War With A Mate - Episode 69: Coming Together

Episode Date: March 28, 2026

A rain of hellfire from the skies…is what both guys intended to deliver, however James encounters some obstacles for his air missions while Andy continues to control the skies. James’ alter ego makes an appearance in the mailbag, the History Segment takes us gradually closer to Italy as WWII knew it, and the conclusion of the Common Ground is the perfect position for the guys to try and come together.

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Because we have your number. Hello, welcome to War with a Mate with me, James. Me, Andy. What with the May? If you don't know what it does, read the label. It says for indoor and outdoor use only. That's an actual warning label I had on Christmas lights once. Well, don't be putting them up in doorways, I guess, or entry points. That actually feels quite apt for Christmas lights. Yeah. And also, I feel like if you want to do that, just say don't use this in a doorway. i think it's use them inside or outside don't have a combo don't have a bit inside and a bit

outside then the warning label needs to be more clear it hasn't helped and i'm fully willing to accept that on your behalf but our warning label says highly flammable do not give to children because this is a a podcast full of high intensity conversation and the adult theme of playing a board game until you die we're playing the campaign for north africa we have been for over a year now and we will be forever more until one of us croaks it that's the unfortunate reality and boy is it fun it's much more fun than it used to be yes it's uh this one was a bit low energy i think but still better than still but the looking back a year to the us trying to get the rules uh is still fairly fresh i will i don't think i think we'll have to

forget that before we start having a bad time with the game again i'll happily take low energy over what we used to have i had i had so much energy if anything i was a more you were running too hot i was a more energized man i was full of fire and vigor nowadays no more i don't have that the game actually if anything took that out of me the game has stolen something from me and it's my soul because giving an offering i i don't want it to have that i wasn't offering it it wasn't on the cards i wanted to play the game and be done with it i wanted to tackle it and win you saying that actually feels a little bit like the game won oh it has do i need to spin back around and become angry again i mean you can it won't matter it looks like being angry at the sky it's just a

part of your life you can't control but deeply affects your life but the thing is in this situation the sky comes in a small cardboard box takes up 10 feet of room and also has rules where you determine what the sky looks like once every couple of weeks it's a sort of complex meta sky it's i'd say it's beautiful if i wasn't angry if i wasn't trapped in it i've become angry again yeah it's a lot like a desert sunset it's incredibly beautiful if you're not standing in the desert don't make it art don't make it beautiful it's clearly what you were trying to do yeah i know but i i turned my back on that idea halfway through i decided quickly that i'm frustrated instead okay the sky is a very apt place to start because that's where we both started

and ended today yes it was all sky it was all not quite blue sky no it was quite blue for my guys Yeah, there were some people fighting in the shade, as it were. Yeah, because I had 26 bombers that rushed out to try and take on the 7th Armoured. And 11 of them did not make it. No, 11 of them bit the dust. Oh, actually, I say that. Nine of them bit the dust. Two of them didn't make it to the bomb.

They got back home, though. They got back to the airstrip. Fair enough, but they didn't help this. You didn't help the fact that they were trying to do a job. no this worked out quite nicely for me yeah i guess it would because you had the superior air force and i had dog shit bombers c309s that carry four bombs a piece they don't have great range they have terrible maneuverability and subpar tack air you know what this one told me about my air force it was actually quite illuminating is i've been misusing those gladiator planes

in what sense because you haven't been shooting down the c309s because i've been trying to use the this time i sent 30 of them like two and a half squads worth basically to guard the fourth and i sent my good planes to guard the seventh because i thought it's much more likely you'll go for the seventh and the fourth um with the gladiators not there it went much better i think those are now going to be strafing planes not air combat planes for me i actually like it the other way around where i can shoot them down as we go yes i know which is why i've changed quite the contrarian we have in our midst yes just because you don't like it doesn't mean that i don't want it well it does mean i don't have to give you it but we are friends after common ground right oh

so we're not friends right now we're frenemies because I'm in your house so I can do I guess small acts of arson small acts of theft I mean you could but don't well again we go back to the you might not want it but I can

still do it I feel you should stop doing that I haven't started yet or if I have I'm sorry that you caught me I did I'm sorry you caught me not that I did it what i did do is not quite arson but it's i guess a level up i did drop some bombs because

it's a level up from awesome yes because the 14 surviving bombers did still drop a hefty bomb load definitely not what i wanted and i got an incredible roll of 64 out of 66 on the dice bearing in mind this d66 system means that a lot of numbers don't exist within the scale yes you don't get any 59s that's not a thing anything with a seven eight or nine it basically isn't it doesn't exist but i did get a 64 which is two off max which would have been great if i had the bombs that i intended to have if i had even more bombs that would have been greater but i guess we're just talking hypothetical it's getting philosophical at that point what i did manage to do is drop some bombs on your seventh armor division and pin a whole infantry you did

got them pinned got them locked down following that i moved on to your trucks and i went to strafe that didn't go as well i'll admit no no strafing on the trucks which good also part of the seventh armoured that i was going for just leave my trucks alone you retaliated with a fairly measured response of bombing first of all against the group of tanks that broke off from the trivoli regiment which is now entirely armor that little group that i've still got along the northern coast you drop some bombs on there and you you got one uh group worth but if it's armor it needs to be two to take an armor and since it's all armor you got diddly squat you got jack i got nothing i'm counting a tiny win on some sort of information as it were but nothing

directly effective you got jack but i'm james so nothing happened you've been saving that one haven't you uh no that actually just came to me in the moment uh that is i it's again we we wax about what is and isn't art or beautiful i'll leave that to the listeners it's probably for the best beauty is in the eye of the beholder if you would like to email in about how lovely that made you feel inside you're welcome to just make sure you make sure you find me personally on my own social media

let me know in advance so I can stop Andy from deleting it from the inbox not gonna work yeah also don't dox me I guess don't dox me don't want to be doxed yeah I don't know why you sort of invited that yeah I live a cursed life there is

no winning there is no positive so drop some ineffective bombs on your armor guys and I'm pleased about that I'm less pleased about what followed because you dropped a much less measured response a much more hefty one 270 bombs

on the Bardia garrison now they moved a little bit further south after the last engagement that they had I tried to put them in a position that put you in an awkward one that meant you had to cross through two zones of control to pass through a a little tunnel

an avenue a what? channel oh I think it said shangle and i thought i knew i thought i learned a new word i was excited it's a fun word for sort of a messy passage you have to get through but shangle yeah i don't mind shangle actually oh i had to get my driver's license reviewed it was a real shangle oh i like that it's not quite hassle or farce no it's like you have to navigate through something yeah it's something awkward

to navigate through yeah it is a shangle it adds a geographical element to it yeah it's like a location i like that because driving license works well uh note that one down we'll we'll create a board of new words you're actually noting that down i'm gonna open a tab when we finish this podcast i'll send a very angry confusing letter to the dictionary with some words they need to add i like that you're angry that's in the spirit of what we do that's going in the dictionary angry in the wrong places that could be another name of the podcast or andy in the wrong places could be a spin-off where we send you off around the world do a sort of idiot

Carl Pilkington-esque I was just thinking Idiot Abroad, yeah Andy in the Wrong Places, watch this space coming to YouTube Red this summer I'd love that, it's just get paid to travel Is YouTube Red still a thing? No

