War With A Mate - Episode 70: That Tracks

Episode Date: April 3, 2026

What happens when an unstoppable force hits a very moveable object? James finds out the hard way, as his plan to delay Andy goes exactly as he thought it would. A WwaM first ever audio mailbag makes an appearance, the History Segment brings about a very on the nose moniker and Common Ground reveals the nature of somethings are immutable. The Fat Controller is very disappointed.

hello hello hello it's war with a mate with me james and me andy what a week it's been for the campaign for north africa it's been quite the quite the eventful little movement phase we've had an eventful time and outside of our play the game itself in the cultural zeitgeist or rather the e-commerce zeitgeist because for some reason five copies of the game have went up on ebay this week yeah if anything about us has made you want to play the game and not driven you away uh it seems like now's a good time to swoop in and get a copy and don't question the fact that we're selling all five and they've been marked up to five grand a piece that's actually what it's worth it's just simple supply and demand at that point yeah we bought up all

the copies we're gonna sell all the copies we're generous like that it's actually quite a kind thing to do we're providing for the masses we're like a farmer well you know what they say there's not my pigs there's nothing more noble than the middleman exactly that's why they call them middle men because the middle is the most important bit the middle you think about it right now we're in the middle we're in the middle of the gameplay we did the start that was the very first 10 seconds of the podcast and the last 10 seconds of the podcast will be the end right now you are in the throes of it knee deep wadding through wading through right in the middle this is it this is the place to be i can't think of a more important part of history you could be experiencing right

now you're all part of it andy me all of australia for some reason australia loves this they eat this shit up we're digging australia relative to our relative to our audience and chicago the windy city yeah blowing a gale there who's that that's a i i think a uh fellatio joke not really sure where i was going with that so let's move on so it was my movement yes we've continued our playthrough of the campaign for north africa we do it all the time every single week of our lives and you've moved you've moved me andy is what you've done not in a good way moving someone i think always has this nice connotation of oh i was very moved i'm i'm angry at you it's a type of movement you've moved from

calm to angry which yeah that's fine and my men as a result of your actions have moved from right to left yes so i guess we'll head uh from south to north yeah which is what we did in the game because your movement kicked off you decided uh to choose war instead of peace against my wishes I did, I woke up and chose violence so I What was your work day like? It was alright actually

Oh you saved it for me then Great, what a nice guy Oh I'm an absolute tree at work An absolute what? Tree I thought you said tree It was an analogy I just did not understand Silent

Useless Well but yes the fourth indians have attacked your your big gun guys the body of garrison the body garrison are just a big cluster of guns with a few men it's not gonna feel great for them i'm imagining well given the fact that there are now fewer men no it doesn't feel great yeah so the fourth did was it 40 casualties 40 casualties is a lot to lose from one group yes i think it was our biggest combat differential or score yet uh plus 17 yes so your morale was minus three yep that's a bad one mine was plus three even worse nice six right there uh some

discrepancy in division versus not division gave me two yep and then i jammed nine guys well nine uh points in yep you stuck nine guys burgers and frines right into my brines i don't know what i'm doing with the rhyme here but what you did was i guess tantamount to overkill the the 17 that you hit is the furthest column on the close assault result table yes it says 17 plus plus etc so i was just still within the realm of actual results before it just became abstracted into and then everything else is this bad so it was as bad as it can get you could have had plus 50 and it's the same result that would have been i guess the biggest overkill ever it was already overkill but 50 feels unnecessary well done friend you've you've hit peak performance

feels good it shouldn't it's what flow state feels like it's well if this is flow state it wasn't very effective because what you did do is yes i guess you took off 40 percent and you move them one hex yeah that's not much 40 percent's good yeah but now even if you take 40 off again that's only 40 of 60 i guess and so on and so forth yeah you it's the go-in-half-the-distance arrow thing. Yeah, I'm going to live forever. Like that Oasis song. Wonderwall.

Ah, we're so insane. It's easy to see what's happening there, isn't it? There's no point in doing the podcast. We think the same. Yeah, we've mind-linked too far. We need someone else. We're going to start speaking in unison like the monster from that episode of Doctor Who, Midnight. That'd be cool.

That's a scary episode. Yeah. As episodes of Doctor Who go, anyway. Yeah. You don't get many scary episodes of Doctor Who. I remember being really freaked out by the Are You My Mummy gas mask one. Maternal issues much?

No, it was the gas mask going into the face. It wasn't them saying, Are You My Mummy? It was the, like, seamless body horror. I guess that's fair. But it's all computer-generated, you know? It's not real. Oh, that's fine, then. There we go.

