War With A Mate - Episode 55: Tomorrow Came

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

The climactic battle along the coastal road has finally begun. A clash of both Andy and James’ forces erupts with dramatic consequences and the promise of a long, protracted conflict. A history segment sees a less triumphant portion of the 7th’s endeavours and this week’s Common Ground sizes us all up, literally.

hello and welcome to war with a mate with me james and me james doubling up there are you yeah that way i outrank you there's two of us and only one of you andy how are you going to deal with this one that would make me the the officer and you're the proletariat no that would make you all the unwashed masses i'm the loud majority hear me roar there we go let you get that out of your system you knew it was coming didn't you oh yeah yeah i'm never gonna we've done enough of these now yeah i'm not gonna leave that checkoff's gun unfired well it's war with a mate the game in which we play the podcast yep we're playing spi's campaign for north africa we are it's a board game not a podcast that was a little joke that

was born out of a mistake a bit like this podcast we are currently hurtling towards the end of stage two of turn three and the the big battle is upon us andy yeah i guess before we get into the details you were pretty down last week how's your energy and thoughts about the game this week well i came into today i'm a little bit more uh awakened ready for the game to evolve and volva did i came in with a renewed sense of potential that the game may have and it did it did deliver it has delivered uh bloodshed it has delivered tears it has delivered less tedium than usual, and instead we have had quite the conflict

develop today. Yep, my movement phase turned free off stage two. And we had some divisions smashing into each other. We did. Big colliding divisions all over the shop up north along that northern road.

Egypt. Yeah, I mean it is. The Egyptian road along the coast. So, we had a battle there. It was my big wall up at the top. The Travolta Regiment, which is tanks. The 1st Libyan Division. And the 63rd Serene.

I think it's Serene. Or Kirene. It's C-I-R-E-N-E. Another consonant, please. Serenity. Now that's a film. Firefly spin-off film. It is, it is.

I'm a fan of that. I'm a fan of Firefly. Took a while to watch it. Did you know when they released that initially it was released out of order on television Yeah, as in episode 2 was released as episode 1 or something Yeah, they released it out of order and then wondered why it went bad

You wouldn't do that with anything else I mean, no, you wouldn't We should with this, actually We'll start batch recording them and releasing them at random Yeah, we should have released episode 5, like today We'll cap them on that toast

Releasing this one as episode 1 would be fun little teaser for what's to come just would have meant doing this for a long time before we actually started releasing it which we did anyway yeah might have worked out but the battle commences up north with those three on my side 63rd serene first libyan and trivoli regiment and you had quite the cluster yeah it got a bit messy there but for serene because that was the first battle had 4th Indians supported by I think it was the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment

it was and the 7th Armoured Division the 7th Royal Tank Regiment went and joined up with them and they went in on that Serene Division and it went swimmingly for me crushing victory on my side I believe

yep just checking my notes it was 25% was it? yeah sorry now I remember i was overrun i believe the technical term in the game is so the close combat occurred we we matched up along this northern road you boxed me in a little bit you had a bit of a flank going on had me in a bit of an l-shape on the hexes had me on the ropes we had to begin combat with the option of a barrage i went for barrage i took aim at one of your groups and i managed to successfully

pin yes you pinned one of the infantry units in the seventh i did hoping to adjust the combined arms rules so that i could take off some of your capability tanks wise which you ended up doing but to no real avail yeah and then i barraged back and got your single armor unit you did and that was a heavy hit for me see when i was calculating the strength of the 63rd serene it was with one of the infantry already pinned from earlier as well as one of the guns already pinned that was from your air bombardment so that left me in a bit of a poor position of already being down some men and then when you managed to pin my tank successfully that was a heavy hit because that took off another 16 raw strength points now that was out of a total of 70 which i had going for me

bring it down to 54 these raw strength points are then distilled dividing them by 10 into the actual strength points which meant that's 5.4 and unfortunately rounding down that brings it to 5 so you took it down by two full actual strength points by pinning that armor it's a big hit the armor punches so much above the weight of the infantry it does the toe points tend to be fairly high you're talking eight nine toe points usually and as well as that they tend to have two or sometimes even three on that close assault or defense yeah most of mine have three on the in the seventh yes so immediately that is a huge hit to me i'm losing a huge chunk of my capability because the combined arms you previously because of the way that i've had the seventh structured

with not much infantry and a lot of tanks you've been doing the barrage of the infantry so that the tanks can't get involved but you had like was it eight infantry or something in there i had eight or nine to begin with you had one pinned yeah so i was like i'm not getting i mean that's an insane amount of ammo to try and pin eight yes because a barrage a single tow point of barrage requires four ammo points to be used and ammo is relatively scarce when you're doing something like that a heavy truck a single heavy truck can carry four eight is it eight yes eight units of ammo and yes you've got two barrages two two points of barrages um per per heavy truck so it's expensive to start barraging willy-nilly oh yeah and if you want a

guaranteed barrage you need to be able to drop something like 140 raw barrage points to still to 100 to 14 that's the only point where you can start guaranteeing that you'll pin when you drop a barrage and i if i used all the ammo that i had and managed to have every single gun in the 63rd fire off a barrage i'd still be about halfway short of guaranteeing a pin i do like this ammo being scarce feature though because it was like my plan in this segment was to slam my divisions into you and sort of break that clump up maybe get a division or two retreating like yeah inflict losses but at the same time i'm like you are next upstage you could come back in so conserving ammo for the next upstage while also trying to inflict heavy like finding that balance is like a good

tactical element to the combat yes which is something i exercised for the first time ever i think when it came to barrages because i looked at it and i thought i could drop a small barrage with the hope i can pin a unit or two and take off some of the combined arms but realistically i could have split it across 11 different barrages i had the ammo for it just do one barrage point on all of them yeah a single barrage point on each one which means the roll is something like it's only between 50 51 and 66 is a success so the chances are very slim it's possible it's just very unlikely and i was like well i can do that and and splurge all my ammo but i'd rather keep the ammo because a single barrage is also the same as four toe points of close assault from infantry

which is more useful probably in the long run if i'm trying to hold you back if i want to keep my foot in the door when it comes to this fight as long as i'm not getting pushed too far back with retreats then i can keep that fight going a long time with stuff like that so i decided instead nope i'll hold back i'll keep the ammo and i'll fight another day instead of running out of ammo now with a barrage that's probably not going to work yeah you did take you take the free cohesion hit don't you when you lose yeah i know you gain three if you're forced to retreat you lose three yes if you're forced to retreat you lose three just if you retreat i think you also lose it if you just decide to i don't know if you do if you retreat before combat sorry retreat

