War With A Mate - Episode 52: Happy-Go-Lucky Scamp

Episode Date: November 29, 2025

The game might last forever, but supply dumps certainly don’t. The guys observe a changing landscape of dwindling resource and an impending clash that will determine the future of the scenario. 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 - Home

hello welcome to war with a maid good afternoon it's me it's james me andy we are doing the board game campaign for north africa we're playing it the whole thing that's what war the made us it's a podcast it's not theater if you're here for a theater show you're in the wrong place if you're here for a television show you're in the wrong place if you're here for a sort of interpretive dance thing this is the right place we just can't see it yeah but we are doing them i still don't know how we translate that properly we'll just probably get a camera yeah that's probably the way to do it isn't it i don't think we can really portray the creative dance aspect of this without a camera why haven't we thought about this we've thought not thought about a lot

so what goes into this mess well you say that i think we are barreling through this game for for anyone who doesn't know the campaign for north africa has never been finished before we're gonna finish it we're making real strides and i feel like i've turned a corner today andy yeah we had a short session it was only two hours because of shifts and stuff but uh we finished the movement stuff uh for you uh i did all of my movement i also breakdowns and stuff you didn't have any homework all my movement all my breakdown we did a combat and i also did a complete reorganization of two divisions the second and third black shirt divisions coming over from nephilia with their trucks in tow motorized them all that is wild that we only took two hours and got all of that done

yeah it seems we've been talking about a bit recently but it does seem like we've hit a bit of a groove in getting through it i had a look back and it looks like it took us eight weeks to go from the start of playing the game in the sense of we were actually applying the rules and going through the stages to when we've moved the pieces for the first time yeah which puts us at about that would have been about 10 weeks to finish the first op stage now we could realistically finish an op stage given enough preparation and streamlining of the spreadsheets we could finish an op stage every week i think that's yeah if there's not crazy combat i think it's it's realistic not now, I mean now

we're still in the throes of the practice but when the real game comes around I'm confident that we are going to be able to smash an offstage every time we sit down to play this that feels overconfident but I think we're pretty close I'm a confident man I guess we'll talk about this one

but for instance I don't think we're smashing out next week's well, next offstage no, no, we're definitely not going to smash out next week's um one thing i did want to quickly jump into before the wacky adventures that is the game is that i'll probably have also put the the stinger at the start of the episode but movember which i've been partaking in the mustache but first of all andy what do you

think of the mustache it's pretty good it's a mustache it's an actual mustache about half the people who do move but don't get yeah i'm actually quite shocked that i've got this far it's turned out to be um well not impressive by any stretch but it looks like a mustache which is great i don't feel too embarrassed about having it now i still don't suit it but we've managed to we smashed the target in six days which was to raise 100 pounds which was amazing and we put a stretch goal of a thousand which if we hit it would mean i get a war with a mate tattoo which would terrify me and i'm glad we've not come towards that target folks well i suppose cause andy gets a tattoo so that's part of what this is um we we are now at 276 pounds last i checked and one was from a

donor a listener who donated a sum of 111 pounds uh and said it was one pound for every turn of the every turn of the game which is insane another reason we have to finish it now otherwise you have to give the money back pound but it's here and we don't do so thank you so much for everyone who has donated anyone who wants to share it try and spread the word in the last few days this will be coming out with just a couple days to go for movember if we can push that any further it's for such an incredible cause and you've all everyone who's donated that's insane that everyone has put money into this on the back of this podcast so thank you so much for making this podcast more than just a wackadoodle thing we've actually put money into a good cause and it's

it's something we're really grateful for so link is in the description of the episode it'll be on the instagram uh by all means share it talk about it look out for your friends look out for yourselves and let's let's just spin it back around to the game let's let's pivot away from that also keep an eye out on instagram for that final mustache shot yes i i did post one when we hit the 100 pounds of what was the moustache at the time. I'll put up a comparison at the end of the month, so you can see how it was and how it is.

I don't know if I shave it all off at the end. Up to you. I think you keep it. I'm not keeping the moustache. I think you should keep the moustache and then do you should do mutton chops. Ooh, maybe next time. Then you look sort of like a

general from more World War I Yeah, that's more Civil War. American Civil War. I feel like they've got a real Muttonchops vibe going on. Maybe next year I'll do Muttonchops. Muttonchops. Or just Sideburns.

Sideburns. Sideburns September. I'll shave my hair. I'll shave my facial hair. I'll shave my eyebrows. Just Sideburns. That's a strong look. Yeah, I'm a strong man.

I don't know. i feel like my diet makes me frail i had a heel today god damn it i guess we'll not get too much into that but i had a heel just so you all know i am still on that anyway we've we've digressed i've digressed the game so today as we said it was mostly my movement i started off by reorganizing the second and third blackshirt divisions yep because they just come in from off board in tripoli and tripletinia yeah last off stage they arrived in the philia which is the pretty much the most western point of the board and this upstage i got to move them as part of my organization phase which i had to polish off i've put a bunch of trucks on them they are now fully motorized

both divisions and i've zipped them along they've made some decent progress 39 hexes is what they can move with that which is swell well they could move 40 i moved them 39 i don't want to go half yeah roads are half and they have 20 cpa when there's infantry in them and i stopped at 39 because there's a town there a village and that means unlimited water i love that and if you're on maps b and c at the moment those wells have refilled as well which is great it's handy for you yeah i'd still i'm still angry about that um about what well i guess one that you ruled that in the first place and two that we spent a whole week talking about how it was a sandstorm when it was actually just rain yeah that one was not great especially coming off the back of the logo being

wrong yeah that's sort of two pretty fundamental mistakes in a row yeah you know what it's really fucking ballsy of me to come on this mic and and say that we're going to start smashing out an upstage every week when we play the game in full when we can't even get the logo right or the weather yeah we might need to rate it a little bit to make sure we're doing things correctly yeah maybe maybe i'll dial that back a little bit the confidence is is there but it needs to be appreciated but it's it needs to be more subtle and humble than brave yeah so yeah we'll temper our expectations but the black shirts fully outfitted with trucks ready to roll out that Was it Benghazi where they are, roughly?

No, no, they're still quite a way away. No, the black shirts? Yeah. No, no, they're still quite early on. Benghazi's further along than you might be thinking. Benghazi's on map A on the hump of it, isn't it? Are you thinking of Bania? Yeah, but Benghazi, it's still got a little way to go.

They're only about halfway up on that sort of northern stretch. I always miscalculate how far away that is because 39 hexes got them about halfway on the northern vertical. Right. So it's actually a lot more, because you have to sort of snake round on that map.

Yeah, you're like, it's a bit of a, like a J. Yes, for James. That's why they made it that way. Where's the A? We need to find the secret A. Map A. It's not a secret, there was a labelled A on the map.