Or if it is, I feel sorry for who I was making stuff for I know they've got Now TV but that's not YouTube and I know you've got Amazon Prime but that's not YouTube You've got Netflix but that's not YouTube don't have youtube premium even let alone youtube red i would the only time i got youtube premium was when we went on holiday to budapest and i needed to download some episodes of i i downloaded

guy months spelling spelling bee yes and watched a few episodes of that on the plane uh fun um dive in actually good segue a lovely shout out from the guys at um worst idea of all time yes they read your email yes found it funny in that episode after the laughter too they had a jolly good time poking fun at our situation and enjoying uh what what we're up to and i feel like anybody's listening but if you want to listen to guys funnier than us do long drawn out things they don't have to that is the podcast to go yeah that's sort of the the the best version of what we could be doing yeah that's what we that's what we could be but we're picking to do this instead it's not that we couldn't do that oh yeah definitely could we could rise to the meteoric

comedic rights uh that they are but uh we we're busy we're busy for a long time yeah so that bombing run wow three infantry pinned it's left you one unpinned one unpinned of my infantry so you got one gun and one infantry and nine guns in there how's he gonna man all those guns thankfully they come man don't worry folks it's all right they're protected i would like to steal them my guns yes i know this isn't new information it's just troubling information it's stuff you didn't need to say out loud i've gauged that you're trying to take my stuff well i think that bombing run went about as well i could have rolled higher but in terms of like doing what it had to i think that bombing run helped a lot in terms of that

above the escarpment area yeah i think that area has now become a little bit more uneasy for me because your movement's coming up yes this is this is why i was also very glad we got normal weather for this is because if sandstorm or rainstorm completely scuppers this plan of mine whatever your plan is i i don't mind that the weather is good if it facilitates your plan fair enough but it means that i'm not also getting absolutely buggered by the weather i'd much rather you have a plan that goes off without a hitch and i also get to respond without a hitch yeah well what i'm really interested in here is does the double turn feel impactful even in like what is for me probably a relatively bad

game state at the minute but does the double turn I'm sort of figuring out is that something in the repertoire that's going to be used is it going to be a consistent thing like if I have initiative for three off stages

in a turn is this going to be a common thing or is it going to be rare because I'm interested in how this goes and then also you're going to have two movements back to back most likely well that's it i guess you've got first of all that trade-off you've mentioned of every time you do that you then have to look at sacrificing a go and giving me a double

turn yeah which probably isn't i don't imagine that's ideal for you no and as well as that what does it look like because for me i find myself in a different headspace looking at the board compared to last week yeah because looking at the board today knowing it's your turn again i felt a lot more negative than i did last week oh good there's i was worried you were gonna say positive it's like no this so this hasn't worked at all definitely not positive because there's something about in the moment ending the movement phase and going right that's where everyone is let's go again and then going again and realizing oh they're all where they were you've moved i've not and then knowing that you're gonna do it again well you've not escaped the shangle i haven't i'm

not uh i've not outshangled myself yet instead i've ended up in the same position that i was because i can't move and you're gonna go again so whatever tactic i had i'm i'm sort of a turn lagging i'm i'm an i'm an upstage behind yeah which i thought would be beneficial in some ways but i don't know that i'll be able to capitalize on this i think you might pull some stuff out the bag i've not really planned for as is always the case to be fair you talk about not being in a great game state i'm in a comfortable game state i don't know that i'm in a better game state i'm in one of the most comfortable i've been i think i've got a really good defensive point but looking at it today is that is that good is that a positive one or is it just better than it

was i'd say this you're not achieving any map objectives from here but you've got the one banked um it's a it looks like a horrible position to be attacking yeah i'll say that like i don't know if it depends what you're wanting if you're wanting to hold that line which i have to break through game state wise it's part why i'm feeling bad you're golden if you want to take city barani back it'll look very different but well yeah if i want to take sydney brani back i i'm in a really bad game state yeah i like to see myself as netflix when they've recently released the peaky blinders movie this is a situation where i can comfortably sit and take in the money but i'm being critically panned there's there's

positives and there's negatives i've released what is objectively a bad piece of media i'd say you're up to you're at the end of season six at the minute it's up to you to fuck it up by doing a move that's a better analogy we've both watched that film recently and we

don't have nice things to say about it I really wanted to and I went into it with like I'm gonna give this some leeway and it's recency bias is a thing

but it might be up there with the most disappointed I've ever been if you go from highs to lows definitely because on a on a sort of level platform it's a fine film it's average I guess it doesn't make much sense without the context of the show but it's just

kind of average I actually think it's a bad film by itself oh really I do that yeah I think it's not just a let down because of how good Peaky Blinders is I think it's a weak film it's a hot it's it's the el camino of peaky blinders but it doesn't yeah i really like el camino and before el camino came out i was massively against it i was like there's nothing

more to add you're not going to gain anything we did a little watch party and i remember you being really apprehensive to even come and watch it i was not i was thinking i'm not going to watch this yeah we live together and you were you considering sitting it out while our friend came to watch it because you weren't interested so good it's incredibly i was like oh okay this might work for people like this and then basically the immortal man is everything i was afraid el camino would be if it failed we'll not give any spoilers but if you if you're a fan of the show which i mean this film as well this film is set in world war ii there's even a mention of the north african campaign which both of us touched on a bit today we like that that's our jam but

unfortunately that reference doesn't save it for me it's still bad it's bad film but that that's the situation i'm in right now all of the power is in my hands to sit on something that's good or allow myself to take a risk that realistically can't pay off i've got all the building blocks for a good steadfast hold of what i currently have or i can reach for city barani the netflix movie of this campaign for north africa practice run and absolutely ruin it i'm not going to do that i think and i'm not i'm not afraid to put my position out here in front of you i think this is something that ghq would be able to obtain through the enigma messages i'm not going to go for city barani i'm going to hold you off for these last two turns this is up stage three of

turn four we've got two full turns to go a lot has changed in the course of two turns before but this position is so vast that i hold and your supply line can't and i say that with confidence can't sustain the kind of fights you've had in the past that regularly yeah the the tempo is i'll say this i think the tempo is not sustainable long term it might be sustainable to the end i think if yes if you go ham yes because i'll say this i think all my big divisions are probably good for water and fuel till the end of the game at this point oh i i completely believe that i do not think water or fuel would be an issue for you they're all good on stores for turn five stores for turn five again i believe my interest is disrupting stores for turn six yes

it's ammo but what i'm hoping is truck stage turn five op stage one yeah supply store run and then the remaining five op stages are essentially ammo shipping yes which is a sustainable main game it's not but might mean i could like really go at you for these remaining two i have two separate plans to disrupt your ammo supply that's the way i see ammo supply stores it's a nice to have it's not a very realistic goal i don't think i can stop you storing your man up if i can it means you can't make offensive moves in the last turn of this opposite of this practice run which really fucks me that means that you have to play the defensive which i'm also playing so turn six is a very boring few weeks of this podcast listening if

james's plan succeeds on my trucks uh turn six is gonna be boring cool it's usually me that discourages people to listen to this so it's nice that you've taken that role if we're sharing the load if that happens it's going to be abysmal for both of us it means we're just sat waiting out those last couple turns well that last turn and three op stages if however the more realistic situation is i can't stop that i need to try and diminish your ammo supply as much as i can and i can do that two ways one disrupt your supply line that's ideal yep that is the golden plan that is my primary objective the second is sacrifice units the way i have been by holding the ground against repeated assault and hope that you over commit over and over until you finally

yeah you finally end up with no ammo and your trucks struggle to make it across those wastes with hopefully a bit of hot weather occasionally and it means that you have so much breakdown that you don't end up having much of an ammo supply certainly not one to sustain you the way you've had I will at the end

of this turn have the most trucks I've had since this scenario started but that just means when the percentages kick in for breakdown it's a bigger loss oh yeah so I'll take that the law of averages is in my favour

oh definitely but uh i'm gonna work around that a bit we're in we're in an interesting point here where we're two-thirds in and we've wrapped up that air stage we've got the final movement section coming up for turn four how are you feeling i know we've talked there about the positions that we're in when it comes to end game state when it comes to upstage three of turn six what are you feeling i have a plan with some leeway in it that i think will work leeway is important because this game keeps on changing doesn't have to

yes i've stopped planning for certainties i've started planning for like if it goes 40-50% well rather than if it goes well. Good way to play it. Which is probably going to help. But I do have a plan I don't want to give too much away but I think I've got some stuff

to throw at you and I guess I will give this away. I think I can get Bardia. That's worrying because that's the opposite of what I thought this would be. I thought you were going to make a push as far as you could

but that Bardia was sort of a foregone conclusion that it's in my hands being able to take Bardia means you've absolutely broken my defensive line being able to break that with your what four divisions

I've got fourth and seventh for full strength there down south second New Zealand is under strength but probably on par with one of your divisions the 6th Australian

are firing along the north coast road they're also probably 2 3rd strength but equal to your yours and then I've got a smattering like this turn

I'll be moving the Polish brigade up to Mersa Matruh on the train got another thing so I'd say 4-ish divisions and then you can maybe round it up to five with the other stuff. Okay.