before assault you don't if you retreat because you didn't put the units in or everyone was pinned you do uh yes yeah if it's forced yeah if it's voluntary i don't believe you do if it's forced you have to so yeah i'm taking hits from cohesion which is not ideal either because then that affects morale which affects the differential which affects losses and makes it more likely that you'll retreat and then it becomes a cycle big effect on the result yes morale is a huge impact on the result it changes the column that you're rolling in which is the equivalent of you having an a role uh an actual strength point which is when it's divided by 10 is like you have to put 10 infantry in for example to overcome one minus morale yeah and most of my infantry are seven

toe points with one strength point so you're looking at a battalion and a bit in order to balance that out that's what morale is worth and most divisions only have eight to nine battalions of infantry so it's a significant portion it's like a 10 boost also uh because morale you have at the start of the game and that's pretty fixed, although you can increase it with training. But if you've got less than zero morale, you have a chance, if you have

zero or less morale and your cohesion starts to drop you very quickly get into the automatic surrender territory. Yes, that snowballs way quicker than I realised. So you've got to watch out on that cohesion because that is killer. And I do have some units

when I was looking over it earlier today that are in the minus three, minus five area so i need to be careful with them there are some however where i've been sat doing nothing with them so it ticks up doesn't go past zero though doesn't go past zero but it gets rid of the fucking minus so it's like five if they don't do anything for a whole ops there's a whole turn um i don't think it's five i think it's three yeah might even be two i did it last turn so i need to have a look i'll double check but i know i've got another one lined up there's a unit i haven't moved for two turns uh we'll have a who'll get a boost from that so i'll see how that goes

the because my uh my seventh armor division are in plus nine cohesion now that's insane it's just won three battles what does it max out at i think once you get to 10 it stops having an impact yeah does it stop having an impact or does it stop you adding it I imagine it stops you adding it as well probably stops you adding it but definitely the table goes up to 10

stops yeah because it would be wild if you could keep that ticking up to like plus 70 and then it just means you've got the room to lose so many battles before there's any material impact or because when you stretch your units you spend cohesion if you got too far

you could have like 20 cohesion and then burn it and just a unit has an extra 20 cpa for that turn which is a lot yeah you know what i keep forgetting that i keep forgetting the cohesion boost is also extra movement yeah for free with no real cost yeah you know i mean you lose it but it's like you're just losing a buffer yeah you're losing something you didn't start with anyway and you can realistically if you're using that to push something it might well be that you earn another three you get your free back yeah so that's scary I didn't realise how high up they were but they did have some real good strings of combat

It also means if you're in a situation like we were where there's a lot of clustered things, it's 5 CPA to attack you can just see the winning gets you free CPA back if you're willing to just immediately

spend them to keep the fights going so it's like yeah, you do have to force the retreat but if you do, you get like a cheap free combat almost yeah so it's well worth the cost i would say anyway there's uh yeah there's a a big a big storm of combat brewing around that north coast because that um that combat ended devastatingly for me because that differential with the the morale with the pinning of my armor

all of that resulted in a difference where i had 54 raw so 5.4 so five and what did yours come out at 136 raw and then we my morale was better as well so 13.6 so 14 so that's already a difference of nine and then your morale shifted so it went up to 12 and 11 is where it becomes an overrun scenario so i was overrun i wouldn't have been if i had my tank still it would have instead been 10 so just below overrun but maybe not a retreat it might have been a tit for tat like chipping each other down like 10 each as opposed to yeah because i did i did zero percent damage to you you didn't lose anyone i lost 25 75 of that 25 were taken as prisoners so i ended up with 11 prisoner points yes because i lost um that 25 percent equated to two exactly two full battalions of men

which was a heavy hit because when i'm looking at eight battalions of men i've lost exactly a quarter of that yeah which is rough and because i was overrun that also meant factoring in the guns that were in back positions yes because if you get overrun it's everything not just what you committed exactly so everything was was counter towards that that could have been pretty bad really rough because you could put like 30 points in but then you've got like 70 that take the the damage yes well well i guess oh no because i'm defending i was going to say if that was an offensive move then it would be considered a probe it was less than 50 but i'm defensive so it wouldn't be um yeah so all in all that was that was pretty terrible i did zero you did 25 i also

was forced to retreat on the back of that so i got pushed back i think i moved four hexes instead of three yeah i think your minimum because you were in the one hex because depending on how well you do you they have to retreat a minimum of one two or three yes i think it was in the one but you decided to pull back uh yes yeah i did not want to stay hanging around for the inevitable next leg of this fight so instead i dialed back i've pulled back onto map c so the wall has pushed itself back a little bit the rest of my men were then advanced on by your guys yeah did a little shuffling around some guys detached and moved it's become a bit of a mess but uh basically ended up with three divisions although the second new zealand is way understrength

with then an additional unit on them because uh depends per tile but the average tile you can have six stacking points in yes a division is five stacking points and then it goes down so you can have a sort of a division and a battalion or company in the same hex so i sort of spread that out so it was as much as i could bring a bear and it was a very good tactic because i was looking at it pretty intimidated the way you'd structure that was very well done so i ended up on the back foot massively you came in with a another mighty push against the um the trivoli regiment and also which are the tanks and also the first libyan were getting bombarded by your naval fleet yes because the ships were there to provide some coastal support and provide they did yeah and

because they they just have a number on for they have like a number slash and another number and that's their barrage and anti-air but they just that's the actual yes they don't it's just that is how many you get so i think it was two cruisers and a destroyer i sent to that one but ended up being seven barrage points yes you hit them with seven and amazingly nothing was pinned not in that one uh i did four barrages overall i got one guy uh that guy though you say one guy between those four barrages which were two on the first libyan and two on the trivoli regiment the trivoli regiment was one that was hit and it was a unit of tanks that were taken out um that unit of tanks was then stuck pinned

while everyone else there the three units at that wall pulled back so that was the first Libyan the Trivoli regiment and who else? the tank one

that was Trivoli oh sorry the one I'm forgetting Bardia's garrison was also there the one with ten guns yeah that's a lot of guns it is ten guns and four infantry as you found out yes of course that was the the fourth uh unit that i had in their fourth fourth group so they all pulled back to be more or less in line with the 63rd serene the pinned group from

the trivoli regiment they had to hang behind and they were accosted a second time and as part of that they took a retreat yes because uh if you're even no ammo or everything's pinned you don't like do a massacre uh they just retreat automatically yes you're gonna have them retreat uh or i could i think i could have voluntarily surrendered yes that's your other option but i thought i'm not going to voluntarily surrender what is a significant amount of tanks because that's the thing as well you can use the other person's tanks you just need to send them to a repair place and then they can attach to anything that can take tanks yeah and i don't want you to have because it's not a small amount of tanks yeah i want them to be on my side so i've pulled all of them back we're now all well

all of my guys are back on back back on map c yeah there's uh like a four hex buffer being created again yes which is kind of what it was prior to this however it is a buffer that i can cross again if i want to hello uh correct me if i'm wrong here but those guys will be pretty tapped cpa wise from this op stage because of the being in combat is free as a defender and then you have to pay for the retreat movement

I retreated before combat, before salt, for the infantry in some of them in most of them Oh, but you do still pay the movement The movement I did, yeah Do you pay the break off price or something?

