War With A Mate - Episode 6: Bin Weevils

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

We’re off to a bold start as 2024 approaches an end. They say one door closes, and another opens; that door is to the red mist. James is furious with the fundamentals of the game, whereas Andrew has come to realise his destiny as the winner. Rated PEGI-18.

it's happening we're on yeah welcome to war of the bay yeah this is this is the sixth one number six beethoven's sixth this is really when people start to hit their stride yeah this is uh this is the real make or break point so looking more toward the break at the moment i think we did have some breaking points today today wasn't a fun playthrough of the game no so today we were getting the air rules sorted out which actually were fairly simple and intuitive whoa hang on whoa dial it back dial it but we're in we're in go mode what what the hell is this what is this you're listening what what is it what's happening this is oh no he's broken uh this is war with a me where we're going to be playing spi's campaign for north africa the longest most incomplete board

game in the world board game written by people who i think fucking hate me personally because the rules have really pissed me off today yeah not the rules about air stuff for the most part we were like these are pretty simple there's going to be a lot to do in like big air battles but what you're actually doing is pretty simple should we start with uh well we've mentioned in the past it comes with addendums printed into the rulebooks and then addendums on separate sheets of paper and you've started

making your own addendums I have, I've got my own little addenda going on, we've created a little well it started as a sticky note and then it became something much more it's just a note in a google drive and it's titled addenda for

rules that make me want to fucking scream and there's already three of them and we've only read one section of the rules today really we've done ground combat which is your your infantry versus infantry sort of thing uh that that was horrible that was that was worse than war i mean it wasn't great it was a lot and again there was some unclear things in the rules unclear they just weren't in the fucking rules or they were just completely wrong just actually wrong. They've put red herrings in their rules. And there's

so many rules already. I'm really not happy about that. They just keep on missing stuff out. And they spent, what, two years making this game and they're still missing stuff out. I say still are. This was in 1978, I think, that they've finished it. Yeah, they've not continued to miss

things out. Well, they're continuing to upset me. I don't know why they... Well, they've sent a thing 50 years into the future to ruin your day yeah and it worked today was the day that they've been waiting for and it happened so we did the combat rules and they've missed stuff out and and made it very unclear and then when we we looked through the addenda the one that was printed off that we got with the game turns out there's a whole three divisions which is the sort of biggest category of a group of units

so that's all of your your battalions your tanks all that sort of stuff there's three of them that are meant to be in the book and they're just not in the book yeah they're just not in there so they got they've been printed out separately by whoever made this addenda our guardian angel and now i've got three more divisions to use for the game so that's like thousands of troops and loads of tanks and if we didn't have that sheet of paper i wouldn't have had that no how can you miss printing three whole divisions into your book about war? Yeah, I mean,

I don't know how they've done this, because, I mean, the sheer amount of- What do you mean you don't know, Andy? Where's the answers? The sheer amount of it, there are gonna be mistakes in there. Don't defend them! That's to be expected, but some of them are just deeply egregious.

They just keep missing such fundamental things for a game. Just rules that need to exist, and don't one of them it's just simple maths that they've got wrong and it's the there's a whole section that gives an example of how a combat should work and we thought we had it figured out and then it gets to a point where it tells you what the modifier is to the dice roll that you make and it sort of gives this whole calculation and then it goes yeah so because of this the

modifier is plus two and then it says one takeaway this modifier is zero and it says the modifier is two so i sat there for 10 minutes thinking that i forgot to add two to zero correctly i was gaslighted by a not even a piece of paper because it's a pdf that we're using to keep the notebook the rule book in pristine condition so i suppose we can use it at the hague to bring these people up on war crimes in the future because this is it's not funny it's not ruined my day spoiled it for me so the calculation it's all there and it's so matter of fact it's like yeah so this is how you add this thing together and then this thing goes here and then this is the result you get no it's not it's wrong and it's simple maths because the thing is