If only I could go back in time and tell my younger self this isn't real you've lived your whole life a documentary you've lived your whole life thinking doctor who is a documentary that's what the doctor stands for doctor mentory the making of documentary i feel like i'm developing documentary that was the result for the poor guys at bardia 40 percent loss and one hex retreat not at bardia they are the body of garrison yeah pushed you yeah that's an important distinction to where well my primary goal yeah they're still they're south of the south of the border they are yeah

down past the escarpment yes and they were around not too far from the supply dump that was a point of contention during the madalena fight a while ago now months ago so they've been pushed back west by one hex which was all right the next fight that we had was a little further north only a hex or two though yes the seventh continued their barrage against the malay these guys just won't quit they've taken a lot of punishment fair play to them i had them on the ropes at one point I think if I'd pushed hard enough, I could have really done some damage to the 7th. Oh, you could have, yeah. I could have picked those guys off, and

now that they're doing bad stuff again, I feel bad stuff, of course, in this context being fighting fascist Italian forces. The rotters. What a bunch of gits. Heroes in history, but for me, real thorn in my side. A real thorn

in my para- Italian side. Para-Italian. So, they pushed, they hit, they hit hard. 30% loss? Yes. Not happy with that. But they did take a 5%.

Yes, I managed to hit back. It was the Mileti division that they were up against. The Mileti division, a nice combination of two guns, one armor, and I believe it was six infantry. That's not the makeup that they have anymore. They have taken losses. I will let you know now, Andy. it's not a division that has armor anymore oh interesting yeah i thought if i'm going to eat

up some of the points i need to since they were overrun it was a 13 on that table that's still into overrun by two integers so i thought well i may as well get rid of the armor what does the armor do apart from breakdown if that's all it's doing it's not defending because i don't have ammo to put in it yeah it is also a good one to get rid of because they have higher higher defense higher stats so you can get rid of less yeah they swallow up a lot and i'd rather have that and have more infantry because it just you can arm infantry easier also like you get rid of five toe points of infantry instead of armor and then you get unlucky on a breakdown and you just lose the five tanks anyway yeah well so it makes sense to get rid of them uh a lot of the time

yeah i i think i just don't want to lose my guys fair enough they're important to me in history deplorable for me real special real close to my heart you like the malady division they've been a the malady division are real steadfast yeah well this does mark the malady division's cohesion dropping because they had a plus for a little while and it's it's now just starting to really crash oh good which you know i'm i'm sad to see it love those guys love those malady we should do a history segment on them i bet they're absolutely fucking evil yeah there's probably some nasty stuff they're named after a guy called maletti who i don't know much about uh well that's that film where uh he's got the maletti and he goes maletti oh okay yeah it took me a while

i thought we're on the same wavelength man so did i but i was horribly proven wrong when you decided to attack my guys i would never attack my guys i just starve them through neglect it's not a great look for you is it well i'm just i'm it's it's as far in character as i'm willing to get okay that's i guess it's good i need it's only as far as you want to go gotta draw a line in the sand somewhere yeah you don't see many fro you see neo-nazis but you don't see many throwback like italian like nowadays yeah you i guess that that makes sense yeah they didn't have a don't want to say as good a run no no they they didn't you're right with that it wasn't as good a run yeah good's the wrong word don't use the word good in this context that seems sensible

actually i'll i'll avoid it from now on and to keep with that phrase um we we had another fight and it wasn't good for me yes this was up on the coast this was a detachment from the trivoli regiment the tanks that i have these guys got broken off a little while ago when you pinned part of them and the rest of them ran off and these guys have taken a leaf out of that book and they too have ran off after being barraged from the seas yes i didn't realize quite that this wasn't of as full of threat i guess you'd say as full of threat it was one group of tanks yeah so they got bombed by 20 actual points which is another etc funnily enough the barrage 17 plus as well 17 plus 17 plus is the the i guess it's also kind of i guess the cutoff for

Leo DiCaprio's dating. Not quite. Yeah. Actually, I've realised what I've implied there. You've just accused him of. Leo DiCaprio, if you're listening, would love to have you on. You and, I guess, any celebrity.

I'm not bothered about having him on. Yeah. The celebrity on the couch would... I think they'd get on. Maybe. They've worked together. Probably. No, they have.

