War With A Mate - Episode 59: Writing On The Wall

Episode Date: January 17, 2026

This is definitively the biggest revelation to date. An episode that sees out the end of the 7th’s History Segment, some heartfelt & heart-aching Mailbag pulls, and a Common Ground that “taps��� against the boundaries of what the segment means; all party to the real game-shaking developments that Andy and James discuss from this week’s gameplay.

hello welcome to war with a mate with me james me andy the only podcast out there that is covering a playthrough of the campaign for north africa that we're aware of it's important to add that last clause we don't know everything all right we are two humans we are limited by our own first-hand experience we never look at the internet we never go outside um which actually limits the first-hand experience of anything no just sort of a thing that exists in a room we are bound here we're um devoid of time time doesn't pass for us i mean i wish that was i wish we could knock this out in a time bubble i don't that would be horrible episodes imagine the psychological damage that you'd come away with if we were trapped in a time bubble playing

the campaign for north africa and then we came out in i mean what 50 years well we'd be playing constantly in the time bubble that's worse that's so much worse we've done much faster we'd be done much faster but i'd hate it more that's if you sat me down and said we're going to play this game non-stop we'd still have to sleep presumably in the time bubble our bodies surely would function the same no it's all on pause so what about what about thought surely that that also means that the synapses in the brain are also on pause they are but the spirit isn't so the spirit is going to play the game yeah that's a that's how time bubbles it's powered by the spirit you're not even a physicist uh i'm not i'm not i'm what i am andy is potentially the winner of the game

yeah let's get into it let's get it because there's a lot to unpack today there's a lot to unpack yeah so uh turn three upstage three uh began with a bang did the org phase moved some stuff around you started some construction i did i started building a minefield around the um the wall that i've built up at the top which is frankly not on i i was i was looking at construction today and i was thinking what can i build what would be a good thing to build and i started to look at what minefields actually do so i thought blow up innocence decades later you monster Well, in our world, there's no later. It's a real time one this week.

It is. This is the time. The time is now. The time is here. The time is not going to be an issue. When it comes to the minefields that I'm building, it's not only the case that they blow stuff up when they pass over, but the most important thing is the CPA cost.

Because if a motorized unit wants to move into a minefield, then it takes all of their movement well all of their cpa to do so so say a truck has 30 cpa it can it can use up to 30 capability points in order for it to move into the minefield it has to expend 30 capability points now that is on top of whatever it's been doing that that movement so that's not you've used up the remainder of your cpa you have to use the quantity of your cpa so that means you can overextend a unit massively by forcing it to go into a minefield is that built in a upstage or what's the like time scale on it upstage to build a minefield oh so it's done or it'll be done next to next construction phase it will be finished right yeah why are you building

that again i'm building it on the track that comes just south from the north road block you know where the road doesn't connect yes it's just south of there along the track yes i know what you mean so that way if you do manage to push past my wall which is your your plan then it means moving further south will become a big problem because then you're gonna have to if you have motorized units wander them through this minefield yeah so that's what i started to build as well as rebuilding one of my airfields so you destroyed an airfield a little while ago on map b up near Barsi, I believe it is. A couple of Navy boys showed up

and bombed it off the face of the air. Yeah, your bloody ship's shown up. They did some real damage, took out an airfield full of bombers that were going to be part of my now aborted plan to airdrop troops. They are the... I can't remember the name of the plane,

but they are the ones who can airdrop supplies. Yeah. They are pretty good in that regard. However, you took out the airfield that had most of them in. So I'm going to rebuild that, so then my sgsu's that are there are no longer sat with their appendages in their hands doing nothing they will actually be able to get the planes up off the air off the air off the ground into the air and do some damage yeah where they work uh yeah so that was my organization phase

you didn't do anything organization i attached a couple of guys uh cleaned up the mess at the front yes you you rejigged your wall uh yeah and and from there it was it was straight to the air missions and the air missions we did two each two a piece no air combat this time it's been a while yeah the the air the air missions went off without a hitch so would you like to go into the detail about your air plans first sure uh one of them i just did a close-up uh combat air patrol over my big block of guys to sort of screen them from any bombers or anything uh they didn't have to do anything and then my other one i sent my bombers and a couple of fighters who can strafe uh over your front lines to map b and attacked the convoy you had up there on the coast and got four

of however many trucks so yeah managed to destroy four of them yeah a decent amount of those trucks i did like those trucks they are important because they facilitate my air force at the moment all of those missions that i carry out today are fueled supplied by these trucks i'm having to swap out the bombers that i use because some of them i'm keeping on reserve getting them ready one turn or one upstage and then dropping them the next so i'm working at a limited capacity and i'm having to alternate that limited capacity anyway and now you've taken off a not insignificant amount of trucks from that group so that was painful that's going to limit my air force i retaliated in kind your two truck bandits that you've got wandering around the hussars and fusiliers i decided a way

to deal with them instead of chasing them around on foot why not just strafe them why not just strafe them and i had bombers capable of strafing the ba65s i believe they are so i dropped 36 tac air points on them which is a good strafe and took off one toe point of what i thought was one toe point one or two one of two down on one so you're it was the fuseliers that i hit they are down to one toe point which i thought hey maybe that'll limit what they can do however turn out to be wrong which we'll get to aside from that i also did another bombing run a bombing run on would you believe it road yeah i'm always going for the road hammering that road that road is a problem because it's where your supply line is so i thought if i can obliterate that then i'm good

so that's what i did took off another piece of road which is positioned on a upslope downslope so it means if you want to move your trucks over there it's going to be costly yeah it's going to add to it uh it's going to add four cpa going uphill it's going to add two cpa going downhill and a flat to breakdown. Hills are on the border of the hexes, so you also have the hex itself that you pay the cost for. Yes, which is clear, thankfully. So it's just four breakdown points,

but you're looking at potentially... Well, it's six breakdown points that have been added, as well as CPA. So you're looking at four or six CPA added to your journey. So it's costly for you. I'm starting to chip away at this road. Yeah. And from there, it was straight on to land movement.

a little biggie because all of the all the admin bits we're all good for resources we'll be doing that in between that shaves off a bit of time now that we can do those bits behind the scenes means that we don't have to sit here and work through spreadsheets which was really the bane of our lives at the start of all this now those spreadsheet days have become homework yeah they're homework they're formulaic they're easy and they meant we could get straight into land movement which is beautiful and you have initiative you chose to go first and what did you do with that andy quite a bit yeah yeah to say the fucking least um got my guys on my section of the wall bit more attachment and then the fourth uh indian division of the seventh armor division

uh went chasing you guys so they're currently flanking one of your divisions we haven't done that combat yet we'll do that next time uh but they're ready to fight um and then we've got moved a couple of guys around behind my lines with the sort of contingency positions yes and then sort of a big one was i used the nefumblin fusili as another one toe point and the 11th uh hasars and i've taken bardia yeah now that i wasn't pleased about see i moved my guys out of bardia to chase those exact people. And what you've done is the old switcheroo, where I've chased you,

you've then skedaddled out of there, and you're now in Bardia. Yep. There are now 200 men that have occupied Bardia. I mean, the Hussars have 506 toe point left. Oh, wow. So, okay. So it's about 600.

