War With A Mate - Episode 61: Andy & James’ Day Off

Episode Date: January 31, 2026

Truck days move pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you might miss them. The guys have little to talk about after today’s Truck Movement, however they simply won’t shut their mouths when it comes to just about anything else.

hello one and all and welcome to war with a mate with me james me andy this is um the podcast you were looking for if it's a long rambling forever rant about the campaign for north africa if you were after a podcast that's hosted by one of those comedians and it's about that sort of like day-to-day life where they go off kildare and don't do comedy that is not us that's somewhere else quite a niche brand of podcast you're yes you say that actually it's you say that the main time it's it's every other podcast that's out there but not us we're original we're playing all of the spi campaign for north africa board game and we're having a jolly good time well we're having a time doing it it's happening time is passing in a linear fashion as we're playing the game

andy would you rebuke that no that is that is a true statement now for those who have missed um either last week or the last 59 weeks last week i won a little bit uh so we've been playing a practice scenario for the better part of this entire podcast which consists of six turns the Graziani's offensive scenario so that runs from turn one to turn six of the game there's also win conditions that can be met to win would you believe it I hit those conditions last week which I'm very pleased about and the stakes was a Kinder Bueno chocolate bar which I've won I haven't claimed it yet although Andy I was at the shop next to yours that's just there and they have both a milk chocolate or white chocolate and a

dark chocolate. So, I could I've got so much choice it's crazy. It's just going to let me know. So, you keep an eye out. I'll drop you a line when I need it. Maybe I'll do it when I'm at work and you'll have to come deliver it. That's certainly not what we agreed to. I know, but you know, similar to the board game, Andy,

you know, the rules change constantly. Another thing that's not true. Just like there's lie idols. Well, if you're going to get all pinnicky about it. Pinnicky? finicky picky what i've do what i've do as i've dude combined two words that's what i've dude um yeah so that's that's an embarrassing vocal faux pas but not to worry because we're seeing

at the end of dry january i've got a nice can of full sugar coke so horrible for the teeth but it it hits good a bit of sugar in the evening power on through i mean it's good get a nice little boost crash when you go to bed i've got myself yet another g-lay of course because i had a g-lay here in the early days i would always play the game in a g-lay i'm doing that again back to old habits it's we're restarting the clock here andy we are finishing the rest of the practice scenario the remaining three turns we will still play out which is what we've been doing today but i was declared victor which means i'm allowed to wear a g-lay i'm allowed a full sugar coke you you owe me your fucking kinder bueno again tell me what kind you want don't be

angry it's the ball is in your court i can be angry and be unreasonable at the same time it's completely within my power that's the only way you can be angry that is by being unreasonable that is the the gift and the curse of the victor so what did we do this week so um in my i guess victory lap is that what this would be sure in my victory lap we did truck day now truck day is notoriously my least favorite part of the game i fucking don't like truck day it's just moving around trucks and it's all it's all spreadsheets which i know is most of the game but there's no fun tactical work to it it's not like move these guys here so i can push you away from the settlement or how am i gonna land a bombing run on part of your supply line instead it's just

oh well i better get the food over to these guys what a boring game it's too late now do you want to um do you want to play ticket to ride no i actually quite like that it was all right it gets a bad rap i've seen loads of people yeah loads of people seem to tear it apart i don't know why it's a it's a steadfast game it's not like the pandemic board game it was kind of fine we played it once didn't we i enjoyed it i think it was a good time the pandemic board games bad it was just easy or we were doing it wrong well an easy board game is a bad board game okay it's fine for you know like kids kids who want to get a startup on you know a medical career tackling global diseases that are represented by little plastic cubes the game is much easier than

it was in real life for you know i actually think that's probably why the covet 19 situation got out so out of hand because every official involved had previously played the pandemic board game and thought whoa this is a doddle this is easy we're not gonna have any issues whatsoever and then the real thing comes about and they're like oh maybe if the creators had made the game more difficult there'd be less blood on that exactly covid19 would have been a flash in the pan two-week problem and they would have nipped it in the bud but instead they coddled them with bad board games and i don't often like to you know shit on other board because board games in general i think you get some that are for you and some that aren't i don't know who that game is for

it's very beloved i surely not i think it is i remember the mobile which is why i think we played no we tried everything we tried to make it harder by adding in different rules and it just didn't get anywhere so we finally found ourselves at this game after everything else we've done and as i say truck day truck day is what we did i didn't do a whole lot i have that convoy that i've split off to hit the wind condition just to have a travel line and i've also created the two convoys up into brook they're splitting off from the black shirts who've finally arrived both of those convoys are um well those two convoys that i've created are about twice the size of my previous biggest convoy oh cool so i actually have a bigger yeah i've actually got

something worthwhile now so they've started to move around they're supplying the front line another few non-truck bits i did during the truck convoy which was permitted by the way i've checked the rules was doing some of my coastal shipping specifically moving my ships from benghazi towards solemn because solemn is now it's in an awkward position where you your truck bandits have snuck into bardia and that's where they're hiding at the moment not pleased about that and then i've got my front line my wall as i've coined it is now sat east so i've got solemn in the middle usually my supply line would come from bengal from bardia but i can't do that now so if i can start getting stuff shipped in to solemn which is going to be like a three

turn round trip that's not too bad no so that's turn or upstage three upstage sorry not three turns three turn would be abysmal that's not that means based on the pace of the game and how many turns on after i got to do this now and never again and also moved my sgsu one of my ground support units my squadron ground support unit for the planes for the planes so i've had fort madalena left abandoned since i mean god what was it turn one when you showed up and you committed a war crime by walking your soldiers in and massacring a bunch of engineers yeah i think that was turn one yeah horrible horrible move so that place has been left barren since the planes are still there the supplies are still there but no one has been able to do anything and then i