So you're getting those bad guys coming up they are bad guys and they are coming up and aside from them there was another push of the wall as i call them the wall has moved up yeah the wall is no longer on map c andy no the wall has moved on to the very edge of map d yeah i'm now in the d zone uh our guys are looking at each other across i think three or four hexes it's it's getting there the next stop stage, it's going to be a big old fight. Well, I think one of my actually tell you what, I can check now.

Yeah, two hexes away. Oh, okay. So there is, I've kept them one hex outside a zone of control. Oh, I thought they were, oh, so you could have done the double movement thing again, but I guess there's no reason for you not to

just charge in. Yeah, I had a look at my cpa i thought yes i can do it i can still get off some shots i can still do some bits and pieces but some of them moved over clears which takes up a decent chunk of cpa and i didn't want to go in with anything except maximum potential so i i'm trying to stop myself from going too aggressive yeah i don't want to go ham just yet not to say that i wouldn't overextend myself to fight you but i want to make sure it's at the right time and right now didn't feel like the right time but it's yeah it's heating up yeah they that that wall has moved i've also repositioned and and this is uh this was a frustrating one for me i've repositioned my

guys around that supply dump that you had yeah because uh the seventh took off they're back on map uh d now yeah so they darted away from that supply dump which was sort of the staging point of the fort madalena debacle yes it was well it was where all of the resources for that fight came from uh and they got worn down pretty nicely so i sent over what was in there yeah i i showed up there with the the first black shirts the fourth black shirts right outside the maletti division right outside they were all hanging around and as i put the first black shirts on you sent me over the document with the with the supply dump on

and it was much more scarce, sparse empty, the fucking thing was empty Andy. I think there was 32 ammo in it, which for you will be 10 Oh, I forgot about that Oh, Andy, what are you

doing man, you're killing me here There were 30 stores, which I think will be 15. Wait, what? the store's diminished. I think store's half or you can only use half. No, I don't think store's diminished. Well, double check. My men are allergic to your food. Apparently

they are. No, they're not. That's bullshit. Apparently British corned beef doesn't agree with people used to a Mediterranean diet. You are talking out your ass, man. That is absolutely not the case. We'll check. The stores are fine. We'll check. And it doesn't really matter about fuel and water because there's precisely

none in there. you're a real piece of work andy you know it's fun to throw carefuls i arrived there you know what the reason i positioned those other two divisions around there and this is going to make me sound so fucking stupid is because i thought well i'll get the first in and they'll replenish all their stuff and then next off stage the fourth black shirts can go in and they'll replenish all their stuff i don't have enough stuff in there to replenish any of them at all there's not enough stores in there to give any of those divisions half rations which they're already on some of them i think maletti's on fine i think maletti's fully fed okay but the other two are i think both

black shirts are starving i'd have to double check but i'm pretty sure both are on half rations so they can't attack or do anything they can they just can't um no if you don't get a sufficient food you can't you can't enter an enemy zone of control willingly i believe it is yeah which is attacking well depends on how you see it like that i don't throw your definitions at me all right let's let's not get lost in the semantics towards semantics we cannot continue because the game is semantics it's fine for me to shrug it off i'm a i'm just a happy good lucky scamp who's making his way through the desert and thought he was going to feed all his men and then you ruin my day uh you know what i've learned from reading about deserts uh they kill happy-go-lucky

scums then i am in extreme danger with extreme caution they will kill you well i've not done that so i'm in grave danger that's that's really bad news for me i'm um so i moved them around that position uh and then the the last bit of movement i had um i i did move the the 62nd mamara who were kind of just hanging around i moved them back up in the middle they moved sort of uh they go from the magdalena group to the coast group and they went up to magdalena from further south i put them further south because i didn't know if the seventh we're going to try and dart down and make their way down the southern end of the map the ones in between siwa and magdalena yes i put them down there just to try and hold a bit of defense i moved them back up so they're in line with

magdalena now yeah so that that was my last bit around there and then i did move a unit on your go actually because we the very start we should say was actually concluding combat from your move yes there was one little bit left over um libyan tank command which is a shell division at the moment they were engaged in combat with some of the well the only remaining truck bandits that you have yeah the royal and the fumbled fusiliers yes those those tinkers those mighty warriors uh well i was going to try and rebuke that but i can't because the shell division were forced to retreat because they had one tow point of tanks and they had no ammo at all so they had to actually retreat from these guys, which is just

embarrassing stuff. Well, it's sort of fantastic for me, because you take cohesion off the biggest thing, so even if you fill the shell in, it has minus free cohesion. Exactly, so they've now had to piss off towards the west. I think they're actually hiding next to an airfield now. Oh, I'm sure I'll get to them.

Well, it is that you can take supplies from an airfield in an emergency, and I can't think of something that qualifies as an emergency more than needing to fight these fucking truck bandits. I've been hunted by a bunch of guys from i'm sick of it i'm really sick of it i took out one of them i took out one side of your truck bandits i will get these guys so the libyan tank command had to flee and on the back of that

i did move five different groups of guns right next door basically filled in the slot where those guys had to run away from and then on my turn you got the other end of that you got the business end of the shitty stick yes because i'd got unlucky well not unlucky you bombarded them so they were pinned which means they couldn't take part in combat so they retreated yes so they had to flee and i will be dogging them okay i'll be chasing them down i didn't have to use any ammo for that because you well i used the bombard i used the barrage yeah that's four ammo that's a lot yeah what i did instead of using all of them for close assault i just amalgamated their ammo and used that for a single barrage with one of them but i have five of those so i can keep this

going for another four upstages. And I might. I mean, that's fine. What I'll probably do is try and find another unit who can come in and pincer you and actually just kill you. Because I'm worried if I keep on barraging you will keep on getting away. Just gotta hope you break down. Out of game. That's not gonna happen.

I don't know. I feel like you're on the edge these days. I'm on rock. You're not. You're such a fragile soul, Andy. You're crying now as we're speaking. It's emotional. It shouldn't be. i guess i'm i'm insulting a friend i guess that's probably pretty upsetting yeah it hurts man i'm sorry i didn't mean that i'm a sensitive guy i don't know that you are i don't think

you've got a soul wow if i had a soul that would hurt no you're wearing a you're on a yellow t-shirt that means that means you're a coward yeah yellow yellow t-shirt with holes in why's it got holes in super glue what i got drops of super glue on it and then it hardens and then when it bends too much they like split in half okay um next question why do you have super glue on your t-shirt trying to fix a pirate ship oh this is the dnd pirate ship i hope it is i don't know what other pirate ships you'd have yeah we have a big pirate ship for dnd it's actually a really cool model i like it a lot we should incorporate that into the campaign for north africa it's like half the size of one of the maps what how big would that make it that would make it

like a hex is eight kilometers each map is 32 it's like i think it makes it something like maybe 400 times the size of cairo cairo's like three hexes but yeah the mast on that got a little broken so i was trying to fix it yeah we use blue tack instead i think yes so i guess you put holes in your shirt for nothing super glue did not work i don't know why they called it super but yeah you i'm excited for the battle on the north coast next off stage i think i think that's going to be the decider that could actually be the the fulcrum on which this whole scenario is balanced yeah because that's all of our divisions yes i've got two of them whizzing along from

nephilia but realistically if i get absolutely ruined in this fight they're only going to serve to try and ward you off a little bit, they're not going to be... Like we take to Brook. Yes, if it goes really bad. Whereas if I manage to make a hard push, they are just going to be a hat on top of a hat. Because if I manage to thrash you...