Yeah. However... Although they are armoured carts, so less than 600. And what I am going to do in retaliation, which of course is march that battalion not battalion that division back so they're going to show up knock at the door ask for bardia back politely and if you decline they will use force now since there's no game rules to politely accept that situation it's going to be with force

that's fine you can't voluntarily surrender not going to do that okay so i'm going to have to obliterate them yes now all of this is good and well my movement is next however we stumbled across a revelation today everything that we've just discussed may not matter everything that we've been doing for the last turn may not matter because we checked in on the win conditions again yeah we've looked at the victory conditions today and it it actually spells out a pretty scary fact the fact is this scenario is on a knife edge and the next time we play there very well could be a victory declared so this is news to us this came as a shock and may come as a shock to anyone listening because we didn't think we were anywhere near a victory probably because we're not checking

the victory conditions very frequently they felt miles away it just felt like something that's not going to be relevant for a long time but turns out i could have won today you could have won today because one of the win conditions we found a victory can be won by the commonwealth if the axis forces cannot trace a supply line to any unit on the map with you taking bardia it means that the two convoys that were in there are now gone and there's only one of the convoy that's alive and well and that is the one that supplies my airlines so if that supply line was to be cut if you were to take out the remaining trucks there of which there are still some then i can't supply anyone with a supply line i have no other convoys anywhere yeah and i could have sent the royal

fusiliers into bardia and basically burned all of the uh 11 facades resources in terms of cpa and cohesion but got that truck and captured it yeah would have won me the scenario which was dead which was a scary realization for me knowing that if those trucks were destroyed somehow then that's that's it the scenario is won by you that that's how close we were to this going that badly we are not we haven't escaped that we haven't escaped the end of a scenario because we also looked at the axis win conditions and they are a little bit more involved in the sense it involves holding things however i happen to be doing that yes because last turn when i did my well i never sent anyone to siwa which would be a recurring mistake from turn one yes siwa was

originally the home of the saharan detachment that's where they were that they popped there immediately from i think it was off stage two i zipped them over the border and they went straight into siwa yeah because i just didn't have anyone down on the bottom of the map and i thought it's a nice oasis i'll pop them down there for a while and then eventually plans transpired i moved them further up they met their fate a couple of plays ago and there's still a little couple straggler battalions there that are on map d but i left it undefended i did however have it and it was it was there for the take and you could have moved units there but you didn't think to because neither of us really thought it mattered yet because we thought well the wind conditions

are so involved i just figured we'd look at them at the end i just it didn't feel like completely drop them out of my mind which is a bad thing to drop out of your head is the win conditions of the game you're playing yeah well we thought the campaign for north africa is a long game it's going to be a complex game it's not going to be one that we're going to figure out very quickly so how on earth would we win quickly lo and behold the axis win conditions for the tactical victory involve holding gearabub which is down towards the south it's just northwest a little of siwa it's on the libya side and that has been left untouched i've still got my garrison there and then to the north of that is fort maddalena of which everyone has heard about the

conflict that happened there was uh most of turn one and two it was the big focal point of those first two turns so holding both of those as well as solemn which is further north that's a little south of bardia those three positions as well as city barani yes which is the one that i held at the start this is where i did my fuck up because i had the fourth indian on them for a while ages and then i pulled back to try and portray your guys at like the limit of their supply lines and it worked they are at the limit of their supply lines a supply line that you are continuing to destroy yeah so you managed to pull me a little further over the border stretch my resources but i now have one of my units i think it's the first libyan are in city barani yeah and city

barani is the final part of the tactical victory win condition so i need to take and occupy city barani which at the moment i am doing i have uh gear above yeah i have fort maddalena i have solemn all i need to do now to win this scenario is have a supply line that can be traced from tobrook to each of these locations at the moment i can't do that however the ace up my sleeve which has been coming for well since the game started yeah for all the way from tripoli it's the other black shirts the second and third black shirts so they are making their way downtown in a quite rapid pace because they're all motorized they're zipping along the north it's all road they're gonna get to bar uh not they're gonna get to tabrook next term this offstage yeah so in my

movement which is going to be next time we play i can get them to tabrook once they're in tabrook i can then break off these trucks yep and that means once those trucks are broken off i can then have a supply line that runs from tabrook to all of those locations just mentioned at which point i've met the victory conditions and the win is mine and i win the kinder bueno as everyone may remember the stakes of the full campaign for north africa are a sit-down meal the stakes of graziani's offensive is a kinder bueno that kinder bueno andy could well be mine the next time we play yeah i think it will be i think if i can get through your divisions up and take it city brady back that's basically the only way i can prevent this now those men that you've

moved over to the border of my wall around City Barani is the only way that you can change this. Because they'll get to Brook at the end of the turn. Yes. Then you'll have to detach them.

Yes, which will cost some CPA. Next upstage you'll be able to... So it'll be next upstage, but you'll do all the work to finish it this upstage. Well, I can detach them, and then... I'm just wondering, will they have any CPA left?

You got a good point, yes. So I won't be able to win this offstage. I will have to bleed it through to next offstage. But all I need to do is make sure that you don't take out all of those trucks, which is realistically not something you can do with an Air Force, which has already suffered heavy losses on your side. I don't think you've got the strafe in you to take out. I mean, I've already talked to you about it before, north of 60 trucks.