Yeah, five. My divisions I know are, from the combats we've had now, I know my divisions are weaker than yours. I think I can hold it. This is interesting, the fact that we have different perceptions on how this ends

because I feel like a lot of the time we're either on the side of we're both thinking less of ourselves or we both see the victor in a particular situation the fact that we're now both feeling comfortable I think is a first

so I don't know what that's going to pan out like, one of us is wrong I think it's a good sign because it's one of us will be wrong yes but it's a comfort with the game thing I think I don't even know that it's that

because I'm not comfortable with the game I know the rules I wouldn't say I'm not comfortable. I'm more comfortable. I wouldn't say I've gone to just fully comfortable, no. Well, if you had, I'd be angry because you've been doing practice runs on your own. I've done this scenario like three times.

Get a life. What's wrong with... If you've done this three times... I should be doing much better. You could do so much with your time. You're a smart guy, Andy. Oh, thanks, man. Stop wasting your life.

Oh, how dare you. And I'm not just talking about that. Stop doing the podcast. You're better than this. What the fuck are you doing? You do realize what you could be doing with the time that we play this game? What?

I've got anything. So much. We don't have time to rattle it all off. Okay, boy, let's shut this all down. I think we have to move away from that. Let's walk away from this. Let's walk away from the gameplay. We've covered that.

We've covered what we've done. Let's jump into the mailbag. Let's look in that sack. The mailbag is, well, the email mailbag is dwindling a little bit. We're looking to backfill that. However, we are now dipping back into the webform mailbag. We have a few different mailbags, you see. And the one that we're looking at today is actually a series of messages from the mailbag, ones that we've neglected for some time. And I'm very sorry about that because it comes from someone with a glorious name james yes or the the moniker that he has taken on throughout these web forms better james that i take some i take some umbrage with

i appreciate the confidence i i i gotta say i don't weird that i quite like um someone who's humble subtle even the bravery in this instance is completely unwarranted however better james has sent a few through to us so we have his saga to read through a few questions some good points so andy why not get into the first one uh hi from oz uh you get this for complaining in ep9 that no one's emailing you back uh back tattoo ideas the entire map of sea uh campaign for north africa obviously pilot where enjoy the listen hope you lads keep it up cheers better james uh episode nine was was definitely where we that makes sense we did bring this on yeah we were i think we've had a few say you've been begging in episode nine we begged for a while and then we we got it

in droves we got what we begged for uh back tattoo ideas for the campaign for north africa uh yeah because we we'd mentioned that back then in terms of what kind of back tattoos ideas you know we could have yeah and what what ideas we could have in general for any sort of paraphernalia to put in our bodies uh what scares the hell out of me is the idea of all of those hexes being tattooed on our back i guess yeah that would be painful it would be painful yeah i think a large camel perhaps the camel would be i'd take a camel uh a caricatured camel oh yeah in terms of uh pilot where um good question we lost the pilot episode the original recording a little while ago um well before we could actually send it to anyone when we promised to so that's not great

that has been lost to the void uh an offering to the gods of podcasting it's got to be somewhere the original mention of deserts of our minds came from that recording i want to find it i have to have it somewhere but unfortunately we'll just have to move on to the next question for now the next email which is again better james hi andy and james better james again loving the podcast as i've now worked my way to episode 34 that's some progress because i don't think it was a very long span of time between the two another question regarding the game could the listeners be assigned to one of the divisions on the board as an australian i'd like to be part of the ninth division love the history segments looking forward to the wrap-up of the 28th maori battalion

thanks better james well the wrap-up for the 28th maru battalion was one of my favorite history segment pieces absolutely loved what you did with that andy loved learning about them loved their story uh hated how some of it ended up because a lot of it was grim towards the end just unpleasant behaviors imparted on them but a crazy good story amazing group of people as well like scary one of the best things we've covered in my opinion as well fixed bayonets just get out of lads and it was a good day diary entry yeah i love those guys 40 seconds street battle uh everything about them just a terrifying group of folk and could listeners be assigned to one of the divisions on the board well come the main game we are looking at um some interactive aspects of of

this project so we're going to be expanding things a lot when it comes to the main game the way that we broadcast the spreadsheets the bootkeeping some side projects we've got going on a lot of things that all tie into this we've invested in some camera equipment yeah we've got quality pictures for everything involved yeah we've got a lot of stuff in the works so this year is going to be a big one for extra extra projects because we'll finish the practice scenario this year we'll get into the main game this year and we've got some of the peripheral stuff this idea of listeners being assigned to units is part and parcel of one of those things so keep an eye out on that better james and everyone else uh the saga continues

better james again each time i use this name i like it less maybe i'll stop when the campaign's finished oh no that's so long that's far too long i don't like it maybe i'll hang on to it for three decades better james cash at me let me know how much to buy this moniker from you uh continuing i love the history segments i do hope to hear about the rats of tabrook in a future segment definitely will have been mentioned a few times they will be getting their own series at some point uh i'm excited for that probably the main game because it'll involve some nazis so oh that'll a while off yes um but uh if you could talk to richard big and ask him anything about the game why would it be the camels uh looking forward to more keep up the effort lads uh cheers better

james i mean he's right it's gotta be the camels because we've they've become almost a totem of our lack of understanding about the game yeah they do personify the confusion that we have of the game they are the one of the undefeated mysteries the camel in the gaps because it's the fact that it's not misunderstanding of the game it's that there is actually no explanation and at this point i can say that with complete confidence that the game does not explain what happens with camels so at this stage absolutely that is the thing i would ask richard berg i'd thank him oh yeah i'd say this is a project we can't do without this game and it's given us i would say between these hundreds of hours we've played it's given us literally minutes of fun

so i thank him for that it's given us time to kill and that's i think he he made this game for people to bite off more than they can chew and that's what we've done we're choking on it right now i would say if it weren't for camels since that's kind of the obvious one i'd maybe ask if the because in the some of the articles we've read some of the information that we found out outside of this he had plans to introduce a bakery system like an economic factor outside of africa that would impact shipments yeah he mentioned i think he actually mentioned in the booklet that they were looking at like german bakery production levels and yeah i guess i'd similar question would be like okay so if time and money hadn't been an issue

what would that have where would this have ended like yes that's it where how far would you have went yes if you had i guess not unlimited time and money because i think one thing i've learned richard berg is if he had unlimited time and money this does not end but if you had another couple years if you had unlimited budget within those couple years what else becomes part of the game yeah and there's also the whole thing because yeah i guess this is some weird you're talking to him uh but also like computers like how much worse would this have been if he'd been able to use a computer while he was both making it and managing it well that goes back to a point i think of a lot about this which is if you introduce computing into this you actually take away a lot of what