remembered you can just move your sgsus it's a bit of a slow walk however i moved some of them just today and i just need to get them uh see what i've done there is it is it one sgsu you need phil uh per squad yeah right okay and then the airfield can have up to six yes up to five or six yeah yeah up to six you've taken away one of my airstrips in this now abandoned airfield yeah you bombed it cool so i've only got one sgsu on the way um so i'll i'll brag a little bit less as i finish this statement so i've got my sgsu my single one showing up so then one of my squads there one of five can get back up in the air and do some strafing um that will be good i need to move more over i forgot about that so watch the space that's probably one you're one squad one

squad you'll be in trouble soon give it another four off stages and then then you'll be then you'll be worried we'll be in a turn five but instead what we're in we're in turn four turn four off stage one who got initiative andy uh i won the turn initiative of course decided to also go first yeah funny that and then rolled hot weather it was a real roll yeah you basically did everything you could to piss me off as early as you can in this turn winning the initiative getting the worst weather for me water's already a problem for me at the start of a turn with a stupid pasta point i hate that everyone online's always oh what a what a silly rule it's not silly it's a real problem for me it materially affects my life every few weeks well every few months really

it actually causes psychological harm so if people could stop if you see anyone joking about it online please tell them not to it's hurting me it really minimizes and invalidates my trauma so come on i think last turn and the turn before you said it wasn't a major issue well i'm allowed to change my opinion aren't i andy i guess so or are you saying are you saying also if you could stop me you would you would stop me changing my opinion at any point let's just freeze those opinions on carbonite christ i thought the year just turned 2026 not 1984 that's wild i don't get that reference yeah yes you do you read more than anyone i know you read every week to research for the history segment that you do every week so don't say you've never read 1984 or don't

know of it that's a baroque claim well anyway you're you're you're clearly in a mood speaking of george orwell the uh where is this have you seen the trailer for the new animal farm film i've not seen the trailer but i have heard it was coming out it's i don't know what the beliefs of the thing are it's it's a weird one i mean presumably it's the same as no there's something about a corporation in there, pigs wearing clothes I think they accidentally adapted

1984 and they've called it Animal Farm I think they've done a anti-capitalism, anti-communism like liberal Animal Farm I've only seen the trailer but I'm quite interested to see that's not quite what the book was trying to do, they went much

broader than the original piece was trying to go yeah it's an odd i don't know maybe it's if it works in a long-form television show it'll be better than the book i don't i don't believe that oh no i think it's an animated movie oh it's not kids no no it's not you've got to be you've got to be talking shit there that's not the case we'll watch the trailer after it's not i'm gonna search that okay are we pausing this animal farm trailer 2026 i'm not gonna watch the trailer now oh my god it is animated it's like the same kind of animation style as chicken little do you ever watch that

yeah andy circus is doing this yeah i think he's producing and writing it or something i know he loves a good animated creature he likes being an animal but that's that's it is a fantasy comedy-adventure film. And it's, yeah, based on the book. It's the third adaptation of the novella. Yeah, okay, that's...

I'll probably not go see that. I'll be honest, I'm not going to watch that. You don't want to see a critique of Stalinism starring Seth Rogen? I mean, when you put it like that. I'd watch that. Is James Franco

in it? Then I'd take it. I don't know. I don't know if he's still in the bad books. He hangs around. I think James Franco might still be off on the naughty step. Yes. I wouldn't be shocked. Not like that actor that's over there on your sofa.

Because our pal, I guessed. He's not really in the bad books of anyone. No. Quite successful. I think he's kept a low profile by spending so much time on my couch. Yeah. I mean, I love that film he was in back in the 90s. Yeah.

And that show that was out fairly recently. A couple of years ago now. It was like a bottle spin-off episode. Okay. It was good. Something else that wasn't surprising, I guess, is at the start of the turn, I look for your naval convoys. Oh, and what did you find, Andy?

I didn't find anything. Womp womp. Yeah, last time I found... I found some wands. I think you found one wands, and you missed it. Yeah, I did very minimal damage. Yeah, I think you're like a glancing

shot hit a crate of food and a few apples popped and that was kind of it. So I've not really got any issue that the convoys will ever be hit. All I need to do is distribute the resources to good areas, but you will never scare me.

Oh wow, that's scary. I'm immutable in my conviction. I am a force of nature and you are but something that nature does things to wow like vesuvius and a tree or vesuvius and a house okay or i guess i'm a house or vesuvius and a silverback gorilla now the silverback gorilla strong by its own right in any environment if it was to go up against another mammal.

But a hundred Vesuviuses can be it. However, when a mountain explodes and hot things come out of it, like dust and steam and hot red rock, it's not going to stand a chance. It's going to get vaporized.

I digress. Yes, we have certainly digressed. It's all about the game. It's all game-centric. And that's the thing. when it's truck day there's never really much to talk about i've separated my trucks you did your usual truck movement of zipping them along that coast road that's kind of it yeah it was basically and then yeah we did weather uh yeah and then and it packed up it was it was home time by home time

i mean get the microphones out and record and then go yeah i i think maybe we maybe we we start recording during and people can just listen to us do nothing for an hour of silence yeah while we both flick through our spreadsheets decide what's going to happen and then announce to the other that we're moving a few hexes away and and that's it yeah it's it's truck day what do you what do you want from me it's truck day back off oh god what is this got the third degree spotlight treatment um yeah let's let's just do some mailbag stuff yeah let's let's jump into it it's uh we've got a mailbag to get through and we so there's very light on game it doesn't give you much to go with truck day whenever truck day comes around and you just got to move your trucks

that's it so maybe we should start signposting on like a schedule and by the way people just a heads up truck day is coming so don't listen to this episode let's let's not do that yeah guys you can turn this one off now we'll continue recording it's like a full episode here but You don't need to waste your time with us. I need you. Next week will be way better. Way better. We've got old episodes.