Um, yeah, because I took out four and went pretty heavy on them. Yes. The most you can strafe is three. And the most you can get with bombs is seven. I think it might be six. Yeah. Either way, it's not a lot. Yes. With multiple bombing runs,

with massive amounts of bombs, incredible strafes, rolling very well, you can't take out 60 trucks. And all I need to do is supply them. I need to have supply lines that work. The supply lines can be flimsy, but they just need to be supply lines so if you win initiative next turn you probably won if i

win initiative i would imagine so um depending on how i maneuver my troops it does come down to that fight at city barani yeah because i should win initiative because i think i've got plus three at the minute and you've got plus one yes so most initiatives i should win the the odds are definitely in your favor to win the initiative yeah it's more a case of how you use the resources that you've got yeah because my air my air units are pretty much crippled at this point i i'm not going to be able to put up much air resistance i'm um i will have the airfield back that i'm rebuilding and there's a bunch of planes there that are ready to go they just haven't been able to so they're going to be back in play i can do something with them maybe but is that going to

change am i going to be able to hold city barani is is the question yeah because if i can all i need to do is move around my trucks if i didn't ruin my supply lines from go i would be able to win the game now decisively i would have already won probably but now that i need to rejig my supply lines to fudge the wind condition it it changes things it's harder it's a scary thought that we've not realized that we've come to this knife edge situation where either of us can win before i declared my movement then instead it seems pretty locked in you are but we've got the rest of this upstage and then at least one more next turn to yeah just after the halfway point turn four upstage one is likely going to be the point where we know who's winning the scenario

because if i don't win in this instance i think my resources are stretched to a point where you could turn this on its head well you've you've got one convoy left and then who are sort of on map b focus on your airfields right uh yes and then it's the guys coming in with the black shirts yes so that i mean 60 is a lot that's bigger than any of my it is the thing is though realistically i'll have to commit a lot of that to if i want to make sure i can keep a longevity play i'm going to have to commit a lot of those to actual functional supply lines that are going to run around the rest of the map because we are going to keep going even if one of us gets the victory yes that's an important point so when this upstage pans out and the next if it is the case that we

reach a victory condition for our sake to continue to understand the game with a bit of safety and have the the stabilizers on have the barriers up we're going to play out the rest of the scenario as in finish the six turns we're going to see how that goes see if there's any other big developments in gameplay see if we can figure out any new tactics or rules that we've missed the the purpose of or just completely forgotten about so it means that this is not the end of this scenario play if there's a victory it does mean i win the kinder bueno it means that it really just i guess becomes a a waiting game of how the scenario pans out in the rest of the turns and what kind of action happens and from there yeah we've got a win we've reached an end point for graziani's offensive

yeah because if i mean yeah because if you redo your supply lines from what you're saying you get the win probably costs you the like overall scenario because we are keeping it going yeah i think in the long run i'm in such a damaged position that recovering it over the three turns is going to be difficult a lot of the wild gambits that i've mentioned in the last few weeks have proven to be difficult to pull off or against the rules so i'm not entirely sure any of the risky players can go i'm gonna have to win conventionally and that requires supply lines which i can recoup now that these extra trucks are here but it's it's just it feels too little too late yeah so i've got to hope i can get this tactical win condition and then it means you know

that's it. I've at least got the victory under my belt, and then you can beat the shit out of me. I'm fine with that. I can be defeated as the winner. The big one comes down to if the 7th and the 4th can dislodge those two divisions.

Well, that's it. It's not over yet. There is still an 11th hour move you can make to change this scenario. And those guys are very, very well supplied. Well, that's it. my guys are going to have to sort of cycle through which i've mentioned in the past they're not the best equipped in terms of resource they don't have huge stockpiles of ammo they don't have

a lot of stores which could be detrimental come the start of turn four but they can defend themselves and that's sort of the situation here they just need to hold the line they don't need to push you further back they just need to stay exactly where they are which is what i'm hoping is going to happen. If they start a retreat, I'm in danger. But all in all, I'm feeling very confident that I may well win the scenario, Andy. Yeah. I'm just hoping, because

the way your guys are positioned, I can hopefully do two divisions on one for each of them. For this first one, you will be. I can't remember who's in front. And the second one, I can as well. Can you? I think so. I'll look at the map. I've got some pictures. I'll put some pictures up for the Instagram post this week,

which shows what that wall looks like at the moment. It's dicey. I'm building a minefield nearby though, that'll be fun That's fun, yeah I should have built one right outside City Barani That would have been a game winner Yeah, that would actually have changed the game

in the sense that it ends it Oh, I guess there's another way it doesn't end immediately Which is? Depending on the weather No, it'll still be fine Will it not if we get rain or sandstorm it affects movement it affects movement but i just need to be able to trace

the supply i don't think it needs to factor in oh yeah it's just 30 movement is it 30 movement points is how it phrases it um it just says a tracker supply line from to brook and every mention of it it talks about doing it in an op stage yeah so as long as i can trace that supply line i just need to get my trucks detached yeah and then from there i'm sitting pretty so this could be it this this is the this is the end of the beginning because this does not mean anything in the grand scheme of things this while i may get a kinder bueno and a bit of a sugar rush that comes with it i'm unfortunately still going to be playing the campaign for north africa for probably the rest of my life i think the grim reality we need

to accept, Andy, is this realistically ends when one of us dies. Maybe. It's only a decade. I don't think it's a decade. Yeah, it is. I think that's very optimistic. We'll bang it out in a couple of years. It's going to be a big one next time.

Next week's episode is going to be possibly us declaring a victor. And potentially we'll have a long game session. I think, yeah. The way our schedule has fallen quite conveniently, it means that this play session

is going to be a biggie by the looks of it. We might get a weekend day for us. Oh, and if we do, we'll spoil ourselves. We'll probably do a whole upstage. We could cycle all the way back round to the next upstage, which could then lead to the victory condition being met one way or another.

I think you and I are both going to go and rest in bed tonight. Separate beds, of course. You've raised your eyebrow there. You want me to bunk in with you tonight changed my plans is this your your idea of a common ground yeah we have to top and tail stay together stick close actually i might do that i might stay at yours tonight so then i know you can't fiddle with the board there's gonna be you can't stay here for like

five days yeah i can't no of course i can't get out you're not actually in charge of me i actually am in my house no that's not how that works yeah it is no my house my rules it would be polite if i let you be in charge in your house no it's it'll be polite if i let the guests choose that's the polite thing whoa whoa it's threatening to spill water on a table or what it's cold coffee oh okay it's cold ness cafe salted caramel instant coffee it's really nice it's uh so nice i didn't drink at all it's quite late on for a weekday and i don't want to be completely caffeinated up to the eyeballs when i go to bed it's good thinking yeah i'm conscious of you know i need sleep yeah i've got stuff to do early in the morning i need to sleep need to get that rest in you're

not meant to have caffeine i mentioned this really early on didn't i i remember mentioned this in one of the formative episodes of the podcast andy that you're not meant to have caffeine for at 10 hours before bedtime which feels too long uh no well by what metric like i'd like that to be like six hours right so this is just about when you like to have coffee yeah i like i like coffee i just also like sleep so it's not about the science being wrong or you think there might be some miscalculation you just don't like it no i'd just prefer if caffeine had a short oh okay that's that's a very self-aware fact you've just dropped there you've just shared an opinion i suppose yeah um i can't fault you for that i guess it is your house i'll be polite

as the guest and allow you to have an opinion thank you very much so i guess in a way every time we record this i'm your guest i guess yeah you should start introducing me as a special guest i guess you can be relegated from co-host to special guest yeah i'd take that special guest feels well special co-host that sounds pretty bland to be honest introducing special guest james and andy that would no yeah that sounds that actually rolls off the tongue special guest is worse than host um well we'll we'll common ground that at some point um i think you're wrong okay but that's the game covered and this this always goes the same way and we've got a structure to this thing.