this is because we are automating some of the spreadsheets but we're having to we're having to actively do that we're having to take affirmative action to automate stuff that is so granular yeah that it doesn't yeah we have spoke about this a bit before where is this was a full game it would be on the like simple end of like save all the paradox like harvey and crusader kings it would be on very much the light end of it yeah because when you think about like i i think of um stellaris is the one i go to because i played a fair bit of stellaris a few years ago i was in a bit of a phase and that is more complicated than i think spreadsheets of this game are

when it comes to boiling them down. Yeah, if you had to manage it, you would never be able to turn a Stellaris. There's too much stuff. If you transplanted Stellaris to this format, it becomes unmanageable in a very

different way. So computers would be an interesting factor, but I think if anything we would just encourage them to be more gung-ho with how complicated it gets. I would have loved to see this. I mean, would have been like never finished not just potentially

never finished in our lifetime but if he had done like I'm going to expand the board now we're doing the Mediterranean as well it's not the campaign for North Africa it's World War 2 Mediterranean and then he gets more

time and now he's done all of Russia as well it's just World War 2 the game and it's every single factor you could think of yes it accounts for civilian casualties through heart disease in every country as well as military factions yes there's underlying medical condition attrition rule for air pollution in london i i think it could go really bad so in in some ways the mystique of richard berg having passed it's it's a damn shame i'd love to ask him questions but not being able to even dream

of asking him questions means we have to figure this one out i think it does give the game a thing of like here's a thing someone's made you can't ask them any questions it just has to stand on its own it's like yeah pre-internet yeah a lot of the fun comes from not knowing what to do yeah better james continues as of yesterday i've now completed episode 57 and i'm curious to find out if the black shirt attack on alexandria has paid off spoiler alert no uh no um the black shirt attack didn't actually manifest yes there was some uh reading of the air transport rules for soldiers yeah the the drop-off would have been grand and it would have been impactful and it never happened instead we're stuck with the saharan detachment surrender at

alexandria you talked at length in episode 57 common ground about real life pay to win and who justifies the value of art and it reminded me of a tax dodge theory person makes 22 million dollars in profit a year so he commissions his artist friend to make a painting then he gets his art gallery friend to evaluate the painting as being worth 22 million dollars person donates sent out to the gallery getting a 22 million write-off yeah that's that's horrible that's that's my fear i say fear i know what's happening that is how a lot of modern art works yeah yeah i don't i don't like the i don't like that tax dodge theory because i know it happens yeah that's not even a theory it just you're just talking about an example of something that

may well have happened the values are different the event definitely happened there's a further a theory on that that they'll get up and coming artists or like buy a bunch of their stuff and then get them addicted to drugs so they like are no longer productive or like die oh so it means to increase the value it's a scarcity thing yeah which again is that's another step on the art conspiracy from the very real money laundering thing but also believable yeah i don't i don't think that's too far from reality yeah that happened at least once in history i can say that with complete confidence oh yeah um but away from the esoteric horrors of life regarding the game it'd be cool to do a civ 5 style end of game time lapse of the board over the course of 111

turns showing rough territory lines moving back and forth with each conflict thought it would be cool to implement something like that sounds like with the detailed bookkeeping you guys are doing it could be fed into a model loving the chats excited and sad to catch up as i'll no longer be able to binge back-to-back episodes better james that is the plan at the end of it uh and also gives us time to develop it but that the bootkeeping will be detailed enough that yeah we can feed it onto a model and at the end we'll have a time lapse where you can also go and click on anything and see how that's a i would love to do that at the very end of sort of well you have the know-how the thing is you are a a tech whiz your job is in software you you do actually

develop things with i think probably a modicum of more detail than what we're doing it's more case of you work within businesses yes this is all completely in-house yes you're the only one doing it, and it's something that hasn't been done before. You don't have anything to come and pull information from. No, I can't just copy someone's GitHub project and change some namespaces.

You've got a project that no one's done before. So we do have that as an idea. But it'll be... Get the bootkeeping right by the time the game starts, and then any... If the bootkeeping's good enough, any of these

very ambitious things we've thing to think about we can do because we'll have the information and so it's yeah the priority is getting it so we have all of that and worth mentioning again just a quick refresh for anyone who's interested in the physical bootkeeping and the the spreadsheets all of that detail when it comes to the full game we will be making sure when we start the full game we can show that through and through that we can show it it'll be with a bit of a lag just so we have time to adjust stuff throughout the week for our homework bits and make sure everything's up to date

but we will be making it visible probably like a tin log maybe but the idea is fairly close to real time-ish and also that's to keep us honest as well because I'm sure some of you guys will

crack them open and be like you've messed up the you've oversupplied this unit or you didn't do the evaporation right here so yes yeah two faucets of this accountability yeah accountability and transparency because it's one thing for us to play this whole game it's another for people to be able to see that we've played this full game we can talk about this until the the cows come home yes i can tell you

um on on my my life on the life of my ancestors and loved ones that this is what i spend my week doing once a week i do this yeah and i i love it and i hate it but i'm doing it and we want to be able to show that to everyone we want to show what it entails because there's parts of it where you look at it and go this isn't actually that complicated it's not complicated it just goes on and on and on it's so long yeah it just really takes a long time it's vast so we want to be able to put that out there so the detailed bookkeeping will be a massive part of the full game and by the end of it we hope to have something visual to show from it based on some of the stuff we've already had sent over to us some of you guys are incredibly invested in either this or board games

in general or history and some of the stuff you put out in terms of research or generosity with your time committed to contributing to this i've got no doubt some of you guys might put something together but we also are planning on doing that so don't feel the need to we will be doing this we'll commit to it but if you do much appreciated love to see it because they know there's something cool yeah um james goes on to his last yes the end of the song came through uh fairly recently uh found myself googling the campaign for north africa to see if anyone had played it and came across your reddit post oh this is a sort of summary but he's got some questions in here that hadn't done through his journey um across the reddit post which led me to the podcast started

listening around episode 60 and like many i was inspired to start sending in correspondence at episode 14 and made a habit of sending another web form each week until i caught up a couple of weeks ago uh they were fairly short form with maybe a single comment or question regarding the game most of which i've forgotten uh been making notes on this email to remind myself uh so here are some in no particular order uh you wonder why so many listeners and at least for me uh you wondered why you had so many listeners and at least for me i liken james's speaking style to ben yahtzee cross shore of zero punctuation fame in that fast dry cynical brit way love it uh that's a very good compliment because that's a great series i'm not cynical or dry

okay um i guess it's not a great compliment move on sorry i was being cynical and dry okay wrong time read the room no one of your catchphrases from the early episodes which has fallen to the wayside was if i was an expert at insert subject i wouldn't be playing this board game it became a quick fire at all if you felt you weren't well versed enough on a subject matter um we do use that on the podcast we do also use that on our day-to-day sort of out of the game lives quite often that's one that's fallen into uh our group lexicon yeah when we're when we're doing dnd or um i i do this so what you've got to bear in mind is outside of this podcast i talk about this podcast to people in my personal life as much as i can because it's it's something to

talk about i don't have you know i've got dnd i've got other stuff i can talk about but this is something i can talk about a great length that no one else understands so i could feel like a subject matter expert yeah no one's going to correct you so i can i can talk about it but i can spin it the other way where it's like well i don't need to worry about that i'm playing this game for the rest of my life i've spun it round i've made it a positive i've become an optimist no longer a cynic except i hate the game because it will take up the rest of my life but i do miss that i miss i miss the salad days yeah i'm kind of glad because they weren't really salad days we were we were young and experienced we didn't know what was going on that's salad days

okay uh like uh other australian listeners i'm keen to hear about the rats of tabrook in the history segment specifically the night raids uh yes uh they're on the list that you guys have sent in that i think at this point is going to be a bullet point list of every event and individual yeah in this entire period but that's awesome it gives me jumping off points so keep firing them in yeah they'll likely be uh when the germans show up in the game so i guess stick around for another 15 years yes and you'll get there you'll get there we will so some questions regarding the game uh if you had five jameses and five andes to play the game still with one commander on each side uh which do you think would be harder to manage and why is it the james side

what's that supposed to mean they sort of astutely read both of us wow he sniped that one if yeah i guess if there were five of me fucking nightmare yeah I think if I mean I'm being completely candid I'd rather be on a team of four Andes and just me than a team of four more of me

whether I'm commander or not because I know my temperament towards frustrating situations and if I'm getting pushback about supply distribution or wanting to try and push forward an air attack to defend

my land troops I'd become bitter and resentful immediately. You'd commit clonicide at some point Have you heard of fragging? Oh, when you like kill your commanding officer? Yeah

