War With A Mate - Episode 62: The Other Type Of Luck

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

You don't need a licence fee for this quality entertainment! In the aftermath of James' Scenario Win, Andy retaliates with a now superior air force and a better equipped ground force while James wields the only force he has left; force majeure.

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Because we have your number. Hello, ladies, gentlemen, camels in the desert. Welcome to War with a Mate, your favourite podcaster's favourite podcast. because this is my favorite podcast there we go with me james me andy we are the two guys from britain as they keep on saying in the comments which is true playing the campaign for north africa it's a very long board game it goes on for a very long time and we are here for a very long time uh today we're here for like an hour or so that's kind of what we do and we've just finished playing more of the game andy we have there's a good one kicked off turn four we

have we've really marched into op stage one of turn four each turn made up of three op stages the practice scenario made up of six turns i was declared technical victor a couple of weeks back but we are playing this thing all the way through to the end of turn six and then we get the pleasure of starting the full game which is 111 turns that's stupid what are we doing a question i've so many times it's lost its meaning a bit like the game itself the rules however they are concrete they are drilled into my mind i say that we did make a few rule mistakes today and have done for the last year but we'll get to that andy how was today it was good uh hot weather hot weather in the game it's it's not early february here in the uk yeah so it's the opposite you know what wasn't

as cold as i thought it might be around this time of year it's been all right we're coming to the last legs of winter but it's still not as not as cold as i thought it would be i expected more weather and what did you give me disappointment just let you sit in that for a bit i thought you'd i thought we'd have a bit of you know two and i'm doing a back and forth wow you've really changed your attitude on this part now it's just a case of i'll i'll spiel into this void and you'll just sit there indeed don't be a sore loser you owe me a kind of bueno you don't owe me silence if i wanted silence as my prize i'd tell you okay i i assumed that's on me yeah don't assume it makes an ass out of you and me

okay so organization phase did a bit of construction yeah i didn't because it's hot and hot weather equals worse construction it does because you have to spend more water and water is a valuable resource in the desert andy weirdly not only it's not yeah for some reason this game all about strategic placement early days i thought oh my god water is some terrible resource that we'll never find it's actually pretty easy you go to any village it's there there's a well and those wells will not deplete very easily as i found out especially when rainfall comes which is more often than you'd think for a desert more often than the odds on the dice yeah it's it's not really equal to the the odds however it happened

we've had a little bit of rainfall i've not had any real issue with water the pasta rule does still annoy me i've had to do that in the week since we last played because we had to do all of our resource consumption yeah all of our homework all of our resource consumption stores water and when it comes to water in hot weather it's amplified i have the pasta point because i'm the italian forces which is it's not hugely taxing in terms of the amount but it's just the extra admin it's the extra step yeah i complained about it so much last week and it it's not even the amount like i was looking at it during the week it isn't the amount that i'm losing it's i have to do because it's outside of the parameters of all the other formulas i've got

it's like an extra thing i have to do it's manual yeah and i've come to hate manual which is bad because this game is mostly that but we're trying to get away from that yeah we're trying to automate parts so we can make the gameplay just that gameplay fun enjoyable however it does have its issues it's it's long arduous but so are we we're long we're arduous uh yeah and despite the increased construction costs i did i'm fixing the road long last and i figured waiting for the weather to be right i might as well just spend the extra and fix it well that's it the way you're rolling at the moment there's not going to be any right weather it's always going to be hot no normal weather it's been hot for the last two two off stages now yes two in a

row is bad that means there's some sort of climate change happening that's bad because we're in the we're in the 40s yeah i haven't even kicked that off yet i know this is well before in this alternate universe that we've got going on climate change has really got a head start i guess before they knew about it they were doing it no no no no it's a bit like illness it's only when you're diagnose that it kicks in oh it's a placebo co2 placebo 2 placebo 2 of course the sequel to placebo is that no i think what i tried to do there was a very niche reference to the game ricochet ricochet 2 yeah that yes see you got it that's why we can do this podcast chronically online in the what was that early noughties i can't even remember when that video came out that's

not i don't know all i know andy is you and i run in the same circles we do and those same circles are damaged mentally because of our chronic onlineism it's a diagnosis that i don't have formally i've self-diagnosed and i did that online well where else would you get information speaking of on the line your trucks have to go on the line that you've been repairing so i have a question to ask when you've been repairing the road have you been doing it with an engineering unit or a non-engineering unit uh it's an engineering hq with a battalion of infantry underneath it so that would mean you can repair yes you can repair the road that you're on and the hexes adjacent yes is that which i've done because the road the actual hex they're on

isn't broken but the two either side either side are yeah so now i know the part that you've repaired yeah yes i can picture that spot right next to mercer matrew just to the west yeah the second new zealand boys are fixing a road that was going to come eventually um so your construction does that go on one of the rules it's a good time to mention it uh you know what that's a perfect point to mention it so for those who've been invested in my air shenanigans over the last year or so you'll be familiar with my tactic of bombing andy's road that northern road all the way along top of the map well not all the way along but it comes from alexandria to just past mercer matru so it's a good chunk of the game my tactic has been disrupt andy's

supply chain by bombing that road now i thought perfect you bomb the road which usually is only a half cp to move a motorized vehicle over perfect for transportation if i get rid of that then all of a sudden that shoots up to two cp if you're moving over a clear tile so that you're talking four times the capability points the issue sort of crucially breakdown but breakdown is a big thing because breakdown points it's four breakdown points for a clear yes so it becomes exponential because on a road tile there's no breakdown points at all for a vehicle so it's it's free movement know if you're on a road your car's not going to break down however it transpires today if you look at the bombardment table the air bombardment when you're bombing a road it does have a little caveat

on there and we look at this table every other week more or less and and in great detail because we've got to figure out how many bombs we've got what we can take apart with those bombs what we haven't been looking at a whole lot are the results because we thought we're so familiar with everything we've played this really long game for a really long time that we know it all once again we've been hit with that humble arrow and that humble arrow today has told us that when you bomb a road from above you don't get rid of it completely instead you turn it into a track so tracks are for the uninitiated dotted all over the place on the map they are they're the weaker younger brother of the rose they're the ugly duckling the first billy goat they are and

they they do reduce the cost of movement and also reduce breakdown what they do is anytime you move over a hex that has track on it it only takes one cp uh it halves it's just one cp it halves breakdown cost yeah sorry that's it yes it halves a breakdown cost which could be some of them are like six or eight if you go crazy but for the most part you're looking at four for a clear if you're in the desert it's 20 that's insane i've never had to check thankfully because i've never been stupid enough to drive to just kill a guy well i've been stupid enough to do that just not in the desert not that way yeah so it's it's greatly effective still because you're halving your cp cost for the most part and you're also halving your your actual cost of breakdown

and it turns out when you bomb a road it turns into a track it metamorphosizes which makes sense you know the book animorphs andy you ever read animorphs it's not the ricky gervais one no that's i don't even know what that i don't know what you're referencing there you wrote like a book with weird animals i think oh you're thinking of the office that's it that's it i was thinking of gareth from the office he's in quite a few things now pirates of the caribbean yeah he's good in that yeah that's just come out hasn't it yeah detectorists he's in um detectorists i don't think i've seen that one it's about some guys who do metal detecting that sounds bbc it might even be itv or channel four yeah it's bbc or channel four i can tell just by the name so yeah it's uh

