i've not actually played yet no that's fine and it's rommel yes uh because he's another cool rule set yes guy uh flying around the map at high speed given a is it a straight morale boost or is it a cohesion boost um he gives a straight morale boost um i think oh no sorry it's because he gives a boost to

initiative when he's on the board yes and then there's also um the area that he's around i think it's anyone that starts in the hex with him i think it's like a zone of control gives a buff to anyone i think it's morale i'm talking about him being my favorite unit i don't know exactly what he does all i know is he's got a if anyone plays dnd it's like having a paladin with the aura effect it's a funny way to describe him yeah i guess uh i'm not comparing rommel to being some sort of religious zealot classic rommel rommel's yeah i guess that's a bad comparison but all you dnd gamers out there you you know what i'm talking about i think it's a it's a cool unique piece the only other one that i'm thinking of which also it's not a piece so to speak so i guess

i'm veering off massively from the original question but you know i get that one raid per game oh yes um the sort of bay torpedo type flotilla that's a flotilla raid uh where you can block up alexandria harbor yes yeah i'm so excited for the moment i choose to do that yeah it is cool you're not allowed to do it in the scenario uh no it's in the full game once we're in the full game you can use it uh you have to plan it a couple weeks in advance if i remember rightly but then once you do you can use it once but at any point yes i don't even know that it expends any units it's another rule where i'd have to go back and check it but i don't think i actually have to spend anything to do it no i think it's a one-off

because i think they only did it well they did it only did it once in the actual thing um i think it was using like experimental mini submarines which i mean you literally can't use them anywhere else yeah so that'll be that'll be cool to see how that pans out i think that i'm excited for that just to see how viable that is as a plan in the full game i've also i've only used them once so far but um the the naval stuff the commonwealth gets gives them i mean that's gonna be i'm excited for them to be weighing in on things well you've already bombarded uh a couple airfields yeah i knocked two airfields out with them uh it's just this it does mean anything along the coast up to like the edge of map b

I could reach out and do something to. Where a lot of my airfields are. Yeah. Which I don't love. Most of the action is going to happen realistically for the whole game. Yeah. Yeah, you can take out a lot of stuff of significant importance.

Bombarding cities and settlements, that's something we've not really got into a whole lot. No. But you'll be able to have a look at that and try that out for size. Because I could think about attacking Bardia and Tobruk so you can't use them for shaping yeah the sangio knows and to brook at the minute uh i can never remember if it's body or to brook i just know it's it's reduced i've got it on the sheet because i had to do my um

my naval convoy arrival yes yeah planning yes i had to book that in for next turn as well you always book that in a turn in advance it was quite handy because this week i rolled the same as last time so i more or less have just copy and pasted the same distribution because it works out in quite a nice ratio. Ah, it's Tobruk, because that's where Balboa died. Ah, yes, of course. Yeah, we should have remembered. Yes, it shot him down.

Ah, at least it had one last act of defiance. I think it got scuppered afterwards as well. Yes. Definitely not long after. Because it was before this started. Balboa died in, like, June, July? yeah and we this starts in the third week of september yeah uh well it should start on the 13th but i guess the calendar is they've delayed a little bit a bit differently yeah well they had

to set up all of the tiles and put all the pieces down yeah so that's why it goes to the third week of september of course well before we jump into the the mail mail the main mail bag that is a bit of a tongue twister. That's not on me. That's actually the English language. Main mailbag. Uh, what? Annie, I have got loads of popcorn kernels in my mouth. It's very difficult for me to articulate. That's your fault.

You knew we were doing this. You sprung it on me. You brought it out of nowhere. How was I to know that we were going to be recording War with a Mate? So what are you going to get to? I'll not say it now. So, yes,

before we get into the main mailbag i did want to bring up that we've been supporting movember this month and i'm sporting a not the best mustache in the world but a mustache and since we reached out in the last couple episodes we've actually raised and this is from you guys listening that have contributed 150 pounds which is pretty wild that this wacky podcast about a game has put 150 pounds into a cause that is raising awareness for men's mental health for suicide prevention for research and development into different preventions of testicular cancer and prostate cancer things that are actually saving lives so i just wanted to say a massive thank you for everyone who's contributed the link will remain in the episodes up until the

end of november it will also be on the instagram if anyone can contribute if anyone can share it even if anyone just talks about it and talks to the people close to them that they care about massive thank you for anyone involving themselves in that it's a massive thing just wanted to slot that in there, in amongst the wackiness, because it's an important thing, and I thought if we wrap it up in a

fun sandwich, then it doesn't come across too serious, because we try to keep this light, it's about the war but it's also just a board game it's about serious stuff, but we're also just having a good old time, with some butter popcorn, I can't think of a better way to spend the day Andy, what about you?