You think you would frag yourself? I think I would frag myself so there'll be five me's and less and less of you over time but we'd replace me with uh more more reasonable versions of me i guess because they know the last one got fragged it's not that way we've got an infinite pool in this situation james is talking about magic and i'm not talking in the third person here i'm referring to the email i think my team wouldn't I don't think there'd be, like, a force multiplier. I think five of me and one of me

are the same functional effect. I think, yeah, between the efficiency and the complexity of decision-making, I think it balances out. Yeah. It'd actually be a hindrance, because... There's no new... You get none of the benefits of having more people,

which is, like, new viewpoints and, like... ways of looking at things you just have five me you're quite organized though whereas i like to react in the moment yeah you're definitely more organized than i so i react in the moment you have the benefit of foresight so if five of me are reacting in the moment at least you've got five of you have come to the table with a plan whereas i'm watching the table ready for you to play and take action so it i don't know it does balance out to an extent also this isn't part of the question but paints a very funny picture in my head of one day you come around to play the game you come in you look through the hallway door into my bedroom my bed's gone it's

two bunk beds and a single bed and I'm in a dorm with myself so you have to live with them as well I assume so you didn't say that I've added that detail

you're just adding fan fiction to the war with a maid because otherwise there's four of you running around where you're like boy I hope they show up once a week and don't incriminate me in anything yeah but they're me they wouldn't they definitely would if they thought a different version of you could take the fall wow you've caught me red-handed yeah that's

you'd fuck yourself wow you god you know me well but james continues the better james the email james yes love what you all are doing the transition from binge to weekly listening was rough as expected stay discreet modest and intrepid james well it's quite the saga james and thank you for sending a a bunch of web forms because that web form section it uh it gets neglected from time to time we we don't check in on it that much but it goes to show that there are real gems in there it's been fun going through your journey it has it's a little journal of adventure seeing you go through the episodes you'll have noticed james that we've uh amalgamated some of your emails because you've managed to perfectly

capture the essence of some of your previous messages uh into the last one so we didn't we didn't double up but we really love that some great questions some very um unfortunately introspective points i'm going to have to wrestle with for a little while now a bit of clone paranoia yeah i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna have to sleep with that tonight however anyone else who wants to get in touch with us be it through the web form the instagram or the email we promised in episode nine we'll get round to it all and we will we're churning our way through the email is info at war with a mate.co.uk the website is war with a mate.co.uk and the instagram is just war with a mate and we'll answer everything we'll get round to it all related to the game or no

and as well as that some of you may already know but we have our first live show ever at the uk games expo this year may 30th on the saturday more details to follow but if you happen to be along those parts of the world by all means pop along that's where we'll be and crop as an email we'll don't know how many people are there but we'll probably do the show and then maybe a a meetup or something so we'll organize something there so if anyone's around the uk games expo or just birmingham in general i guess if you're not popping along the expo let us know we'll be there that weekend we'll put something together we'll all have a big old chin wag about the game it'll be a it'll be a grand old time we'll have a confusing conversation to anyone around us

uh that we're incredibly into and you'll realize how unstable we are when we talk about this game it's not actually fun we just have a microphone and we can edit what we say you get to see the wilds of our eyes and boy are they wild i'll grab a stranger and talk about fuel consumption you don't understand they don't understand andy the only way we've got a possible chance of understanding is to learn from the past so i i implore you tell me about the past and i will the men of the long-range desert patrols were quite a sight on their return to cairo from a month's trip the contrast between the east and west of the nile is very marked in the east at this point i gave little thought to my future but i'd always be interested in the sea

what put it i am more or less in the position of a cactus in the ship which is on the point of sinking because errors are present. We are absolutely not qualified to share views on history. Where and when in history are we? And why is it whimsical, waxical, and happier

than the Italian-Ethiopian conflict? Because we're continuing with our king. We are. Victor Emmanuel III. We're way in the past. Yeah. We're building up steam back towards the events but uh covering this guy so uh you remember umberto one i do his big mustache dad yes i

remember him very clearly because i've looked at pictures of that mustache and wow it's big yeah so here's the quote he gave his son about rulership to start things off i'm sure it's inspirational remember to be king all you need to know is how to sign your name read a newspaper and bound a horse. That's terrible advice. That's terrible advice from anyone. A father, that's abysmal. It's horrible advice from a father.

It's also the worst. It's not good advice for a ruler. No, it doesn't help anything. No. That's not at all constructive. No. But yes, he ascended to the Italian throne on the 29th of May at the age of 30.

um his big mustache dad was dead at the hands of an anarchist called uh chatino breski but after his father's death he immediately went to work calling the prime minister giuseppe saracco or joseph saracco for a meeting uh two days after his father's death right so he's straight into it right into it the prime minister is leaving the king's funeral chapel when victor summons him to his study and the prime minister comes in and tries to give the general condolences but the king's right to business he's looking over this big pile of paperwork on his desk and their decrees the king hadn't had a chance to sign yet and he points a pile out to the prime minister of decrees that the new king does not think are in keeping with the constitution

so he's not going to sign them immediately the prime minister tries to explain that it wasn't the king's job to make that decision and that he should just sign them like his father had to which victor retorts yes but from now on the king will only sign his own mistakes and not those of others this is an interesting direction it is this is not the italy that i've known from the other history segments no this seems a bit more of a level-headed and uh more of a investigative italy yeah he's a he's an this guy's a really interesting guy considering his place in history but um so yeah the prime minister immediately gets upset at the the notion of this and offices offers his resignation that's a fucking bold move to immediately quit yeah uh the king just

ignores that he just continues talking and just doesn't doesn't even acknowledge it and goes on to like explain his uh worldview and explain that you would be reading all the decrees before signing them i do not be able to claim to solve the present difficulties by my efforts alone but i am convinced that these difficulties have a single cause in italy few people perform their jobs precisely there is too much laxity and laxity everyone without exception must strictly observe their obligations i will set an example by fulfilling all my duties the ministers will help me but not by lulling anyone into vain illusions not promising what they are not promising what they are certain they can keep so he's he's got this like i'm gonna do my job right yeah which

compared to his parents and a lot of nobility european nobility is quite a refreshing thing to see yeah it's quite unusual because it seems to be very much a case of he's not going to go along with the flow of things however he's been brought up in an environment i mean the quote at the start says it all yeah that's what he's an interesting like he's not quite a product of his environment fully i don't think he's booking the trend yeah but unfortunately history dictates that he didn't actually book the trend enough things changed again he couldn't fully change the environment no but i'm excited to see where this goes because domestically he has quite he's quite liberal uh for a king with a focus on social peace and education for all citizens