if i'm looking at something and i know what the answer is i don't then just type a different number and they haven't figured it out wrong because it's so simple so why did they put it like that it's a typo it's that's not okay a typo is different if it's like a word and you put you know maybe you put uh dos instead of do you've hit you've struck a key by accident you don't you don't you struck the two key instead of the one typos don't apply to numbers okay you're not allowed to type numbers incorrectly it doesn't happen doesn't happen so it's intentional that's good okay it's a slight and it's an intentional one it's your rule, never attribute to stupidity

what you can attribute to malice. Yeah, and these people, they've got malice. It's in their heart. Oh, it's in my heart now. I'm angry at them. And then there was another few instances of the rules being wrong, where there's a key to refer to, where it tells you what types

of missions the aircraft can go on. And in your book, because we've got a rule book each, one for your man, one for my man. Mine's okay. Mine was printed fine. This time i'm angry on your behalf so this is because it says what is it it's um there's a column with like what they can do and what it's like air combat yes no bombing yes no and then the

reconnaissance column also has an f at the start so there's two columns with f's at the start neither of which what they stand for begins with f one of them is correct the other one stood for reconnaissance and they put an they put another f which meant to be an r yeah for reconnaissance yeah that's that's the letter that the word starts with and i know you know that andy and i i don't want you to feel like this is a personal attack on you but right now it's me and you in the room and i've got to take it out on someone so you've picked a bad day to be playing this game with me. Came across these rules.

We're not playing the game yet. We're getting the rules down. We're playing it. We're playing little bits of it. Initially, we were like, oh, we'll probably, like, get tired or start to, like, wane

after, like, five to ten turns, say. We haven't actually started yet. And you seem pretty angry. Well, like you say, you know, there's a very big difference between waning and getting tired. I'm fired up. I'm fired up, I'm ready for war

I'm ready for this, and again, I'm taking it out on you you're going to be the opposing side you know what, I'm you see, I like this this is going to lead to rash decisions on your part yeah, it is, but it's going to be something like throwing the game in the bin it's not going to be anything

productive in the game, you can't use this yeah, you'll charge some stuff forwards angrily it'll get mopped up then you'll throw the game in the bin and have to buy me dinner that's not the rule if you throw the board game away you lost

yes you did you can't measure that, it doesn't say anything about that in the rules there's not even a half written bad rule about how if you throw the game in the bin then you lose except instead of that they say if you throw the game in the bug, I don't know

some of the typo, it's not really a typo it's a completely different word at that point you've just thought of something else while you were typing do you have that at work by the way where you're like send an email and you have to read it like five times over just in case you've put like you know a big big donkey willy i mean it's very rarely putting that in but i will just add words if someone's talking nearby i'll just start like typing what they're saying not what i mean

just writing out a transcript of conversations in the office yeah you're just like a text to what a speech to text generator yeah you just transform into one of those i've got i've got this thing where i'll be typing emails at work and everything will be fine and then i'll get to a certain point where i'm like oh have i just have i just typed something into a professional email where i've i've just insulted them and their family and i look back over and i'm like no why would i do that why would i have done that subconsciously and i just have to check it like five times to make sure i definitely haven't and then i can send it doesn't happen all the time but it happens at least once a week i have that moment where i'm like i haven't typed something

crazy in this email ever. So maybe give the guys who wrote several hundred pages of rules for a game a break? No, no, I don't think that's the rational takeaway from this. Okay. Because the thing is, every time I look back over it, turns out I hadn't done that.

That was just some sort of delirium. I'd love to see the stats on how many wild things got through. Yeah. Because you think you caught them all, but the thing is you didn't catch the things that went out. I feel like sending something like that, you'd get a reply.

Pretty sharp. It would be pretty angry. Maybe. Or maybe they just vent on a podcast. Maybe. Maybe. I'm the recipient of something nasty. Yeah, somewhere out there, there's a podcast complaining about you.