Angry at you for this you've eaten food before no i haven't not on the podcast but you've eaten food before that is the crucial differentiator well i'll make it up to you next week's common ground don't you worry but before then we do have some messages from our mailbag which we missed last week with the anniversary special it's good to get back to the mail bag and start chipping away it's pretty full it's bulging at the sides and i'm not just talking about this bag of put a popcorn i'm just doing a debate you know andy and you are taking it every single time the email opens from rebecca oh by the way that the

subject is hope this finds y'all well another y'all love it love y'all and it opens in the most opens in the most predictable way hello from chicago of course well all of our listeners are rebecca writes i've been absolutely loving the podcast so far i'm on episode 31 and it has helped keep me sane through many a work day i'm very glad to hear that while i've been enjoying the whole thing i just wanted to highlight that i've especially enjoyed the history sections hey shout out andy i have a few questions if you don't mind there are board games where early decisions can be super consequential to the point that people say you can lose the entire game on the first turn if you make poor choices do you think slash worry that the campaign for north africa could be

lost on the first turn or first few turns that's the first question andy what's your verdict on that i don't think so i think you could set yourself back but i think because one it's so long and reinforcements are going to come in in waves anyway like you start off with a bit of an advantage and then the british are going to send more people and then Rumble comes in and then Lend, Lease it's already going to have a lot of natural back and forth

swings of momentum built into the conflict anyway so I think you might fuck something up and it could have a long lasting effect but I don't think you'll ever put yourself in a hole you can't play your way out of

if you play well that's at least sort of what i'm predicting will happen i think that's a good way to put it yeah um my side is i think kind of a cop-out answer uh again i'm just sitting on the fence all day today but i think there's definitely a situation where you could make a mistake in the first turn that haunts you later in the game oh yeah to the extent where i don't think there's going to be one measurable mistake you can make in the first turn just because of how long the game is yeah that would completely cut your legs out from under you i don't foresee like us on turn 100 and one of us

is like if only i hadn't moved them slightly out of position on like off stage one yes i don't think but like if i lose the seventh for a silly mistake in turn two or three that will definitely have massive ramifications for the entire game yes i i think it's yeah it's sort of a butterfly effect where it will be so difficult to trace that mistake back through this particular game. I think there are definitely board games on a smaller scale where you can maybe trace that easier. Well, a perfect example in my mind is Monopoly,

where you go around the first two or three times, the board gets bought up. And that's it. And then from there, you can sort of look at the board and 99% of the time you know who will win. It's just going to take five hours to get there. Yeah, if you've got Mayfair from turn one, that sort of Mayfair is locked in.

you've won the game potentially anyway if you buy the other one park lane so i think yeah it's it's going to be hard to tell i think that's the beauty of it we'll never have to have that moment where we look back at the first turn and realize it will get lost in the haze of the 111 turns that the game is made up of but i think there's definitely serious mistakes that contribute towards a loss but there's so much game left to win it back yeah so yeah it's kind of a cop-out answer but it's it's yes and no so there you go you've not got an answer rebecca but you've you've had us talk so i guess there's that's just as good isn't it that counts um the second question what was your process for initially learning the rules like was it basically just studying the

rule book over and over again i tend to struggle to learn from just reading the manual and have to set up dummy games and just play all sides something i assume wouldn't really work for the game you're playing well interestingly we did actually talk about this a little bit last week yeah and i think we were studying the book over and over again but that was probably a mistake yeah uh i think the closest you're gonna get to a dummy game is the scenario but absolutely need i think to play a scenario before you try and do the whole game uh there's just so much to keep track of um that you need a bit of time where it's more fine to make mistakes like what we did today would be deeply annoying in the actual game but we've sort of run into this

and we can go we can't just count on keeping the weather in our heads between us we need like a sheet for like this is the turn this is the person who won initiative this is what they picked and this is the like weather rules well better yet there's a counter there is a counter in the game for weather i think we need to use the board counter yeah i think i think um maybe we maybe we've got a little bit um cocky in our our old age now we're getting a bit long on the tooth we played this game for like nine ten months now we just presume we know the weather i think we need to keep an eye on that but bring a background to that yeah we we read the rules um front to back we read them cover to cover and on the back of that then we started we did a couple of sort of