We listen to those. They're way better than this one will be. No. This one's just, yeah, we'll just be going through, like, the mailbag, the history segment, Common Ground, which will all be great, but, you know. Don't. Oh, God. Guys, what are you still doing here?

That's right, Andy. I'm Ferris Bueller-ing this shit. Nothing else. Go home. in fact until you've all left i'm not going to talk anymore please read the email i'm gonna die on this hill andy if anyone's still listening to this i'm not gonna continue okay they're gone the series you promise yeah and stop check the check the computer stop doing this yep everything's fine read the email don't fucking patronize me

your computer's never made that noise before why would it just start doing it now when you're clearly angry at me. It's the Is Anyone Listening program. Oh, fair enough. I haven't turned the... The audio up. Farron, I'm really sorry. You work in computers, I don't. Yeah. How dare you question me? Oh, you've really spun it round.

You've taken that victim complex that I just tried to put on you, and you've really directed it back at me. Like a sort of jujitsu of emotional blackmail. Yeah. That's it. You'd be a great politician, Andy.

thank you i don't mean that um so we can prime minister of england uh no we'll see we'll be lucky if there's an england by the end of the century andy everything is falling apart not just here everywhere fine first viceroy of new britain okay i can see i'll be honest man i don't think you want to be at the helm of whatever's coming next no i can't imagine it's going to be a very positive place there's not going to be a golden age it's just going to be a constant flat-lined plateau age. It's certainly going to be stressful if I was in charge. I don't know, there'll be so few of us left.

We'll all have been killed in nuclear fallout. Anyway, on that happy note, we have a message here from Christine. Hi, y'all. Love you all. Love you all. Chrissy from the Midwest again. Y'all talking about Sully and Flight Sims. That's two y'all. That's impressive.

Y'all talking about Sully and Flight Sims was my sleeper agent trigger phrase. I'm a professional-grade Flight Sims as a programmer. I wasn't that's pretty cool you work in computers Andy but Chrissy here works in in flight computers which is way cooler I wasn't in the industry when the events of Sully happened so I won't comment on that but what I can say is that the qualification standards for the high-end sims the kind that would have been used for the investigation are incredibly high examples of

things that are checked include locational audio the sounds at different points in the cockpit have to match recordings from the real aircraft to detailed flight profiles. Full motion systems are incredibly realistic and are really capable of tricking the mind. All that to say I would not underestimate the mindset of the test pilots. The primary purpose of sims at that level are educational and can be used to train these sort of worst case scenarios in a realistic feeling cockpit so that when they happen in real life they can make the split-second decision to turn around. I was also thinking about the surrender of the Saharan Detachment. Oh, it's still a touchy subject, Chrissy.

And propose we reframe their push as a noble piercing attack through the enemy line to set up for a special forces attack. Now that is more like it. Their plight does make me wonder about POW rules. If Alexandria is taken while there are still prisoners there, can they be freed and reintegrated as a unit? Love the show. Keep it up. Well, thank you, Chrissy.

a few points before we get into the game stuff i want to touch on flight sim designer very cool job yeah that's a that's a very interesting one of the like 10 jobs that i've had that is that's cooler than like three of them that's me trying to embellish how exciting a life i've had i don't think i've had anything half as interesting as that no i don't think so i think working in the building that that's happening in would have been more interesting than a lot of my jobs being the security guard i would take that i'd clean up afterwards in the evening and as someone's like finishing up a late shift just be like what are you making there are you on microsoft flight simulator i feel like you try a goodwill hunting and just write nonsense

how do you like these peaches no i feel like they would probably um see me some sort of security risk maybe like a a terrorist cell trying to infiltrate and i'd probably just end up getting questioned for a lot of time this isn't a satisfactory answer to any interrogation where are you spending all of this time that can't be accounted for i told you i'm playing the campaign for north africa i really am but as for prisoners getting you can recapture prisoners they don't come back as they don't come back as that unit they come back as replacement points that's right yes so if you do manage to nab your prisoners and i can in theory get my prisoners from alexandria

Not from Alexandria They're on boats Oh you put them on boats now Yeah if they're there they might as well Immediately go to Europe Oh my god so they're gone You sent them away You piece of shit

You absolute monster This is because of the Kinder Bueno thing isn't it It's not helped You are deplorable You know that There's common ground this week They're having fun They're not having fun. They're prisoners of war.

Yeah, that's a fair thing to say. You ignorant tit. Yeah, so in theory, Chrissy, yes, I could have rescued them if Andy wasn't so trigger-happy to propel people across the Mediterranean. So in this instance, I can't. But yes, if I get them, they become replacement points, and then they can wander off and join another group. I can't remember if you need to get them back somewhere first.

the prisoners, I don't know do you need to escort them back to a settlement first to send them off and then they get reinvented into replacement points I feel like that might be the case yeah, we'll have to off the top of my head I don't think anyone's close to liberating any prisoners right now, thankfully

so we don't need to worry about that too much although we did say that about the wind conditions yeah, we'll have another look that's vitally important yeah, on the point of these flight sims, the fact that it tries to match the sounds of the cockpit at that time that's insane because that is also like uh what would be in like film like a continuity advisor or something yeah to be able to do the

research and figure out exactly what the sounds were in the cockpit at that time because i don't know how much a black box stores this again makes me sound like a pretty suspect guy so tell me exactly what the black box would record what do i need to worry about if i'm trying to get away scot-free on the situation i guess all in all i'm i'm just curious about being in the sky i just want to learn also i do like the reframing it as a special push attack to do that's very uh it's very um optimistic you've really ameliorated that sense of um i guess defeat and devastation that realistically was in the air but it's very the propaganda of Italy

at the time. It would have been like yes, the glorious Saharan detachment have bloodied the nose of Alexander. Well, the victor writes history, Andy. And that's me. Give me my pen and paper. I've got some bars to spit.