You know what? It's not just my half of this one. You know what? I'd take responsibility for that as well. They can lock me up and throw away the key, send in that email if it exists. But innocent until proven guilty. And right now, they're guilty.

like guilty of a number of things so they've been proven guilty yeah yeah they have because i've judged during execution i'll be fucking execution i can tell you that for free this is a badly done game and it goes on forever and we've decided to do it i have to keep on catching myself when i'm talking to people about it when i'm like yeah you know it's gonna be long but it's got to be done it doesn't we didn't need to do this you initiated this yeah no that's part of the anger yeah because this is all your fault yeah this was my idea yeah you seem to be enjoying it quite a bit now yeah i actually am why i've come into this with a good attitude well yeah you've been really upbeat all day and i've got to be honest it's kind of annoying me because things

have started to click yeah i know i'm the rules apart from typos and obvious errors they are actually fairly clear to the point where we're now starting to be like that seems wrong go to the addendum so it's like yeah we're getting there you know what i wouldn't be as angry about the rules if i didn't i've started to understand the game now now i know what i need to be angry about now i know when i come across a typo this could have massive ramifications on a game we're going to be playing for years so if there's something written wrong this will have an impact on my life it's gonna have like an actual material damaging influence on my psyche yeah i mean it is gonna be bad if we get 60 odd turns and like four years in and we've done everything wrong

because then we have to start again no no no we power through we said we were doing a playthrough of the game if everything's wrong it doesn't count no now you sound like them you sound like the game designers one thing i will give them credit for there was a one thing one thing that they did there was there was a little oasis amongst the the deserts of my mind today which was when we were reading through the rules it was all about the the raids on rommel rommel being the the desert fox he was the um he was the german um sort of field field commander sort of rank not entirely sure general yeah i'd yeah his actual rank i'm not sure on um general i think he was he was uh he was he was one of the bad guys i don't think it's we don't need to give

too much uh too much credence to what his actual job was um but what he what he does have in the game you get a like a little piece to to be him and he sort of bounces around the map and you can do a bit of a cat and mouse thing where you chase him down if you're if you're andy's team the commonwealth and if andy wants to try and capture the desert fox general rommel then there's a sort of table you roll on and there was an interesting rule about how you get an additional plus to whatever result you roll and it involves genealogy oh yes i've got some genealogical work to do Because it turns out, if the player on the Commonwealth team is related to... It's a handful of actors from the 50s and 60s, I think.

Yeah, we've got Alistair McLean, Richard Burton, and two other guys. It's such a short bullet point, we haven't made note of it. Yeah, then you get a plus one to find Rommel. but i have to be related to these people and andy's gonna have to give me some actual proof he's gonna have to go down the hole you know 23 and me to figure this out i'm gonna need some paperwork if he wants to have that additional plus otherwise he's not getting it i mean i'm not i there is one guy who lived in a town i have some family living in so the only way i get this plus one that i can see is discovering decades old infidelity about the lineage of my father

but that's the thing because this which isn't happening because this guy he's american so you're gonna have to hope that in the what two this was an actor in the 60s so you're looking at like two generations or so so we're not talking about somebody who's sort of ancient you're looking at somebody that your dad probably knew like an uncle maybe if he's if there is any relation yeah did you did your dad used to go to many film premieres with an uncle who was a massively successful actor in the 60s did he mention that at any point or no not often next time you next time you you see your dad sit down with him for dinner just be like by the way are you are you related to richard burton by the way yes is is he your is he your uncle

it would be fun to expand my family based on this game i mean you're not expanding your family discovering more about my family yeah this is what i mean about you being really positive and being annoying because you got that and whereas on my part of the rules it says if uh if the axis force player is related to uh it gives it gave a couple of examples as well you get some german director yeah well all of them it turns out are um individuals who've acted in or wrote films or books about uh some aspect of the war or some of them even served during the war and then it mentions two other names one of them was uh james mason the actor that says if if the Axis Force player is

close friends with James Mason, that's nice. And I'm like, right, okay, you can't be giving this benefit to the other guy, and then you're just mocking me after I've already read through your dogshit rules, and now you're just

mocking me to, I would say to my face, you're doing it through the medium of a rulebook. So, it's pretty outrageous. Yeah, I mean, no, it's It's a nice little bit of fun in the rules For who?

For you? Not for me I mean It's not going to be relevant Is it? I find it really difficult to be So So openly frustrated And act like I've got any way to it

When I'm wearing this t-shirt Which is I've currently got a t-shirt on that says It's a picture of a skeleton And the caption is begging for a pegging. So I don't really feel like I've got any real

emotional weight behind my words because all it takes is one glance. I wore this when I went to the shop earlier and I was wondering why the woman behind the counter was giving me sort of a bit of a sort of, a bit of a grimace.