And I think the interesting part is we don't know how big each other's divisions involved really are. I think I have a bit of a sense of it. I've not looked in the book, but just doing the research for the initial setup, based on it being fairly accurate for mine and a kind of rough idea of yours. Do you feel confident going into this fight?

I have a plan, and if it works, it will work. Do you think you have the numbers, or do you think you have the plan, or both? Both. You think you've got both? If a couple of things go right for me, which I'm not going to tell you what they are. That's fair.

I won't pry on that I could get all four of those divisions next up That's interesting I can only presume it revolves around air support to an extent I'd be amazed if air support didn't play into that

I think some of it relies on the 7th swooping over from their position south I think they would need to come in and reinforce I think you're going to have to manoeuvre your guys and i think if you do maneuver them you're going to try and pincer my men in such a way that they can't retreat try and box them in against the coastline and also bombard them with your naval

assortment i think i think those are the factors that i need to look out for yeah and i know i've got my men in a position where you can bombard them however i'm counting on it oh okay and i'll not say much more than that but i am counting on you bombarding them with your naval resources oh you're gonna try and take my my fleet out i have i have plans that rely on them being the target of this naval assault oh okay i don't know if that will be at all beneficial in the end because that could mean that they just get obliterated but i also have a bit of a plan i'll be completely frank most of my plan has revolved around trying to scare you off in a big game of chicken along this road it's not really worked the way i hoped that was kind of last stop stages gambit now i'm having

to go and just sort of commit to the bit so i've had to work a new plan out around that but i think i have a plan mine is sort of praying that i've got the numbers and if i do have the numbers i've got a good plan if i don't have the numbers i have a silly plan okay that's fun uh and also one thing I didn't move with the Saharans because, again, they're pinned. Yeah, they're all nicely fucked up by planes. Yes, absolutely. So that sort of wraps up where we are. We have trucks to do,

but that's sort of it. I had a little bit of breakdown of some tanks. I lost four tanks overall because it was 10% on a few different groups. Yes. So I've lost a few tanks, but nothing that's too devastating.

I can pick those back up at some point. overall that movement was great the way i moved it around meant that none of my trucks had breakdown so they like as in didn't even have to roll on the table because the most they moved over were three clear hexes and that's 18 breakdown points trucks move two columns to the left and it's yeah and uh the the third one maxes out at 20 and the first column there's no breakdown so that worked out great i've had no breakdown apart from the tanks i've repositioned my guys i've got an all right supply line in mind which i'm going to have to figure out the fine details of for the black

shirts the old black shirts yeah when it comes to next session but all in all i'm feeling tentatively confident i think this this is the turning point this is where the scenario changes this is where it's like the game of monopoly that we've compared this to is it the case now where one of us knows they're going to lose for the rest of the scenario and is just trying to fend off the worst of it yeah because i don't know about you i don't have much more impactful reinforcements coming i've got the two blackshirt divisions that are on their way i've got they're already they're already moving up yes

on the arrival track do you have any more oh no in terms of actual reinforcements I don't think I'll double check but I don't think I've got any at all oh wow okay I've got planes I don't think I get any actual reinforcement units during the scenario I think I'm just stuck with what I've got

yeah what I've got out there is if the if it all sort of falls apart i do have the sixth australian division uh who've been mentioning the operation compass stuff but they're in cairo currently okay so you've got one division up your sleeve yeah i've got to brook's garrison which is basically a division in terms of its scale so i've got that as yeah i don't really want to pull that out though because if i expose to brook like that i'm sort of accepting i've lost to an extent so if i have to pull them out something's gone really egregious

wrong yeah i've got a big cluster of divisions around the middle of the map around madalena i just need to bring them into the front if i really want to make sure i solidify this i think i don't really want to do that though yeah well they can't do anything at the minute yeah we'll see how that goes it's an important truck segment coming up it is it's always important i hate truck day but it's important yeah well enough about the campaign for north africa roll credits uh well let's let's have a little look in the mailbag and see what people because we're people who talk about the campaign for north africa which is a board game that talks about the campaign for north africa what about the people who talk about us talking about the campaign for north africa which talks

about the campaign for north africa it's too many levels of obstruction it is it's nested storytelling and here's a nested story for you andy we not only have something from the mailbag here but we have an extra special revelation that came about today we had a message from a listener oh yes and it's a pretty wacky one um because this message uh denotes the i think unraveling of a man's psyche um what seems to have happened um inadvertently on our part is we've encouraged somebody um unfortunately to buy the game and now that was never the intention and we've made it quite clear that yes the game can be played and yes if you sit down and and give it a go you can probably do it too we didn't mean by the game so a bit more power to you yeah more power to you so

i just want to say rick i know you're listening i'm really sorry that you decided to buy the game after listening to this and i really hope it does not consume you wholeheartedly because we're we're already silly for doing this i wish you the best of luck whether you're playing it or keeping it but it's it's lovely that you sent that in and best of luck with whatever you do with that game uh hopefully it's some sort of ritual sacrifice where you burn the game and free our souls from its captivity i don't know if that's how it works but probably not we probably have to be in hours but we need it yeah i think that's how it works it's like some sort of like vassal tied to our spirit it's a phylactery it is we are liches except we'll we'll die like mortals i imagine

some sort of like coronary heart disease is probably what's gonna get us that our soul is somewhere else but aside from that we have emails that have been sent in which we're incredibly grateful for as always let's have a little look in this mailbag of ours the first one for us let's have a little look see who we got in here we have um we have outlook loading that's oh there we go that's that's much better than outlook loading it's an email it's an email from jeff from chicago and jeff jeff's been in touch before and jeff is in touch once again and saying howdy guys i ended up listening to episode 44 to 46 in succession during a car trip so this is in reference to two of those three episodes in one of these episodes the idea was introduced that