he helps pass bills for legal protections for immigrants protections for women and minors and work uh various uh workers rights including weekly rests that's sunday like he adds the idea of a day off of work per week um he's better than henry ford yeah um and also creates the national maternity fund wow okay and this is in the first decade of the 1900s so like 1901 to 1910 so 1920 is sort of the range he's passing these laws in maternity fund back then i wonder what that would consist of then because i don't imagine the number of women at work are massive no so but he is helping their rights and the rights of children it's quite an interesting goal he has here and this is before i know the rest but i'm going to say this guy seems to be

moving in the right direction i don't know what horrible things he might do but it seems to be good progress yeah he actually his goal is this is another quote to achieve a higher intellectual moral and economic condition of the popular classes and he actually gets called by some of his contemporaries the socialist king wow which is an oxymoron in some ways but does give you a sense of his his intentions in general yeah and this is i think this is also an important time in terms of royalty is falling throughout like the previous century the russian revolution is about to happen yes it yeah i think it's is it 1918 or no it's before world war one regardless i think 12 yeah i think 12 yeah that sounds about right the the sars are about to get it in the neck

the french royal family got it in the french revolution there's sort of a thing at the time royalty are like, if we don't manage this properly, we're getting guillotined or worse. And the guillotine in Europe, or around these times, they love a guillotine. It's a...

It's a bizarre... The guy guillotine who it's named after has an incredible life, by the way. Not, like, good, like, interesting, not. Is there a connection between guillotine and the Gillette Razor brand? I don't actually know, but it doesn't feel... Just pop

into my head there and i couldn't help but think gillette guillotine yeah i do wonder if there's like a root word for like razor maybe yeah yeah did he come up with the idea of a razor maybe is the razor named after him i think he made it big and dropped it is razor a brand and gillette is the thing it's been an uno reverse yeah um an important thing to mention about his powers because they're mainly military and foreign affairs despite his like having this local influence but one of his powers that will become very important later on uh is he can appoint a prime minister even against parliamentary vote vote wow so they're in a constitutional monarchy kind of like britain now but with more power to the monarchy in the monarchy so it's not

fully they're not fully symbolic yes they're sort of in between in the uk they just get royal assent when it comes to passing of bills and that sort of thing and and there's been cases in british things of like them having influence on certain policies and like in particular apparently they have quite a lot of influence on tax policies that would affect them even though they're not meant to have any yeah because i don't know what like yeah what degree it shifted over the years but in in essence you're meant to just have royal assent over bills in the uk but yeah i guess maybe that's a different structure in the past yeah uh and this is an interesting this is we're jumping around a bit in this section just to give you a vibe of the guy but

nothing but after 1920 um but on the 14th of march 1912 a roman bricklayer antonio dalba who's an anarchist shoots at him twice but misses a few hours later three socialist leaders from the italian socialist parties basically show up at his palace and go essentially congratulations for not dying okay this causes quite an issue it gives the psi or the italian socialist party a pretext to kick these free men out fully backing this movement to expel them was the die-hard socialist benito mussolini who said that socialists that talked to the king were part of the Clerico-Nationalist Monarchist Flock

And another quote he said was Either with the Pallest or with the Socialists Hmm And that name That name comes up a bit I know this guy He's bad news And we've sort of been dancing around him

To like lay the characters So he He does start as a Socialist Yeah which from what i understand quite a few fascists do yeah historically there's been a lot of socialists turned fascist yeah which is a for me a weird roadmap i can kind of understand it on a certain level where it's like you're looking around and you're like i think it's a problem now as well where you're looking around and you're like i know things aren't working but i don't know

what the answer is it just feels like a like bounce between like it's kind of like i i heard a thing about like a weird number of people who would have voted for bernie sanders in 2016 ended up voting for trump when he didn't win the primary because they're anti they're an anti-establishment vote yeah well that's it it's that it's that jump from one extreme vertical to another yeah it's like i know something's wrong in this like middle section or like in the mainstream establishment yeah i want to get outside of the usual verticals i want to go into a different one yeah and if if the left vertical didn't work i'll try the right vertical yeah and yeah just kind of jumping to an alternative it's an alternative approach of

politics which is and we'll get into it in the series about him but it's just an interesting thing of like if history had gone slightly differently Mussolini could have become the socialist communist as it were dictator of Italy in the early 1920s like there's a version of history that's not massively distinguished from our own as far as I can tell where Mussolini is a socialist dictator in Italy leading into World War II because he just wanted power. Yeah. And he ended

up constructing fascism because socialism wouldn't do it for him. But if he'd been more effective you might have got a socialist Mussolini. Yeah, that's an interesting thought of what does that change? What methodologies

are instead just adapted under the umbrella of socialism? Yeah. instead i mean you have of course the national socialist party yeah which aren't socialists a notorious one which have that that bracket but what would that look like how many tactics are employed that are the same or is the following different enough that it changes the course of history well if they had been socialists they would never have allied with the nazis because there even before like or equal to jews uh they hated socialists and communists yes so you don't

get an italian german bloc in world war ii or i guess does socialism become defined so differently that it no longer because mussolini in a lot of ways defined fascism so would he have what do you have had a defining effect on on socialism in the way it's taken in europe around that period does he then just absorb it and when the when the nazis do rise to that scale of power is it just absorbed in that bubble does it just become accepted that this is actually just the function of a socialist party there is not that hatred anymore i mean it would still be hated elsewhere probably because the the doctrines don't fit but yeah would it have had that much of an impact i guess but yeah we'll never know it's an interesting one the guy became fascist

yes the guy pioneered fascism he invented it and the king's also got a really interesting thing here that i'm not going to go into too much but this feels unique to italian politics which is a semi-domestic semi-foreign affair which is handling the vatican oh okay because it's it's a very complicated situation but basically the pope used to own all of rome and at some point in the like 1800s the early uh the italians basically came in and conquered rome for the kingdom of italy but left the popes in the vatican and it wouldn't be until like 1929 that the vatican was like recognized by a piece of uh legislation mostly only passed and the king signed weirdly but um so throughout his entire thing he he's personally not very

religious his mother is extremely religious his father was not religious in private but publicly thought going to church was good so wanted to like demo it to his people okay so he has this constant throughout his entire reign like friction and pressure with the Vatican where the Vatican are like you need to make us a fully autonomous country we want Rome back

he's like that's obviously fucking nuts we're not going to give you Rome and then there's that like and he's like the current legislation we have is fine you guys have the Vatican it's not technically a country yet but you have it I don't want to deal

with this that much yeah but that seems like he's absorbed his father's views then if we're gonna analyze that because the idea of public facing importance of religion while not being particularly devout and then passing legislation to recognize the so was it to recognize the vatican as a as a sovereignty in a sense i think so i'll definitely need to do more this will be something we probably cover because it's but i think it was mussolini pushed for it and he signed it on behalf after he sort of became a bit of a puppet yeah um but before that he was just sort of like you guys are fine stop complaining i would i've had in my head that the vatican is a

sort of separate sovereignty was way earlier than this same before i did any of this research and like i've still not gone into it enough to but it is interesting it's fairly new like the vatican's been there for like 2 000 years but the vatican as a country i've been there and i didn't know this yeah very recent so then we'll jump over some foreign policy stuff here so italy is technically part of something called the triple alliance which is between german germany austro-hungary austro-hungary and italy but despite this victor wants to make new like alliances and friends for italy and not just be locked into this which leads to the two most important sort of allies he'd made that will also set up what's coming next um he pursues better relations with france

in a process that had started by his father a few years before he takes the throne and as part of these agreements uh italy and france france recognized italy's interests in tripletania and serenica which would eventually form libya two years later they come to an agreement that if the great powers went to war uh these two nations would remain neutral this is before world war one this is a pretty crucial thing that will affect italy's fate in the great war yeah because they're meant to be allies with Germany and Austria they don't really like them

the Italy Austria Austria Germany situation is very complex fortunately we will cover it later and Arrow one of our listeners has sent in a good chunk on that which will form that episode so also Arrow I am I am using it