i've completely lost my train of thought um i've got it's completely sidetracked whenever whenever bbc comes into play i've recently had a dispute with the tv license people i think that's what it is oh they tried to enter your home they haven't tried to enter my home but they send me those letters where they're like are you going to be home on the 21st of january and i was like well maybe i opened up the letter and as you open up the letter this is quite funny so it says are you going to be home on the 21st of january because we might pay a visit then or another day and i'm like well you kind of lost the threat factor here because there's kind of a looming shadow if you go i'm going to show up on the 21st of january but if you go i'm going to show up that day or maybe

another and for the most part i'm like i'm going to be at work yeah so you're going to knock on a door there's no one there to intimidate and even if you do show up at the door and i open the door which i don't often do to people then i'll just go well i know you can't come in bring me a warrant show me some paperwork show me your warrant there's a judge signed this warrant but i don't actually need a tv license i don't watch bbc programs at my home and i don't watch any live programs either because it's just a subscription service but it's incredibly overpriced for what you get yeah and for anyone outside the uk if you're not aware and this might be a bit of a bizarre concept because i don't know how widespread this kind of structure is but in the uk you've got

the bbc which is the british broadcasting company yeah that's what it stands for nothing else don't get don't get funny with me in the comments it's the british broadcasting company and they were the sort of og broadcaster in the uk and they also run a lot of doctor who big one you'll have heard of that and a bunch of other tv programs people know the thing is though i don't know to what extent because i'm i'm aware of how ignorant i am of other things across the world there's been so many times when i've not grasped it so i'm just going to give the benefit of the doubt that people are as ignorant as me to be fair i have no idea how it works in any other country so i probably shouldn't exactly so before i go too far off topic to summarize it quickly

the bbc if you want to watch any live television in the uk anything that's broadcast live or any bbc program on their platform you have to pay a television license fee and that's what like 120 pound a year oh it went up recently it's like almost 200 now yeah i think it's like 180 pounds a year or you can pay it monthly and that goes to the bbc they make programs they're advert free but if you watch netflix and stuff like that you don't have to pay it so i'm exempt i don't watch bbc stuff and i don't watch anything live so i'm all good but they sent me a letter saying i need it and i don't that was the crux of the condition that i was talking about and i've got completely sidetracked we're talking about bombing roads in north africa in the 1940s in a board game yeah

and you're repairing them turns out turns out i wasn't doing the damage i thought i was no which has completely changed my tactic going forward because in the main game when we start that my plan was eradicate that road just absolutely blitz that road with my air superiority from go and disrupt your supply line to a completely devastating level if i try and do that now it's not going to be as effective as i thought it's still going to be it will still be effective it's just it will it be worth the bomb cost rather than it being like a shoe in yeah instead i can commit those bombers to other fun stuff so i i moved away from that idea after i found that out today but you did some repairing and we did our f stuff we did we did our air

missions i did a very little air mission still we won and you did three relatively sizable ones there's a bit of crossover there actually so i decided to drop some bombs just 72 on the 7th armoured division nice and subtle humble and brave bomb the 7th armoured division just a few planes though six planes in all that's pretty fine six planes sm79s each of them carrying 12 bombs 72 however one of your air missions counted this yes you were doing air patrol over the seventh yes i sent a batch of hurricanes and blenheim mark four fighters wasn't pleased about that not gonna lie when i found out that i'd committed six planes to this and you'd committed was it 19 yeah 19 fighters to defend them wasn't great however in amongst this there was some

victory to be had i'll skip to the um the end point of this my bombs didn't land on their target i i went up against you my bombers fought your fighters i took out was it two just one i took out one of your fighters it had a pilot it had a pilot yes took out one of your pilots and your fighter and i also lost three three or four three at least three one two and six survived that's correct so half my bombers got through they dropped a bomb it did not land on the division and i lost three fighters not ideal three bombers bombers yes i don't have any fighters in action and then you carried out a mission to make sure of that because you went after fort madalena i did that empty hex but there's those planes there they are and strafe them and that's because

i was very candid and i told you i'm going to be moving some of my sgs use to that spot so i can get them back off the ground and we're in overtime now i've already won so we're okay to divulge this information and we have been doing anyway so what does it matter so you found that out you've now tried to strafe them and what was really fun today is how that panned out so to break down some strafing rules we've had a few emails about it recently so this is a little preview into that strafing thing when it comes to aircraft you can strafe aircraft that are on the ground the way it works is you roll off a table depending on how many strafe points you've used which is calculated by tack air the value of your planes when you roll that it tells you how many dice to roll

all of the die are um six-sided as well in this game for anyone who didn't know and um explaining everything to its basics today so andy you managed to roll a quantity of one die yes and then on that die you rolled another one i did and that means you get to destroy that many planes so in theory you could have rolled a three at first which means you then get to roll three i could have done 18 if everything had gone the other type of luck the other end of the luck spectrum the other type of luck good luck but you didn't have that you didn't have the other type of luck no you had the first type of luck which is bad luck and bad luck is what befell you and more than once today my ad yeah i mean the other type of luck hit you a few times

today well you also like the plane you shot down you needed an 11 which is the lowest possible result and you just got an 11 yeah that 11 today that's snake eyes it was coming out hot and heavy yeah you got a plus two pilot which is good i don't have a lot of them and it gets that guy one step closer to being a plus one pilot on my end he just needs a few more kills under his belt four more four more and he's not really going to get that in this scenario no it's not realistic so yeah your your bomb um your your strafe rather on my guy was uh ineffective ineffective uh you did then do some bombing though i did i then bombed the malay division you did you took on the malady and they are they're quite they're quite good

i like the malady division they are steadfast you've got a nice mixture of infantry guns and armor so i like them i like a diversified division it rules off the tongue it also kind of the bombs ruled off their back and put them into a bit of a sticky situation yes i pinned i got a four on the table which i could pin four things yeah armor and guns cost two uh pinned one armor and two of your infantry so i think that's all the armor in that wasn't it Yes, I had one armor in that group. I had, I believe it was eight infantry and two guns. You pinned one of my infantry.

You pinned one of my recon as well. Oh, that's good. They tend to have pretty good close assault and defense. At least the recon I've got seems to be better than infantry. I was looking at these guys when you pinned them. They seem a bit more niche. I think they've got a more specific purpose that I've not quite determined. Yeah, recon.

Yeah. Yeah. Looking at them there, their assault ratings weren't great. Oh, okay. So I need to review that and see what I'm actually meant to do with them. Because every time you take someone down, I look at them and I go well, how am I meant to use these guys?