You think history's a rap? Yeah, history is a rap. Everything is a rap when you think about it, Andy. and i i don't really have a way to prove that because i can't rap on on the spot hit us with a freestyle i'm not gonna do that i don't think anyone wants to hear me try and freestyle but thank you for that chrissy um both giving me some motivation in the new lens that we've seen the saharan detachment rest in peace on a boat um and also flight simulators i did not

know they were that detailed which sounds like a stupid thing to say but i knew they were going to be detailed i just thought the fact that the noise is that level yeah i thought it would just be like the controls feel really grounded and like it sort of shows and reacts the way it would in the plane but the stimuli that you get being exactly the same really cool feature i'm going to get into that that sounds like a good career so what else we got in the mailbag here andy we got one from jeff ah jeff hi jeff from chicago again they had a couple of comments on episode 57 in the history segment you mentioned the city of khan one of the british d.a landing forces initial objectives it was erroneously erroneously linked to the film festival in khan

a city in the mediterranean coast near monaco yes yes given the long history of anglo-french relations it is not unreasonable to assume that the french had two similarly named cities specifically despite the english but regardless they are separate locations okay well there you go that's a bit of clarity yeah that's a generous interpretation that it was a french scheme and not my reading comprehension i do like that yes yeah guys you're really coming in clutch for us today just really putting us up on a pedestal that what we do is not incorrect it's actually wholesome or or ideologically reframed also nefarious forces play yeah because the idea that someone here jeff is willing to rewrite history in france to accommodate for your bad

reading that's so generous jeff thanks jeff uh secondly for the common ground i'm not sure you carried the idea of the super rich competing for exclusive items to its inevitable conclusion given some form of physical challenge to be able to buy an exclusive car handbag whatever else the super rich would definitely hire someone more capable to compete in their stead rather than humiliate themselves additionally seeing this collection of more capable athletes acting behalf of the super rich the companies organizing the exclusive sale would be far more likely to sell tickets access to the event that prohibited what the super rich were doing in short your common ground is essentially inventing professional sports oh dear now don't misunderstand me

professional sports is awesome and i'm 100 behind this common ground however let's not pretend it's doing something else that all aside i always love when crazy fails in the game secretly spawn genius strategies so this week's game talk was right up my alley stay subtle humble and brave and happy new year jeff thank you very much jeff thank you jeff and i'm very sorry that this week's game talk um will probably not be right up your alley because we mentioned the trucks for about seven minutes um but yes beyond do you like when we someone points out that we've just invented something that exists yeah i mean the because this was the common for anyone who didn't hear this one um the common ground was it was one that i presented and it was the idea that anyone

who wants all of these um luxury items they should abide by the the rules of the the birkin bag which i found out about fairly recently but up to a up to 11 because it should be the case that there's some sort of competition to earn each of these items and he had proposed for like a waterproof rolex that works down like 50 feet you need to dive down 50 feet first prove you can go down there so you have all of these professional um skills that have to be showcased but i i do see the point that's been made there um that is kind of what professional athleticism is um i guess it was a good idea well to then put a little footnote to the common ground to amend the flaw pointed out by jeff here and what i will say is um you can't have any proxies no proxies you have to do it

yourself or the proxy gets to wear that rolex like how professional athletes have rolexes yeah yeah but that roly-poly is only going to be on the wrist of the athlete okay the the guy who's doing it for doesn't get a thing from this so there's no reason to hire them if anything the only people will see wearing rolexes now will be professional athletes no rich guys so that's the where the world should be only athletes should wear big watches that's a mini common ground for you agreed but thank you for that jeff um for uh protecting andy's ego and for reminding us and for reminding us that we're not original at all um everything we come up with is just a very thinly veiled version of something that is very prevalent in the world and um and we're not that

clever but for anyone who does want to send anything else in um it could be game adjacent it can be entirely game focused it can be a little off uh kilter as well we take it all at our email info at war with a mate.co.uk our instagram which is just war with a mate and we've got a website which is war with a mate.co.uk it's been updated fairly recently got a new flash banner up at the top yeah it's looking very nice we've got a web form on there you can use just in case email is to Boomer for you. Or if Instagram is... You don't want to give us your email.

I guess there's that too. I don't do anything with them. I don't have a document where I store them all. Okay, guys, I'll look into that for you. I don't. I just want to know what's on the black box, Andy. I thought I could use these emails to somehow figure that out.