I just haven't got to it we are working through the mail and very much appreciate you sending me that if you send in depth stuff we will use it but we have to disseminate it and it's it's crazy good stuff so it'll work into a history segment and then on the russian front which is the other ally uh his marriage to eleanor uh created a lot of goodwill as uh montenegro was a long time ally of russia at the time uh in 1909 the russian empire and the kingdom of italy make the raki on the rakan oji agreement in secret this is they essentially make a deal here that they're both going to work to

maintain the status quo in the balkans and what that means for both of them is limiting austria basically right so they've entered a secret agreement against one of their allies oh wow that's not like italy at all no but this also means russia will recognize their interest in tripletania and serenica yeah yep so we've got two foundational sort of political justifications for the kingdom of italy ruled by victor or manuel of food to set its eyes across the mediterranean to what mussolini mussolini would later call the fourth shore and they set their sites on lands owned by the powerful but declining ottoman empire and they'd tangle with them when they went into libya but we'll get to that well the ottoman empire as we all know exists now and

is thriving yes i was gonna do an ottoman episode empire episode and then i completely underestimated how like they were from the 14th, like 1422 to 1914 like World War I like there were 700

year, no 500 year empire that I like knew almost nothing about other than that sort of like the east bit of Europe during the World War I bit I tried looking into it like a year or two ago

to me no i think was i think was it before we even played the game yeah i started looking into the ottoman empire i can't remember what got me onto it and i started and i was just confused i just i didn't have enough historical context and it's just like layer on layer of previous foundation yeah i just couldn't understand the relations between the countries involved and the situation that it then led into that became world war one i just couldn't make sense of it so i'm gonna do an ottoman empire bit i fucking love it because i can digest the stuff you are telling me but i could not understand the stuff i was reading i think what i'll say is there'll be an ottoman empire episode maybe at some point what's coming up will be in the ottomans

in libya and egypt sort of the ottomans on the map we're playing on i'll take rather than a yeah i'll i'll take a broader ottoman history is history it's gone it's past the only thing we can do is look forward and to look forward we first of all have to counter look back and now for something nicer a little oasis in the war it's time for some common ground I'm trying to intro the common ground I'm recording maybe yeah

yes because we're getting into common ground where we we sort of pitch each other something we come at some agreement so we can be friends going away and last week I predict suggested the mint of useful objects

you seem to be sort of on board with it but you wanted to come back with a a refinement so this is a two-part common ground this is part two of the same common ground and you proposed yours with the idea last week that you have a a mint of reusable items that everywhere across the world there'd be these uh dispensaries where you could obtain disposable but short use items you'd mentioned lighters pens lighters i'd put hair bands in there i was thinking about it paper clip like yeah yeah sort of um stationary or average household use just useful things that are good to be in circulation and i and i took this away with me and i thought i like the concept but there's so many moving parts to it there's the cost there's the function and i i went away

and i thought of some of the things that are really beneficial to just have at hand on the go stuff that you don't often have you've mentioned uh some of them um lighters pens yep things that if you're out and about they're handy to have i put together a few more items i had a little look at some of the most regularly produced mass items that are short use okay oh and some of them some of them stood out i've got four big picks when it comes to the modern day okay are you adding these in or are you laying these out and they're not suggesting i guess i'm adding these in and then i've also got a bit of a caveat for the common ground okay so some of them were and this this is the first one is um less common but very handy toothbrushes yes when you're staying

somewhere when you're traveling a toothbrush very handy to have batteries yes batteries not just when you're out and about uh traveling but when you're anywhere a battery is handy to have um tying into that chargers yes so a um you know a phone charger a even a laptop charger something that's a bit more bulky but maybe it's tied to a battery pack that's temporarily reusable yes something that doesn't have a permanent lifespan something you can't recharge and this one going more into the practicality of things sanitary products yes so this could range anything from toilet roll to women's sanitary pads tampons maybe even contraception not in the way that you've got the sort of dispensers in bathrooms i guess we're moving more into sexual products

we're moving into contraception but everything that goes around the genitals okay because i think all those things are they're important in different ways some of them more voluntary than others all of these things are are things that stood out to me in my research as things that are important okay so i guess first of all before i go into my caveat what are your thoughts on those things and do you have any more items that you'd like to add i like the charges charges are great i think also because it'll force some standardization because we can't be providing a lightning and a usb abc yes we need to we need to go the um central european route of usbc i think it is yeah is the general uh standardized charging port same with like laptop charges i

think yeah so that's a nice side effect of this yeah we we backdoor legislation into that i agree with sanitary products i think yeah let's add them in that they're essential you can't go wrong with it and the the sanitary thing that came um not through the direct research that i did because for some reason that didn't come up and i guess it's because what i was searching is short-term use stuff yeah but what i did find is that aldi the supermarket um some of the larger aldis have bathrooms in them yeah i've not been in many aldis that have bathrooms but there is one that i go to fairly regularly and my girlfriend had mentioned that the bathroom there has

free sanitary products which isn't commonplace in the UK as my understanding is maybe I'm underplaying it yeah that's me thinking that's great because you've got toilet roll why not have sanitary products

for women and broadening that out that's kind of the idea of this whole common ground what other items can you have readily available that aren't just hygiene related but just convenience quick side note just to as we're talking about aldi i'm a huge fan that they let the people sit down yes big fan of that i don't need you to be standing up that's weird give him a fucking seat i've worked um i'll i'll not dox

the business but i've worked at a a fairly popular diy store when i was younger and they were very very against standing up uh sitting down yeah yeah it was very much a case of stand up i don't get that it was a case of there's a chair there there was always a chair at the desk because that's as i know the kind of story you're talking about uh yeah there's seats around yeah like a big like home and the thing is that their rationale was well you'll need to get up and scan all the stuff well yeah you do need to scan all the stuff at that point i'll stand up yeah i'm not going to forget how to scan stuff because i've had a seat for a bit no i think it's a weird like boomer issue where like they get upset that someone's not having as bad a time as possible in a service job

yeah they talk about it was like engagement where it's like you need to like bring people in and it's like the thing is if someone's got a a flatbed trolley full of wood and copper pipe and anything else that they're wheeling around this shop and they want to buy it they're not going to be stuck because i would have to instead of sitting down not only stand in front of the till but walk like in front of the till along the like row of of tills yeah i'd have to stand there and just wait for someone to approach and then be like oh i'm available if someone's got that stuff if they've come into the shop they're there to buy stuff they're not going to be put off by the fact i'm not there to beckon them over yes it might be good customer service yes it might be

friendly but by the same merit if i'm sat down i'm comfortable i can beckon people over as they approach and go oh yeah i'm free come on over it yes it's a bit more casual but are you beckoning them from the chair and then stand up and meet them halfway yeah like like if they've got a bunch of bricks and paving slabs in their trolley and i move around with the extended cable to scan it with the scanner gun then i can go around and do that i can give my greeting hi how you're doing what's going on how's your day you can do all of that you can do all that sitting down if they're just bringing a few you know potted plants and a bag of charcoal for their barbecue you can do that there yes but it is that weird warped reality of well you need to have it this way no i don't yeah