This isn't the Wild West. That's not where you live, Andy. There's no sand here. We're quite far from sand. The coast is miles away. So here, we do things by the book. We do things... We follow the rules.

We do, I swear. We follow the rules, and that means... What does it mean, Andy? It's time for emails? Is that what it means? You got it in one. we are gonna seem like the right answer but i never know

well you've not said something that sounds like we follow rules there andy come on get with the program emails emails emails and all of the joy that they bring so we've got some developments here that are email adjacent yeah it was a lot of joy this week yeah we've had we've had quite a lot of emails come through which we're always very grateful for thank you everyone who sent them and we've we've got some big things coming this year we've got some big stuff coming up we've touched on some of it in previous episodes we've got more that we'll talk about in future ones and one such thing as you will be able to see today is that we have at long last a new logo look at that brand new logo for a brand new year and maybe even for a brand new victor

in the form of me james winner of the scenario to be declared now this logo you may notice is a little bit better put together than our previous one it doesn't have an erroneous board game in the background it's um a little bit more than the two silhouettes and not to rag on and your creativity because you put that thing together and it was it had the charm of our of our early days it did its job for the time it was doing it it did it was spectacular and it will always have a special place in my heart it actually pained me to see it go because that is a logo that i've seen oh so many times when we've been editing and putting stuff out it really reflected us but who are we to deny the opportunity to use a new one when one of our fantastic listeners you're out there alex

that's right we're calling you out you alex have sent over that logo and provided it to us and we are beyond grateful because it it really does fit the bill for ushering in a new year of war with a mate yeah awesome logo as well oh yeah brilliant a definite step up and then also it's very kind to take the time on it yeah yeah massively appreciative of it and we've got the email that you send over to us which has a bit more to it um and it goes hi andy and james here is alex your first emailer long time no see that's right people uh it was the the first email that we ever read out first email we received was from alex and he's went full circle he's come back in the new year and he's provided us with a new logo as well what a guy he goes on i started

listening to you last year and i couldn't catch up so i left the podcast at about episode 20 but i still got it in my mind during the christmas week of this year i listened episodes going from 22 to 56 i was spending christmas alone so i didn't bother anyone listening to this all day long i think i'm literally addicted to this podcast it will probably be really hard to wait each week for a new episode to come out now i know the feeling i just want to binge playing the game and get it over and done with in a time bubble no less that's right andy i'm going back on my word one of the last episodes you guys are talking about how you feel the game um feel about the game and james tells he is really confident he could take alexandria in a couple of turns at

the start of the new game this probably includes a daring plan where he launches a great offensive which will probably be stopped by andy who will himself see a vulnerable and overstretched italian army and start an offensive to gain terrain and well this is the campaign for north africa the game managed to get james into thinking he could win easily with some decisive actions just like all commanders during the north african campaign maybe you guys will be more resentful to attack during the full game but i'm sure there are times when you will put all your forces hoping it will work only for it to fail due to trucks probably fuck the trucks i like that that's a good callback and you know what if andy had followed that mantra i would be done i mean i

kind of have no no no i think that the fact i've only got one truck convoy is down to mismanagement it's not due to enemy effectiveness okay maybe you had like a five percent impact i've stolen like 10 convoys off you by chance lucky roll of the times happenstance in another episode you guys mentioned eventually changing the logo maybe with the right map in the background oh that's a dig i've made a couple of sketches for a banner and a profile picture it's not much but feel free to use it as you wish maybe it will give you some ideas or you can use it as your new profile pick or whatever it's yours well the uh using us on your profile yes we uh we had some some back and forth with alex we were um lucky enough to have a lovely conversation about it and express our

gratitude and he was very generous in having this provided to us and letting us use it and it feels all that more special that it was one of you guys that provided us with this and just took the time to put it together and you also mentioned here alex that the uh the banner that you put together is a picture of us getting tired over the bootkeeping, and the profile pic is us standing in a Crusader Mark I tank, a British tank used during the war.

Which also, and I'm not sure if this was your intention, it actually looks a little bit like the cover of the game. Yeah, it's a nice, that's lined up nicely. Yeah, I don't know if that was an homage, Alex, but if you look at the cover for the Campaign for North Africa on the box, it's, admittedly, it's Rommel,

but it's him sort of poised atop a vehicle as well. it does strike a bit of a resemblance it's a really nice sweet swap because it's an homage to the cover without implying one of us is going wrong it's left open to interpretation

so thanks for that thanks for saving us some controversy on a more serious note, you guys are incredible I had a pretty tough past year and surprisingly started feeling depressed just as I stopped listening to you guys in the end of 2024 you're funny guys, I love the history

segments and the common grounds are always solid gold keep it up really and thanks again for helping me get by playing this game i guess one suffers ends and others you really made my christmas and each friday from now on in the deserts of your minds alex probably from chicago well alex i i hope you're doing better christmas is a it's a tough time at the best of times and if you've been spending that listening to us then we appreciate that we played at least a small part in getting through that and it's it's a lovely thought that we get to brighten someone's day in any aspect the fact that someone has decided to tune into us and it brightens your day in any way is a miraculous outcome from such a silly endeavor so we we were very thank you for

brightening our day because we were very excited when the logos came in yeah i don't think you understand how giddy we were to see that it was so brilliantly timed with us starting a new year and you getting back into it as well by the sounds of it if you've had a hiatus and it's it's the case i've also had you know times when i've been down i'll stick on a podcast and i'll go down the rabbit hole of binging different podcasts oh yeah my big one um not long before we started this i listened to the worst idea of all time one of the best which is great um if anyone hasn't listened of that it's brilliant two guys um who re-watch grown-ups to every week for a year and review it every week um i think maybe part of that inspired the idea to do something else stupid which i guess

is playing this it's those layers i think we've had an email mention it the niche of like unwanted endurance podcasting yeah it is a niche that we're in and i'm happy to add my name to that list but uh yeah anyone who gets any sort of joy from this is a lovely thing to hear so i hope anyone out there who's having a bit of a rough time hopefully this hour or so each week you can remember that there's just two people doing something silly somewhere there's a bit of whimsy going on in the world and hopefully you can de-stress and remember that if we're doing this you know the world isn't all that serious it's all a big joke really isn't it are we really countering the seriousness of the world yeah i mean i can't think of anything that's happened