Oh, Grimace Shakers back at McDonald's, by the way. Oh, you tried it? Oh, when? a week and a bit ago oh you didn't tell me yeah it was i just threw half of it out i was wondering why your your kitchen stinks of blueberries stinks of grimace sounds like it's all the grimaces come in here he's slept on the slept on the couch he's made himself a meal and he's not cleaned up after himself no he's really grimaced the place up

grimaced all over the walls the uh yeah so the grim grimace shake um but yeah she she had a sort of um a wry smile on her face when i came up to the counter because she probably thought i was wearing this as some sort of you know maybe a invitation an invitation to to peg me no that's not what i was doing i was buying a big bag of crisps because that shop is very very good for their crisps massive bag of cheese and onion crisps a bit of an off-brand but you know you can eat them yeah they're nice yeah they're good i'd recommend them back by popular demand yeah i'd recommend them it's uh i might just yeah don't dox me yeah i might just dox you for all this happiness yeah no i'll i'll not do that but if you keep it up i will

so just yeah i suppose bear that in mind okay so that's uh gotta be kept in mind One thing, you have been dangling over my head all day. Yes. You keep on saying that you've thought of a question for me. It's going to send shivers down my spine. And you've mentioned it. It sent shivers down my... Right, okay.

Because we're playing next... The game starts next Friday. We're putting the map next session. Well, we keep saying that, and then we keep on doing mini-scenarios. We don't have anything to mini-scenario left. We keep thinking that. We keep on pushing it back.

and we are trying to play a scenario of six turns soon. So that should be happening in the next session or two. So this is something you've got to consider for next session. If you win initiative

for the first turn, do you know what you're doing? That's a much more simple question than I thought it was going to be, but you have really fucked with my head now, because no. because if i win initiative because the good thing is so initiative determines who goes first so you roll a die each and the higher result wins you get some sort of modifiers as well um they're all in andy's favor for the first half of the game and the good thing is with initiative the person who wins initiative picks who goes first so for the first turn the person who wins initiative is going

second yes because they're then going to just turn to the other person and wait and see what happens yeah i was going through like the book and then i just was like what will you do like i don't have a strategy in mind yet i don't have like i'm going for this town or this town i don't know what well we we had a bit of that to be fair when um when we had the the guys from the echoes of war channel on on the what was the third episode yeah and we got on the call with them very generous for them to uh give some time and some very very good information um and some of their expertise and we got them on the call and then i was just like right okay so let's start this off i was like right how how do i start this off how do i how do i open up this conversation

i know they've got a lot of knowledge and information how do we get it how do we draw it out how do we siphon it out in a way that makes sense and is meaningful and it's going to be the same with this where i've read the rules we've played the scenarios and then we go to do it it's one thing to know the rules i don't know how to play the game well i'm not even sure i know how to play the game properly anyway yeah i mean half the rules we've read are probably fucking wrong anyway but yeah i'm so angry that just really hit me with oh i'm gonna need to know what i'm doing yeah that that's the whole game we need to know what we're doing the whole time and we just don't no it's not it doesn't even feel like it's close and we're making a lot of

progress but i still can't say definitively that i know what's going on no i'm hoping things will start to click once there's actually a board and things moving around and stuff but yes this is a game about trucking with a war attached to it. Which is why my plan of fuck the trucks is feeling more and more correct. Fuck the trucks is definitely the way to go. And now that we know a bit about the air

rules, to be fair, we've played through a little bombing run turn. I think me focusing my bombers on your trucks is probably the way to go. And I'll be focusing mine on yours. Things won't be moving. There'll just be a lot of trashed trucks.