distract should be more transparent yes that's right i did say that and i meant that this immediately brought two things to mind for me one that episode happened to be released on the day that drake's lawsuit against his slash kendrick mars label over not like us sorry no yes not like us was dismissed by the court a meaningless coincidence but it's still true no i like that meaningless coincidence no it's not we pull some string well andy we can't say anything especially with that celebrity on the couch you'll you'll blab to everybody two although you reference not like us in your common ground segment the track you should have considered here was one kendrick released immediately before that one meet the grahams the track is basically a monkey's poor

wish for this common ground where kendrick lamar addresses drake's son parents alleged hidden daughter and drake himself directly to discuss what a horrible person drake is alleged to be and now everybody involved needs to either do better in the case of the adults or rise above in case of the kids while highly effective as a diss track it's also a profoundly uncomfortable listen so depending on your feelings towards diss tracks maybe a little ambiguity mystery isn't really a bad thing fair enough i i think that one see i became aware of this one when me and you were talking to our friend jurassic park friend about this particular common ground because that's what we do in our spare time we talk about the common ground yeah yeah and he'd actually

mentioned this song or well you'd mention it to him it came up he mentioned it i didn't know about this either until and and then not long afterwards we got this email so this seems like yeah this sort of careful what you wish for situation because i've had a look at this song and it's it's pretty cutting it's pretty brutal i'm gonna have to give it a listen it sounds mean it's very mean but i think that is the intent and i think based on what i know of the beef if i felt that way i i guess i see why he'd say this i just don't know enough about the beef where i can precisely say whether or not it's warranted and i don't want to take a side on a celebrity few that i don't really understand despite my common ground it's in current ground

i'm allowed to say it outside of common ground i need to be civil especially the allegations in that song i guess that's another thing i think the allegations about drink are pretty strong i don't want to weigh in something i don't understand i don't want to be in trouble finally episode 46 is common ground discussed a cameo like app where people pay to send messages to celebrities and they get to witness videos of that celebrity's reaction to the video oh yes harangue that was yours yeah still looking for venture capital if anyone's out there if anyone's considering that please don't put your money somewhere good to get around the horrific implications of where this idea will inevitably lead to what if we instead proposed a common

ground to this common ground as well as the previously mentioned one what if all celebrities who release diss tracks with hidden disses need to agree to have their reaction filmed and distributed for all previous and future disses in whatever beef between celebrities was occurring it would basically be like a virtual take on the in-person rap battles for two people who either couldn't coordinate their schedules to do it live on stage or who weren't quick enough on their feet enough to do it well now i admit this common ground idea is half-baked and possibly nonsensical but i hope you both take it in the spirit it is intended as always stay subtle humble and brave and keep up the excellent work jeff from chicago well jeff first of all don't apologize for common

ground being half-baked or nonsensical i don't imagine any of ours have ever come across as anything beyond that i think that's a fun twist on it though i like it it's nice when our common grounds have common ground yeah especially when it's two common grounds coming together on a common ground yeah it's the common ground of the common grounds but yeah just you do realize that sets a precedent which means that can eventually be a single common ground when all of them come together in a tournament style that's the last common ground is the ultimate we amalgamate them all into a single agreement stone statues cats roaming free big lights being weaker well it's a bit like if you click the first link on every page of wikipedia you eventually get to the page

philosophy and then it just gets stuck in a loop yeah so it's sort of like that we're getting down to the purest common ground eventually we'll get there and this is the first stepping stone in order to reach that yeah we're highlandering it yeah there can be only one yeah and so far it would seem the being only one is this use of harang for rap battles so there you go andy maybe there is legs on this idea maybe harang is a rap battle platform harang will see the light of day in some i hope harang does not see the light of day in any form i i sincerely mean that I'm just going to do it I want some time off for Christmas

I'm just going to program the app Spend the holiday season doing something nice No Stop creating a forum for cyberbullying of celebrities I'm going to use Christmas to make the world worse That just sounds like a very upfront description of what the Grinch wants to do

Well, you know Jim Carrey but let's carry on I've got one here You're not going to laugh at that? Oh, no. Sorry. I wasn't supposed to. It was a joke.

It was a funny joke. Come on, man. We do this every week. We're friends. What the fuck? Moving on. Got one here. Subject to a pair of terrible influences.

Ah, yes. This is sounding about right. What's this? This one's definitely for us. Hey, Andy and James. I'm Nick, one of your few but faithful Australian fans. Hoo, hoo, hoo. we don't get messages from them very often so this is great yeah i've been meaning to send

off this email for a very long time i came across you boys the same way most of your listeners came across you uh i wanted to punish myself with a crazy board game and here's some guys who are already doing it for me i remember you guys had said you started the podcast in a way to warn away future players from the pain of the game that's right rick but i have to say it had the opposite effect on me damn it so there's a thought that's been bouncing around my brain for a few weeks and i wanted your thoughts on it if you have a larger amount of players instead of 1v1 what would the general consensus on bribing an opponent for information like convoy routes or knowing which airfields had better targets or even getting an

opponent's partner to pry for information as that certainly was something that happened back then i reckon it would be pretty neat but also ruin most friendships for life uh anyway thanks for taking the time out of your day uh both playing the game for us and reading our messages cheerio for now uh ps i think someone at meta is listening to the podcast as minutes after i finish listening to the episode uh where you guys want to bring the thunderbirds to life i get an instagram ad for Thunderbird's anniversary box set and I think that is pretty neat. Oh, cool.

So we've got a Megacorp spying on us, which is fun. Well, we already had a direct message from Jeff Bezos when he sent over that bloody... Oh, Heathcliff. When we got the Heathcliff comment, that was from Bezos himself.

So we've got Zuck and Bezos. Oh, great. Now we just need Musk and I think that's the trifecta of Megacorps. The unholy trinity. Yeah, when they're all listening, That's when the podcast is really going to come under fire. But I do like the

spying idea. I think for this game it's too... It would destroy friendships too much. Well, you're a big RuneScape advocate, Andy. Addict, not advocate? I've been weaning off. Oh yeah,

as you can see, you've got your RuneScape patch on there. You've got your 99 woodcutting patch on. So in that, it discouraged real-world trading. That was a big thing back when i used to play it oh yeah it still is yeah back when i was like 10 and i was always like i don't understand what real world trading would be this is what real world trading would be i would not encourage you bribing your friends with real cash to do that however an in-game mechanic i think

could be fun we talked about it before with the whole enigma machine being part of the game maybe like an intelligent slayer too you could make this game even more complicated if you wanted to yeah you could finish richard berg's work you could add bakery rules for off-map environments bakeries depending on was it weather in italy for that season i think it was yeah i think i think it wanted to include the economy yes like the world economy which is insane but yeah if you want to go real hard with it if you want to add you know new game plus to the campaign for north africa i think adding the intelligence layer is the next thing to slap on top of logistics so if you've got a bigger group we're doing this with two people yeah and i think it's easy as hell like this is the