There's a price associated To break away if you're not in combat it's um two cpa yeah do you have to do that as part of retreat um yes because we are we're fighting so we're in contact so that yeah they didn't spend the free but they spent the two and then the movement so they probably spent maybe about 10 i'd guess um i think it was seven overall apart from the ones that were barraged yeah because undergoing a barrage also costs cpa yeah so some of them are going to be a little worse for wear but because you can push infantry to 50 percent over what they have overall you could come back in i could come back in and make

a push for the rest of this offstage it means overextending and taking a cohesion hit before the fight which is uh yes yeah because that would then stack over for the actual combat yeah so it's risky it's not it's not maybe the best option i have but it is an option that i have I think the morale gap caps as well. I want to say four. Three or four, yeah. Yeah, that might be right. So you can't end up with like an eight differential from...

Morale alone. It would be good if they pushed the cohesion drops and then they do the auto-surrender thing. No, it wouldn't. Not for me. That'd be a fad. Oh, they've come back to surrender. well i i think there's there's definitely risks involved if i do make a push i do have a plan

that's good because uh i had a bit of a victory here but i basically concentrated my entire army to a single like spear point yes you you have to i think realistically you have to keep it this probably i can't be like detaching because you've got the three divisions down side south of fort magdalena yes i don't want to fight with a single division yes and i don't want to send single divisions after the year of retreating guys so you're gonna have to either commit to the bit and go whole hog or lose a lot of momentum by stopping now and then pulling back and reorganizing i do have a rough plan which i guess is that if things go well for me i want to take at least Bardia maybe to Brook as well

before the end of next turn which means I have two turns turn five and six of no one involved having supplies yes because if they don't get fed they can't enter an enemy zone of control which means they can't attack

yes same with water and stuff so if I can destroy that supply situation you could have as many guys as you want but if they won't go into combat well they can't enter your zone of control i could attack them yes but if i know which you'd have to because around that area even if i didn't want to because of the maneuverability in that little ridge that we're in along the north if i

wanted to have them pull back a little bit it's still going to become a bottleneck whether i like it or not yeah where that's going to be the area you push through unless you go for a massive swing down south and go through madalena yeah but then i'm fighting those guys who you've said are fed fairly well now because you've refilled that supply dump yes so you're looking at having to tackle that and also you're then moving through track across open desert and your supply lines do not account for that your supply line is a straight back and forth along that road and there's no supplies down there for you to capture so my bad supply situation almost becomes my bad supply situation yes because if i make a push against you i'm gaining supplies every time i

make a push if you make a push against me there's nothing to get from it i mean that supply dump that i i guess we'll get to it but that's there yes and if i get to tobruco bardia there's no supply issues because of coastal shipping that's true i guess i stopped shipping to them going forward but but i can commonwealth ship a certain amount yes but i just haven't been at the minute because i don't have a port technically exactly so yeah you taking bardia would be a crushing loss for me i don't think you'll take it anytime soon i think it's also one of my win conditions yes i can't see you taking bardia not by the end of next turn there's too much for you to cut through i'd have to move my men completely out of the way for you to do that because anywhere they

retreat to is just going to be a box around bardia my thinking though is each time they retreat they get the disorganization points they burn cpa when you're the non-phasing player which limits what they can do so i think if there's like a cascade of like lose a fight lose another fight and it just becomes more and more like less resistance from it yes then there's a chance but that would mean the same units losing the fight consecutively yeah i've got enough units where i don't have to have the same one fight you every single upstage i can cycle through plenty i can have one division go up against you like the 63rd did just before i can lose a quarter of that i can fuck i can be overrun they pull back i've got another seven divisions that i can just cycle

through and if they're only losing a quarter every time you'll time out of upstages before you get anywhere well they get an overrun then they lose 25 percent 25 percent more of an overrun yeah but still yeah but i know what you mean it i think i could it's not going to win me the scenario by doing that but i've got at least it lets me feel more comfortable playing around with more offensive measures knowing that if i wanted to go full defensive you can't realistically break through that wall if i wanted to just completely stonewall you i don't know about you i think sort of matching what i've learned in the history as well one to one my divisions outmatch yours it seems like that might be the case in the game mechanics as well possibly i mean maybe the

equipment level on the tanks being better yes yeah and i think i want bigger divisions if that makes sense like there's more stuff in each one i think so yeah but it was a i guess the other thing to say because it was all focused up on that northern bit. I did detach the 11th for SARS. You did. And they're a recon. They have 45 CPA which is nuts.

Just more truck banded stuff that I'm not happy about. Yeah and fired them across they like went round here four divisions and went into that supply dump. Yeah. Like captured a truck convoy. Wasn't happy about that. However

there is a... And then it got bombed by the other half of my fleet bombed that supply dump and destroyed 10%. Yes, you've captured a trio of heavy trucks that were sitting at supply dump 1, which is the one supplying the wall.

And yeah, the 11th showed up. They have those trucks. They've just watched it get blown not quite to smithereens, but blown slightly to smithers. Also, the bad bit you were going to have is, because there was 176 ammo in it, right?

That sounds right. That's furthered. Yes. And then when you recapture it, it's furthered again. Yes. So there'll be 20? That sounds about right. Yeah, I mean, what's that?