Because I've wasted them. So I need to look at that again. I wonder if they're for they'd be good for patrols? Their CPA isn't great though. Really? Yeah, they've got bad... That's why I knew they were definitely categorised as infantry. 10 CPA.

so i don't really know recon yeah they're recon and they're 10 cpa and their combat rating isn't very good so weird yeah so i don't really know what the i'd maybe double check you've got the right thing for them because having recon with infantry cpa yeah why are they doing that recon on well i've got them up here um let me double check while i'm well let's do this let's do this live you guys want a live show we'll give you a live show this is me checking my recon right now and maybe having misunderstood them let's have a little look so i've got them here there we go and if i slide along completely misread it um no i haven't no they are yeah decent decent toe fair enough but not no nothing standing out really don't know what that

good point is maybe it's just because the italian cars they're using a pre-world war one scrap they're just those you know those like kids cars where you just put your feet at the bottom and you like run away yeah they're running around in flintstones vehicles so they're gone unfortunately um they're not going to be in this fight because they're pinned but not to worry I do still have plenty of guys around the area the Mileti will push through the Mileti is still my most efficient division

I've used so far because they have positive cohesion oh yes they got a they pushed back the 7th back at Maddalena so that was the air mission and it was all in all a bit of a loss for me

apart from that guy I shot down, that pilot pretty happy with that so we moved on to the beginning of planning for the land movement yes better yet you did yours uh yeah at least step one pretty quick we've got really all i did was move we got that big fight up at the coast between at the border basically yes city barani it's still being held down yes i basically moved the 16th infantry battalion up to help the fourth yeah garrison them a bit the sixth australian has now left cairo that was interesting they've moved up from cairo towards alexandria like halfway basically it's a road as well isn't it at the crossing

so i spotted that i'm interested to see what's going on here because they've sat back there for a while oh i can tell you what they've been doing training yes yeah i yeah i i just i didn't know if it was training or if you were worried about me getting to alexandria somehow it was a little of a little a b while the saharan were there i wouldn't have moved them out that's fair enough but training you gain one morale a turn where both the trainer and the person being trained don't do anything okay turn or upstage turn turn um uh yeah i think so i'll double check that but yeah um and they came in with minus three right training since day one so now they're flat yes right so the sort of mixture of that and the sahara and not being like a sort of damocles

means they can i've just head off now i've incentivized a good decision yeah great i love it when i do that the saharan detachment the saharan detachment never failed to do good by you like those guys uh you know what they're gonna go over to europe and they're gonna turn on me i know for a fact they're gonna work as informants yeah and they're gonna tell everyone that i have absolutely no plan yeah so they're moving up got me a little bit on edge i'm not really sure where they're gonna go from there i imagine it's to the front lines but there's always that risk that you do something wild because also do you remember where the names come up before um oh dear which history segment was this uh operation compass they were the other divisions

it right okay it doesn't matter because we don't you don't have enough time to do this you don't have enough time to get to triple e or wherever you want to go so i'm not i'm not too worried about that i am a little bit skeptical a little bit cautious but we'll see how this pans they seem to be a pretty good division once you get the minus three off them well that's it i don't know if i'm gamifying this too much but in my head there's always that sort of like give and take of you get like a really good thing but you have to hone it yes like you you get like a like loads of power but you need to fine-tune it for it to be usable that's where i'm going with this so i i fear that might be what you've got yes but i've also i've got no idea this this division

could be pitiful or it could be the scariest thing you've got on the board i've got no idea also i don't exactly know because it's not full strength oh it's like 50 right okay the rest of it would arrive if i remember the arrival table right the rest of it would arrive around before turn 10 ish okay so that sort of makes sense for the compass timeline of crane and cairo head along yeah you're kind of jumping the gun then yeah historically which makes sense because we only get to turn six. I don't have time, yeah. Yeah, you've got to do something with them. Well, bearing in mind, I had the black shirts

stowed away for ages, moving their way from Tripoli, and they ended up becoming the ace up the sleeve that I needed to win. Yeah. And they're still now very, very important, because they are fully motorised, both the second and third. They're also...

You've got two fully motorised ones. You've got five overall, is it? Five fully motorised. No, five black shirts overall. Four. Yeah, I started with two. They've had some ups and downs. One of them took a real beating from your guys. I think it was the, I want to say the fourth took the beating.

That sounds right. When I was pulling back from Magdalena. Yeah. Yeah, I think it was the fourth. Yeah, one of them took a real battering. It was when I pushed them over the border. Yes. And hung them around there for a while.

They were really hung out to dry. So I'm kind of worried about them. I think of all my divisions, they're kind of in the position that your seventh were when you left Magdalena. where they're so fractured that you can realistically only use them for an auxiliary effort, but they can't be a full division now. Right.

If I wanted to go up against one of your divisions, I would not send them. They'd be like the second division you might send to reinforce a primary one. I would use them as a pincer, but if I use them on their own, it's just stolen. They're not good for that. Your movement also, I guess the absence of movement,

worth mentioning was the guys in bardia yes left them there for now yes and they are they're your truck bandits they are infamous in the war with a maid verse yes and because you ended your movement with them there we decided to finish off that combat today that was the last thing we did which was my division the 62nd i want to say i believe it was the 62nd i can tell you right now for sure it was indeed the 62nd marcia and they went up against them i had full division you had a single battalion yep the odds were not in your favor morale we were balanced your cohesion brought your morale down in terms of divisional size organizational strength i got a plus four from that because you are a battalion and i am a division and then our actual tool strength

that balanced out to being 6 versus a 1. 6 on my side, 1 on yours. Yes. So an overall minus 9 to the attackers. Yeah. Which was bad, because that meant that, once again, you had the other kind of luck. I

managed to decimate 50%, half of your guys, and took prisoners, which we need to roll. Yes. And you did nothing to me. 0%. No. It's 4. well because they're an armored thing they're not even 400 guys they're they're like eight so yeah you did nothing to me i did quite a bit to you yeah and that was the last thing we did

today yes and it was it was good it's another interesting stage of the game because we were still in the practice scenario but we've completed a win condition technically we've hit a win condition and now we're just seeing what happens afterwards so all bets are off we're in a state where the game can go either way when when i won i knew that my forces were on the the teetering point of falling apart and they still are so that little victory for me is good but the last thing we have to do for your land combat your land movement rather is next week and it's going to be the fight the big fight at the wall yes because the fourth and the 16th are fighting three of your units the maletti division yeah the tank one yeah and the gun are yeah and then the

seven tanks uh yeah the trivoli yeah trivoli yeah yeah those guys are they're still reading from a loss from last time because you've already picked some of them apart yeah broke off and then also the seven for still in contact with the not the game state contact uh but they are next to um the first libyan at sidi barani so we've got two big battles uh next time yeah so it's it's going to be interesting to see how that pans out i want to see where this goes i want to see if i have any chance for the rest of the practice run or if this is just me absolutely boned now i don't know which way this is gonna go but time will tell because also i don't know if you noticed you know the 11th though they didn't leave bardia yeah they can't in terms of which direction they can go yeah yeah

i know that they're boxed into his own control it's one hex and it's one yeah see so they couldn't have left if i wanted them to which i did you could if you did a retreat more than can you retreat through an enemy hex you can if it's the only way i think might have a look we'll double check that because we have got rules wrong even today so but we will um we will have a look at that that's important to know we need to know these things it's important to know it's important to understand the game andy it is and i've got just the way to understand it that a little bit more not just to understand the game but to understand what we're doing here what's that We've got to look at ourselves, but not like this,

not like we are right now, lovingly across a table with lovely glowing microphones in front of one another. I love that they glow, by the way. It's great. It's by using our listeners as a reflection. We bounce off them. It's a to and fro. It's like jazz.