white box scenarios where we did a practice run of what bombardment was like we ran a full close assault in a sort of practice mode seventh first one of the black shirt divisions we did are like it was seventh versus panzers that was it so we did that so just so i could play with the the german side a little bit so we played around with that and it gave a good idea i think that gave one of the best ideas because we did that and the air combat and i loved the air combat from go and i still do so i think that really did do it justice in how it plays out functionally in the game well the thing about the air combat is every time you do it you're all it is in a box i guess that's another thing it's isolated that is an accurate experience um but yeah i think

lesson learned so last week is jump into the thing and have a go and be willing to make mistakes is probably better than reading it all and putting it into memory and stuff um because there's just too much to hold in there yeah if you were to play a game like this maybe even something smaller scale we can't speak to that necessarily with accuracy but i think this kind of game you'll learn it better through playing it yeah i certainly have learned a lot better playing it than i have reading it oh yeah i think that's that's the way to go with us so that was our experience we tried to read it then we played it realized that's the way to go i think we started off just playing the game and reading the rules as we went we would have had an

easier time having said that richard berg does say in the rule book to give it a read through first oh yeah you definitely give it a read through first but we were sort of trying to go like this week we're gonna read this section this section and try to lock it down which is a good way to go about it but then like that isn't you learning to play really that's you doing the first entry point of learning to play might work better if you're compartmentalizing it between 10 players yes each player has a responsibility of luring a certain part about the game because then you just have to hold the supply if you're the rear area commander you just have to know the aircraft stuff if you're the air commander yes but even then i guess the supply stuff ties in

so intrinsically to the rest of the game you would probably still have a hard time getting that communicated i think you'd also want to be if you if i was doing the rear area commanding and all the logistics and stuff i'd be like no i need you guys to read this so you're not just like i need 10 ammo i need like 100 fuel here next turn and it's like i've got a lot of stuff like to manage it would be good if you understood how this works yeah i think what it would do give me like a request sheet it definitely makes for arguments amongst friends yes but all in all i think there's there's not necessarily a right way to do i'm sitting on the fence again not necessarily a right way to do it but i think i personally playing through the game is much easier i'd

recommend that for everyone which is a good point because rebecca goes on to say um also just wanted to let you know that as a result of listening to y'all perfect y'all there we go i've picked up north africa 41 picture attached and that i was inspired by libyan sands traveling a dead world to train to bike 100 miles to push myself wow thank you so much for doing this podcast stay humble and brave rebecca well first of all the bike 100 miles thing um i'm glad we've inspired someone to do something we won't do despite playing this long game we couldn't do that so kudos to you rebecca we aren't biking anywhere we don't have that in us we simply can't do that what we can do however is speak to north africa 41 because andy do you recognize the map that's

been posted in this email yeah because it's currently part of our logo and it was the banner on our website North Africa 41 is the game that we erroneously put in the background of our logo which if you're listening to this when this comes out is still in the background of the logo so yeah there it is

North Africa 41 a simpler game and one that we have just adopted as part of our logo through erroneous means glad we're inspiring people to give these games and listen because a go sorry because i mean we've done the most extreme thing but it has been a lot

of fun that i would never have done or experienced so it's cool other people are like picking stuff up this has been a lot more fun in different ways than i expected so i imagine picking up a game of your own playing it with friends family or i guess even on your own would be a fun experience so i hope it goes well rebecca hope you're enjoying north africa 41 um our our logo sick and thank you very much for the email i enjoy your bike ride yeah because oh that is 100 miles is a bike ride well i guess that's it for the the mailbag for now we still have a fair bit in there but if anyone does want to get in touch the email address is info at warwithamate.co.uk our website is warwithamate.co.uk and our instagram is just war with a mate i think when you say it like that it

just shaves off parts of the contact information yeah it's just getting more and more precise Yeah, and if you want to know what conflict is, it's just war. And if you want a friend, it's mate. There you go. Or I guess mate is another word. Shove war into Google. There's a lot of stuff there. Yeah, we're actually quite bad for SEO if you're just searching for us with war.