Third would be 60 to 20. So it goes 60 to 20, yeah. I think it's less than 20. Yeah, 18, I mean. Oh, no. So, yeah, I'm going to have absolutely no ammo from that. That is worth using. That's enough for a few barrages.

a 20 is some of mine can't do that's five two point of artillery a lot of them are like six yeah so it's it's very much a case of if i want to hold that line i'm gonna have to start resupplying with ammo again and i'm gonna have to get rid of these 11th i do have a plan for that yeah i do have a plan to squash these new wave of truck bandits i mean that makes sense yeah and i i have another plan which i think i'm going to go for um is this the one where it would ruin everything at all no i've got i've came up with a new plan today that you inspired that is going to be quite a frustrating one for you to watch unfold is it to do with the saharan uh it might be it depends what flavor of mischief i want to go for if i want to go for risky mischief or

uh just overt um wacky mischief yeah but all in all i think that was a that was a very good session it is making me wish i'd gathered my guys and pushed earlier because if i'd done this in turn two and you had your supply issues yes like none of them could have got involved in the fighting and it would have just been a a rollover if i had motorized these guys from the start and just drove them along that northern road from upstage two you would be absolutely fucked yeah so yeah watch this space in the full game because you've got 11 divisions on the map at the minute right that sounds right which is double mine yeah yeah so if i triple if i motorized a bunch of those three or four of them stuck them on that northern road and just bombed down the coast towards you i don't

think you'd have enough time to get all of your men organised and in the same spot. Probably not. So then I could just start backfilling that position of forces and leave you on a very difficult straight. Yeah. Well, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out, because next session

we'll have our back half of this upstage. We'll have my movement. Your movement in combat, yeah. And I do have a plan. It's going to be, as always, a risky one. And I think this one it has to be more careful than i anticipated it being i don't think it's going to be as violent

as this upstage was from your side yeah i think it's going to be more positioning and getting ready for a fight yeah i think next upstage is going to be where that that fight really comes to a head i think what i'm going to do might force you into a position where retreat is removed as a viable option interesting to see what that is it's a it's a bit of a two-pronged plan both prongs need to work for anything to come to fruition if either part of this plan fails yeah then the whole thing falls apart so we'll see how that goes but that that's that's where we are and it's a it's a far cry from last week i gotta say last week's episode was a very different mindset for me and now

I'm feeling a second wind is what I've gained Andy It's good we need that. We do, I've got another sense of purpose instilled in me when it comes to this game. I'm ready for it I'm ready, I'm raring to go, I'm

willing, I'm able I'm excited to see what you've got up your sleeve I have a pink t-shirt up my sleeve Andy, I'm wearing a a hoodie, and I've got a white t-shirt on which I washed with red clothes, so it's become a pink t-shirt. Always got to separate them. Separate your washing, people. That's a cautionary tale from me. But when it comes to cautionary tales, we can't just take our own advice, Andy. We should

take advice from those listening, because they have plenty to say that we couldn't possibly know about unless they were to beam it over to us through the internet. And that's exactly what people have done do you enjoy learning about the stuff they send in they have beamed little bits and bobs over to us so what do we have here there's a web form i believe you have for us andy oh we start with the web form i say let's get this web form done we need to churn through these web forms we've got a bit of a backlog going so if you have sent in a web form and we've not read out for a while we are we're going to start moving through them so it should be up soon uh the first one's coming from uh andrew though uh oh you just wrote this yourself then yeah it was me testing the form

and the message is test oh cool um i guess someone's open to interpretation uh hey cunningham uh when you mentioned that cunningham had been promoted to admiral i wonder if he skipped commodore i don't think he did i think i just didn't mention it uh and raised his flag on hms hood i was momentarily alarmed that thing had a date with the kms bismarck remember uh yeah uh well lucky moved on to other things before that happened um the hood was the elephant in the room when everyone sat down uh signed the washington naval treaty uh head and shoulders bigger than the next biggest battle wagon in the british fleet uh even at the start of world war too it was handily bigger than capital built ships built since the treaty um might actually

do an episode about that tree because it really shapes the entire naval structure because after world war one they all get together and like hammer out who can have a navy and what can be in it yeah i know a little bit about that that's that's one of the sort of tertiary bits of history i do know a little bit about yeah and it's all weird like you can have i think it's something like 70 000 tons of aircraft carrier that's like weird way for them to measure it yeah it's um so you got a really light aircraft carrier yeah you could get a bunch of like very flimsy ones i guess some plywood some styrofoam i'm sure that was available in the early 30s well that treaty might be the reason have you seen the ice ships that got prototyped no they like mix some weird

compound and like straw and stuff with ice to reduce its like uh melting point further and then like built ships and like floating platforms out of them i don't think i ever got past the like prototype like here's an idea stage but there were ice ships i mean all that picture there is just a comical scene of an aircraft trying to land and it just slides off but yeah i think i might have just stepped on uh andrew's toes here but sidebar this is how the u.s navy started world war ii with two ridiculously large aircraft carriers they were building two battle cruisers to outmatch the hood and then when the treaty showed that they would need to scrap them the builders yards yard quickly pivoted and said these things oh no no no these are going to

be those new aircraft things uh aircraft carrier things that have just been invented uh the treaty doesn't cover because they're new ah classic loopholes yeah because with cunningham being mentioned uh cunningham launched the first aircraft carrier attack against a fleet in port like that the first one of them to ever happen happens during uh yeah world war ii against the italians so it's a real turning point in that sense yeah and sort of defined naval power for till now i mean yeah that's still yeah the aircraft was sort of still the the crown jewel for power projection also andrew's harangue app idea is genius uh and here's the web form you asked us to try although i'm super interested in military history and old hex encounter games

i would never have been a soldier of any type i'm noisy manic and way too cowardly don't be so down on yourself andrew but thanks for the message good stuff in there i think that's a play on subtle humble brave it is i do enjoy seeing when people do the flip and like what especially what's opposite subtle yes what the antithesis of subtle humble and brave uh that comes to people's mind is always a fun one to explore but if you're listening to this and again i'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that this isn't just you sending this andy um if if this is a real person doing it then don't put yourself down like that if it's actually just you andy you should put yourself down a little bit more further yes you want to be subterranean the way

you're going on here especially after what you've done today i hope you know that despite my energy having picked up i do not forgive you that's fine that is how this works that's that's very fair we've um we've got another one so thank you for that andrew moving on we have milan milan has been in touch via traditional email and says hey andy and james milan from texas here again i have just finished episode 54 and wanted to give you guys some cool few verses a few versus many stories from world war ii ah which we asked for last week yes i've included links to wikipedia and other related media for each one that i know off the top of my head so we have here three different examples number one during the german invasion of poland the battle of wisner saw less

than 1 000 polish defenders delay a german force of 40 000 for several days before finally surrendering this is despite not only being outnumbered but also outgunned and it took them running out of ammunition before surrendering that's very impressive also the surrender is we can't hurt you anymore so we're gonna it's not yeah it's it's there is no like alternative breaking of will or anything it's like fuck we actually can't yeah by the nature of the situation everything is a surrender at that point there's no action they can take other than throwing furniture at the enemy that isn't just surrender by its nature but i'll definitely have a look at that because that's it outnumbered huge 40 to 1 yeah is insane this is uh i guess we'll get

this is what I was thinking we would get with we'd get a lot of outnumbered defenders because I think there's something special about the being outnumbered and then while you're the aggressor

going on the attack yes that's a very rare scenario which I guess we've seen now historically but for the most part you're going to be able to defend something with less men a lot easier than you are wiping out an enemy force actively yeah as a an aggressor that's one i'll have to look and do as well but i'm sure with it being part of world war ii that could

well be a history segment we also get polish uh units in the north african theater so there might be oh there could actually be some crossover directly yeah um number two the battle of castle itter saw just a few dozen soldiers and civilians with small arms defend castle in austria against 150 to 200 german ss soldiers that had mortars machine guns and even anti-tank guns the real twist of the battle was that the defenders were made up of an american tank crewman american tank crewman vermack soldiers with their major an ss officer french civilians including a famous at the time tennis player who played a key role in the battle i did some light research into this because this piqued my curiosity this is an amazing piece of history that will