You see, we play a little beat on the double bass, and they come in with the saxophone, and that's how this whole thing works. Just learn your sheet music ahead of time, guys. No, no, no, no. we don't do sheep music here we don't do that we're not about reading we're actually we do a lot of reading yeah in fact we're gonna read some fan mail let's do it now listeners here we come we are never disappointed with the turnout of our correspondence we have some fantastic emails that

come through and fantastic topics fantastic folk and i've got one right here and it's from someone who we've been mailed by before this is a a serial mailer it is monday and monday is sent in an email which is titled talking about cfna with family good afternoon brackets evening y'all there it is there's the y'all you know what we like monday it's monday again i realize i don't think you ever read my instagram message when i sent you way back i'm gonna read that again it's monday again i don't think you ever read my instagram message i sent you way back when i first started listening i don't remember most of it but i do remember at the time you were talking about general montgomery and i thought it was funny since that's my name monday i never knew your

first name was general and i'm very glad you share that with us it's just a little joke i imagine it's not his name just doxton oh god general monday i'm so sorry i will read out your national insurance number if that's any help anyway the point of this email is i'm on episode 59 love the new logo and you were both talking about how you go on long-winded explanations to people about your podcast and they clearly get tired of it after a while well my parents live in another state from me and every week when we call i'm always updating them on how your game is going they eagerly await the news my mother was especially excited to hear that i had sent you the pow diary from her great uncle and i can't wait to hopefully hear you talk about it one day

it was also my birthday just a week ago and i'm looking forward to spending many more birthdays listening to your adventures with this game your subtle humble and brave friend in texas monday thanks buddy and belated happy birthday yes belated happy birthday because you sent this more than two weeks ago so i hope it was a good one i'm sure you're turning a crisp young age of something younger than you are as is the compliment nailed it it's a it's a generous compliment that just kind of fits the vibe of everyone um the pow diary is awesome by the way monday we've not put together a segment i say we andy hasn't put together a segment for it just yet um but i've got no doubt it will pop up at some time

in the future because anything that we've got quite a few people have sent in personal connections to history some of them we've read out some of them we're yet to and it's just brilliant hearing how these i've come across some myself in my own personal life and finding out that all these people who are spending time listening to us have then delved into some of their own family history whether it's something they knew already or something they've taken an interest in it's wild oh yeah there's just these little snippets of history that have all sort of come into our email box that's that's wild oh yeah it's crazy uh so we we really appreciate that and we will get around to that monday um it's also very endearing that you update your parents and

your parents want to know what's going on with the game it reminds me a little bit your parents are more interested in this podcast than mine same it reminds me andy funnily enough of we we play dnd a lot and you often talk about or you you did a little while ago um when you'd go out for meals with your parents and they'd ask for like a debrief on how dnd is going and and if you've won yet well yeah it was it would be uh oh have you won your oh why haven't you won yet yeah why haven't you won dnd yet why haven't you won the campaign for north africa and i i'm at that stage as well yeah i think my parents now i've talked about dnd long enough i don't actually think this fully realized what this actually is

Well, you know what was the most crushing moment for me? It was a couple of weeks ago when I'd won. And I was sat next to someone at work who's generously decided to try and listen to the podcast from time to time. And they were, I think, up to like maybe episode 30 or something. They've spent a lot of their time listening to it. And they did it off their own back.

I didn't push too much. I just mentioned it. And I mentioned, well, in this episode, there's actually a Victor declared. And it was like, oh, that's interesting. That's cool. and i was like just skip ahead to that one you can come back to 30 just listen to that one and i was just sat there and um they were on their they're on their lunch break and i was sat there

having a lovely meal deal which was a plain ham sandwich a salted caramel protein drink and some refrigerators that is a meal deal to enjoy if you're a psycho and just they just sat there take out the headphones and go oh you won nice and it just dawned on me there and then like what a fucking waste of time this is like just that that reaction it was that little reaction that little oh you were nice i'm like oh no it wasn't it wasn't a big thing i'm not what i've done for a year it wasn't worth it what's it going to be like at the end of the full thing it's the same reaction when someone tells you oh what a five from the laura yeah it's like oh all right okay yeah or when they try and show

you like a picture of that dog on your on the phone and it's like oh this is my dog oh nice it's like you didn't you didn't care why would you i'm white noise in the background of your room when you're when you're doing the dishes you don't care what happens here but to be that's actually if anything the kind of that's a that's a perfect thing for people who know me to to say about the podcast anyone who's got a genuine interest in this brilliant but for the people who know me directly i guess that's the perfect you can really ask for it's supportive in the sense of they're listening to it that's really nice but they're not super invested where they're like badgering me with questions because i i love reading out the listener mail yeah and finding out

the interesting questions here but if i was at work and getting it every day i feel like it would take the shine off yeah it's too close to home at that point so monday i'm glad your parents are interested say hi to them from us play this little clip hello monday's parents we haven't doxxed him and you should be proud because we daddy did that once to someone um and um we hope you're all doing well in the other state which isn't texas so i know that's kind of doxxing but i hope you forgive us and once again monday happy birthday happy birthday and we've got a another one another how spoiled are we we have another email and what's this email well the subject is common ground desk kettle kerfuffle now that's a mouthful can you say that really fast

common ground desk kettle kerfuffle that's genuinely impressive given the fact we trip around words so often when reading emails i had to reread the first part of that email and you just spat that off now watch me fail to read the rest of this i pulled my beard to the honorable james and the kettle hungry andy instead of a desk kettle you should get one of those zogirushi countertop water boilers i have the cdwcc3o it keeps a reservoir at a user selectable temperature and dispenses at the press of a button takes about 15 minutes to get the reservoir attempt and plays a little song when it's ready their bread maker is great too i swear they aren't paying me neil well if they are there's a bit of stealth marketing for you i had a look at this

that is basically what i want is a boiling water dispenser well what's interesting is i can't i can't tell off the top of my head um but based on the date of this email i think i do know the answer i i reckon neil sent this before i came up with my rebuttal to your kettle idea yes i think so um and i didn't read this email until well this is the first time i've read this email so it's interesting that me and neil both had this idea um his seems more genuine well it's either genuine or it's an actual advert um in which case neil you need to pay us for that you're not allowed to do that for free now anyone advertise anything if you've got something to advertise just bear in mind our listener base is scattered everywhere so it will not work don't

yep for any potential advertisers listening it's pointless to do so it's pointless you're not going to get any sort of draw from it our listeners are too widespread advertisers shouldn't pay us and you can quote me on that we're so good at business andy we're not here for business we're here for board games you got the wrong we're getting that part right andy we've got the other kind of look we're rich in emails we're rich in board games emails and other look um well neil that's interesting because um we've come up with the same idea it almost suggests that andy was wrong and that i was right i won't mention the name of the company that i brought up in that episode because i was forbidden from but you know it's all coming together in fact

and we have another email that does suggest the same thing oh we do a triple decker listener bill this week a triple decker because this one also touches on the kettle incident now this one i must warn is not for the faint-hearted we've read this one and we were we were shocked this email reads to anderson and jame drew hello again this is erica a listener from california i've just listened to episode 58 and i'm absolutely infuriated about wanting the kettle in multiple rooms to begin with i have consulted a british friend on some insults to use andy oh andy i think you're an absolute moron a twat a wanker and a complete that i i i understand the calvin was let's call it controversial but your your british friend