I'm just signing people up to some mail services to get some of this, some cash in the bank. This podcast is a scam. stop destroying the podcast this episode it's alright, if they heeded my advice then we've got no one listening

so you're admitting to crimes and telling no one to listen yeah, well no one should be listening now, you've promised me no one is you press the button yeah, there we go what's quite funny is that little sound effect you made there, you did it away from the mic

so I'm the only person in the world who knows what you just did there That's a little treat for you. Well, thanks. Don't. Well, that is the mailbag. It is. And since we don't have anything to talk about now,

that's the end of the episode. No, what we'll do... That was false alarm. Anyone listening, come back. There's still like 20 minutes runtime, so don't go. What we'll do is we'll look into the history, perhaps. the men of the long-range desert patrols were quite a sight on their return to cairo from a 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 you've been hard at work on a new history segment and i'm very excited to see where you take us this time i know it will be into the past but that's all i know so the black shirt is not a garment for sundays it is a permanent skin it must be worn with the pride of a soldier who never leaves the front line augusto turandi uh under secretary of the national fascist party i feel like we're gonna grow to not like him very much he might get an episode later but he just was the quote uh don't worry about it just it's not a title that really endorses anyone as being a good person oh no so the black shirts or the voluntary militia for national security uh came into

existence from squadrismo in the early 1920s organizing groups of former soldiers and others disgruntled by communism and socialism they took a part in a campaign of political violence which we looked into with balbo yes i remember balbo and um his pals being just some of the it's very unpleasant yeah this is going to be focusing more on the black shirts as a sort of military unit than the movement okay yeah but we will yeah so the mvsn was formed from the action squads yet in 1920 1921 uh in 1920 they're not yet part of the government but they have almost 200 000 members um it's made into official militia at one point that's recognized and part of the state officially on the 28th of december 1942 uh when the council uh announces it the king

solidifies this into a royal decree on january 14th of that year 1943 and in february it all goes into effect this is a weird thing here where they don't totally take over the state so there's a fascist council the king's also signing stuff it's a parliament go there's some weird situation so they're like a sort of militia force and then they have been sort of indoctrined into being much more present and official yeah well this feels weirdly familiar oh this might this might ring some bells for some stuff that's happened yes distantly in the past yeah this is um i'm having deja vu so they make it official for a few reasons one is now that it's part of the government they have to pay for it uh rather than it being self-funded so

overthrow the government and then get the government to pay you it's a fun move it's also lets them sort of cause it's more organized now they can push out some of the wilder anti mussolini elements okay so try to structure it and also italy is kind of on fire they're burning everything they're like beating the shit out of people and they just sort of want to be like now we're in charge we need to dial this back so we can say we brought order yeah yeah it's all very um very performative yeah so their main jobs are yeah investigating dissent kangaroo courts under the pretense of yeah restoring lord and order and then ideal ideological indoctrination of the youth and then also military campaigns so they're under the general command of mussolini

he's like basically he's the top of every organization because yeah all routes lead to him yeah but under that you've initially you have the quadrum for it so balbo and the others who did the march on rome are in charge at the start yes so yeah so below the overall thing they're split into four regions milan bologna naples but yeah and then each of the groups under them have each of those four groups have 33 groups under them uh led by a general consul and that's a roman title and that's because yeah that's yeah that's because the organization is modeled after roman legions so instead of well they have divisions but when they're looking after a region it's called a zona and then a regiment is a legion a battalion is a cohort company a centuria a platoon is a

so they're using the roman all of the roman ranks yeah and also this tenery system where there's three of each thing and the one above so like three squads to a platoon okay yeah yes the reasons they're doing this obviously are ideological and not practical yeah because it doesn't sound like it's the best way to organize stuff you're just taking something that's been done before and stretching it very basically so yeah it's because they they're talking about rebuilding rome it's this thing of capturing our lost glory make italy great again um the thing is i didn't i didn't see them as doing it so like it's one thing to be like i want to do this thing i want to let's let's make it what it was but to just model it on the old thing when so much time has passed it's

like yeah well this seems like a stupid way to do this you've not optimized anything for the modern world yeah well it doesn't work for a number of reasons one the black shirts are a power military are not military like the romans um they're also taking over law enforcement roles which roman legions didn't do so as well as the military issues there's also issues the roman legions themselves actually had so for one the roman legions one of the problems of them was the person who's in charge of the legion would become too powerful oh the people in it were loyal to them not not of the cause necessarily which is how you get like caesar his guys following him over the rubicon to take over rome yeah it's because they're more loyal to him than rome then you don't

want to end up with a coup yeah but from a military perspective you've got an issue here because the romans are organized to write around fighting with heavy infantry and not even cavalry let alone vehicles so you've got a military organization built around deploying heavy infantry typically against less well-trained people and now you're trying to move it into machine guns and a bit like the british in the first world war yes but this is very bizarre because they're going so far back it's like we've not learned from the fall of rome or any of the intervening wars this really does encapsulate everything that we've come to know about italians in the second world war yeah it is this thing of like it's all aesthetics and if we get them right we'll essentially fake it till

we make it and then there's a bunch of people being like no we've actually spent quite a long time thinking about how to do war yeah to you and fake until you make it only works if you last long enough to finally make it if you get killed part way while faking it it's not gonna get anywhere so they're also split up and because it's a sort of part-time thing a lot of the time so as well as being in these legions they're also split into different types so you might join the black shirts but then you become part of the forestry militia which is just a forest ranger or like a road highway militiaman which is like a traffic cop so it's from the like glorious fascist newman you heroic warrior you are going to be doing very mundane day-to-day policing

so that's their setup let's get them like doing some stuff oh dear this is going to be the bad part yeah the first outing of like actual conflict they have is in libya in september 1923 uh fighting omar al-muqtar uh the lion of the desert who led the libyan resistance movement for like 20 years that's a cool name cool guy from what i've seen as well history segment here it comes yeah uh they perform well relatively well here uh with sending three legions this leads to them making deciding to make two more legions one for tripoli and one for benghazi and this is the creation of the colonial militias oh yes yeah the first out uh the creation of the first colonial militia does not go well however i'd expect nothing better the they're recruited