But the rules say not to do that. don't they there's that little snarky addenda rule where it says oh don't don't leave all of the destroyed vehicle markers all over the game map it's like really that's that's what you're concerned about because we're going to get confused because the map's messy i mean yes we're not going to get confused because of that no i'm what you're thinking is we're going to get confused by other things yes yes what's going to happen is we're going to be confused by other things. And the map. No, because the thing is, with

the destroyed trucks and all the destroyed vehicle markers, they're actual physical tangible things I can put on a play mat. And play mat's probably not a way to describe the game mat. Game map? Map. It's a map. I keep on saying mat, yeah. I want a play mat. I want one

of those ones, you know, where it's sort of like a top-down view of a city. It's like a carpet you roll out. Yeah, the map we have has that. Yeah, yeah. But I want it to be sort of soft. Okay. That would be nicer. We should have played that. Maybe we'll get the map printed up on the carpet.

That would be good, actually, because then you can hoover it. Yeah, that's the one thing missing from the game. Yeah, you know what? They just keep on missing stuff out. You can't hoover the board. It'll crinkle it all up. There's so many pieces. I'm going to come armed with a

not hands-free Dyson. I was going to say a wireless Dyson. It's not a Roomba. Yeah, hands-free Dyson is a Roomba. Yeah, the special move for this game is you put a Roomba down, it sucks up all the pieces, and then the other player cries. And I've already

said I'm willing to put this game in the bin, so a Roomba, that's just the next step. That way at least I'm implementing a bit of technology. Modern warfare. Yeah, modern warfare. Yeah. Something that on the game map

is 60 kilometers across or something. Yeah, yeah, you know, who knows what's out there in space maybe it's a big old rumor maybe that's what they're going to send to get us clean the air when they come, yeah, cleanse us suck us all up

and oh, maybe nice alien Peggy 18 I can't get that out of my head now, as soon as I got this it was a gift by the way I didn't buy a begging for a pegging t-shirt

but as soon as I got it I've just got the Peggy A-Team sort of soundbite stuck in my head. I mean, it's kind of related. Yeah, I mean, there's a word that sounds similar. It's not really an excuse.

Oh, Andy, what are we doing? Why did we do this? The game's really worn me down today because I've started to realise that it's annoying. It's not just long, it's the stuff that's wrong. We're going to have to refer to so many

addenda sheets. The one printed in there. Yep. Then we've got the one that came with the game, separate print. Now we're making a record of all the ones that are wrong as well. Our own addenda sheet. That one I feel like will stick a bit more though, because it has really irked me, so I feel like that will

re-dig its heels into my psyche. And then when we finish, we can release our own addenda. No, no one gets that. Oh, okay. This is for us. No one else deserves it. If they want to know what's wrong with the game, they can get the game and they can find out for themselves that's on them so okay so we've been helped by two iterations of playtesters making addendum but we won't be helping anyone else

that's right yeah this game is a crucible the fires have heated us up we are slowly but surely going to go from coal to diamonds but right now we're very much still cool when someone else certainly salt oh oh spoken like a true adversary didn't realize you were such a wordsmith maybe you should have wrote the fucking rules i mean yeah that's what we write our own agenda you know i i would trust you more man i uh i i trust that you wouldn't you wouldn't make such a such a cock and ball of this rule book you know what to be what i will say if we made a game of any complexity, it would have

more mistakes in it. Like, our version of Monopoly, there'd be no rules about the chance cards. Because we'd just forget. The thing is, you don't play Monopoly, so you don't... No, because it's awful. Monopoly is the quintessential

family game night game. Yes, and the quintessential view of a family game night is everyone getting in fights and falling out. Because they're playing the worst game ever made. No, they're not. They're not playing SPI's The Campaign for North

Africa. The worst game ever made. The longest game ever made. Yeah, longest. It's not the worst. We don't know that yet. No one knows that yet. No one's finished the game. That's not a good sign. Yeah, so I'm trying to keep a positive attitude. You get all these people, and you're definitely one of

them, where they'll go, oh, Monopoly takes so long. That's not my issue with Monopoly. Yeah, your issue is that you get to a certain point and then you know who's gonna win. Yes, and then it takes, like, seven, eight hours. This game's rigged because you're the side that won.