has really helped you get to the deep end yeah eric i'm not sure what british friend you have but they are a potty mouth they are they are really tearing andy apart here and this is andy we love andy we got to be careful all right he's just a person he's just a little guy all right you can't be saying these kind of things to him on air and i yeah i may have been the mouthpiece for it but i'm just the messenger and you're not allowed to shoot the messenger i'm like an sgsu it's a war crime erica continues after after calming down to begin with the reason the kettle is in the kitchen is because the water is in the kitchen that's a good point i agree with that then why is the kettle not in the ocean oh oh it's jazz it's jazz he's coming back

what does eric have to say to that if you had it in any other room you'd have to go to the kitchen anyways to fill your kettle so you're not even saving much time anyways and secondly who has the money to just frivolously frivolously frivolously throw around on buying extra kettles if you want it then just take it from the kitchen to whatever room you're in there's plenty of plugs to go around in this day and age i can't believe you made me listen to that absolute drivel and i hope you feel bad for suggesting that well i do now oh you see now that's the thing we've got a safe space here and i can andy i can call you a you just did i i did and i will continue to from time to time when i feel it's necessary just to take you down a peg however we gotta remember

he's he's a man with a heart and yeah he might be silly sometimes i'd say maybe moronic you can call him fucking stupid but you can't call him a this has not been a defense you can't call him it's just not allowed but i know it's in jest i know that everyone who's sending an email it's always with love in their heart and water in their kettle from the sink in the kitchen which is where you fill up the kettle so you know anyways i've been loving the last 40 or so episodes since i last wrote in and the addition of new music intro for the history segment is excellent the continuous history segment is enlightening and i have learned more about world war ii through these segments than any other source and i ought to give you credit for that there you go andy

there's your kudos see it's balanced out the hand strikes and gives a flower a few questions stick a what carrot and stick carrot and stick both at the same time a few questions james are you still confident in being able to win the main game within the early turns after learning about the airdrop rules quick answer no i imagine actually by the time this mail gets read things will have changed substantially so i might already have an answer to that question well there you go and i again reiterate no one thing i've been curious about is how you two decide on who was playing which side was it a coin toss rock paper scissors or did james simply want to be the axis keep warring with your mates erica well erica despite the potty mouth from your british friend

who i had to cry unless it's someone i know and like in which case you know fair enough that's quite funny um erica brilliant email it touches on a point that defends me i'll always be on side with that however you have kind of suggested something dubious about me towards the end there which i will have to defend now there wasn't a coin toss there wasn't a rock paper scissors i wanted the challenge the challenge eh so that well that's it you see when it comes to subtle humble and brave that saying is about me now you'll notice at the end of every episode andy says stay subtle humble and brave to me that's who he's saying it to i'm subtle humble and brave i wanted the challenge of being the axis because i know the axis lose

and this is about a challenge for me okay i won a kinder bueno andy you did i will win a sit-down meal no you won't and i will do that by being the underdog and i said it early on the underdog i said it early and i'll say it again i'm the underdog people love an underdog that's what i am that's what you're not you're the other kind of dog over dog you're the overdog andy i've always said that about you you're the overdog oh that is actually i just realized top dog is actually a phrase oh there was always a thing for that ah look at that the the duality of man the underdog and the overdog well um erica um everyone who sent mail we've got quite a few

bits of mail in there which are really standing out but um yeah monty erica um where's our other neil neil sorry neil i've yeah i'm sorry i'm reading through all of our youtube notifications they've absolutely clogged up all of our inbox they're taking up our bandwidth um but thank you Neil, Erica, Mondi. It's brilliant seeing all these pieces of mail come in asking us questions about our game, about the war, about Africa. And if anyone wants to send anything of the type over to us,

our email address is info at warwithamate.co.uk. Our website is warwithamate.co.uk. And our Instagram is just warwithamate. We take messages through all of them. Yes, I've seen the Instagram messages that have come through. Yes, we've seen the web forms. and we will answer everything we'll read it all out unless you ask us not to um also if you want a pseudonym put in you can do that as well i'm acutely aware that we're reading out the email

as it comes in yeah and we'll we'll usually read the sign off at the end as the name but also if we can't see a name we will read off whatever it comes through with just first name of course we won't do surnames we're not that bad but if you do want a pseudonym either for comical reasons or just to protect your identity by all means pop that in there we're fine with that but that covers off the mailbag quite nicely which brings us into um erica's favorite segment clearly not your common ground it's the history segment it's time for the past 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.

At this point I gave little thought to my pastures, but had always been interested in boats and the sea. I am more or less in the position of a cactus in command of a ship, which is on the point of sinking because errors are present. We are absolutely not qualified to share views on history. Where in history are we going today? well last time we got up to 1935 we did with the black shirts heading to ethiopia yeah to do i imagine horrible things yeah but we'll get to that but kicking it off a word from the juice from the what the deuce the deuce mussolini oh no italy italy entirely and universally fascist the italy of the black shit fascist revolution rise to your feet let the cry of your determination

rise to the skies and reach our soldiers in east africa let it be a comfort to those who are about to fight let it be an encouragement to our friends and a warning to our enemies it is the cry of an italy which goes beyond the mountains and the seas out into the great world it is a cry for justice and victory shut up mussolini yeah uh justice is an incorrect word here also i've been to italy it's a lovely place stop ruining it in the past so yes the second italo-ethiopian war was a war of aggression waged by italy against ethiopia starts in october 1935 but we're gonna go back a little bit we've talked about the black shirts but we're gonna do some have a look at the geopolitics shall we oh let's

break it down yes let's get fun with it spoiler alert ethiopia is going to get fucked by europe collectively not just italy yeah europe not a great time with most of africa ethiopia particularly yeah what's going on here we've mentioned mussolini wants to rebuild the roman empire yeah moron yeah interesting fact the romans never conquered the axuman empire which controlled ethiopia ethiopia was never part of the roman empire did not know that nope so so he's already breaking his own rules here he wants to rebuild the roman empire but he also wants to be a european colonial power he's sort of reaching back to quite a few bits that just aren't gonna come to fruition but italy's had a interest in the region for about four years at this point

in 1980 uh sorry in 1880 they tried to expand through the horn of africa so that bit with ethiopia and eritrea goes off towards the bit that goes into the suez canal yes yeah their goals in the region were slowed by the next thing that gives the italians a desire to go to war in ethiopia which is the battle of adwa in march 1896 which is the greatest loss by a european force ever against an african power oh wow like colonial age wow the worst uh they they lost 6 000 men here which ended their expansionist ambitions as well as just being deeply embarrassing um so for the next few decades things are relatively stable in the region as italy is limited to managing eritrea and italian somaliland uh which are to the north and south of ethiopia

britain's got its grubby little imperial hands in the mix as well of course well that's kind of what we did around that time yes on the 14th of december 1924 britain and fascist italy made a secret agreement where britain recognized ethiopia as an area of interest for the italians as well as agreeing to build a railroad for them this deal promptly leaked to the chagrin of both the ethiopian and french governments wow fuck us yes so as fascism further escalates throughout italy it is also amongst their colonies uh with governors starting to encroach on ethiopia this all leads up to the walwal incident oh i've not heard of this yeah so the southern border border of ethiopia at the time with somaliland was meant to run roughly parallel to the south