this is child's play at this point i'd take that back i'd take that back i don't want this to be played back at some sort of i don't know the pearly gates or wherever this ends up getting brought up but i would say with a bigger group you can definitely have some fun with it i think some real life arguments could definitely ensue depending on the group of people you're playing with and the amount of time you're playing it for but this fun to be had i don't think it's a crazy idea what i think is is crazy nick is if you go ahead and play the game don't do that we've already lost one person to it we've already had one casualty in this and we didn't mean to cause any of this so please everyone remember that this this is a cautionary tale this is not oh this is fun

please join in. No, not what people are... Having said that, if you are playing, despite our advice, let us know how that goes. We'd love to hear. I'd like us to sort of rehabilitate the reputation of the game from like a terrible, unfinished mess to

a thing people actually play and enjoy. No, Andy, you want to start a cult. That's what you want to do. Don't mention that. That's not sugar-coated. You want to start a cult where we're at the top. I would love to have a cult. You want to do a pyramid scheme. there's not any cult in the world where it's never been shady there's some sort of personal gain

involved in a cult even if it's just for ego oh yeah it's gonna be like a money cult though not like a weird pain cult or anything like that i guess yeah there's definitely layers of insidious there's grades of cult yeah okay yeah i'll i'll give you that i don't think you're the worst kind of cult yeah but i do think you're cult just want to be like an armstrong riki i think we're just a pair of cult classics that's what we are classic yeah this won't be big at the time but trust me 50s time everyone is going to be talking about war with a mate oh the second i fucking die this is gonna blow up you will be the lovecraft of our time no no an awful man but his art was there is so many people who have been appreciated after that dance you could have said but

with Lovecraft. Yeah, I think that sort of gels quite well. You know, like Van Gogh. You can Van Gogh fuck yourself, Andy. You're not Van Gogh. How dare you? That's mean. Oh, it's all in good jest. Oh, yeah. Maybe.

I don't know. It's getting realer. I'll be honest, sometimes the lines blur. Sometimes at the end of a... With that whole supply I don't think you pulled earlier. I don't know if I hate you in real life anymore. I don't know what's going on. And this is the Ark. It is not whether we enjoy the game,

it's how much we come to hate each other. Over the last year, I've transposed my anger from the game onto your face. Oh, that's good. It's now just I look at you and I see the box. We do go to the pub less often now. I have noticed that. We do hang around here a lot more.

We are becoming hermits in our free time, and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. It's bad. It's winter. It's cold. it's acceptable for now yeah i suppose we'll see how it goes but one week there will just be one host it's coming yeah but until then we need to we need to pull ourselves away from this and we need to go to a more important place which is the past yes and in the past there were all sorts of strange things happening stranger than even today and i think that's why andy you need to take us

on a journey through history indeed so we're up to the seventh farmer division part three operation compass part two now this is a big one because this ties into more or less what is coming at the end of the scenario yes this scenario i think if we played the 20 turn version of it that is operation compass i think yes i think it wraps up with graziani's offensive and being the the push that the Italians do to manoeuvre into that spot, and then Compass is what comes after. Yes. So, this is Churchill describing Operation Compass.

In two months, the army of the Nile had advanced 500 miles, had destroyed an Italian army of more than nine divisions, and captured 130,000 prisoners, 400 tanks, 1,290 guns. The conquest of Cyrenaica was complete. so uh operation compass went pretty well yeah it sounds like they had a jolly old time with it yeah well the the commonwealth yeah so we left it off on uh winter 1940 coming over into 1941 with the british troops surrounding bardia bardia we all know and love bardia doesn't get mentioned a whole lot in our game but it is for me a very core point bardia i don't mention it a lot i have

big respect for bardia well that's good it's good to get that bigger bardia yeah so it's a bitterly cold winter uh heavy rain fog and sleet which to counter the rush order 11 500 sleeveless jackets to the front oh some g-lays yeah to go over there uh go over their uniforms but uh i had a g-lay i used to play uh used to play the game in yeah where's that gone why would i i left it here at you're home then it's in a bin you've been my g-lay of course so on the 1st of january the western desert force gets renamed to the 13th corpse and as this is happening the navy and the raf are bombing the port of bardia while the 7th armoured division move round bardia to block the road to the west cut it off from reinforcements part of the 7th the 4th armoured who broke off

to take on city omar uh a fortnight earlier join it with the combi force to patrol west of here anna bale bear gnosley is the that's butchered i'm sure you've nailed that one oh yeah well handley he's got uh he's the commander of bardia's defenses and he hardly has the nickname electric beard uh okay he has a pretty impressive beard you got a picture uh i will get one and show you but yes it's not a crazy beard but it's a very good one okay it's just a well-done beard anyway musolini writes to him i have given you a difficult task but one suited to your courage and experience as an old and intrepid soldier the task of defending the fortress of bardia to the last i am certain that electric beard and his brave soldiers will stand at whatever cost faithful

to the last electric beard replies i'm aware of the honor and i've today repeated it to my troops your message simple and unequivocal in bardia we are and here we stay so on the 3rd of january the freshly named 13th corpse makes its move on bardia they open up with a barrage of 120 guns followed by a feint to the south while two battleships and four destroyers unleash on the northern parts of parts of bardia the majority of the fighting is performed by the australian supported by matilda tanks in two days the town is captured wow uh yeah they take uh 45 000 prisoners at the cost of 130 australians killed and 326 wounded so again just disproportionate prisoners just disproportionate prisoners and very much did not defend it to the last there

were 45 000 people defending it and they took about 45 000 prisoners they defended it for about two days and then gave in oh yeah so while the australians are taking a moment to regroup and count their prisoners uh the seventh head north looking to repeat the pattern at tabrook tabrook's a very valuable harbor as we know cities twice the size of bardia it's only guaranteed by 100 by 25 000 men though having 25 000 men it has a 34 mile long perimeter which is twice as long as bardia's which had double the troops okay spread thinner very dense yeah well my bardia garrison is actually moving along the wall yes that's one of the moves that i've made well i've taken them out probably serve you better than they did in bardia so as well as the 25 000 men they do also

have elements of the italian navy there such as the san gregorio oh do you yeah which they've taken guns from and brought ashore to use artillery style similar to i guess abc and their ships in the boa war it's yes when they would just take them off and then use them to disproportionately attack yes so they've done that so after the seventh start to show up and circle the city Graziani sends Mussolini a message this morning the investment of the position by the enemy armored vehicles has begun after which the various episodes of the new drama are easily predictable there's not a lot of hope there for Graziani the guy is just flailing he's trying to stay above water yeah this also he must suck to have as a commander because he takes an armored

unit and a division that would have been part of this defense and sends them further west before telling the town commander there will be no relief force. Oh dear. He takes a bunch of the guys and then goes, no one's coming to help you.