And it takes more than seven or eight hours, friend. Yes, but it's not gonna... It's not rigged that way. Yes, it... Sorry, yeah, you're right. It's rigged way, way worse. It's not just roll a die and, oh,

where have I ended up? Oh, it's Barney's Ballarama. oh it's the sleep easy motel I'm going to buy the, you look confused it's Simpsons Monopoly I used to play so I only really know Monopoly in the context of Simpsons so yeah you land wherever you land

you buy it up, it's a complete chance and then yes there is a bit of a foregone conclusion after a while this is rigged from the start the rulebook that we have which is already rigged in your favour, didn't include three of my divisions from the start

I've got thousands fewer men than I'm meant to have thankfully we've got the addenda but that wouldn't have been in there it's like not only are the designers trying to keep everything true to history where my side loses, my side in the game

again we don't know this you're just assuming this because you're in a bad mood so it's rigged that way and then the universe seems to have sort of warped everything round in such a way that I'm at another disadvantage where they've forgot to put my divisions in there.

You've got them, though. I've got them now. So what's the complaint about? Because I don't know what else is missing. Probably not divisions. You don't know exactly what's missing, but I bet divisions. I bet it's divisions. If we come across that, we'll make one up. We're not

doing that. We'll balance this game on the fly. Actually, that's fine. I'll mix them up. Yeah, you can trust me with that. You know what? allowed to look at my divisions so yeah don't worry about that it will be fair and just and reasonable i'm sure it will it will it will it'll be fine yeah what i'll be doing is normal so the uh but you'll have unlike monopoly you have decisions to make even if you're losing i mean you do thousands and thousands of decisions you do in monopoly as well you don't you roll some

dice and land somewhere and a thing happens to you well you've got decisions in monopoly you've got the decision to try and beg and reason with the other players, and go, well, can I have half-price rent this week? And then I'll roll back around and, oh. Oh, no. You know what I've just done there? I've just referred to a turn

as a week. Yeah. Because that's how the game works. Because every turn is a week in the context of the game. And months in the context of our lives. Yeah. Oh, no, I don't like that at all. I've been sat looking at the screen all day. I'm so

tired as well and i've just been sat here staring at pages and pages of rules and then occasionally gotta roll some dice to test out whether or not i can shoot your bombers out the sky oh no this is what it's gonna be like isn't it i mean yes it's gonna be making decisions of rolling dice you know what i'm i'm excited for when you for when you feel like this well i'm hoping when i do you flip because what we can't have is both of us on a downward accelerating spiral because then we won't finish it we're finishing the game that's that's the tagline we're finishing the game okay we'll just have to we'll just have to pull that inspiration out from the from the deserts of our minds really pushing that still as well aren't you yeah yeah i like it

said it once and I love it. Beautiful phrase. Poetry. Weird catchphrase. No, my catchphrase is Peggy 18. You're going to have to pay them for that. We're allowed to say that, surely. By the way, if there's just a

strange bleeping sound every now and then when I refer to a catchphrase, it's because we've found out we're not allowed to say that. Might get that for the begging for a pegging. Maybe that's a catchphrase as well. That could be your catchphrase.

I don't want that to be applied to the podcast as a whole. It's not really a catchphrase, is it? It's just an advertisement. It's a rude request. It's not a request. It's a description of how I am as a man.

It's just my aura. My vibe. Just a guy who wants to be penetrated. Just a guy. just a guy wanting to want to take something in and really have it

I want to hold space with it that's a that's a wicked reference you're certainly using that wrong it's a wicked reference did you know people are holding space in their ass oh my god really I didn't know that

well I've seen posts online where several websites wicked.com oh that was such a bad mess up, can't believe they did that I think someone's trying to sue them for that the wicked.com thing

how would you sue it's just a website for anyone that doesn't know the wicked film, wicked part 1 I don't think it's called part 1 but it's the first of two parts and they released sort of um action figures or dolls or i'm not really sure i'm not really sure what the

definition of each is but uh it's it's uh figures from the the film the um ariana grande is in it i can't remember the name of the actress who plays wicked no she's called elphaba i think is the witch i think i think the witch is called elphaba elphaba i don't know it doesn't matter i guess looking at me like i know the green one um and uh they they released these these action figures these toys and on the back there was a website address and it was wicked.com which it turns out isn't a link to the wicked film website it is a pornographic website so yeah you can imagine i mean first and foremost to be fair as a kid i guess it wasn't really that much of a thing when we were kids but do you ever really buy stuff and then look at the back of the packaging and go oh

oh, there's a website on this packaging. Let's go there. Let's have a look at that. I think the last time I would have done that would be something like Binweevils. Binweevils? Yeah. What are Binweevils?