that's serious in the last few weeks that anyone should be concerned about i'm sure that we've balanced that all out which brings me to the subject line of our next email oh this this was a corker um moving from moving from something touching and moving to uh i guess this is also quite quite touching would you like to read the subject of this next email uh yeah why threatening divorce divorce me over my love of your podcast that one that one worried me when i read that um i was worried it was going to be an appeal to us to somehow talk around someone's spouse yeah and and figure or just to get us to stop recording permanently otherwise we'd be breaking up a marriage um but i'll why don't you delve into this and uh dear future andy and james

i write this after having just finished episode 24 graziani's defensive and you know the emails are slowing down so i thought i'd get one in now with the hopes of hearing it uh read once i catch up i've been listening to your podcast for the past month and i'm really enjoying the format and your banter the history details are fascinating here and as a fellow war game and board game enthusiast i thoroughly enjoy the gaming commentary i've been telling all my friends and family about at holiday parties so much so that my wife says that if i bring up pasta points one more time at the dinner table she will divorce me thanks for the guerrilla marketing but i'd take the warning yeah there's a there's a fine line between doing something lovely for us and doing something

catastrophic to your marriage but if anyone's listening from those dinner tables let us know yeah that means that that we've this has worked if you're listening to this on the back of that recommendation you need to talk to your your your sister or your daughter or whoever she is to you um you need to let her know that it's it's important this is an important piece of art it's avant-garde it's um it's groundbreaking it's historical and the pasta points are sort of an educational point around cuisine so the dinner table is actually probably the best place to talk about where else would you talk about pasta yeah exactly so all in all i i mean i i hate to weigh in on one side or the other of this domestic arguments but only one of them was a listener

so i'm backing it yeah i mean i'm weighing up these uh these arguments in my head and one of them's really coming down on my end so fun fact my son was born around the time he officially started playing episode 13 uh and so is as old as your game has been played therefore when you finish the game i'll personally send you a picture of him sending uh wearing a t-shirt that says i survived the campaign for north africa podcast of andy and james by saying subtle humble and brave keep up the good work chaps looking forward to catching up although i'll be sad i'll no longer be able to binge the episodes your subtle humble and brave fan nav thanks for that email now that's another great one that is a corker and this is the second occasion i believe where someone has

said that they've recently had a child and they're going to be indoctrining them into the the area of the podcast from essentially birth um someone's emailed in and said they're going to use the podcast to soothe their child to sleep now i'm worried about what the next generation is going to look like if they're all being raised under the umbrella of this podcast as background supplementary material well it's good it's long form content by the time they grow up it'll be like one second videos um and i'm just trying to put together the the dynamic of this this family in my head at the moment nav that you have a newborn child and you're at the dinner table talking about pasta points and i can just picture a very tired wife who's been looking after the

child all day and then you sit down after having listened to three or four episodes and just rattle off facts about the game and it's just sheer frustration on her part it's it's a very funny dynamic that we're involved in it's also something i've definitely done where i'm excited about something and then i realized sort of half an hour it would get it'll be explaining it to someone that they couldn't give a shit andy i get that now talking about this podcast that we do i get down the rabbit hole too often of talking on and on about this and after it first people like oh podcast that's interesting and i'm like yeah so let me tell you about how complicated the game is oh and then there's this wacky part of the game you know how many spreadsheets we've got

and after a while i think the novelty wears off and they're like i get it it's a long game and i'm like yeah but it's really long no one's ever finished this game before and yeah it's just it must be so grating but the thing is now if that makes you one of us yeah you're annoying just like us and that's fine it's fine to have a passion it's good so you know i think what i really hope is that this is tongue-in-cheek what i don't want to have is a follow-up email in a few months time where nav is telling us about the new apartment he's moved into on his own it wasn't a light email so i um i hope all is well on the home print nav and hopefully you can talk the whole family round and you'll all sit down on an evening stick on an episode and it'll all be a jolly good time

yeah if not you can move in with andy it's getting crowded we've got celebrity on my couch you'll stay for five days and now fans are moving in yeah but the celebrity on the couch said my home kind of isn't big enough for the game the celebrity will be out soon though i hear he's got big stuff coming yeah we'll replace him with another one yeah yeah it's just a revolving door actually that gives you connotations which probably aren't aren't great let's quickly diverge away from this dangerous topic of uh dangerous i went a bit short connery there um let's move away from this dangerous topic of um you being some sort of serial one night stander with celebrity guests which you know we've only got one celebrity so if anything it would be a very committed um

monogamous relationship on your sofa andy why don't you reach my ndas why don't you why don't you do us a history segment andy i would love a history segment okay i'm gonna hit you with it um oh actually if you want to get an email to us you can do that at info war with a mate.co.uk good man the instagram is just war with a mate and our website we've got that too it's war with the mate.co.uk it's full of well old pictures of the game we'll update it though we promise we've got we've got lots of coming this year lots of things all sorts of bits and pieces the website will be part of it i promise i swear to god we'll update it it we will get around to it we're busy calm down we're busy all right no one's talking

i can hear them andy i can hear them we will update it we will maybe but no we will we will and that's at war with me on instagram it is we can take messages on any of those forms and um you can send it it could be about anything it can be about how comforting it is to listen to our podcast when you're feeling a bit down and solemn it can be about the dissolution of your marriage because you're listening to it it could be a opinion on kettle gate it could well not that not that um i did see a few emails coming about that by the way people i i have noticed that and i've seen the youtube comments i've seen it all right i i explicitly told you not to do that and i've seen it so when i said you can do anything maybe i should start putting

some caveats on that i'll i'll give you one chance people all right one chance stop talking about these kettles anyway before i get ahead of myself and start telling everyone off for this kettle talk which you started andy why don't we delve into history the men of the long-range desert patrols were quite a sight on their return to cairo from a month's trip the contrast between the east and west of the nile is very marked in the east we are absolutely not qualified to share views on history so where does history take us today back to the seventh and the end of their glorious march oh is this is this the end it is oh i finally ended this they've concluded at long last

fun quote for us to start with was always we are not interested in holding on to anything except the enemy's balls we are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all the time george s patton known for his aggressive stance during the push into germany that is quite a quote for the send-off series so the seventh uh where we left them they were enjoying christmas in holland and uh but they're back to work on the 13th of january 1945 with operation black rock their first action is to cross a bunch of canals which means this infantry in the front for now uh rather than the tanks they go canal to canal village to village accompanied by their flail tanks artillery

and the crocodile tanks, which are the flamethrower ones. Oh god, yeah, that's scary. At one point, they fight three companies of German paratroopers at St. Just, who make them fight house to house, only ever giving ground when the burning buildings they're fighting in, lit up by the