That's horrible. So the Brits make contact with Tobruk on the 6th of January. They are struggling a bit at this point. You don't say. The Brits are. Not because of the Italians. of course just in general they're burdened with victory yes their nearest supply depot is now

100 miles behind them because they've advanced so quickly this sounds familiar yeah and they couldn't use bardia as a port on account of the raf and the navy's bombing campaign they've ruined their port yeah so they do manage to set up a small supply depot at the border at solemn like the border of libya and egypt but it's much smaller than bardia even it's so small you can't use it on the in our game it's not like a well i've just had a few people there that's where the wall was positioned before they just moved yeah so they set that up because of these supply issues the brits decide to wait for a bit for the supply lines to catch up behind them and to have the infrastructure in place this is because general o'connor his plans are already

looking past to brook and he wants his units to be properly supplied so they can react fast after Tobruk Falls. Really thinking ahead. Oh, yeah. On the 19th of January, the RAF dropped leaflets on the town calling for the Italian surrender, but they're ignored.

That's still... This has happened before, we've mentioned in a history segment. It's such a scary thing to receive leaflets from the sky telling you to surrender. It's, one, because it's just leaflets from the sky telling you to surrender,

but it's also, that could have been a bomb. It could have already killed you. This is a grace. many of the seventh tanks and vehicles are on their last legs at this point to the point where the sixth royal tank regiment um which is part of the seventh hands over all its remaining serviceable will be serviceable vehicles uh to the rest of the seventh and then the men head back to cairo uh because there's just not enough vehicles anymore due to like breakdowns and attrition This doesn't stop the 7th and the Australians though. On the night of the 20th of January through the morning of the 21st, the Navy moving in again with four ships to start bombardment of Tobruk, while more ships lay offshore in wait, setting a trap in case the San Giorgio wants to retreat.

the naval commander uh in fact asks permission to take the ship out um but Graziani Graziani uh puts orders against that saying so as not to deprive the fortress of the contribution of the San Giorgio's uh guns and especially for morale reasons since the departure of the ship would be harmful to land troops morale if it would happen right at the moment the attack is underway So they can't get that ship out even The naval bombardment's Backed up by the RAF Which serves two purposes

Both bombing the town And positions there But also the sound Of the explosions Covers the sounds of their tanks getting into position Oh, I like that Yeah, I thought that was really cool Just make a fuckload of noise

So you guys can do their thing Stealth tanks Yeah so during the night uh sappers and artillery have cleared a path through the minefield that surrounds tobrook so at 20 at 6 in the morning they another huge artillery barrage opens the attack and the australians attack at first light over the next hour they managed to create a while my a while a mile wide a mile wide hole in the perimeter so and at 7 a.m 18 matilda tanks are clear enough to join the assault there's a big enough gap so i'll just take a moment here

to highlight another problem with the italians poor supply and the importance of radios the bombing through the night by the raf and the uh navy has severed the phone lines in the town and because they don't have enough radios the italian command commander finds out about the attack at half eight which is three hours after it starts oh wow and that's a lot of time for things to go bad in fact it's enough time well for most of it uh by half 10 the aussies have overrun four strongholds within the city and also taken out six of the 10 artillery positions and i don't imagine that when you find out two hours to respond that's that's not enough time I think a guy on a horse told him.

Oh my God. The guy's got medieval messages. Yeah. So at 12, the Italian commander informs Graziani that they've lost the eastern half of the city. In response, Graziani sends three planes, which the RAF promptly shoot down. Just don't bother.

Three planes? Yeah. What were they hoping to do with that? I don't know. Was that just like a token gesture that he's still in the fight i pretty much yes so but at 6 30 the commander whose name i can't say the commander the italian commander wow you've just completely given up on that one give it a go pitassi manella that seems like a fairly easy one to go for oh there we go he orders his staff

to surrender um but the italian admiral didn't know about this and kept fighting defending the harbor so and since graziani's prevented him from going out which actually does turn out to be a good move because he would get attacked by the royal navy he sets about uh systematically destroying the harbor and its supplies because he's like we're getting taken i'm just gonna not let this be useful to them so as night falls uh over half the city's been captured and during the night an important order is given i guess for us uh with the game uh that's the night that the order is given to scuttle the san georgio and it's ammo magazines are blown up to deny the british the ability to use it so this is when it gets scuttled into brooks harbour oh wow so but that

so is operation compass before the game then no no that's odd that it's already trapped in the harbor then i wonder what they didn't leave and they maybe he because it would be the only italian shit so i wonder if they've shorthanded that so the italians don't have like one ship for like naval combat to add a whole naval combat system possibly it's just odd that that would be part because i feel like the game does not shy away from having awkward spare pieces no so that's an odd one yeah but the italians did put up a slightly better defense here than bardia even with less people they were slightly better quality of soldier but it still only takes two days ends with the capture of 27 000 italians 200 vehicles and over 230 guns the port of tabrook also does

manage to survive which alleviates some of the 13th corps supply problems as supplies start to be brought in by boat they dig additional wells and bring in water distiller distilleries to set up in tabrook so they've really set that up as their like forward supply depot i mean it's a good spot to have in the game it's it's a vast fond of resource for me yeah so having that that far west yeah that's that's a crazy benefit if you have that in the game now the game is sort of over yeah so yeah i can see how that translates to being a massive stronghold to have oh yeah and I think it goes back and forward a couple of times because once you get to Brook,

you get the area around it in a lot of ways. You hold the border at that point, yeah. So from here, the 13th Corps start pushing further west. Just also to remind you again, this is a five-day raid looking for opportunities and to push the Italians back to the border. They're now hundreds of miles past the border, well, a hundred miles past the border and still going.