coast 120 miles in okay so the italians created a fall at the well well oasis uh which was past the border uh by quite a long way which became a problem on the 22nd of november 1934 when a force of a thousand ethiopians in a militia arrive and ask the 60 somalis who are italian soldiers there to leave uh asked uh yeah um the somalis say no and alert a nearby italian force the next day a joint british and ethiopian force arrive who are doing surveying on the land to figure out the exact border the british officer officer approaches and he just asks if they can camp nearby okay the italian captain roberto simonatru denies the request um he's arrived since the day before swelling the italian force to 150 at this point a british officer named esmond clifford decides

to withdraw to a nearby town 20 miles away to avoid an international incident the ethiopians however took no notice of the italian commander and set up a camp nearby they spend the next day 10 days insulting each other often within arm's reach as reinforcements arrive for both sides italian aircraft are starting to circle above another 500 ethiopians show up bring their number to one one and a half thousand and also there's now 500 italians in this fort this is before the war by the way this isn't yeah this is before yeah there's no war going on at this point so tension boils over on the 5th of december shots are fired uh that ends up being 110 ethiopian casualties and 30 to 50 italian and somali casualties there would have been much more

but the bombs they tried to drop on the ethiopians missed oh a bit like mine yeah this kicks off the abyssinian crisis as a whole which uh among other things discredits the league of nations and is like a very important domino leading up to world war ii that's interesting yeah because i'll say this ethiopia is part of the league of nations okay they're like a signatory of this thing at the time they're ruled by emperor haile selassie who and i found this out and thought it was very interesting his original name i'm gonna get some pronunciations wrong was tafar and the ethiopian word for king is ras i see yeah that's too far yes he is a prophet in their religion right didn't know didn't know that but yeah uh he is the third prophet in their

religious tradition this guy so is that rastafarian yeah yeah so that's that that's the the origin of that yeah yeah wow yeah i had no idea that's the the connection yeah i didn't realize that that bridges yeah that's another slice of history i had no idea of no uh he's an interesting guy but also a religious figure so may or may not get a history segment but so on the 6th of december haile selassie is his emperor imperial name of ethiopia protests the italians to the league of nations demanding an apology the italians come right back and blame them and say they uh need compensation the league of nations investigates this and exonerates both parties which is from what i can tell there's not a definitive source on who started it but the italians are past the

border yeah so i'm also not going to give the italians the benefit of the doubt at this point in history no i think that's a fair i i think based on the other history segments you've done and the stuff i've picked up if i just use your history segments as the basis i don't know that i can believe that they didn't start this that's uh very fair so everyone's playing a balancing act at this point britain and france who are sort of the leaders of the league of nations in a lot of ways are trying to keep italy on side for a potential conflict with germany in europe italy's also worried about germany taking austria which is right to the north uh german wants germany wants to weaken everyone involved and is also wanting to see the league of nations response this is

an interesting part of it as well at this point the germans start sending arms to ethiopia not because they want ethiopia to win but they want the conflict conflict to go on as long as possible to weaken the sides involved yeah so weirdly at one point in time nazi germany was supplying weapons to an african kingdom which feels which is also going to then be counter to italian interest yes and then italy and germany ally with each other in the future yes this is such a messy period of history oh it's just a complete yeah so they're also wanting to uh britain to end up imposing sanctions on italy which will strain them and also italy's relationship with them may be leading italy to join with hitler so they're doing some like 4d chess on this so

on the 7th of january they come to an agreement between france and italy which gives the italians free reign in africa in exchange for help against nazi germany you'll notice there's no african countries involved in this decision yeah i was gonna say you're naming a lot of countries they're all in europe yes later in april italy france and britain create something called the stressor front which is an alliance intended to keep germany in check and stop them breaking the like conditions of the treaty of versailles which is wild because they've already got the treaty of versailles now they're introducing another metric to stop this again yes because they're worried about germany's remilitarization and rightly so yes so in doing so as part of them announcing this the original

language in this was meant to be talking about upholding stability globally but it eventually got whittled down to um maintaining stability in europe which mussolini takes as like an implicit go ahead to do what you want in africa oh right okay yeah so june comes along at this point and it's another step towards italian intervention in ethiopia because britain and germany create a naval agreement which means that the german navy has to be 35 of the size of the british one yes including types of ship right okay what this is this is bad uh this is a bad thing to do it benefits the brits but not the french so it puts strain on that relationship who are meant to be the two power blocks holding germany in check yeah i can see

where this is going also it importantly gives the germans a legal basis to ignore the naval restrictions in the treaty of versailles because they've come to an agreement with britain and really salt in the wounds for the french here cherry on the top as you might say they signed this on the 120 year anniversary of waterloo come on where british and prussian at the time but germans beat napoleon so it's it feels like a calculated slight yeah this feels like britain us being absolute dickheads yeah for, by the sounds of it, the sake of it

in a lot of ways we're just spiding an ally here I don't really see what's to be gained from this logistically like I can't maybe there is something the naval deal because the Britons I think Britain's logic was

if Germany is always 35% of our fleet and we also dictate the fleet make up yeah they will never be as in a naval war which i get it's just why why spiked france during it good after looking that's the part i don't get like i get why you want to try and oppress the german naval forces and keep them shrunk but i don't understand why we seem to be doing these like nudge nudge wink wink insults to the french as part of it there's like some sort of weird

compulsive deal-making going on or something like in this trifecta of of england france and germany it's like yeah we're friends with your friend you know i mean you pals but you know we hate you why are you doing this why are you doing this yeah this political clusterfuck while that's going on miscellany moves 300 000 troops to eritrea no one's looking at italy at the moment we're busy doing infighting in through the spring and summer this is like well reported in the press the like world is sort of speculating everyone knows what's gonna happen so in june of that year another development takes place as the british foreign secretary avin arrives in rome to make a deal the british were against the invasion but were willing to give a corridor of ethiopia to

italy so they could connect their northern and southern colonies again ethiopia is not in the room here yeah apparently we just don't care it's weird that the british not caring about the colonized african nations mussolini at this point believes that britain will never go to a war with them for the sake of ethiopia and they are just posturing this correct opinion is bolstered by the fact the italians broke the british naval codes and knew the british fleet in the mediterranean was having some issues once it became obvious that the invasion was inevitable highly selassie made this declaration all men and boys able to carry a spear go to adis abba which is the capital every married man will bring his wife to cook and wash for him every unmarried

man will bring an unmarried woman he can find to cook and wash for him women with babies the blind and those too aged or infirm to carry a spear are excused anyone at home after receiving the receiving this order will be hanged bloody hell that's yeah that's a fucking steep cost yeah so on at 5 a.m on the 3rd of october 1935 de bono the italian general to the north crosses the mareb river and advances into ethiopia from eritrea without a declaration of war and we'll uh we'll get into that next time what a mess yeah just as i was researching this i was like i do want to highlight what a fucking mess this was like it just goes to show the state of the world leading up to world war ii yeah it's just absolute anarchy like but like that weakness