from sardinia which wasn't really a fascist stronghold so they're having to recruit from outside of the fascist like card carrying party members okay so to do this um they offer a daily wage of 17 lira uh which is 10 more than the military like the military plays seven a day they're offering 17 okay so this is a massive difference yeah this worked really well to get a lot of world war one veterans to sign up and a lot of people i mean it's a very good wage yeah after a two beat brief training period they are sent off to north africa uh where after encountering the enemy for the first time the recruits uh come to the realization that they're only being paid seven lira a day and promptly mutiny oh my god it took invention by the royal

italian army to restore order they were put back onto a boat to sardinia where they were disbanded in disgrace so they sent men there the men realized that their pay was false yeah and they've immediately rebelled yes and they got sent back yes and then the actual army showed up to get rid them have to get rid of them and also the actual army are like what where the military why is this now the military because it's clearly not working no so on the 1st of august 1924 the black shirt militia is reorganized and officially becomes part of the italian armed forces so they now also swear loyalty to the king but it isn't until 1935 so almost well over a decade later that they have their first major test as a military force which is the ethiopian war oh yes we've heard about this

playing a role in the area and mussolini wants the black shirts to be in the lead here so they send over six divisions five to fight in ethiopia and one to police italian somaliland to the south so they've got 97 000 and a half black shirts sent over out of an overall italian force of 168 000 uh each division has two of its legions with it and one of its legions back home okay because also the way the legions are split out is again following the roman style there's sort of a an age thing so one will be 17 to 35 and that's like 35 to 55 oh okay and that's your like experienced one who were mainly doing the like malicious stuff and home protection yeah you probably don't want them out on the front lines if you've got a choice between the two no so

despite their numbers the black shirts are lacking support units and artillery uh so because of this the italian army are asked to help them out they do so on the condition that the black shirts are trained and reviewed under supervision from the army and also the top ranking officers in the mvsn divisions uh are replaced by army officers oh they're playing hardball yeah they know their worth they do not like the black shirts yes well as history would have it not many people did in the end no and we'll get into the second italian ethiopian war next time i'm gonna do a bit of a deep dive on that i'm sure it goes flawlessly for them i'm sure there's not a single bit of hijinks or malpractice or ill will i'm sure it all goes perfectly yeah i just read

like a 35 page long document about war crimes oh that's horrible oh such shit bags yeah but um yeah the seventh had a bit of a glorious march through history the black shirts do not so it's less of the following their journey here yeah this seems a lot more case of um not gloriously marching through history just kind of fumbling away yeah and then eventually dying off yes i'm happy for that to be the story yes i'm happy for that character rock to go in that direction because uh well no love lost no well an interesting little venture into the territory long-standing characters in our practice scenario so it'll be interesting to see how they got to that place and then started to starve when i stopped giving them food by accident

but realistically me not feeding my man while in game is detrimental um i'm kind of being uh noble and heroic in my actions in the real world oh okay because i'm i'm not allowing these um you know fascist war criminals to eat i have that power and i'm refusing them food you are a hero thank you that's all i want to hear that's all i want to hear oh okay i just want to sit here across from you and have you look me in the eye and say you're a hero. Well, you're not asking for much. Exactly. God, that and a Kinder Bueno,

which I notice I still haven't got. You're going to lose the Bueno soon. That's not how the game works. As you said, the rules change. Yeah, and then you said that was a lie. Fuck. Do you really want to fall down to my

level, Andy? Are you a liar? No. No, you're a good boy a goody good boy remember what our nickname used to be back when we lived together the good little teal boys that's correct oh what a cool house we had and the reason for that folks is andy and i the place we used to live it was a flat we were renting and um there were two sofas um they were they were black leather sofas they look if anyone's um done some browsing on internet videos they they might ring a bell in their appearance um and uh we we had two of them in

the room so we'd sort of l-shape them but further away and peering into the little it was like a an old fireplace that had been taken out and that's why we jammed the television and there was no television stand we just propped it up in there and it was kind of like i will i was always waiting for it just slide down and break but we propped it up and we each had a blanket and they were both teal blankets so we'd get up cozy in the evening when we both finished work we'd had a had our tea and we just sit there with a couple of ice-cold beers or well everything was ice-cold in that flat because the heating broke so i guess room temperature beers and and we'd watch usually the same like two programs on rotation and all under the comfort of our blankets yes so we were the

good little teal boys i need another teal blanket andy i miss those teal blankets keep an eye out for christmas eh it's january it's january my birthday's before christmas it gives me some time i'll give you yours on your birthday as well then okay that's also before christmas well some blankets some black shirts some buenos eventually but right now we move away from the b's and we move up a letter to the c's the c in particular that i'm looking for it's not charisma it's not chocolate it's not even well those are like the only C words aren't they

except for common ground and now for something nicer a little oasis in the war it's time for some common ground I'm trying the intro for common ground I'm recording maybe

yeah okay now common ground is the segment of the episode in which you and i come back together to be friends once again at the current rate we're going to be doing this for the next 40 odd years and we need to still be pals so every week when we're done playing the game we'll find a topic to discuss and we'll find that common ground about it and it's my turn to propose an idea it is and i've got one we need to make it a priority globally to focus all of our scientific research into speaking with animals okay what are your initial thoughts i guess my first question would be why so think about how many people there are in the world we've hit like what eight billion

now yep it's a lot of people it is and the thing is with people we've kind of we've done that haven't we we've done it for death we've done people we've done that yeah we've put a tick in that box people yeah sorted it okay they live longer now you you see them all the time you spend your time with them um everything is kind of we figured it out you got some bad ones you got some good ones and we're we're here to stay who's coming with us who's who's next because we can't who's coming along on the journey i mean there's a lot of things coming on the journey with us yeah but we can't we can only talk to people right now however if we can figure out a way to communicate reliably with animals we will not only be able to well communicate