We'll answer everything. Every question you send in, we will get around to it eventually. We've got plenty more to come. Well, I guess the mailbag segment is history for this week. Nice transit. what else is history andy the history of the seventh oh we're picking it back up let's see how these guys ended up because i hear they had an interesting experience out in the desert oh boy did they um so i do not entertain extravagant hopes of this operation but i do

wish to make certain that if a big opportunity occurs we are prepared morally mentally and administratively to use it to the fullest that is a waverly about operation compass i don't think we're equipped in any of those three ways so it's good that they thought about that in the real war yeah it is also i found it interesting administratively was one of the three big ones for him yes that does speak to the fact that this game does hold some real verisimilitude when it comes to what the tasks were at hand oh yeah it's also is that they're subtle humble and brave moral mentally administratively should we change it to that it doesn't flow quite as nicely it doesn't they should have had you on pr oh yeah i would have

nailed that um um but yeah we left off on the 13th of december 1940 uh graziani starting his offensive so as they came over the division's forward elements that we discussed like the 11th sars um engaged and harassed the italians um while also falling back to avoid prolonged engagements or getting bogged down uh by the 16th of september the italians had reached city birani uh where they stopped progressing and they built a big series of fortified camps around it while this is happening the seventh have pulled back to mersa matruh um although it still has elements out in the desert scouting and harassing the italians at the end of august before the italian launched their offensive reinforcements uh even launched their offensive sorry reinforcements and supplies were

sent from the uk to port uh said in egypt which is the port at the end of the suez canal these arrive in october they include a hundred tanks the parts to maintain them as well as uh maintaining the tanks they already have and additional artillery so end of october would be the end of this scenario uh yes uh they arrive at the start of october so well so they're here this is this is um the turn just gone yes i've this is the seventh royal tank regiment and the second royal tank regiment that arrive to reinforce them oh well that'd be now sorry this is this is october one yeah that's oh yeah of course that's right now brought up from alexandria oh yes oh here we are this is live feed oh yes so we're going to skip forward a bit to the 9th of december

uh when we're going to do a little bit of operation compass because this is nuts so on the 9th of december the western desert force launches uh operation compass which is meant to be a counter-attack in a five-day raid uh against the newly captured italian positions uh it ends up being an extended raid but 36 000 brits attack fortified positions holding 150 000 italian troops not insane numbers oh yeah uh waverly told general uh that's the quote as well this is their limited operation where they're going to take the opportunities and boy are they going to so waverly tells general o'connor who's in charge of the western desert force which includes the seventh uh to attack the area around city uh barani using their newly

arrived matilda tanks which are a step up in terms of tank quality for this conflict for both sides yeah so yeah city dorani is defended by fortified camps but they leave a 20 mile gap between two of them the seventh armor division leads the fourth indian division and the 16th british infantry brigade in the attack they carefully rehearse it throughout uh november and then on the evening of 8th of december they kick it off uh set it into motion uh the first camp they deal with uh was at a place called nabiwa where the new uh matilda tanks show up and are basically impervious to italian gunfire and like artillery that does not shock me from what i know of the italian artillery and tanks as well oh yeah together with the infantry they completely destroy the milletti

division no that's my guys yeah the commander general milletti who gave the division his name uh engages tanks with a light machine gun before he's killed okay so we have a we now have a new character yes general general milletti is it uh yeah yeah so general milletti is a figure i'll bear in mind whenever they get up to hijinks that's a man i know is in there oh yeah gonna find out a bit more about engaging a tank with a light machine and he's probably a character that's a that's a very sort of rambo move that's a scarface send off so this first camp after they break the lines the cameroon highlanders who are part of the fourth indian division sweep through the camp with a bayonet charge killing several hundred italians and taking over 4 000 prisoners

uh we've we've seen these bayonet charges before yeah i thought it was just a maori thing but it seems they are have a place even at this point i think yeah it was it was the maori division's move but everyone else seems to have also had a little bit of it to various success but it works here so the seventh royal tank regiment who've arrived advanced north from here assisted by the fifth indian brigade to assault another large encampment called tumar west they'd lost the element of surprise because they'd attacked the previous camp uh and their attack was also hampered by an inconvenient midday sandstorm ah are you sure it wasn't a rainstorm damn it uh the first attack uh was by the royal fusiliers which faulted but the third and first

punjabs uh managed to break through the camp's defenses taking another 2 000 prisoners the attack on the camp this is brilliant was helped by uh truck drivers from new zealand who were handling the logistics who borrowed rifles and then led the british infantry with a war cry of come on you pommy bastards oh wow so a bunch of truck drivers are like while i'm doing it you have to follow and around the same time as a bayonet charge uh yeah suspicious timing if you ask me well the italians send a release force of tanks and motorized infantry uh in trucks to try and uh prevent this attack i can't see that helping uh the fourth and sixth rajupatan uh rifles uh drove them away inflicting 400 casualties without a single injury right that's insane