because they're appeasing italy to get italy on side while also appeasing germany to get germany to it's just like they're just very in on appeasement which is not well historically it's really yeah historically it doesn't go well no it's almost as if we shouldn't be appeasing yes maybe if you let someone have an inch they actually will take a mile or the rheinland or austria yeah or well other places yeah it's weird that this historical president for this yeah but there we're going to continue doing a sort of parallel war diplomatic political fuck-ups because they're going to run alongside each other for the whole thing but this will essentially destroy the league of nations i mean yeah a lot of world war ii in a lot

of ways yeah this is interesting this is building the the sort of the the landscape yeah for world war ii to happen and this is the this is the origin story of world war ii yeah and it's it's not no one's coming out smelling of roses here no this really starts to look like a a rod that everyone has made for their own back oh also i think i'll double check this for next time but i'm also pretty certain at this point in time ethiopia is the only self-governed african kingdom on the continent that's everywhere else is owned by colonials yeah so it's sort of one last land grab yes and it's it's causing massive issues because it's allowing for nations that play a major role in world war ii against these allied

nations to to posture yeah this is such a messy place to be yeah it boggles the mind because it's sort of you know there's objective incorrect moves made by nations that make them the the bad people in world war ii yeah but there's also mistakes made allowances given that allow them to build to the point they're at yeah and world war one was a weird clusterfuck but also like the top the top blowing off like a release valve from what i can see yeah world war one seems like a sort of rube goldberg machine yes that's been built up through decades centuries and then it just kind of happens through the strangest of circumstances yeah and world war ii is the the sort of aftermath of that and all these nations that seem to be just making missteps well i'd

i'd be very interested to hear any uh insight from the fans on this as well but from what i've been reading it seems basically once they signed the treaty of versailles world war ii was happening well like in a lot like obviously the fuck-ups here and the weakness of the league of nations is a problem but ultimately it leads back to versailles well yeah you could call world war as a sequel just slap the subtitle of unfinished business yeah on it and that's that's the film you've got that's the next chapter because it never really wrapped up again we're not people who know everything about history but if i'm talking about what i've learned from background knowledge already and your history segments it's just misstep after misstep that allows these things

to happen yeah at the end of all this i'm going to be a perfect scholar and i will have the correct opinion or certainly strong i'll probably not have a strong opinion one way or the other i'll probably stay on the fence just to be safe yeah you maybe get off this fence yeah it's not a fence i want to be on i know who were bad i know who were trying to fight the bad people and that's kind of all i know i'm just a i'm just a little guy andy yeah we're both just little guys we're both just people who are trying to play a big board game we're trying to learn along the way we're just having fun and part of that fun is you know i'm i'm enjoying my uh my christmas present from you which was a lovely 12 year scotch so it's dry january's gone it is i can

enjoy that now so i i feel welcome to a monsoon february got a month for drinking a capture one well this this has hit me a lot more uh than i anticipated i can i can feel this um so i think the only way we can really bring each other together now unlike the treaty of versailles or appeasement is something much more capable of doing so something that's tried tested and works and that has to be common ground it does and now for something nicer a little oasis in the war it's time for some common ground i'm trying to interrupt the common ground i'm recording maybe so common ground is the segment in which you and i find a topic to discuss and use that to

unite one another something controversial something exciting something gentle something beautiful something subtle humble and brave that we can both agree on and become friends at the end of this era of conflict and andy this week it's your turn it is what is your topic no suits for men for 30 years oh okay no suits for men for 30 years now that's uh there seems to be some specificity within this okay you've picked 30 years yep and you've picked just suits for men what is the rationale i feel like suits were invented like i think the like early 1800s uh yeah that sounds about right by this guy bow something just a bow tie uh but he like made suits of like the sort of muted colors and cuts we have now

as a like reaction to everyone else wearing bright clothing yeah i see the sort of like flashy imagery in my head and of like the the quite like decadent um like red and green blue sort of garments but i think it's it's like locked men's fashion into one place i think we we just that's why 30 years might be 30 years might be too long i just think let's have no seats suits for a while and see what we come up with because we're sort of we've got locked in on this one thing i see you you don't want to necessarily get rid of suits because of how they look you want the next suit the next suit or yeah let's add some because everyone like the range of like men at like a wedding or something is like dark blue gray black basically yeah they're all the same

you wear like a purple suit if you're the joker yeah or like a red suit if you're like a wacky guy but they're like base suit your average suit i've i've worn a black suit i've worn a gray suit and i've worn a blue suit but i've not worn anything beyond that yeah so i i see what you mean in terms of ride because i like a suit i'm i'm i think that i might be wrong here because i think the suit for men might be a bit like the bike where you can sort of update the materials but the core thing it's kind of already solidified in what it needs to be yeah but i want to give it 20 years to see if we've accidentally stopped at the penny farthing oh that's a very good way to put this yeah yes maybe there is something afterwards yeah maybe we've locked in too early

but did the penny farthing come because they stopped using penny farthing for 30 years no i almost certainly not it's because it was unwieldy and bad desire but that was the analogy let's not dive too far into it but yeah but let's just free some people used to wear like the big pantaloons brightly colored vests and jackets and tunics it's all it's all just become one well they did but then they came onto suits and have you worn brightly colored tunics no have you worn a suit yes what would you rather wear if i if i had both of them right now in front of us well i think i'd go for the suit but that's because everyone goes for the suit which is why i think we need a bit of restriction but it right so no one's gonna see so if i give you the two

outfits right now and i said you know i'm gonna i'm gonna leave the room you've got an hour which one are you gonna put on which one would you rather wear and not because of the the novelty of it because novelty would dictate the pandaloons let's face it but which one would you rather wear and look at yourself in the mirror which one would you like to be in most probably the pantaloons and tunic okay they're not socially acceptable this is adjacent to my poncho fingers i just think for some reason i'm not into fashion at all but i think men's fashion needs a kick up the arse i just i i just wonder because the suit because i i like i like a suit and i'm just trying to envision what other thing could come about where i'd be like i'm gonna wear that to to feel like

i'm well dressed and i guess it's sort of like imagining a new color because i don't have the capability to invent new fashion or like in the 70s like trying to predict the internet yeah like i don't have the means to think of the next thing so i can't picture it yeah so the concept of it i don't mind at all it's sort of a a fashion forest fire yes clear out the big ancient suits and let some new stuff grow and a lot of it's gonna die and suck and maybe the suit comes back hard after 20 years because no one thought of anything better but people will have interesting wedding photos baptism photos or whatever the hell and then also we might we might find some new stuff how in in essence i don't mind the idea of trying to find a new thing i just worry what i do i think

the suit's too reliable well that's it that it's it's safe it's a safety net yeah i know that if i'm going to an event and it's it's fancy i know what to wear i feel like it's much easier for men if you're if you're a guy and you you dress in a typical masculine fashion you'll wear a suit to these kind of you know formal events i feel like you know women who are into wearing a dress anyone who's you know into that kind of fashion style i feel like the the technicalities of it become a little bit more involved because then you've got so many there's like a lot of styles of dress and and this might be a nuance that i don't really see because i'm like i'm not very fashionable like there's different types of suits but i just kind of look at a suit and go blue suit

gray suit black suit and i know you can get like the different buttons and you can get like double breasted or like the cuts yeah and i don't really know what double breasted means in a suit i think it's to do with i mean it's like bigger so they go more across i think yeah and a four button i think yeah so i don't really know even much about that but i feel like with dresses it's a bit more involved like there's a lot more style to it so i don't know if this is something specific to suits or if it's something specific to formal wear. I don't know how broad this goes because that also makes me think about jeans.