with them but we'll also be able to enhance their intelligence that's a different okay i guess it's a two-in-one project you have to enhance their intelligence well that's it we we don't just want a dog to communicate like you know i want to walk we know that we've known dogs long enough to figure that one out we've done that kind of dog we figured that out what we want to do is make a smarter dog who can then you know have a thought on something and communicate that thought and then we can do something with that what if that untapped idea what if it's in a dog's head or a cat's head i assure you it isn't and how do you know that have you talked to every single smart dog in the world yes right don't be obtuse i have you haven't i i've literally spoken to

every single dog who can talk on it right well now you're being facetious because we haven't made the technology yet so unless you've spoke with scooby-doo who speaks in sort of broken english but i will give you that then no you haven't and i mean i mean smarter than scooby-doo Wow Don't talk down to me I don't know if I can comprehend such an intelligence Scooby-Doo by the way can make great sandwiches so you know

careful He could be the next sandwich artist at the local subway So you just want to get You want to make animals more intelligent so they can work So they can just work Well the thing is it's a new challenge for an animal

it's something they've not done before and they're always looking for a new child yeah dogs certainly are you throw a stick a dog goes right after it it wants to be busy and you know all it needs to do is do make the sandwiches scooby-doo is like a great you'll be like a great role model for them because let's face it subway needs a bit of a rebrand when it comes to role models they don't have a great history so you got scooby-doo in that chair a dog for the dogs and they start making sandwiches we can free up the capacity of people so we like move up a rung and and then the animals are filling a sort of role below where they cover all of like the sort of inane um mundane tasks they also cover areas we can't do flying animals birds some would call

um they could they cover a niche we can't fly not without planes or helicopters so birds can do things we can't do um you got your aquatic animals you got your fish um there's something to do there okay i'm just gonna i'm gonna few questions okay i'm ready to take them andy you essentially want to create a biological underclass to do our work for us um no um i want them to want it if they don't want it that means they've got big ideas and i'll hear what they want to do because if they don't want to do those jobs and that's what we've been doing for god forever so if they don't want to do it we'll ask them what do you want to do then what do you want to do so they have more rights than people well in a sense yeah that's the responsibility we're taking on if

we've got this mantle of responsibility where we've created a new super intelligent badger we can't then just say you have to go to work you have to pay income tax they're brand new we got like a few thousand years before you had to like you said badger there so you're just doing this to all animals yeah what are you gonna eat so the animals are gonna have a lot of intelligence they're not gonna know everything so we can still you know we'll have some animals that are off off grid so to speak not every animal is gonna be smart we're not going out there and getting every single animal um like i didn't say anything about cows i didn't say shit about chickens okay so some guys are just food well yes what what's a cow gonna do realistically

what job is a cow going to fit in what job is a chicken gonna do a chicken's already at its peak efficiency it it's food itself it makes food every day it just poops out an egg so the chicken's perfect the chicken don't touch it don't don't reinvent the wheel the chicken's already perfected it's the apex of being an animal and while we're doing this no other science will take place it other science will but it'll be a second priority or lower okay it's not going to be first priority get the animals smart enough so they can talk and do jobs okay so if so you know say i say i'm a dog okay i'm like woof woof i'm just joking i'm one of the smart ones um i hear you wanted me to work at tesco i actually i've got big dreams i want to do something else

i don't care right well that's a bit intolerant so you think that's fine to say to an intelligent creature people who work at tesco also have dreams they don't just get a stipend of money to go and do everyone working at tesco isn't living the dream some people will be i'm sure some people love it but also i think we're over generalizing here so dogs get to i don't like working at tesco i want to be a broadway star and that's facilitated for the dog and then the dog leaves so a person has to take it yeah in essence but then you get to see where the underclass that depends doesn't it it you know what we need a new challenge we've had it too good for too long sat at the top of the food chain do whatever the fuck we want now this will this will keep us on

our toes oh do you really want to be outclassed by a dog you want to be up there with your name in lights oh sorry rex is now doing that and whose fault is that it's not rex's fault it's not the scientist that made him speak it's your fault if you put on your glass slippers and you got up on that stage and you danced like no one ever fucking danced before this would not be happening that's what rex did and you had a head start you're much older than rex and he'll live half the life that you will but during that time he'll be alive and you'll just be breathing okay that's another thing i guess we're talking about some animals very short lifespans yeah i'm not going to bring a you know a house fly to vast intelligence what would be the point in that but like a dog that

might live dogs will live like years upon years so this isn't even about like getting information out of animals what information would you get out of an animal them to society yes you just want zootopia well not really zootopia but real life no because they'll be humans okay so it's like it's it's like um i'm trying to think of an analogy it's it's it's the real world but with smart animals everyone integrates it's fine and there's no intolerance well at this point if if if the existing intolerances we currently have continue, when you've got dogs on Broadway, then we

were always broken. Then this was always ruined from the start. It was a rigged game. And if those intolerances transfer over onto the animals, it's bad. Go on.