100 be getting an episode or a series it's because as well as there being the the french tennis player in there there's also a former president of france oh wow there's like a bunch of high level prisoners and as it's there's an ss officer fighting the ss it's i think only twice the uh americans and germans ever fought like alongside each other in the war and this is one of them yeah that's that's bizarre i'm gonna have to look at well i imagine again this could be a history segment so i'll not do too much of a deep delve i like learning through the lens of history segments but that is one that is particularly strange to imagine i just can't imagine how that came about it happened in this weird end phase of the war oh right i think it

happened like two days after hitler killed himself and four days before the end of the war or so in like a very weird tight time scale where like the german army and ss had like broken into like regional things where people are like scrambling to get to the Americans to surrender to them not the Russians and like some SS like this are going to castles to like execute everyone

before they lose the chance and it's like a very chaotic time within a chaotic yeah so it's very much last chance saloon if you want to make one crazy move this is the time to do it the train's off the tracks there's like one thing you can

do it's like what people chose to do with that yeah it's sort of you know you see a meteor coming to earth what do you do on your last day that kind of situation and a tennis player former french president and an ss soldier have apparently all come together with the same idea to defend a castle that sounds like some sort of netflix original film this could be a film definitely i'd probably give that one a watch maybe on a sunday afternoon when hungover and the third example is the defense of shanghai in the chinese theater its own research topic but in particular the defense of the warehouse is a story that needs to be told more often a brutal battle that culminated in the chinese

retreat from the city however it is special in that a few hundred chinese soldiers held the line for days against an overwhelming japanese attack long enough to allow their forces to retreat from the city the warehouse was also situated across a small river from the foreign section of the city so you can actually find recorded footage of the attack taken by journalists that were staying at the embassies and hotels in shanghai i mean that's insane as well that would be wild to see footage of that as well yeah and that is a part of it i because we've sort of mentioned the four theaters but like i've never really looked into the what's going on in the pacific that's not the americans fighting the jap like the japanese imperial stuff and them trying to take manchuria or stuff like

that like that's all i ever really picture when it comes to that i don't think i've ever looked into anything involving china in world war ii well yeah i mean they kind of had a they got a rough deal there's like the rape of nanking yes occupied by the japanese for a while and not a nice occupation by any means like well i think that's part of why i've never wanted to look into it because all i understand of it is just horrors yeah and not the sort of ones where it's like oh this huge battle took place and devastating losses on both sides all i know about it is is like nam king where it's like oh so atrocities committed against described as the rape of like i don't think there's anything else that yeah and if that's the adjective that describes the event

happening to a location or a population i'm i'll be honest it's not really a portion of history that is then going to tickle my fancy in research i'll just i'll just get sad i think it was grim but i'm going to be looking into it yeah i mean again in a history segment i wouldn't turn my nose up at learning more i think it's just it's such a grim thing to spend time alone researching i can't do that yeah so if you're if you're going to do a research section on that props to your buddy because that's going to be a horrible night's research well it's sort of horrible all of it when you look into it. It's the same reason I've not

gone too far into the Eastern Front stuff, because the sort of bullet point contents page of that is horrific. Well, yeah, it must read like a fucking horror story for the most part. And you've got things like the Duralange Brigade, which is

an insane thing. I don't even think I know that one. It's a penal legion, so it's made up of criminals. Oh, okay. in the SS right and it was responsible for like

doing pogroms and stuff on the eastern front but like not the industrialized holocaust but like just go into a village and kill everyone then go to the next village very manual genocide

yeah and it's like the people who were like criminal scum to the Nazis the nazis were like let's harness these people it's like that's a scary group yeah let's make them radical fascists yeah send them overseas and see what they do and i imagine the result is well it's not yeah heinous activity brilliant well well it's almost like we picked an incredibly grim subject to do a podcast about yeah you know i i always i always uh let that get away from me a little bit i'm like oh wacky board game oh wait no sorry world war ii board game oh yeah world war

ii are yeah atrocities yeah i always forget how few degrees there are that separate whimsical podcasts from atrocities in history no degree they're butting against each other yeah the degree it's just the next guy yeah um but the email closes off from milan as an aside the whole chinese theater is something i've been reading about for the past year it is unlike any other part of the war in a way i can't describe sounds what we've just talked about there if you're getting more interested in the history of world war ii i have to recommend checking out the information on that theater and what happened anyway these three popped into my head as i was listening so please enjoy milan from the desert of my mind thanks man that was three really good

bullet points that i'll reach something to like just interesting to look at so thank you very much for that yeah awesome examples and also yeah some more thought-provoking aspects of stuff to look into and stuff i i sort of fear learning about but stuff that is by the merit of it important to learn about i guess if i'm committing to the podcast and the game i just have to accept learning about things that make you sad yeah i mean i've learned some things in the game today that made me sad but i guess speaking of learning about things that make me sad andy what do you got for me today in the history segment well i have for you is continuing the seventh the seventh have plagued me all day today so why not plague the history segment as well at least this time

it's the real ones and not the ones that you've co-opted into some sort of tool to harass me through the medium of a board game well if anything they're underpowered in the game get on with your history yeah i find this army and its famous commander with a record of victory behind it which was undoubtedly played a decisive part in altering the whole character of the war that's another quote from i think the seventh number one fan uh winston churchill he likes them he does a big fan of them he's got a lot of good stuff to say about them and i can't understand why in the game but in history of course oh yeah so the 14th of february 1941 One, seven days after Operation Compass comes to an end.

The 11th for SARS. Oh, yes, great. You bring them all out. Encounter a new enemy in the theater as three Messerschmitts come over the horizon and attack them. Oh. They do manage to shoot down one of the planes, but the other two escape.