crocodile tanks, are too hot for them. The fires contrast sharply with deep snow and persistent fog, mixed with smoke, which, when it gets cold, makes fog thicker so like burning and then it's cold and it's just less and less visibility oh oh yeah that's that's not a nice situation to be at all i hate that yeah but by the end of january they

pushed the germans from the west bank of the river raw in germany and after brutal fighting operation black rock steamed a success they pull back for some more training to cross the rhine and spend some time off the front but they're back towards the end of march for operation plunder which is to fight 190 miles through germany to capture hamburg after some initial fighting around the town of wessel they crossed the river rhine on the 27th of march led as always by the 11th for sars naturally who are allowed to range forward in europe as i said it's mostly been vehicles leading uh infantry leading supported by vehicles uh but now the 11th get to push forward first they're passing through destroyed towns and villages there's signs of combat everywhere

rubble the sense of bodies no one's had time to bury broken gliders and tanks everywhere it's just a horrific landscape they're going through yeah this sounds very much well yeah it's the end of the war yeah it shows yeah the seventh armor division splits into three groups at this point to secure various towns to create a new front. They're moving through tracks and thick woodlands, which is when the Panzerfaust, or Tankfist, becomes a major problem. These are the German World War II RPGs.

They've got a conical top, I don't know if you'd recognize it. Yes, I know the ones you mean, yes. So throughout the rest of March, they have a series of advances, many through the night, and battle fierce German resistance the entire time. they take a series of towns and cross minor rivers using uh bailey bridges oh callback they've advanced 120 miles into germany at this point when they reach the tuto burger wald which is a 25 mile long mile-wide escarpment covered in dense woodland with a canal running through it oh dear

the canal of course the bridge has all been blown up well yes you would do that and waiting for them in those woods are the hitler youth and their elite instructors they've been at war for years at this point the seventh they've survived battle after battle marched through the ruins of europe and now they're fighting fanatically brainwashed children many as young as 12 oh god just this is imagine gutting through all of this warfare and they really have saved the worst to last yeah they're throwing the um you have to you're fighting children in nazi germany who would rather die than surrender yeah so you're not even getting like you're having to kill these kids that is the that's the bleakest way for this conclusion to come about that's horrible yeah

so the non-children germans are elite soldiers and instructors for the hitler youth who are normally taken from like experienced veterans so they've got like an elite force backed by these kids and they're working in small teams staying mobile to reduce the effectiveness of artillery uh hunting commanders tank commanders and officers and sniping them so after several days of brutal fighting the 7th and 11th armored division who've joined up for this are ordered to disengage and go around this pocket of resistance in the evening of the 4th of april two other division stayed behind and it takes them two more days to dislodge this like resistance i wonder how much of that was hesitancy because of who they're fighting i wonder if the fact that they're

mostly kids played a part and maybe holding back or i think also it's horrific terrain to be fighting like heavy woodlands they've got a height advantage and then when you get into the woods there's a canal to cross yeah and they are elite so it's just a nightmare it very much is the last boss fight here there's such a not just physical but moral obstacle that you're running into here and the these elite soldiers the instructors that are there with them i mean can't can't really think of anything more evil to do in warfare you're there with your child soldiers battalion of child soldiers while you're then sniping and picking off others yeah like it just it boggles the mind that this is just such a horrible thing to run into like war is obviously horrible like

they're going through all these ruins germany's been heavily bombed but like you know in the heart of darkness fighting children it's just but yeah so leaving that behind them over the next few days they have a mixture of rapid advances that are then stopped by blown bridges uh or heavily defended bridges that are then blown up when they're going to lose them so at this point they need to review their tactics because every river crossing is just a nightmare so instead of heading directly west so instead they start heading directly west hoping to cut off and isolate a german army they make good progress and there's another brief and brutal battle with an ss training division so on the 10th of april they capture a large hospital nestled in some pine

woods near the town of widdershawson with 200 patients during the night the hospital was attacked by infantry and german infantry and artillery in the morning all the patients and the staff had vanished and they don't they didn't know where they went oh i was expecting the next words out you must be we're dead but just gone just gone is there any then is there any information after the fact that clears up this mystery i'm gonna look into it a bit more this was mentioned in like a thing about the seventh but it is like probably just the hospital was just empty of patients and staff that's really bizarre yeah it was just a weird little part of that so the day after this uh weird spooky hospital occurrence on the 11th uh part of the division takes

which they're next to which they're very happy about because it contains a massive supply of gin oh nice nice little morale boost soon after the 11th for sars report seeing 17 german tanks in the woods that had previously been shot at by uh planes the german tanks managed to sneak up on the brits destroying several park tanks before being knocked out themselves uh this was followed by an infiltrate infantry infiltration that was repelled by british artillery a theory at the time was the germans were attacking to rescue their gin yeah hey you got to motivate the boys so due to basically every bridge in germany being destroyed um they couldn't get into the path of the army they were chasing without a costly battle against several other divisions but they

do get a huge morale boost even bigger than the jinn when the division find and liberates a pow camp stalag x1b the first camp to be liberated in germany of the war it has 12 000 prisoners spread across two camps about half of them are british and american including men captured at villas bow cage in normandy oh and also members of the 8th and 11th facades that had been captured in city rezegar all the way back in 1941 oh wow that was the battle where you know the guy was grabbing the side of the tank oh yeah it's like tank battle between rommel and yeah and he was like riding along they got captured there and then get liberated by their guys yeah that's awesome so yeah they're fighting through the suburb suburbs of hamburg at this

point facing fierce resistance at this point they're fighting everyone soldiers policemen firemen ss school boys it's just if you can hold a weapon the germans are standing so at 2 30 a.m on the 26th of april the germans counter-attack leading to a protracted day-long battle finally withdrawing on the 27th as well as dealing with the city there's just thousands of german uh soldiers spread around the woodlands around hamburg as well that they're having to deal with it's just a nightmare just everywhere you go there's someone wanting to kill you yeah they shell the city through the 28th of april and on the 29th a group comes out of the city to discuss surrender were they looking for an officer to surrender to this guy was a bit more reasonable

although the new negotiations do take some time and on the 21st of may general waltz the german general uh after like aids and stuff have been going back and forwards he comes out um to talk uh and about surrendering the city he specifically wants to surrender it to the desert rats that's interesting yeah so they've got a reputation with the germans as well so i again wouldn't trust that that sounds very suspicious oh we'll surrender but just to this highly renowned unit it's like why do you want us to be here why do you want us to have this settlement but uh yeah they're discussing terms and then that evening uh news of hitler's death is announced over the radio oh yes big news big news uh the next day the city surrendered the division entered the city in