that's yeah just awful but as for the items i'm comfortable sitting down don't tell me that i can't the chair's there for a reason why'd you buy the chair who's that's the question like you have no chair or are you trying to trick the customers into thinking i'm allowed to sit down sometimes but i'm not because i'm such a good worker and i'm so keen to serve you 10 minute break is what i had yes i was young i had a four hour shift but i had a 10 minute break i had enough time to run out to the burger van buy a discounted hot dog run up to the break room get a scalding hot coffee for 15 pence that which to be fair great great value for money for the coffee down a scalding hot coffee scoff down a hot dog and then go back down with a burning hot mouth

and then stand there as if the chair is a worse option side common ground we're fully on board 100 both of us let people sit down and retail jobs just let them sit down fucking pop a squat yeah but for your for objects for objects uh i've actually thought of a distribution mechanism as well because i think charges is good uh you mentioned toothbrushes it's another one um i think you know when you go to a hotel and you get the gideon's bible yes in the draw yeah if we get enough if we could get there it should be the the gideon's bible and the war with a mate survival pack which is phone charger toothbrush hair bands lighter pen like this is actually now i'm thinking about it's the stuff that a good hotel makes sure is in the room for you yes but

we just want to extend it out uh i'd put elastic bands hair bands that kind of thing in there yeah just everyday conveniences the the issue is andy something i was wrestling with is not just the cost because i think the cost thing can be worked into maybe my solution to this next part have you thought about what you're doing to the environment with this yes but i actually you're thinking about producing a lot of waste right yes you're killing the environment i actually think you're doing less damage i i don't because instead of everyone buying a pack of 10 pens and eventually throwing them out the pens are just in circulation but these in circulation pens are lost broken left in the

hotel room they will eventually yeah i think it's you're talking about a marginal change but i don't think it's enough waste that it knocks the current system out well that's it current system's bad already yeah and i have a solution okay the second part to this common ground is not just the items involved it's the solution which i like to call and i take a little bit of inspiration from runescape here the grand exchange okay okay these facilities these dispensaries you can take any item you want they'll have an array of items maybe maybe they're structured like vending machines where every institution an office a hotel a restaurant anywhere you are, they've got these

machines that can dispense any of these items. However, you don't buy them. You exchange for them. Okay, so yeah, I like this. The exchange has to be an item that has enough recyclability

that it buys points of what you're trying to get. So you might take a rubber in to get a pen. Or you might... Okay, yeah. You could take anything.

The thing is, it doesn't need to be something that's dispensed from this machine. You're not doing a one-for-one trade. You could take four plastic pop bottles, soda bottles for the international audience. You could take those over and pop them into some basket that recognises it, that sort of scans it and sees what it is.

And then it'll go, right, you've got this many points. Sort of how you trade in empty recyclable bottles in countries like Germany. Yes, where you trade in an empty Coke can and you get 15 pence. Instead of getting 15 pence, you get... A credit. A credit.

Or four credits. Whatever the conversion rate is, you find a way that you can trade in these items and you get a point system. I like this, and I'm going to take it a step further. you know how you're talking about you have these vending machines yeah i think you also have like like almost a shed fairly regularly where it's like you can have the things for like an example i'm gonna think of because of my fucking bathroom light

step ladder light bulb light bulbs fine step ladder is actually the thing because i look to get a stepladder high enough to like get to my ceiling to change that light bulb because it's like a high bathroom ceiling and it's in the middle of the room yeah you can't lean against it's like 70 to 80 quid whoa that should be something that is in the the repertoire of this because you never you don't need a step stepladder daily constantly or daily i certainly don't want to spend a bunch of money on it and i also don't want to buy a really shitty one and fall through it that's another nice this might be an an evolution of this one but you can spend your recycle credits to borrow one yes it's a temporary one because it's more expensive this isn't a

single use item this is a one use item you rent it for an hour for a pack of 10 pence if you want a bigger more valuable thing from the shared pool you put in a bunch of the like you put in a pack of five lighters oh so you know you're like you're you don't even necessarily put in just a recyclable object you're no longer using you actually put in something to be used by someone yeah because you know how we were talking about the pens are useful but like who's gonna get them yeah maybe it's a thing of like i want to use the step ladder i'm gonna put 10 pens in and that also means i've got a credit for a lighter when i need one yeah but you don't then i don't imagine 10 pens is enough to borrow the step

ladders for an hour they should be steep maybe but it's more about making it useful and convenient but i think that's part of it obscurity should be more costly a sanitary product is you need to go to the bathroom yeah to clean yourself up for whatever the the mess is it's you don't have your body's doing that yeah you need to go for a you know you go for a poo you you're on your period you need to clean yourself up so that's like the bottom rung yeah and the higher rung the highest rung is stuff like stepladder where it's like i need to use this gardening equipment where it's like once a month I need to cut my lawn

let's have a shed on every street with the like or not every street but like every neighbour, walking distance from anyone yeah and yeah you go you take your pens, your lighters

your stepladder lightbulbs we mentioned are another one but yeah let's and again to make this somewhat controversial because I've got to challenge you somewhere blood

what about it give blood to the machine I think that's actually you're saying that like it's going to catch me out or be like a weird thing but I actually give blood you've given to society

you get some credits for this system give blood yeah how far can I go with this I don't know what you're thinking but I think giving blood's a good thing like if we can encourage

more people to give blood I'm all up for that as well oh okay so you're one of these vampires are you yeah I want to drink 50% of the blood and I want to use the other 50% to help people

that's fine that's actually a good vampire yeah that's probably a decent rate for a vampire that's like a nice thing to do yeah so this way we're also turning to the vampires oh yeah which you gotta you gotta look after those fellas well we did the spooky episode a while ago where we talked about what monsters you would put into the north african campaign and i guess if you're gonna do vampires that's how you appease them you know what i actually like this one i think maybe maybe this is the common ground where there is no debate maybe we've finally found the good idea i think i know what we've just done yeah we've created like an authoritarian overbearing system to simulate

community. Oh, otherwise no. Where it's like you just go knock on your neighbor's door and you're like, hey, can I use your stepladder? And they're like, yeah, sure. Can I use your trowel in a week? I think what we've done is we've created a commercial communism

and it works. Yeah. Why is this not in place? please let us know guys but i think we've both to use a wrestling team we've worked ourselves into a shoot is this is this actually just right if we found a common ground that's just it's not so it's it's not like some wacky conspiracy or some insane supernatural plan it's a bunch of vending machines and like a shed within walking distance of most homes and then just people having a system

why doesn't this exist am i am i stupid or i've just have i figured it out i feel like this is like yeah this is like why doesn't this exist and this is like someone's gonna be like you've just explained why capitalism or something like if i don't know what it is but i feel like you know when you've like come up with something and you've essentially invented something that already exists. I feel like that, but also I feel like there's a flaw

that I'm deeply missing. Maybe. I guess, so yeah, if anyone has a counterpoint to this common ground, for the mint of common things, put it into the mint of common things, which is I guess the shared common ground

universe. Submit it to the mint of common things, because I think we've just got it i like this one a lot i don't disagree with you at all here andy sweet because i thought when you were coming up with something but we've just refined it we we probably can't do any more two partners because they get too refined but but if you've got an opinion on this please let us know if you work for a think tank and you're shocked by our genius we are available for job offers relative to what good this will do to the world we will charge incredibly low a couple million each which is for a consultant that's almost nothing it's like i'm giving it to you

for free for a world-changing consultant the first one ever yeah and bearing in mind our split i get 92 you got eight eight percent of four million is a lot of money andy i'm just grateful to have a slice of the pie, you know. You coward. You spineless coward. I'll say anything and you'll just bite me. You'll give it all to me

in a heartbeat. I'm just a weak man. And that's my common ground. Stay so humble and brave. in the deserts of my mind and 8% Andy's mind farewell and goodnight stop wasting your nights on a mattress that doesn't get you experience the most comfortable

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