In fact, this is the two planes that survive swing around and machine gun the crashed plane before leaving. what why i guess to like knock it out and still like fully destroy it oh that's odd yeah uh they don't manage to do that though and the crew of two from the crash plane do survive the crash and the 11th recovered documents that outlined the route the planes had taken to get to north africa ah right that'll be why then yeah and also information about hotels in naples it was apparently worth mentioning in the thing i was reading but didn't go into why just you know the kind of stuff you find in the glove compartment from months ago

yeah so the second armored division uh has come in and they're responsible for holding the ground that's been gained in compass although half of it has been detached and has gone to greece so it's understrength rommel's africa corpse supported by the luftwaffe starts to advance easily dealing with the forces trying to stop them. The joint German and Italian offensive is called Operation Sunflower. It's a nice name. Yeah, that sounds quite nice.

Between Converse and Sunflower, the names themselves don't sound particularly ominous. Oh, yeah. I'm going to look into how they come out of them. Just the most disarming name they can think of. But this is very successful, and by the 15th of April, the front is all the

way back to Solum. So back on the border. yeah that's a push although tabrook is holding out against siege okay it's surrounded but uh the front they just sort of moved past it but while all this is happening the seventh is being refit in cairo they're struggling to get back up to strength because there's more pressing need for equipment in places like greece so they're not a priority at the time you would have thought they'd delegate some to them because of what they managed to pull off and how dire things are with a push that far east again yeah i think they they will get some but i think it's like we're actively

fighting the invasion of greece and stuff right now yeah whereas this is just a pendulum swing yeah there's also a like a political element where like to greece to come into the war on the allies side they needed to have a certain amount of troops sent to them yeah to like yeah so the first guys to like get back out there are get out in early april from the 7th it's the first king's royal rifle company and uh the 11 hussars the 11th are training a south african armored car regiment um so they're more in a training role than at the front okay um but the uh king's royal rifle uh they get to the front and they start separating into small groups and raiding across the lines looking for convoys these will be called jock columns after jock campbell which are like

small groups of motorized soldiers artillery and tanks that operate to spread across like a wide area and like try and find vulnerable points okay yeah these are successful at first but eventually run into problems dealing with rommel's armor as rommel tends to keep his tanks together to be like a decisive hammer blow right like uh well he even set comments on british tank tactics to a captain captured british tank commander what difference does it make to me if you have two tanks to my one if you send them out and let me smash them in detail you presented me with three brigades in succession so it's like i can beat i can power through small chunks as you want yeah if you're not selling them all collectively i'll just pick them apart yeah

it's a yeah it's a um divide and conquer but they're doing the divide for you yeah because it worked well against the italians i mean yeah that's because they're they have paper mache tanks yeah and they have like a very defensive mindset but then rommel comes in and he's the aggressor and it does let you get away with more stuff yes so on the 15th of may uh the british all launch another operation called operation brevity which is now that's funny based on how short converse was meant to be and how it ended up being so well this one was meant to relieve tabrook by taking some territory close to the border and like pulling troops from it and eventually gang up to tabrook but it failed after three days oh sort of a reverse compass where it

was like this is gonna push them back and look at it oh no it's gonna end after three days yeah because by historical precedent of scaling it would mean that they take all of africa yeah apparently not then they have another go with operation battle axe which is a bigger offensive with which sort of the same goals but it also fails and then the seventh in particular suffer a rough thing here where um on the 27th of june they suffer a friendly fire disaster as a group of raf bombers accidentally bombed them near mercy matruh oh shit uh they lose 359 lives and almost twice that many are injured

which just to put it in perspective is almost comparable to the amount of damage they took through all of Operation Compass. I was gonna say that's massive. What kind of bombing run was that? Like how many planes were involved? I think it was Vickers bombers it said the raid took place

over two hours. How the fuck do you not realise after the first ten minutes what's going on? Yeah or like someone gets on the radio or something but like do you because i again i can't picture in my head how different the planes look if you're like on the ground so were they firing back at the planes as well do you think which just exacerbated the issue i don't i don't know i'll look into it more but so i have seen like

they could identify planes by the sort of silhouette and in particular when they get closer like engine sounds yeah but i don't know how the because i think bombing is pretty imprecise from the air in terms of, you're like, this map grid coordinate, go and drop bombs near it. Because you can't be like, strike this building, they're just not accurate enough at this time.

Yeah, so it's a case of you're going to try and sweep an area. But you'd think that one side would, whether it's the air or the land, would at some point see what's going on. But again, if you're being bombed, I mean, that's very naive of someone who's never been under bomb fire.

I don't know the conditions, like if there's a sandstorm and you've got like a layer between you yeah and you're just hearing the planes and then just seeing bombs exploding and then on the the other side you're just seeing like silhouettes on the ground and like well there's something around here that we're told to go here by someone or but that many losses yeah that's a devastating hit really bad um regardless the next uh major action they'll see was operation crusader during november and december this was another operation plan to relieve to brook so to brook as well is holding out for like nine months that's wild yeah this is when the desert rats will face the 21st panzer division oh now that's a showdown that will be

quite the fiery one yes uh at an airfield called city resiger which will get its own episode of detail but sort of moving through the seventh uh this is uh on the road uh it's south of the road that goes between bardia and tobruk the british come in and they capture this airfield um and at this point their commander elects to hold the position rather than keep advancing and yeah it's the british playing the cautious defenseless role rommel however despite depleted ammo and fuel does send his panzers to go and have this which is one of the major tank battles it does have a bit of an effect that the british are looking for because the panzers were taken from around tobrook so it has relieved some of the pressure on tobrook with the germans having to react to it okay so in the

early afternoon of the 22nd of november rommel attacks the airfield fighting is desperate here uh i think three brits in victoria crosses in this one engagement so it's an intense one then Yeah, including Jock Campbell, who rides in his car and then his car is slower than the tank, so he's just jumping on, holding onto the outside of one of the tanks, directing the battle. That's badass. It's some full-on war hero stuff going on. That's metal as fuck. So the 21st Panzers have considerably weaker numbers, but just superior in both the tanks and also combined arms tactics.

Because the problem the Brits have, they've not used combined arms during Operation Compass, and they sort of got away with it. And then this is them reaping the overconfidence almost. Yes. So after three days, they do push the 7th Armoured Division back. The 7th Armoured Brigade withdrew, which is part of the 7th here. It had four of its 150 tanks remain operational.

Whoa, so that is... They're done, though. They're out of order now, completely. In four days during Operation Crusader, the 8th Army, which is the overall one the 7th is part of, lost 530 tanks, and the Axis lost 100. Oh, so that ratio has swung completely. This is swinging back the other way, yeah.