You don't know Binweevils? Also, I guess before we get into Binweevils, no, I don't look at websites of toy packaging. What are Binweevils? Binweevils was a, I would probably describe it as an online movement, a phenomenon. Bit like, you know RuneScape.

You play a lot of RuneScape. Yes. Yes. A bit like RuneScape. Don't tell people that. You look worried like I'm about to give away your username. See, that's why I think we can do this game as well. I've got 99 in some of RuneScape's games, which probably

takes longer than completing this game. No, it doesn't. Yeah, it does. Matching out a RuneScape account will take longer than finishing this. Nine years. Well, that's because we're doing it intermittently. That's because we're doing it poorly. Yes. So, yeah, So it was like RuneScape.

It was a massive online multiplayer game. Why are you asking me for a definition and then you're clearly going to try and Google it? Fine. No, get it up. No, no, no. Tell me your vision. Get it up.

So the artwork left something to be desired. But the game itself, the minigames, the lore, the community that it fostered... It was beautiful. Beautiful. Every kid's dream. It was what Club Penguin always wanted to be. I've never heard of this.

You've never heard of Bin Weevils? No. No. I just never came across it. Scrolling through Bin Weevils. Yeah, I'm going to close that. Into Bin Weevil lore. Oh, it's good.

It's good. I was looking into it a little while ago. Just the background, the fall It's like the fall of The fall of what? Fall of Troy Oh, it's a historical It's a, well no, I'm saying it is historical

Like it means a lot to a lot of people I don't I don't even think it means anything to you Anyone listening We'll drop in the email address Fire over your favourite Bin Weevil lore Let us know what you think about Bin Weevils

Why are we asking for that? I just want to know if anyone else played Bin Weevils. Bin Weevils. Or, alternatively, I will also accept any information or anecdotes you have about Toontown. Because that was another great one. So, Toontown or Bin Weevils.

I'm fine with either. So we're all shitty RPGs. All MMOs. I suppose them as well, but mostly Bin Weevils or Toontown. Okay. I think we're...

While we have made solid progress, all I've found is that this game is not... It's not really tickling my pickle in the sense of it's written in such a way that makes any sense because they've missed too much stuff off for me to forgive it. Not too much stuff off.

Three divisions. They didn't miss any of your divisions. You're really stuck on that, aren't you? Yes, it's a massive part of the game. I'm really stuck on it. That's completely fair. I can't believe that you're not stuck on it. Well, it's not really affected me.

Yeah, you don't know that yet, though. You might be missing a bunch of divisions as well. Better not be. Yeah, exactly. Stop thinking about it. Oh, no. What's the email address again? You know this one.

Info at warwithamate.co.uk. Info at warwithamate.co.uk is the email address. Sorry, I couldn't see it through all this red that I'm seeing. That's what I'm seeing right now. A bunch of red. seeing it feeling it soiled it

I'm going to need you to get yourself back in line you know what I'm really tired and I've been reading through these rules and trying to play this game all day and it keeps on spitting out errors at me I'm allowed to have one

this is my one this is your freak out session this is me coming to terms with what this actually is which is again crazy, because this is your idea. You haven't come to terms with it yet, by the way. Yes, I have. You're in this fantasy mindset that I was when I thought up this idea.

No, I'm not. I've read the rules. You're not really processing this correctly. I'm not in denial. That's right, yeah. Denial is a little bit further off the map. It's on the map.

Is it? Yes. Is it really? There are specific rules for crossing the Nile. Of course there are. Oh, that's right, yes. You drown. You drown. I remember that now, actually, come to think of it. Yeah, it turns out you can't just send that many men over.