next up on the morning of the 10th two more italian camps uh surrendered uh before they head up to city birani under cover of fog the fog lifts just as they start the attack which the italian infantry to uh artillery to fight back and inflict heavy casualties okay uh until 10 matildas of the 7th royal attack regiment show up uh supported by naval artillery neither of which the italians have an answer for leading to the surrender of a black shirt legion garrison oh wow this is two days into the raid the british have suffered 700 losses and taken 20 000 italians prisoner what the hell that's insane they came with 36 000 people so at this point every two british guys has a prison like at this point the fourth indian division are recalled to cairo

because they need to go down to sudan to fight in another a different italian army who are sort of moving up so if the they'd stayed this could have gone even crazier but this left things for the seventh uh who continue the battle they find several more camps they'd been planning to attack just completely abandoned the italians are in like full retreat the 11th uh hasars at this point discover the canter nazaro division is that one here yes uh oh i think that is the one of the black shirts yes uh yes that would make sense they've set up on a salt flat with a whole bunch of artillery artillery i think it's like 30 to 40 artillery guns right um and they're going to make a stand here um but commander lieutenant colonel john combi who will have a he gathers

this group of uh guys together uh which comes to be known as the combi force to deal with this um i think i've seen that somewhere in one of the books yeah before you will have done uh can't remember where it is in the books but they're like quite a big deal for this the italians are making a strong stand here this is probably what some of the most resistance they put up during these few days uh until tanks get round behind them and flank them and then it and if those tanks get behind you and you've got no way to combat them they're just there now and they they have what they want yeah uh so at this point the italian army's in full retreat uh being actively harassed by the seventh support group and the 11th for sars the italian air force is

trying to cover the retreat but it's just not really working uh the retreat's continuing the italians are chased back across the italian wire so back over the border out of uh egypt uh south of solemn and in uh syriaca which is the mountainous region on the you know the hump oh yes yeah that's right that's where the saharan detachment is roughly isn't it uh that's the qataran depression this is up on the coast yes yes i know what you mean it's the area around uh to brook and bardia that's around where my wall currently is yeah it's where the like fertile area of libya is yes where most of the people lived uh before graziani um did his genocide so yeah by the 50th the italian army has been pushed back out of egypt and both times take a

pause for a little bit uh the italians to regroup around the bardia while the british need some time to take infantry of all the stuff they've captured, which at this point includes 38,000 prisoners, a vast quantity of equipment, 237 guns, which is like artillery guns,

not... Yeah, not handheld. And over 70 tanks. They set off, remember, with 36,000 people, so they've now... They've taken 38,000 prisoners. Yeah, they now have more prisoners than... Than men, that they started with. That ratio is insane.

The 7th Armored Division surrounds Bardia, but hold off the attack until the 6th Australian Division could arrive to replace the 4th Indians, and also so they could resupply. The Italian defences around Bardia, it's an 18-mile-long perimeter with a 4-foot tank ditch, 6 minefields, barbed wire fences the whole way. This defence garrisons 45,000 men,

400 guns 100 tankettes and a dozen real tanks um real tanks not tankettes you know this would be an absolute nightmare to take and would have been much more difficult but the british did have the advantage uh as they'd captured a chief engineer on a joyride with some lady friends uh not again with the detailed maps back in july so when the same one This is the guy they caught who had all the mapped out defences. So they start probing them, but they have like a blueprint of the defences they're going to attack. Probing is an interesting word to use

when this guy's been caught with his pants down. Yeah. So while most of the 7th are preparing to attack Bardia with the Australians, the 4th Armoured Brigade, who are part of the 7th, detach and attack Sidi Omar, which the rest of the force have just sort of gone past because it wasn't stopping them yes i i recognize that from the the map so on the 16th of december they attack city omar from the west with the second uh royal tank regiment um supported by

the fourth royal horse artillery the italians uh had positioned most of their defenses facing east where they would expect an attack to come from but because they've gone round them they come in from the west the battle lasts only 10 minutes uh 50 italians are killed before a further 900 surrender wow uh at this point there's a pause in the action because both sides need to supply themselves particularly the british because i'll remind you this was meant to be a five-day exploratory raid and they've taken all out assault yeah and they've taken like 50 000 prisoners exploratory raid turned mass victory is insane well i do wish to make certain that if a big opportunity here occurs we are prepared they are prepared for this so we'll leave them with

a pause in the action here uh as the siege of bardia sets in the british and australian troops around the uh city have a christmas in the desert before launching the attack on bardia on the 1st january and we'll pick that up next time for the second half of operation compass and the further adventures of the seventh armoured division well the seventh seventh armoured division it would seem in history uh a lot more formidable of a force compared to the game in the game they are i guess still harassing italian forces but in a much more passive manner um although having said that we are getting to the point in history where they were doing something much more significant So maybe they're going to swing around and do some scary things.