It isn't a total loss, however, because it does sort of bloody the nose of the aura of invincibility Rommel had, like despite him winning it's the first time there's like rommel's taking substantial losses as well yeah because that's not nothing no over 100 tanks that's a significant number to lose it's just that it paid off in the ratio that he's getting back yeah so i'm gonna speed up here um so throughout 1942 the seventh take part in the first and second battles of el alamein and then the tunisian complain uh they take over tripoli in january so throughout that year it swings back and forth i'm thinking same way i highlighted operation compass with the seventh

i'll do like each of these operations i'm mentioning in the battles of al alamein but sort of focusing on them with a different yes i could have done this with just the seventh because they were in it but then the series would be just the history of the north africa campaign yes through the eyes of the seventh yeah so but they get into a race where the seventh is racing against the second to see who can capture tunis first oh it's a fun game yeah they won the 11th hasars again enter the city first on the 7th of may fighting in north africa comes to an end on the 13th of may uh 1953 at 43 not wow that's a long ass battle and it wouldn't be part of this series uh without mentioning a crazy number of pows being taken naturally in this case it's a quarter of a million

axis soldiers surrender jesus christ the seven take part in the italian campaign as well but they're not there for the initial landing because they're in syria training for amphibious landings which will be pretty important later they don't have a good time in italy it's described this there could be no have been no greater contrast to the desert we struggled forward blown bridges and muddy vineyards causing more delay than opposition from the enemy like it's a wet winter in italy as well the complete flip yeah in december 1943 the seventh hand over all its vehicles and equipment uh to the fifth canadian armored division and head back to britain arriving in glasgow in early january where they'll start making preparations for d-day oh pick it up there

next time and that i can imagine is going to be another significant slice of history that they're involved in yes i mean they go for it's amazing they go from like fighting at the very start to like going into berlin yeah that's yeah you're very much seeing it through start to finish yeah you can't really get much more definitive closure than going to berlin for what is the the culmination of it all which is yeah why i sped it up a bit because it would just be the history of world war ii these guys are that like crucial and involved well at least we'll get some cameo appearances from them in future episodes because they'll definitely be back yeah i mean all these are the battles that they've been part of i mean jock campbell who i mentioned getting the victoria

cross and being uh the leader of the seventh support group he'll just get his own episode by himself a couple of other guys in the seventh just as individuals from what you said there that description of him just hanging on to the side of the tank is i mean what a what a cinematic little flashy guy this guy is oh yeah i think the the fact that there's such a big pushback from rommel and the panzers gives me confidence that my tanks in the end well not in the end but maybe partway through the game will have their day in the sun and here there's a hot desert sun that they'll be under and i think you'll have it for quite a good chunk and then land lease and the shermans and stuff will show up but not again it's the quote about it's similar to the one

rommel had but it's some german describing fighting american tanks which is every panzer is worth four american tanks but they always have five it's just out producing them well i look forward to having my um my superiority finally shine through because i've not done a great job with my air superiority but uh maybe maybe the tanks will be different was it when you mess measure schmidt show up they're gonna be a huge jump in quality that's a good point i just need to hold out until the german show up which unfortunately can't happen in this scenario that we're currently playing but we're pretty much halfway through the scenario now andy yeah that's that's good news i mean that yeah as of the end of next stop stage we are halfway through

which means it's it's it's doable well we finish next year ideally so it will finish next year through yeah it will definitely finish next year we're not doing this all the way through 2026 no fucking way this scenario ends next year and the main game starts yes that is that's that's my resolution that's my new year's resolution finish this fucking scenario finally there we go and then we'll get them to the big leagues big boy stuff no more training wheels andy we'll be kicking them off unscrewing them with an allen key going big and in order to do so we're gonna have to get along up until that point you have to maintain the friendship and the way you behave today is just unacceptable taking out my guys overrunning me you really think that's cool yeah that's fine

to do yeah well i disagree i enjoyed it well in that case we're gonna have to try and find some sort of common ground 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 what's this common ground you speak of well if you'd like some exposition andy here it is common ground is the segment each week in which you and i decide to discuss a topic and try and find an area in which we can agree on said topic we alternate in picking the random area that we're going to be debating and it's actually your turn this week to pick the common ground topic i've got one for you right here let's hear it shops aren't allowed to specifically clothing shops aren't

allowed to size things themselves anymore uh okay that i think at a glance i know what you're going for here but i'm gonna need some clarity just in case i'll size wise i fluctuate from like xl to double xl sometimes triple it but that's quite a range and like there's no indication from shops which like because i'm the same size but it's like three sizes different and i'm like okay if you guys haven't standardized this yourself already i'm gonna create a like a third-party agency they're gonna size everyone's clothes so it's consistent yeah you know what i have a bit of an issue with this because i'll go in buying clothes online just insanely pointless well i mean i bought because i usually get like medium-sized stuff and for the most part of me

it's it's kind of loose and baggy then sometimes i'm like well i want something a bit more sort of neat fitting so i'll get small and sometimes that works or sometimes i buy something and it's like a crop top on me or it's just super short on the sleeves yeah because i'm quite tall but slim which means when i'm buying like like a shirt or something i'll buy it and the sleeves will be like halfway up my wrist but then it'll fit the rest of me fine then other times it's completely okay and by the same merit if i if i want like a baggy jumper or something something nice and warm for the winter something to lay about in i'll go for a large and sometimes it's just a baggy jumper on me and sometimes it looks like i'm a child wearing his dad's clothes and it's just way over

the top there's no sensible place in between and especially when you've just got the vague small medium large yes when it's just the the size descriptor i feel like there's too much wiggle room so i think intended they make the clothes and then this group come in and they're like the guys who rate uh movies who are like separate oh like the um uh oh not you know the yes um why can't i think of the name the one that ranked the the sort of like pg 12 15 i can't remember the name of that now but i i know yes some sort of independent body yes whereas like you can make the clothes but they'll come in and be like well you've said that's a large but it's not because we've got our like templates because it also means i'm thinking you can get you know like a thing of

carpet samples or something for when you're like doing your house or whatever yeah you buy like a pack and it's the t-shirts all the standard t-shirt sizes like just a plain oh okay and then you just you can like try the shirt on the t-shirt and it's because it's always fixed it will always fit yes so you've got the like measuring stick at home that's a brilliant idea no that's absolutely genius hang on a minute let's not release this episode let's release this as a business idea i swear to god if anyone listening releases this as some sort of business idea we will hound you to the end of the earth for royalties that is too good of an idea for us to not be credited the war with a mate is not just a podcast it's also now the empirical