But, at the very least, what I will say is this has at least unified our efforts to play the game. We're actually focused on the game itself and not just the experience around the game. Now, it's about picking apart the rules, and it's about playing the game. We're getting there. We're nearly at the playtest.

We're nearly at the six-turn practice. Next episode, we will have started. We will. Maybe if that's just putting the pieces down on the map. We've got nothing left to playtest. No. Everything else we just need to do through the actual dry run of those six turns.

Yeah. So we're going to be doing that next. We're going to be trying to Andy's going to give me a massage now and we're going to relax a little bit. No. We're going to well I don't know maybe it will fire me up a bit more.

I don't know what kind of massages you give. No, it's not the effect of the massage I'm arguing with, it's the massage. Right, okay. I don't know, what else are you going to do for me then? Kick you out of my house. Right, that's not going to put me in a better mood. But you won't be here. That's true. You can get angry

on the streets, or you'll look to get pegged. Doesn't mean you're getting doxxed next episode. One of the only rules of the podcast when we decided to do it was don't doxx me. Also, we have to finish a board game i think it was don't dox me and we have to finish a board game we

didn't say anything about doxing you that's on me i guess so yeah come to my house yeah everyone i'll chop andy's address in the next episode uh everyone's welcome if the door's locked presume that was an accident break a window climb in through there i don't like this joke i'd like to backtrack this no no no we will be giving this as an ongoing joke until i eventually snap and decide to dox you then i'm gonna put your address on the website oh no because you're in charge of the website yeah you know what you're doing with that i don't checks and balances we've set it up in such a way yeah but i'm the one to edit in the episodes yeah so i'm gonna put it into episode one and release it then with your address as the title

of the episode. Yeah, I can't really do much about that. Yeah, yeah. Well, we'll call it a stalemate. I suppose we'll leave it there. Me and Andy are going to reconvene and see if we can figure out some sort of rule about this old doxing thing and maybe

whether or not we should play the game or bin it. Well, how about this to increase the stakes? Right? The loser has to buy the other player a dinner and have their home address revealed on, now it's high stakes. It is, it is.

I don't like that at all. That's a horrible game. Maybe instead we just, we stick with the dinner thing. And docks the dinner and people can come. And who's asked to buy dinner? Everyone who comes. No, because it's rigged for me to lose. And I don't want to buy

four people dinner. It's a new fan every three years. Yeah, and some of them drop off occasionally. Well, this has been War with a Mate and it's really starting to I am concerned by your mental state

because we haven't started yet We've kind of started What I'm doing is I'm preparing myself for that You keep saying that, we haven't started When we go into it I'm going to have already had this moment where I've reconciled what it is that's

going on. You're going to have that in the heat of battle and it's going to destroy you No, I think I'm going to have a serene calm that will lead me to victory. I'm not going to be happy if that's the case. It's going to frustrate the shit out of you. You are a very calm man, so that's likely, and it's really worrying. So I'm going to head off now, me and Andy. We're going to figure out whether it's a massage or just a head tickle or something.

And we'll catch up with you all next time when we've played the game properly. We've started it, and we probably have a nicer time. All the mental decline accelerates further. Maybe we just need a bit of sleep. Maybe that's what it is. So remember, everybody, get plenty of sleep. Don't drink any caffeine for 10 hours before bedtime. Don't drink any alcohol for 3 hours before bedtime.

Don't use your screen for 2 hours before bedtime. And sleep in 90-minute cycles. That's how you get the best REM. And with that... So you're spending hours of preparation for 90 minutes of sleep. No, 90 minute cycles. So you sleep in 90 minutes.

It needs to be an increment of 90 minutes that you sleep for. Oh, okay. I see what you mean. Yeah, yeah. That's okay. Six hours or seven and a half hours. That's fine.

Okay. If you sleep for eight hours on the dot, that's bad. That's really bad, isn't it? You wake up out of REM sleep and it really throws you out of whack. so yeah so that that's my advice to all of you that and don't don't start playing this game don't look for it don't try and get a hold of it just if you want to think about it listen to this

this is your catharsis in the deserts of our mind all right bye farewell and he lives up no We'll be right back.