Because, yes, they launched this in December. So September, November, October were relatively... Relatively quiet. ...stable. There was the Italians digging in. Which is what's happening right now. So history is indeed repeating itself on the board right now. We could see a bit of a repeat of this in the full game.

I hope so. It'll be interesting to see how close it pans now, because now i'm looking at my plans for the the full game and it sounds dangerously close to what you've just described there but i know now how it went in history so i don't really want to repeat that too closely yeah this is an insane thing though like the level of coordination and skill the british army has and the amount of i mean if you're taking more prisoners than guys you have you're doing something right like that's crazy because part of the reason the attack stalls out not necessarily stalls out but the part of the reason they sort of dig in around bardia and

don't continue is they have something like 20 times the amount of projected prisoners the raid would have generated and significantly more territory it was basically meant to harass the italians and sort of pressure them back over the border instead it just caused a full retreat christmas really came early for the seventh armoured oh yeah wow that's yeah i'm i'd because part of me is now thinking i'm more intimidated by them but i don't want to fall into the long range desert group trap of now fearing this unit that may well prove to be less formidable in the the full game in the game it might although i do wonder if they've got a bit of a buff because of how good their reputation is like because they will after this take part in

the invasion of italy d-day and they're one of the first groups into rome uh not rome sorry into berlin oh wow so they go from like start of the war to the very end and are like accomplished the entire time uh so yeah they get a they're one of the more like decorated units in uh the war i think i wonder what that must be like going from desert warfare and then moving to like urban warfare in berlin it's such a different thing like the vast space of the desert like versus yeah fighting in in a major city and when they fight in italy it's like a rough winter like it's just very different terrain the whole time yeah it really speaks to their adaptability being able to do that um you know keeping the tanks maintained adjusting i think

psychologically as well there must be a huge gulf between surviving in a desert because you're also fighting the environment yes i mean the the section that we did um i say we that you covered where it was the idea of you know you walk over a sand dune and you find yourself lost to being in a city which will be you know mostly at that point in a bad state yeah yeah ruins and but they have different dangers like in the urban environment you've got people could be behind any anyone could be anywhere yeah um i think part of the reason there's so many prisoners in this war is because if your camp gets overrun you can't like slip away and then like flee and then like go back and join up with your units because if you guys like run

out of your camp it's like cool like 200 kilometers through the desert while you're being chased by vehicles and planes and stuff yeah this isn't like saving private ryan where you can slink off through the ruins of a city and then come back out and regroup it's a case of you're running through sand dunes or just open vast space where you'll be picked off by planes or spotted from a distance and at that point if you're spotted from a distance there's nowhere to go you're also leaving in a hurry for an expedition that nowadays people would prep for like months to cross that much desert yes like and not everyone's going to pull off the miracle of surviving on like a little quart of lemonade no that's a that's a that's a one-off yeah so yeah but i'm

gaining a massive amount of respect for new zealanders from this series because you've got the maori the initial guys that made up the long range desert group were from new zealand yes and then you've got these truck drivers being like come on you pommy bastards and leading a charge and they are logistic truck drivers they're not meant to be soldiers in that way yeah all of a sudden uh this this paints um new zealanders as war heroes regardless of your background you are just built for war just machines of victory yeah regardless of your profession or design that's it's scary stuff oh yeah thankfully i'm not going to fight new zealand anytime soon in real life do not wake the sleeping giant of new zealand well i've always said that i've always

said i'm not going to start a fight with new zealand i just don't have it in me to fight a start uh start a fight oh my god it's this popcorn man i've got i've got popcorn kernels in my mouth it's ruined it uh it's hard to say words in the right order the popcorn jumbles them all up pops all over the place well we live and learn to maybe not do that next time well i don't know andy you seem you seem pretty grouted about my whole popcorn thing do you think do you think maybe there's a way that we can make this up uh yeah you think maybe there's a way that we can get back on the same page yeah i've got a i've got a common ground for you and now for something nicer a little oasis in the war it's time for some common ground i'm trying to interrupt the