triumph led by the 11th facades the triumph is short-lived allied soldiers have described the city as a city of rats and flies due to the stench buildings are in total ruin 60 percent of the city's homes have been destroyed almost 200 large factories and 500 and almost 4 000 small ones were destroyed there's writing on like every surface that's still standing because people are writing mess like civilians and stuff are writing messages like gone here because of the house bond if you find it dave come find me like they're like just leaving writing everywhere trying to like communicate with each other oh that would be such a terrifying thing to see yeah there's just something about that that i find really unsettling it's like another layer on top of the

like just the ruin yeah it's like it makes it feel like it's been left there longer like it removes it from not just being a ruin of something it's now being changed again it's taken another form yeah and they're just writing these hoping a loved one or a family member will reunite uh it's estimated that 37 000 people died from bombing uh even before the allies arrived in hamburg although this number is difficult to confirm and this is fucking horrible due to some counts only being possible to guess how many people were in a room when it was bombed by estimating based on the amount of ash in the room oh god like yeah raf um at the arm air marshal arthur harris uh quoted the bible in 1942 stating that the nazis sowed the wind and are now going to

reap the whirlwind uh about the bombing campaigns that's a scary threat yeah whereas neville chamberlain says we have no quarrel with the german people except that they allowed themselves to be governed by a nazi government as long as that government exists there will be no peace in europe so there's varying attitudes from fuck these guys to like a bit of sympathy for the people yeah but you've got to get rid of the nazis well that's it it's a case of we can't stop the fighting until the structure that put it together is removed yeah so on the night of the 4th of may the german surrender overall is announced when ved was to be declared on the 8th of may 1945 the division found itself concentrated around the town of gockels north

of hamburg with some units still in or closer to the city or in the kiel area a lot of the units wanted to leave the city partially due to the jet devastation and partially this city absolutely stinks of like bodies rotting under rubble oh my god they've not been able to clean up this is i know it's the germans but it's horrific yeah it doesn't really change the fact that this is a horrible scene yeah so they're glad to be out of the city but the war was over and the seventh armored division had one more march for the next two months they're based in hamburg dealing with german prisoners including huge numbers of germans fleeing west looking to be captured by anyone but the russians which is fair you don't want to be taken into their custody so in july they head to

berlin to take a prominent role in the victory parade through the city personally inspected by winston churchill and then drive past him very prominently placed in the parade and then later that day churchill goes on to address them at the impromptu churchill club they've set in berlin uh making a speech i've pulled multiple quotes from but i'll give you it again in full yes Soldiers of the 7th Armoured Division I am delighted to be able to open this club and I shall always consider it a great honour that it should be named after me

I have not for the first time had the pleasure of seeing your troops march past and this brings back to mind the great and many moving incidents in these last long and fierce years Now here in Berlin I find you all embellished in this great centre from which as from a volcano

fire and smoke and poison fumes have erupted all over Europe twice in a generation and in bygone times also German fury has been let loose on her neighbours and now it is we who live in our place in the occupation of the country dear desert rats

may your glory ever shine may your laurels never fade may the memory of this glorious pilgrimage of war which you have made from Alamein via the Baltic to Berlin never die it is a march unsurpassed through all the story of war so my readings of history

leads me to believe may the fathers long tell their children about this tale may you all feel that in following your great ancestors you have accomplished something which has done good to the whole world which has raised the honor of your country and which has given every man the right to feel pride and yeah that's the story of the seven farmer division wow the desert rats yeah from desert to destitute germany yeah a hell of a journey like that is a push that is a hell of a push from where they began in these history segments to where they ended the scope of combat that they've taken on the environments that they've traversed and the the adversarial nature of what they went

up against between the environment itself in africa to the fanaticism in germany there's no real pause on the just the intense terror that there must be going on but pushing through it all oh yeah massive victories and ununderstandable reputation at the end of it all yeah that's just mind-bogglingly scary stuff to go through and to make it pretty much the whole way. I know a lot of them changed up towards the end

with some of them going back home, but for them to fight for that long and through so many environments is just insane. I wouldn't make it through one. No. I wouldn't last a day in any of those. Like, if they'd just done

Operation Compass, it would be unbelievably impressive. But that's a month of their, like, five-year... Yeah, because I know that was a fairly condensed month in terms of the amount of stuff that happened in it. It was very, very busy, but it is just a month. It's also not that busy compared to them going through France and Germany. I've focused in on Operation Compass

because it was part of the campaign for North Africa, but, like, that level of everyday intense fighting was like D-Day in Italy all the way to Hamburg and then Berlin. And with them being, from what you've described in a lot of Europe, the sort of tip of the spear for a lot of these operations,

it means that they are showing up early doors to some of the atrocities and having to take on some of the worst stuff first. Well, they liberated the first POW camp. It wasn't a death camp, it was a actual POW camp, but they were

i mean yeah they got there first yeah so not only the are they traveling all this way but they're regularly ahead of the main army like yeah their first foot in the door yeah and again for them to make it through as the first foot through the door is just insane yeah a scary group of people again another one that i didn't really have any information about before we started any of this and then when we started playing the game I looked into them a bit, read some of the book that you did but I had no idea the full extent of what they've done

and your use of them in the game I'm always now going to look at them and be like these guys can really switch up how this fight's going to go which again, I think it does feel like that's what you're doing with these history segments you're trying to put the fear of God in me

I'm trying to get ideas and have you got any? they've not worked but I got them Well, yeah, it sounds like you're going to lose next time. I haven't used those sevenths very well, have you, Sunshine? Could have been better. We both. Both could have been better.

I could have used my trucks. The Italians used their trucks, at least, from what I understand. You need to do a history segment on the Italian trucks, Andy. I'll get to them. I've no doubt that you will. We've got forever. Yeah. In this time bubble.

oh yeah scary stories but um yeah i i just i'm trying to picture what that must be like in the the canal area where they're up against the hitler youth i just there's something so grim about that and the just the writing everywhere in the ruins it's just it's it's like a post-apocalyptic think of them as just ruins but it's like no people are leaving their mark on it and like their hopes and desire like find the people like yeah there's just that added like human aspect of it it's a place where it was destroyed and then people have been there still yeah it's not just it's not like a an old ruin from you know ancient rome that you pass through now in parts of england where you know there's roman ruins and it's not that it's so contemporary yeah i just don't like

that there's something unsettling about that in a very strange way well andy the game is not only a foot it may be an end we're looking at a scenario that's gonna i mean quite possibly wrap up soon we've just heard some terrible tales of history and we're leaving our mark on it and it will likely be with me as the victor so i would like to be a good 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 i'd like to bring us together with a common ground okay what you got so mine is about the the betterment of life okay it's it's about making life that bit easier that