measurement of clothes sizes across the globe yeah that's um so yeah you'd have your it's a bit like i did this for jewelry once where yes the ring sizes yes the ring sizes where you've got a to z and you can get the little packs where it's got like with something like cheap like wire or something yeah it's just got a range of them the one i had yeah it's just like a massive like a comedically big key ring with just little like loops of metal so that you just slide them on and then you you know what the ring size is it's because i don't understand entirely how dress size works though you know like women's clothes like i don't know if it just applies to dresses but you've got dress sizes where it's like i don't understand how there's a zero i was just about

to say i don't get that either i don't understand how it can start at size zero yeah because for me that's like it's like getting jeans which are size it's like there's no there's no way for your torso to go into them yeah because it's like a category because then you've got because there's the whole thing and surely there must be minus two for someone who's smaller than a zero well there must be because is a is a plus size model someone who's just a positive number above zero like two onwards oh i don't it might be where that term like comes from maybe because if that's the case then because from what i understand size zero is like very very like slim yeah so i don't really understand how that scale works so maybe this could be applied to dresses as well

i don't know if that if that system works very well or not but we'll look into it as part of our expanding research to see how the market needs our attention but i think this this idea of having a much broader scale because if dress sizes have zero two four whatever i think they go up in twos because whatever that goes up to whatever that goes down below zero two i think we need to have a broader scale for men's clothes or just unisex clothes in general because i also found out something when i went to america to see my family and i wanted to buy jeans which is apparently you know the like waist sizes you've got yeah i think in like britain they're like four inches smaller than that or like two like a certain amount smaller than that typically

and in america they are as well but it's like a bigger number it's because like as everyone's got fatter so people don't feel so they're like if you get a 40 inch like or 30 inch like waist on your jeans it's not 30 or 40 it's actually shifted as well and that depends like where you buy them and also the like region you're in but that's a measurement that's actual distance yeah it's become like a brand branding thing where it's like they've got it they're like psychology of like how people it's like no let's standardize i don't care what the number is i just want to know it's the correct number yeah it can be a hundred inches it's sort of a ridiculous thing of like oh you still go up when you gain weight yeah it's not it's still going to increase yeah

what are you comparing it to because at that point it's it's a measurement that at one point has become obfuscated from reality so then it's just a different standard that you're measuring it by so going up from that is just confusing yeah because i think i'm a i think i'm a 32 is what i usually go for for waste yeah so does that mean i'm actually 36 i think so i'm not i'm not 100 on that but i do know there's like a a differential that is adjusted for that's so fucking stupid yeah so we're just standardizing all of it and yeah having a sizing agency yeah no that's good we're going to get some sort of governing body on this because there's no way that this is reasonable this this isn't you know what this isn't a controversial take at all on

your part. You've done a couple of these in a row now where I'm just, I'm on this. This is correct. It's a good way to do Common Ground, Andy. It's moved from Common Ground to me doing Dragon's Den pitches. Where it's always a good business idea. You're doing the, was it Reggae Reggae Source?

Yeah, that was the big breakout from Dragon's Den, I think. Yeah, and that's what this is. This is another Dragon's Den breakout hit, Andy. This is just fantastic. I'd love to just have a draw where it's all t-shirt shirts. like trouser like but just like maybe even just like gray sweatpants it's not that you wear yeah they're just templates yeah the thing is i know for a fact i don't

have wearing them i would as well but like it would be good to have yeah i don't know wearing the it's a bit like getting the stretching them it's like you know that the training shield from lumbridge on my uh runescape yeah it's like when you carry that around you get mocked for it yeah everyone's like oh he's wearing the template shoes oh but then that would become a fashion statement wouldn't it you're wearing the template clothes no brand branding type stuff

I only wear the template clothes guys well don't they dissolve in rain that's how we get you and we make them expensive as well so if you ever tear them or ruin them you have to buy another set and it's going to be costly well you'd also go on

and you'd just buy the range so you would get like small medium and then maybe a large yeah but i'm not gonna buy like the full kit where it goes up to like 5xl and like 5xs yeah because if i got to either of those i've had a huge change in physiological shape going that is like you've got a bone stroke yeah the shape of my body's change it's not weight it's height yeah i have lost inches uh right yeah i don't think there's really anything i can add to that as a criticism i've got the clarity i needed i've got um my wallet here ready to invest i think this is just a spot on idea we need to get in touch with i don't

know who's in charge of this i don't know how you set up a third party agency that regulates stuff yeah i think you have to petition to the government i yeah right so we'll write a letter to starmer we'll let them know that there's a a need for this i imagine there'll be a lot of red tape to cut through but it's important to we'll fast track it it'll be in the next budget i'd buy so many clothes online if i had this yeah so the only thing i bought online clothing wise i bought two things i bought a jacket from wish when we lived together years ago and fit surprisingly well that jacket lasted uh it cost four pounds 50 and i wore it for about eight years it was a leather jacket well full leather and it was it was amazing i loved that

jacket i've still got it somewhere it's very worn down now it started to fall apart after a while there's pockets opened up and fell apart like a wish thing is typically you think it's going to be like you wash it twice so yeah eight years that's like what you'd get out of it actual good jacket it was my go-to jacket it was incredible so durable i got compliments on it uh once um at a nightclub and i offered to just give it away and they were like no no you can't give that away i was like the pockets are falling apart if you want it you can just have it i'm really warm anyway they didn't take it um and the other thing i bought was um it was in the same place we live together i bought that spider-man suit which was for like a small like a genuinely small child

yeah well i bought it and the sizing um chart i used was i was using it correctly i think but when it showed up it was the black spider-man suit um it was for halloween i put it on well tried to put it on and i realized that in order to do so i would need to i think break my spine in two places and remove several vertebrae in order to fit into it. I tried, but I just, I need that spine. I'm too spined, Andy.

I've got too much integrity. That's why I couldn't be that Spider-Man. That's what it is, yeah. Normal Spider-Man has integrity. When he's got the symbiote suit on, he's got no integrity. It was a metaphor. I bought a metaphor from Wish. And couldn't make it fit. Well,

I think that's it. I've spun some tales i've reinvigorated myself with energy i've agreed with your common ground um andy do you have anything else to add that you feel needs to be said today other than i guess letting people know how to get in touch yep please email in info at warvermate.co.uk uh there's a contact form on the website which is uh warvermate.co.uk and there's an instagram which is just at warvermate it is indeed so three points of contact there pick your favorite and fire something over yeah it can be about the game which is the thing where we're most focused on maybe about world war ii

which we're also focused on it can be about anything else which we're not focused on but boy will we talk about it oh yeah we love a bit of nonsense oh that's all we're doing that's what this whole fucking thing is it's nonsense start to finish desert of my mind subtle humble and brave yep thanks for listening say so humbling brave stole my life i'll steal more than that you son of a bitch good night We'll be right back.