It's been a month. so the you know that armored unit i mentioned graziani sending away yes uh he sent it to a place called met chili yes i know that yeah they have a tank battle on the 24th of january where they knock out nine m13 tanks at the cost of a cruiser and six light tanks would have been even less if it wasn't for communications issues at this point general o'connor splits the six australian who are going to continue along the via balba while the seventh will move directly across the desert hoping to come out south of benghazi um oh wow 170 miles across the desert uh basically that's basically map b yes that's the the tracks yeah yeah you know i was looking

at that today i was thinking do i move the black shirts across that vastness but i was like the breakdown is too dangerous so that goes to show the environment they've navigated to slice through that map yeah and they're slicing through there because they want to cut off retreating forces from benghazi who have already started their retreat at this point wow so they're really getting ahead of the game here oh yeah i will pick up the the seventh and the uh operation compass we'll finish operation compass next week but yeah that's the seventh and operation compass wow that is some scary stuff oh yeah that's wildly terrifying because that that move there pushing along you've essentially just described a march across the entirety of the game map yeah

to the point where you're heading to benghazi heading to map a which is the the westernmost map on the the game board yeah so that goes to show that it's it's essentially controlling the board which is scary in context of the board game because how fast it happens because that goes to show that the pendulum swing of this game is in the offensive i move all the way to practically map a well e rather l alimane i think is on map e so i swing it's like 20 hexes of alexandria or something and then you swing all the way from e to holding a yeah and then we fight back push it into the middle again then you get to lma then there's another fight like rommel comes in and pushes i just can't see the board game going that way i i did was thinking that when i was doing

this of like unless we follow it quite closely the things that cause the swings won't like rommel's arrival will look very different if we're still fighting over map c when he arrives yeah other him arriving to push the british out of map a yeah like if you manage to hold maps b through e and it was a struggle for map a i would just i would not give up in the literal sense but i'd feel like it's over yeah i think it does it will have a bit of you know the what do you call it yo-yoing or whatever you know in mario kart where you get the better items and stuff the worse you are yes yeah to balance it out i think this has the inherent thing of like if i push you to map a my supply lines are four maps and vice versa yes whereas like

the further the enemy retreats the further you are from your supplies that's a good point you are going to be further away from your stronghold of supplies so i think that sort of yo-yo momentum shift might be i'll have essentially unlimited supplies coming in from tripoli yeah because i can have them ferry in from tripoli which you can't you can't touch i can't go past the western arch which is yeah means you get a little bit of area to like land in and there's no mechanic for you to hurt tripoli or any of the resources there and yeah if i was to then be pushed back to map a i've got that and if i manage to somehow hold benghazi i've got a place for them to arrive more readily so i do have a constant stream available and then if i have an attack that

peter's out and you start yeah coming across you'll take all my supply dumps yes so i guess there is the yeah that's a good point maybe it would yo-yo if it gets that bad yeah but i would just i'd be worried that all my men are gone at that point i think that maybe that's where the prisoners come in yeah because if you starve out me with prisoners or vice versa it becomes an issue where the prisoners become a massive drain and then if i free up those prisoners you get a huge influx of replacement points yeah to set your stuff back up so maybe that is how the pendulum works in this game because i think to get you rid of your prisoners i have to get them to alexandria or cairo and you have to get them to is it benghazi where the prisoners get like

shipped off map i think so i think it's benghazi which again with the long supply lines if i'm capturing people on map a they're probably never getting back to cairo at like 10 cpa a turn to be shipped away hopefully not before i push back i'd hope that i would outpace them yeah yeah that's a scary thought that the game could swing that drastically yeah that if actually in some ways it gives me some confidence because now i'm thinking there's no situation where it's unwinnable we talked i think it was last week we've definitely talked about before but the thing of like monopoly where you know the winner and it's such a long process to get there so has given me a bit of hope of like well no it's not going to be quite like that because again like

i think the distance is the balancer because also if the other person's pushing you you're in reinforcements arrive and get to the front yeah i think yeah it actually reframes this upcoming combat in my mind where i was thinking at first this combat is going to be the be all and end all of the entire scenario maybe it could be but it might not actually be but we've still got if if this takes the full turn we still got three more turns to resolve things things could still swing again yeah one of us could lose and then by the end of the scenario bring it back we don't have a whole lot of reinforcements so that will change things but we could potentially still swing it oh yeah so i'm i'm actually feeling a bit more if anything this history

segment has given me some confidence that i can lose this upcoming fight and still win the scenario yeah I just hope it doesn't come to that I don't want to lose this I want to win this fight and win the scenario that's the perfect situation and there is a historical precedent for it

I guess you're the history guy you know there is I guess the historical precedent for this is you get to about where you are and then get wiped off the map yes I just need to hold it for the rest of the scenario

I'm telling you The Saharans, they are They are my ace up the sleeve If you stop bombing them Probably won't Well you can't afford to keep on bombing them No, you've got to bomb other stuff Your plan for the next stop stage relies on you bombing other places

No it doesn't I'm just going to bomb them again Please don't Just going to keep bombing them And if you keep on bombing them we're going to fall out Okay. Which means... We're going to fall out.

Well, I guess there's a way around the falling out. Okay. I think maybe to try and avert that, we do a bit of a preemptive, a bit of required common ground. And now for something nicer. A little oasis in the wall. It's time for some common ground. I'm trying the intro for common ground.

I'm recording. Maybe. Yeah. this has got to be a good one because we need some goodwill buffer for next week we do we need to buffers a good word actually andy i'm glad you used the word buffer okay so common ground is the segment in which each week andy and i come back together we reframe this war of ours as a chance to talk about a topic where we can find some common ground we can agree on something we become friends again for that little short period of time

so next week we can come back reinvigorated and I've got one this week Andy. What have you got? So, my common ground is we need to start replacing stuff with inflatables. Okay Okay, what stuff? Well, think about it Andy

Furniture You should just watch that episode It's always sunny No, but I I like what a bad idea this is Hang on a minute is this where i've got this from i think so oh christ maybe it is but i think oh no maybe it is no this might be where i've got this from but i was thinking you're gonna have for furniture you

can't this is so bad because i it's only when you i've seen that episode i think we might have even watched it together and it the thing is it seems like a good idea to me because you can replace furniture with it you can replace entertainment with it it saves space it saves resource you can cut out like a sofa for example looking at your sofa over there you know where the celebrity's sleeping yeah kick him off and then just have an inflatable chair and then at the end of the day deflate it this is such a ball like it it's not though it it saves a lot of space it saves not so much time but it's so you know what it comes from you know when we went to download festival a few years ago yes and i had that camping chair that i took everywhere and it

folded down into like this tiny little bag yeah that was good and then i could just whip it out at any time and i could just sit anywhere i wanted and i could carry that bag and it was like it was it was handheld it was this tiny little thing and i just i would love to have that in my home i'd love to have the ability to just add a chair yeah add a chair add furniture and you can get the sort of like the comfy inflatable chairs with like cup holders in you can use it for entertainment as well all the one of them all all the sort of stuff in um you know uh like like kids birthday parties and stuff why is it that there's a cutoff where inflatable things are no longer just acceptable to just put up in an environment why are they

just for kids do you not want to inflate bouncy castles that's fun is it not for like a bit for a bit but like what other entertainment you're gonna have really as an adult like think about it what what do you actually find fun because i've been thinking about this and i don't really find anything fun oh god this is this isn't anything to do with inflatables man you're depressed so you know inflatable stuff is great what can't you replace something with uh inflatables tv television right projector on a bouncy castle okay you know i think we're over complicating the issue if anything okay we can have inflatable stuff it it can be bolstered by other pieces of technology but you don't need a television