bit nicer i think um my common ground suggestion is that all houses should be built with a billy tap installed what's a billy tap so billy tap is um it's it's in a lot of offices um that i've worked in so it's a a tap that can dispense um cold and boiling hot water um as well as sparkling water so it it means you get very easily accessible what are you doing you can get what are you doing very easily accessible hot water boiling hot water you don't need a way for it to boil it's just there, readily available we can't be tagging each other in

common ground okay, so you think are they the ones they have in like kitchens and restaurants where it like sprays, yeah like you've just got hot water ready, like you just, you've got like the cool tap option or the hot tap and the hot tap is just boiling water and it's readily available

okay, what do you think about that, I mean I agree I guess, yeah, seems like just having better taps than you have now yeah because i my my thought process behind that is with that you don't need to wait for a kettle to boil so it saves time it feels like you you've really not common ground is not this common ground is not what andy you get a single chance to rebut and then it's over no see um i what you're probably referring to is what i i can see um maybe from an outside

perspective are similarities between my suggestion here for common ground and what you suggested last week which was to have kettles in more rooms which yeah of course now i was thinking about that bad idea and i thought hmm what is a good idea and i thought there we go we can we can instead have hot water taps in in the kitchen and it's just ready to go you don't have to wait for the kettle to boil like yeah yeah you what are you what are you checking there you're checking the cost of a billy tap i was having a look yeah yeah and what what sort of price range are we looking at there they don't sell them commercially well we can change that that would be part of it because common ground's about thinking big isn't it andy it is

It's about thinking beyond the mundane and having very big ideas. Fucking hell. This is this part. This is a good idea, Andy. I didn't know this would piss you off this much. The kettle is no longer needed in this situation. You make it redundant.

It solves my problem. It does. It solves your problem. what i'm doing here andy is i'm presenting you with a solution i've come to you with a peace offering i critiqued your idea and did so with zest and vigor and i've come here with you uh today to unite on an idea that will solve your solution and i think do it in a better way so every house gets one of these taps every house should have one of these taps it's not mandated but it's recommended because we're going to discontinue

the sale of the kettle that's insane that's not acceptable that is that's the only way to really get these billy taps off the ground because if we get all of the kettle manufacturers to be on board with the billy tap

idea then the billy tap manufacturing cost people who make taps will definitely want to get a kettle sorry will definitely want to stop making kettles well they're not going to be able to make kettles anymore andy so you are mandating this i'm mandating the the barn of kettles kettles are dangerous all right well whereas a articulatable tap that you can sort of point anywhere in your kitchen that sprays boiling water is just

completely safe you're thinking of a different kind of tap mine is stationary it only pours it down and as well as that there'll be safeguards in place because of course immediately that the risk is well what if a child were to get a hold of it this tap will be up atop the mandelpiece so it's too it's too big to to get to um you you'll have it up on the the kitchen countertop so a child can't reach it and as for adults um you know we'll put safety measures in place because we don't want you know hot water to be catching anyone so i'll i'll design a mechanism um so you're designing a new tap um no i'm going to alter the billy tap okay it's still going to be branded the bill the branding is definitely on board with the billy corporation

yeah i mean the t-shirt i'm wearing has nothing to do with that the billy tap t-shirt company i think it solves the problem that you had of you want accessible hot water you want to fast at my desk at your desk so if you want i can install a billy tap at your desk no you can't why a few reasons you lack the skill set you you you can't say that with complete certainty i can you can be suspecting of it but you've never seen me try to set up a billy towel you recently tried to set up you truingly tried to like attach something to a wall yes correct me when i go wrong okay you didn't check for studs or anything behind the wall it's still accurate yeah you drilled directly into the wall yes and you're only alive because

you hit a water pipe instead of an electricity pipe but what you did do was flood your home um yeah what flood the home is you know the whole place wasn't flooded but there was definitely water that got out of the pipe yeah so don't do handiwork on my house so this doesn't involve any drilling first of all it simply must no it's it's going to involve a lot so you're just going to lay pipe and plumbing through my hole because you can't put it behind i'm not laying pipe in your house come on then you can't set the top i'm going to be using a new mechanism and i've not designed it yet. You know what? I came here with a solution

to your problem. You know what sucks about this? Yeah, I sort of whiffed it last week. I'm willing to admit that. I was really hoping you'd not sink to my level. Sink to your level? Is that a Billy Tap joke? Because we don't appreciate that at Billy Top.

We think it's quite reductive, actually. I'm not sinking to your level, Annie. I'm trying to lift you up I see you dangling over the precipice and I'm throwing my hand down I'm saying Andy come up here don't go down there that's where the silly people go

I'm trying to save your life here I'm trying to save your soul that's the only thing that lives inside the time bubble that's what you told me I did say that you're using my words against me that's all this is Andy it's rhetoric

and it's dangerous rhetoric and it's prosaic and it's part of what we do here it needs to be collaborative so you you just want better taps in houses i would love that would you not like a better tap that's fine yeah because the issue with your kettle idea is you need to go fill it up in the kitchen you'd need to fill it with water yeah you just have a water bottle that's fine i'm not defending this so this way you just walk into the kitchen you've got boiling hot water ready to go you just flick

down on the tap boiling hot water in your cup there you go now you can walk back you don't have to wait for the kettle to boil and you get your steps in okay this is a win on all fronts it's a win for you get your steps in it's good for the billy corporation it which is a primary concept it gets rid of the the danger of kettles where you got the cables everywhere you know okay you can have wires all over the place if you've got kettles in every room a single wire yeah exactly one wire too much you're re-plumbing houses i am not i accidentally re-plumbed a house right i was trying to mount something and i accidentally hit uh my common ground isn't did i drill well the other week because i would struggle to defend that i admit

I pick my battles do you want the billy tap do I want one do you want the billy tap no that's not how common ground works Andy you gotta say yes we do have to find the soap cream in here

I think we leave this embarrassing water boiling saga behind us would be my common ground do we are you proposing a truce i'm proposing a truce i'm proposing we never mention kettles or the billy corporation ever again that's the common ground i'm suggesting this is over it's done well i'll allow a bit of leeway on the kettle like in terms of we can mention kettles going forward okay but i i do

i do give in i i agree as part of the common ground to never mention the billy corporation again well that's all i want so our common ground is we can still talk about kettles but i'll never mention the billy corp again yeah okay i'm glad we got there in the end because it's going to be a tough game next week it's good when we agree i knew we had it in us buddy we're still friends oh we'll always be friends well well tune in next week just listen to us continue being friends well you know how to get in touch with us it's info at warwithamate.co.uk the Instagram is just

warwithamate and there's a website and it's warwithamate.co.uk and I'm James I'm Andy we're friends stay so humble and brave in the deserts of your mind

we're friends that's right folks see all your friends later night night just the worst catchphrase It's not a bad catch. We'll be right back.