But it does solve an issue for humans. it means that we've we've taken a step we've projected that and i feel like it'll be much easier to diffuse intolerances with animals because you know what that intolerance will come from it'll be shame that you've got um you know michael schumacher who that's probably not a good example he had an injury um that uh lewis hamilton you know he's no longer he's no longer top driver i'm generalizing i don't know if he's the best um but he's no longer top driver now

it's a bipedal ox in a specially designed car and now he's top of the ranks. Whose fault is that? It's not my fault. It's not the

scientists who bestowed sentience upon this ox. It's Lewis Hamilton's fault. For not driving fast enough. For not being as good. So any intolerances, take a look in the mirror. Are you the fastest ox there ever was if not what does that say so andy where you where you sat with us by your logic because

the ox is the fastest no one should be racist to them um i think people should look inward as to why they're intolerant okay i guess i can agree on that well that was going to be a really dicey one if you didn't agree with me on that i'd prefer if you left these animals right why are you worried that they're going to be better than you no then why not your point was there's like a lot of people right yeah am i sorry am i going to upset the status quo with all of these people do you want me to kill some people off first just we have eight billion people right roughly and then you're gonna raise that to like 60 uh because we're handling eight so well probably 20 billion probably 20 billion okay on top of the eight okay 28 billion in total okay it's certainly

an interesting prequel for a post-apocalyptic series with animals in it right so you haven't heard second scientific priority colonization of the north pole the north pole yes okay it's not even land well what we will be doing we've got to bear in mind we're going to melt some of the ice to raise sea levels and that's where we'll put all of the intelligent sea creatures so it gives them a bit more real estate this is i feel like i'm not getting across the point no you have no i feel like you've missed it because it's such a good idea there must be something you're not getting i know i fully understand so where do you sit with this truly bad idea what would make it better for you this common grounds ran so long

truck day man what are you gonna do how do i fix this in your eyes come on what makes it a deal for randy what makes you think attaboy what's what's your actual problem with this is it the amount of things because those animals are already here by the way i'm not saying let's grow more young crow animals. I'm not saying that have more animals be created. Yeah. There are animals that are already out there.

But they'll now be smart. And? Will they have rights? Yes. Okay. They'll have, like, most of the rights that we have. Most?

Yeah. Okay. Do you not do you not see a problem? What's the problem there? uprisings oh yeah what are the animals gonna do bite your throat out right okay that's a bit dramatic if they're gonna bite my throat out over being enslaved no one's enslaving anyone you just said we're the lower class in this situation someone is no they don't have to be

okay they don't have to be there's gonna be no class systems anymore okay i'm going to see what i'm what i'm doing here is i'm quietly fixing all of the real world problems as i usher in a new age of animal sentience and i think that will catch people off guard i think it will certainly catch people off guard here's a question andy do you want world peace sure sure not very convincing but i'll take it no i i want the skepticism that leaked into that is from what you're going to say now what if the secret to world peace isn't fewer bad people what if it's more good people i guess tip the scales with dogs it will only be good people who'll be doing this to the animals yeah everyone knows animal experimentation's deeply moral it's not going to be experimental

it's going to be confirmed oh it's going to go from idea to production flawlessly with not a single experiment yes because it's the number one scientific priority it's fine

what do you think the number one scientific priority at the minute is um like probably um like pesticides i might i might guess it's ai right okay which is a guy or pesticides good for me because it's about trying to create intelligence where it wasn't before oh okay and it hasn't worked and it certainly hasn't created a more equitable society right well how are pesticides doing

good there you go there's a lot of them and that one we did in our bodies and we still don't know which is which we still don't know which one took the top place off the top of our heads so if one of the top two are doing really well pesticides they're in your body like you were just saying okay they're in my body i'm happy you're happy we're both healthy i was a little ill the other week can we make one dog smart and then go from there uh well yeah we're gonna start with one okay and then like a half hour later we'll do the next one that's fine we'll see how the first one turns out you can do like 40 a day yeah if it does anything bad we'll put it down.

Put down that sentient man. Well, if he's gone... They do that with bad people. I'm not for the death penalty, but there is a president for us. Well, as long as there's a president, we can dust off. Yeah, we can do that. We're allowed. It's our plan.

So you want to make like Morlocks, but they're dogs? Yeah, I don't know what that word is, but I want to make a better world. And it's going to have animals that talk And that I can be friends with That would be nice

I'd like to be friends with a panda You should have just said that You should have just said all of our scientific evidence Should be geared towards Making you friends with a panda How are you going to make a panda your friend Because that doesn't sound very good That sounds very coercive

You're going to make It's going to have no choice Through vibes you're going to remove it's free will Pandas would just get on with me Why? They're my spirit animal. We'll just sit here. He'll have some bamboo.

That's a weird thing to say. That's like if I said, like, my manager is my spirit animal. You can't just compare yourself to another person. That's my spirit animal. This guy's sentient. Yeah, okay. Pandas are going to be completely different

when they're intelligent. They like sitting around. Yeah. Doing not much. Yeah, that's what we've been doing for the last hour and five minutes. It fits right into my life. I don't like the idea

that you're trying to replace me with a panda well you shouldn't have given me the technology i said only good people are going to be using this yeah you can't have it i'm gonna get a good person and make me a panda oh fuck because bad people can make good people do things oh shit i did not think about this this is why we need it andy the scales have been tipped in the favor of evil for far too long it's good to workshop this well i think we've got some some level of understanding of this yes we start small and then we get really big with it 20 billion make me a panda friend i'll make you i'll make some i'll not make you anything we'll make some pandas and then i'll be i'll be honest i can't make them i do not have the moral compass

it takes to make sentient life oh thanks for listening to an incredibly long common ground you can tell it was chugged here, because we didn't say a fucking thing about the game there. No. We'll be back to starting to infall proper next time, so the game chat will be back.

We'll be onto our air stuff, so all of our airplanes, doing some bombing runs, some strafing, and then not long after that, we'll be moving our guys' boots on the ground, and we'll see what happens with the wall up along the north road. Yes. It's going to be intense, or maybe it'll be lackluster. The only way to find out is

by tuning in next week. But, in the meantime, from me, James... And me, Andy. Stay subtle, humble, and brave. In those deserts of your mind. Good night. We'll be right back.