I love jeans. Yeah. But are they the safe bet? Are we too comfortable with jeans as well? Yeah. Because if I get rid of jeans, then I'm absolutely fucked. I just wear jeans.

But I think there's sort of a difference between casual slash work wear. like the jeans fit into and the like formal yeah because i think people look more diverse not at events or at least men definitely yeah like if you go to a wedding everyone definitely men if you if you see a bunch of guys in suits yeah then it's kind of ten a penny like even with dresses like that's why i feel like there's more diversity within dresses because i'll go to a wedding i'll see a you know a dozen guys in suits and i'll be like they're all wearing suits they all look pretty much the same you see a dozen women in dresses and you kind of go well these

people seems like there's a wider range in dress yeah it's like the variety is there yeah like you have some with you know like go over the shoulder some that are you know strapless uh some that have like the leg slit some that are you know sort of big and wider out yeah whereas with a suit it's like but you've got like three buttons or two buttons yeah and if you're like very adventurous you might get one that's like maroon well yeah like and who's gonna go to a wedding and wear the weird suit yeah elderly people can get away with it you can get like a an elderly guy who's wearing like a brown suit yeah because that's not yeah that's i don't know what that is but that is or they look better.

I don't know. Yeah, I remember my great-grandad who passed, he would wear these quite baggy, almost oversized suits. And you would see it and be like, well, yeah, this is his style. He can pull this off. Yeah. He's elderly.

This is his jam. And you'd look at him and go, this works. If I was to wear that, I would feel, and I think others would feel, that's weird. I think if you're not old and you've got an oversized suit on, it looks like you're wearing your dad's suit up to the age of 40 almost. Yeah, and I'm like

yeah, so maybe there's like a generational thing as well to it. I feel like there's a lot of moving parts to this. I'm kind of worried about getting rid of the suit, Andy. I don't know that I can survive getting rid of it. I don't know what's moving in to that space, but I would like that's what I'm interested in.

Do you have a do you have a vague idea, just a vague suggestion of what could come next? is it going to be crazy different or is it going to be like an evolution of the suit i mean maybe we're bringing some old stuff back okay sort of like when like flared jeans came back yeah maybe we go back or maybe yes someone comes up with some totally new i guess the thing is if we're getting rid of suits how far back are we going here are we going tunic no i think suit as a

shirt tie maybe vest like what we're thinking of yeah not like a long coat or but I meant how far back are we going to reinvent something like if something's coming back is it the tunic that's coming back

I think there'll be a couple of really interesting years and then they'll settle and get boring again and then the suit comes back because the way I see it historically you've got the suit before that you have the kind of tunic yeah pantaloons

I think before that you had like a cloak which I don't mind a cloak we talked about this cloaks ponchos we like these

but I don't know I worry that we might have actually just got to the end point I say maybe that's what I don't like that it's the end yeah

it's just done you don't like an end maybe not I don't like an ending yeah I don't do well with endings so maybe the suit

maybe the suit has to stay because if we end it maybe this is a reason it has to go but if the suit stays Andy what you have to accept then is that there's no end if we get rid of the suit and it comes back then we have the definitive answer we're at the end

then we've got an answer and I'm fine right so you just need an answer I need maybe we stopped at the right place I just want to make sure we're not on a petty farthing and again that's an analogy I love i'm gonna use this in more context this is you know what that is great like business nonsense

speak oh the penny farthing problem it's like a best-selling business self-help book it's like the perfect bullshit statement to say when you're like you want a better idea it's like let's not stop at the penny farthing guys what you've done there is you've made one of the wonkiest phrases I wouldn't leave something in the world oh maybe that's what this is maybe this is about misunderstanding where we're at

maybe this is about wanting more when maybe sometimes there isn't but that's why maybe 30 years is too long but I think like say 10 to 15 because then you've got like sort of 5 years of people figuring stuff out

then a bit of like oh we've settled on a new thing it's just then the suit comes back in and maybe the suit doesn't beat the new thing we've settled on but the issue is maybe someone wearing a suit is like a guy in a suit of armor or like i'd wear a suit of armor then maybe that's maybe people will bring back like the stereotypical historic wear functional clothes yeah maybe it's scots will have kilts brits will have like i don't know red coats or like tabards over armor like i feel like we're we're in a dangerous point in history to start regressing back to yeah maybe regressions not because a lot of a lot of cultures still enjoy wearing them yeah and a lot of cultures have

moved away from them some for good reason i feel like because the thing is with common ground you never want to reinvent something that causes political tension. Because it's not like a common ground at that point. The thing that's meant to bring us together causes widespread tension, and we need that. Yeah, let's not do that.

Also, I'm approaching my 30s now. I don't want to be banished from the suit until I'm mid-40s. I feel like I'm going to lose my best suit years. Tough? No, not tough. I can't

i can't hit 30 if they're your best suit years they're your best clothing years yes so whatever it's the suit it's the suit i just don't think anything else is gonna do it but but what i am up for we can keep the suit yeah but we normalize experimentation at formal events and we start small we start with the different colored suits we start with the maroon suit so we get rid of black tie we get rid of black tie yeah we save formal wear yeah and then we go fancy wear oh and after that we just go uncommon wear yeah what if the the crows are we talking the big collars yeah the big white the one you see shakespeare with and all the portraits well that would be fun if they came back that would be interesting yeah the wigs the powdered

wigs they don't really work with a suit but they work with robes yeah like a judge so maybe maybe we get rid of the suit and then we it opens up a whole world of weird hardware you know what put it all together let's see what mixes and matches right okay here we go so for for formal events we say formal wear but we don't specify the era of time that's fun because it also you can have a stab at formal wear from the future i like that because it's formal wear and who knows what that might end up as that's way better there we go formal wear can be from any time and we almost you'll have a bit of a he's not how to go there yeah like and don't get you don't need to ban it but yeah let's

encourage other stuff and when we say you can like do formal wear from the future don't get silly and wear like tinfoil it's like what that's not the future don't just put shiny things on and say it's the future make an effort yeah tell us what you think the future formal wear would be and you know what that's where we find the fashion because you might end up with a bunch people with wedding photos where they're in the sort of piped Marvel-style bodysuits. And you know what?

Eventually, someone will show up to an event and they will say, this is the formal wear of the future. And you know what, Andy? One day, someone will be right. And everyone there will be like, I'm nicking that. And then 200 years from now someone will be like, everyone needs to start wearing flangles for formal events.

And they'll look back and they'll go, this was the guy. And you know where he got it from? He got it from listening to a podcast he listened to war with a mate and he listened to the episode from february of 2026 and he thought he'd be subtle humble and brave and that's what he did and he changed the world and my message to everyone listening is change the world while also staying subtle humble and brave in the deserts of your minds and you take this idea and you run with it and you never stop running never give up

never surrender goodnight We'll see you next time. Choose firmer or softer. Adjust cooler to warmer. And right now, save up to $2,500 during our massive Labor Day event. Hurry into your local Sleep Number store today, because we have your number.