common ground i'm recording maybe yeah got a common ground and common ground of course is the segment in which every week we come together and we decide to despite the war that we're having with each other become friends again we'll find a topic to unite on and this week andy it's your turn to pick the common ground and i've got it here for you we need more town specific and town wide sports right okay i okay so hang on one has immediately popped to mind here we've got a bit of a flow okay i'm thinking of you know the cheese race that was one of them yes because that's a town in gloucestershire that's their sport so do you want to give a bit of background for anyone who

listens and is not aware of obscure subcultures of england uh yeah so basically they get everyone at the top of this hill uh and then they throw like a five like a massive block of cheese down the hill it's like a big wheel isn't it yeah and basically everyone like sprints down the hill and the guy who gets the cheese gets to i think they just keep the cheese i think that's the whole thing um but yeah that's like specific to that town there's i can't remember exactly where it is but you know that one where they have the it's basically like a football match between two towns next to each other where the goals are oh yes the goals are like spread across like huge like space between the towns yeah it's like takes place over like kilometers yes i've heard of this one as well

yeah it's these kind of things i think we need more of them where like a town will have its own sport or like two towns near each other will have like a game of football where 10 000 people can get involved yes it's it's it's sort of the it's like a nicer vibe of you know the film hot fuzz yes where the village comes together to kill everyone off who's causing the town sort of disrepute yeah it's that idea of there being a weird communal sense of well this is our thing we've got this sport this is our competition because i also like the idea of wanting to i guess it speaks to us playing the game i like the idea of picking something obscure up and just really diving into it and just yeah embracing it and if you could just choose from a list of

hundreds of villages in the country or if this goes global thousands upon thousands of villages globally and just be like i want to go and do this obscure competition i want to be part of this one yeah and i think towns should start coming up with them like you use what's there so you use like we will use the bridge or we've got this series of hills how do we make this into a sport i like the idea of a bridge one because i think you could get some sort of troll themed thing going on yeah like you know so there's a troll under the bridge one one person has to be the troll, and everyone needs to get across the bridge, but the troll

has, I don't know, like a flare gun? Those big things, you know the big versions of the EF things? The gladiators. Yes, we're both in the same movement as if we're fighting with a gladiator stick. Yeah, so they're on top of the bridge in your situation

and they're trying to fend people off. Stop people going off, or they're trying to get the ball from one town to another and the other town's trying to do it, and they have a troll each who, like, stops you getting passed i think we get like a strong man who's like this like like i'm talking like you know like sort of power lifter and he's got one of these like earbud things but it's it's weighted and if you get knocked over the end the end of the bridge you're out you're disqualified

if you get past them then you score a point for the town yeah but then if the town gets so many points then they win otherwise the corporation that's paid for this strong man they win and they get another square mile of green belt land to build a flat in oh that's interesting so it's like we'll bet you 10 million for the local council verse a bit of land right for development yeah so you want to like make food footloose is it or like one of those like we need to do something to save the town we're making that official you know what yes you know all of these petitions against building something in a an area it should be solved by like an obstacle course or like a version of gladiators or whoever can like get the property deed by running down a

hill the fastest yes but and this is where i guess the interesting point comes in the town names the competition based around their strengths but they're up against corporations who can fund one champion or i guess a team of champions to go up against the village yeah the town can build the game around their local geographical features what they're good at whatever and then they have to come in and win the right to like do things there yes so it's like oh we don't want a starbucks to open you better get the like you better get the cheese yeah you have to get the cheese so then starbucks hires out the the best cheese catcher in all the land and this guy he's bolting down it's usain bolt usain bolt is the cheese catcher but he's good on the flat he's not i don't know

if he's got the that's going to translate to going downhill or if he's going to be too fast and fall over well i don't know because you know the guy on your sofa he knew he knew um usain bolt I mean, everyone knows Usain Bolt. No, but he was actually friends with him briefly, apparently. It was in a tabloid once, I think, but then it got scrubbed from the tabloid. So he would be all over this. In fact, he's perking up at the mention of it,

so I guess he can simmer down, because that's not his wheelhouse at all. I like this, because I always figured we just need more of these fun, weird sports. But I'm now also like, we're going to add some fun stakes to them, where it's like this is how the town like gates keeps itself yeah you have to best them you have to bring it it's it's very sort of medieval feudal sort of odysseus like achilles fighting hector