television accompanied by inflatable chair you want to be like an amish guy but with inflatable furniture is this a weird luddite slash inflatable furniture thing well i've tackled the television thing what else can't i replace with inflatables a book a book yeah why would you need a book when you've got a bouncy castle also is a book fun depends on the book right name a book that's fun snow crash what's that never heard of it it's a fun book about cyberpunk well not cyberpunk but a sort of absurd future America where the mafia deliver pizzas and the main character

is called hero protagonist. It's a fun book. Right, that doesn't sound very fun. It is. So I'll pretend you said something interesting and like I'll pretend you said like the witches by Roald Dahl. He was mentioned

about the, you know, you mentioned him in your history segment, hadn't you? Yeah, he got creative from a brain injury outside Mercer Maitreux. Yeah, there you go. They stop brain injuries. So we get rid of crash helmets and airbags. Airbags are inflatable! Hang on a minute. Oh, they're already doing the writing for me here. So you've got

airbags and cars which are inflatable. Okay. So there you go. That's some fun. Immediately. You go into a crash and you're saved by an airbag. That's pretty fun. It's not fun. It's more fun than being grievously injured or killed. You might

crack a few ribs but you're you're alive that's fun it's not fun using life isn't fun you'd rather be killed in a motor accident it's not fun or unfun you're having a severe injury yeah but i'm trying to mitigate the injury okay i think that's important sure so it's not only important but it's it's fun and important all right so we've we've ticked off books we've ticked off we haven't ticked anything off we've ticked off um road traffic accidents what else do you think that can't be replaced with uh with with inflatables can be presented to me it's just so many things so many things but so many that you can't even list them this isn't on me to list yes it is this is my common ground i've made a very good point and you can't rebuke it

just a table a table inflatable table put some weights at the bottom it bounces around a little bit. You find the weights, you put them down and then you can just put stuff on the inflatable table. I... I can't put anything sharp on it. Why would you want to put sharp things on a table? Oh no, I'll leave them littered around the floor. Where do you put your

sharp things? What sharp things are you talking about? Knives. Why are you putting knives on a table? What do you mean? That's what. Put your knives in the knife drawer. That's... Okay, also drawers, but the same point. No, knives go in drawers

And we're not talking about drawers here You were talking about tables Okay I wouldn't put like a Swiss army knife in a drawer So where would you put your Swiss army knife? On my table Why would you not put it in your pocket? It's meant to be on the go

I store it Well, you know That's meant to be on the go So now you're just being difficult You wouldn't put a Swiss army knife on the table It's a multi-tool You keep it with you shuriken you are not uh you're not uh you're not a ninja you know you're not a shinobi all the more

likely to like wildly brand the shit and deflate everything i own that's a weapon though that's meant to be used in a combat situation that's always going to destroy furniture can you just the rooms you're picturing walking into is like oh cool uh just walking into a completely empty room and be like what am i gonna blow up today exactly thank you yes you've nailed it you're describing like a crack den just nothing in there except disposable furniture but it's not a crack den andy because you can't have needles around the inflatables so if anything this actually prevents criminal drug use no it just means a little waste and inflatable the inflatable is not better than heroin for a

heroin on it yes it is you're telling me that a heroin addict would rather have no furniture and have heroin yes you didn't let me finish you didn't let me finish okay sorry go on no you've taken the wind out my sails you've taken the air out my inflatables just what you're saying a heroin addict would like heroin more than stuff but yeah exactly are you really saying that yes in your heart of hearts you believe that yes i don't think you understand anything about inflatables or heroin. You really believe that? You're struggling

to argue against this because you know it's a good idea. It's not a good idea. Name, right, okay, quick fire, alright, I'm going to give you one opportunity here, Andy. Name two things that can't be replaced with inflatables, and I will give you rapid fire responses. Windows.

Pass. a phone charger right that that's not fair that's not fair at all a rack to hold antique spears right you don't have any antique spears a taxidermied animal head on the wall you could definitely do that balloon animals you ever heard of those come on andy get with the program into a nice wood-panelled office to see an inflatable desk and chair and a balloon animal head on the wall. But you're

probably thinking of, like, bright, colourful balloons. Are we? You are. Let's face it. You are. Okay, these are going to be classy born balloons. Yes, they're going to be very, very fashionable. They're going to be very trendy and modern. Just sort of, like, sleek, marble-patterned

balloons. I think that's good, is it not? Does that not fit with this, you know, ivory tower type vibe you're going for? Does this fit your agenda, Andy? No, it doesn't. Because what you're trying to do,

you're trying to push big furniture on me. You're trying to put phone chargers. Really? Phone chargers? That's wild. That's wild.

Wow. All right. I think you've not really given much of an argument as to why this doesn't work. You haven't given an argument why it does work yet. I've made the suggestion.

this is diverted so far from what you initially said i said we should replace more things with inflatables which you might have been able to argue but you've somehow in your defensiveness said we should replace everything with inflatables well so far all i found is you're an advocate for big corporations that produce phone charges and cracked ends and i'm sorry andy but those are two areas that i don't want to try and push for i i want to push for i want to push for fun i'm a big advocate of fun enjoyment and revitalizing childhood into the adult age that's what i'm all for i'm all for making things enjoyable and you you want to you want to keep the crack den culture alive you want to you want to help big phone charger make more money okay and if that

if that's how you sleep at night then that's fine but i will sleep quite happily on a nice inflatable airbed knowing that my head isn't up in the clouds because of my ivory tower that i'm sleeping in my head is on a soft inflatable pillow resting on the floor because your bed is gradually deflated during the night well it's a good way to make sure you get the right amount of sleep and you don't oversleep because that is if anything just as bad as undersleep nope not at all but okay i guess we can put your money where your mouth is i assume you'll be getting rid of your bed and replacing it with an air mattress well that's all the time we have this week for war with a mate but if you want to get in touch with us you can get in touch with us at info at war

with a mate which is our email address info war with a mate dot co dot uk yep uh website is war with a mate dot co dot uk and our instagram is just war with a mate i am seeing out the end of movember if anyone wants to share the post if anyone wants to contribute themselves we're amazed at the contribution so far thank you so much an eccentric millionaire who would like a guy to get a tattoo get in touch with them i'm confident i'm not gonna have to get the silly tattoo and i'm really glad about that we've raised good money and i don't need to do something i'm terrified about it's the perfect scenario for me so let's knock that out let's not do that so from me james me andy stay subtle humble and brave in the deserts of your minds and if you've got something in your

house replace it with an inflatable and you'll thank me later for it all right thanks for listening We'll be right back.