like yeah having champions but yeah niche sports yeah but to prevent a conglomerate from coming in and putting in a coffee shop that's going to make the local cafe completely defunct because they'll gouge them with pricing so instead you have a team of champions stood at the troll bridge and and they've been there forever i guess in this instance it would be the the town is the troll yeah or maybe actually i think it depends how they design the game yeah i think it's more thematically correct in fact that it's the starbucks has the troll and they have to get past the troll to protect their village i think this is a great one i i actually i'm i'm very enthusiastic about this one or you have nearby towns who are competing for funding play the game

against each other yes at that point they have to they have to come to their own common ground or it's one of those sports where everyone in the town can get involved and it's like get the ball somewhere and then it's like oh you're silly like sports rivalry you get too invested in like who cares if your football team beats their football team if once a year your entire town is going to play football against their town that would make it more interesting because i think at that point you cut out the and i guess this is me going on a bit of a tangent it's kind of common ground is anyway i was trying to get the bus out of the city the other day and there was a football match on i was stuck in traffic for 45 minutes and when i say stuck it's insane yeah i

mean standstill yeah the opposing team i can't even remember because they have to like clear them out and let all of them get out and then move open things up so there's not like fights and stuff well they were having a march through the city the other team it was a it was a home game for us and they were marching through the city and i don't really follow football i can't remember which team it was but the bus was stood still for 45 minutes i just think yeah you're doing this march everyone's having a good time i think i always encourage people to enjoy whatever hobby they've got but with the caveat if it disrupts my public transport i'm not on board for you having a fun time anymore oh yeah but if you're not fun until it annoys me exactly that's

my mantra if you're getting blitzed and you're gonna go watch a sport i i wouldn't get blitzed to go you know to the cinema i feel like i'd lose a bit of what's going on i i feel like surely the same must apply i know it's all about the atmosphere for any sports fans out there i'm probably really diminishing the thing you love but when it comes to that i think if you've got a village and you're partaking in the sport you're part of the team i feel like you cut out that aspect of the nonsense you get your shortcut to the bonding that you're looking for yes without the weird yobboism yeah you get rid of the the the hooligans yeah well they are gonna there's gonna be a bad element yeah there'll be some bad eggs there always are but you at least have that

bonding experience then afterwards if you win go for your big piss up enjoy yourself but you've maintained the core of what you're doing here and i think that's what this is you're maintaining the spirit at the core of it the sport the community whatever it is if it's fighting a troll on a bridge if it's chasing a cheese you're you're maintaining the core yeah and then at the end of it all you can enjoy it plus sports fans can then be like there's a thousand more sports yeah and you love that it's more of the thing you love and it's it actually reflects perfectly what we're doing andy we're doing this we get rid of the hooliganism we get rid of the yobbs it's just being you and at the end of this then we get our reward then we get a meal paid for by the loser

Plus, we've developed a skill set where if Jeff Bezos wants to come in and put in an Amazon factory, he has to beat us at the game. Which has an extra nice element of, it takes so long, they'll move on. That's a good point. When it comes to us defending our honour, we will challenge the opponent to a game of the Campaign for North Africa. And in that instance, Andy, I'd be honoured to be on your team. You too. Question. You know Bill and Ted. Yes. you know how they play death yes and they like get around him because they're not playing chess

they're playing like flicky football or whatever yeah and it's because he's played so many of the other games you just bring this out and he's like fuck you can read the rules death but it's it's much easier when you play and guess what no practice scenario yeah well has anyone else died and has to play this to you to not that i don't think so well that's how we do it we've not only put the world to rights but we've also safeguarded our souls from death itself a specific interpretation of death one from bill and ted's excellent adventure which has as much chance of being right as anyone else that's how it works it's all guesswork we we're all looking out to the the divine and we're all brandishing our maps of the campaign for north africa and we're saying

here i am let's do this and i personally can't think of a better way to send this one off andy Neither can I. Thank you for listening, everyone. Get in touch. War with a Mate. Info on warwithamate.co.uk at warwithamate for Instagram

and warwithamate.co.uk for the website. And again, we're still following through with Movember for the rest of the month up until the 30th. If you want to donate or share it or even just look at it.

appreciated and it's a massively good cause and it's massively appreciated um it's uh the donation link will be popped in the description um and yeah get in touch with us any other way that you wish um we we accept smoke signals um send the avatar of death if you want just we'll lock them down for a little while if you do that but from me james me andy thank you for listening and stay Subtle, humble and brave In the deserts of your mind Good night