Oh, okay. I know the film that they worked together on. I can't picture it. Yeah. it's it's not one of the best ones but leo dicaprio aside that 17 plus did some real damage well it pinned the only thing there which meant you just retreated yeah i got pushed back because i couldn't do anything which means i get to have a a fun little free retreat of um three hexes which is not free because it costs cohesion as if i lost 30 of my forces yeah it costs free cohesion points

and dignity yes and giving up ground however with that being the last part of that combat it does leave me in a position that i am a little bit comfortable in which is having a rock in the road because that position that they've been forced to retreat to is not a very good one for you you mentioned this after we finished playing that because they're now in that spot it would made more sense to just loop around them yes it does they are now a blockage again um it would have swallowed up more cp but for a much bigger result and also those guys aren't doing anything if they got behind you what are they going to do flank you they're going to run at you and then surrender yeah i guess it's sort of a good play putting just the one thing down because it's like

i have no idea what's in there i guess yeah i didn't put it down so much as had it ripped apart by a previous pin that you pulled out. Oh, yes. They were... Yes, I remember now when they split off. Yeah, you pinned them further along that road. That's when I met you on map D. That was Sidi Barani?

I think that was actually further east than Sidi Barani. You know, when you were right on the cusp. For me trying to take Sidi Barani for the win condition, I think it was around then. Yeah, I think that actually already broke off by then, you know. Maybe. I don't know. i'll listen back to every episode of the podcast and find out do they have trucks they these guys don't have trucks should they shouldn't have been able to move that

they're tanks they need water and fuel do they vehicles need water and that's not a that's not a rule mistake that's a call yes you need water and fuel to move see i've been taking that off with the others why have they not oh because is it because no trucks are unlimited resources no that's because um they've always had stuff around them to use apart from now they had water where they'd been previously because they'd been in villages and burrs so they'd moved from a place with water oh yeah to a place without. So now they

can't move. Now they can't move. Yes. They are stuck where they are. They really are a rock in the road. They've just buried the tank. Turned it into a turret. Oh, Christ. I was so scared that I thought I'd absolutely fuck their movement, but

no, they have been in villages. Yes. Because they were at Sidi Barani. And they've been in the airfield as well. Yeah. Were they in the airfield? when i moved them no they were next to the airfield in uh what do you call it there's a village there city book book book yeah buq i think it is yeah so they've they've been around

water they had wells to draw from they have fuel they have fuel as well yeah they'll just have fuel in a tank yeah yeah they've got the full capacity because they haven't moved that much no they've only moved when they've been scared all right cool cool i was scared there and moved yeah moved in the bad way still and scared in the bad way not like a nice thrill like a roller coaster which i actually think is a bad thrill why would you do that what a waste of you what a bad day do you not like roller coasters why would i like roller coasters describe one thing that's good about roller coasters without getting esoteric honestly i'm not a huge roller coaster fan it just seems like you would be why that feels like an insult and i really can't pinpoint

what it is but that makes me feel like i'm some sort of petty man that's a lot of baggage you have of roller coasters that's leaking into this i think i think i've got a lot of baggage apart from roller coasters oh okay i think roller coasters have just become the lens through which we can view it interesting it is not interesting at all in that case i'll stop because i was going to continue that rock in the road is going to be perfect to try and keep you away from my big cluster of guys but if you get past it that's fine because that big cluster of guys are there to fuck you up yes i'm very happy that you're starting to creep up towards them because your supplies will start to dwindle your cpa has got to be taking some hits at this point

i mean yeah they're sort of stopping where they are most of them some of them have some cpa that might do some stuff but yeah and when we pick up the game next time we've got two more fights because you've advanced your man once again for those first two fights for a round two yes they've pursued their targets yes the quarries have been made and you are going for the bardia garrison and the maletti division once again indeed i am and those guys have taken some licks so it's not going to be a fight i'll win i know that definitively but what i am interested to see is how long they can keep you where you are do i sacrifice the maletti division and the body a garrison to keep you wedged

in place. And just keep doing the 10% on the... Because you can't hold out forever. I don't understand where that thought comes from. Because if you continue to sit there, I can just start snaking my guys around. Oh, okay, I see. Yeah, I've got like

two blackshirt divisions right next to those guys. So if I keep you there and burn through your CPA and then I just bring two divisions into the fight, that means you're coming in with dogshit CPA yeah the 7th have only used

7 CPA at the minute so they're good yeah that'll dwindle more I mean they're going to another fight yeah that'll be them on 12 and they barraged as well didn't they some of them yeah so that's going to be another hit for some of the guns it's all 5

5 for the it's 5 if you barrage and 5 if you close us off yeah oh so they weren't committed to the assault the guns just the barrage yeah yeah okay cool uh all right i'll have to do some work then to actually try and whittle these guys down a bit you've also used cpa in getting barraged and moving with the false movement oh those guys are fucked those guys have got bad cpa because they're getting burned through but they aren't going to be the ones who retaliate okay yeah the black shirts have actual capability they have munitions they have men the maletti are just a sort of roadblock they're sandbags made of men

i think it'll be an interesting man bag stage yeah i mean well let's turn ends which will probably be next time we play yeah i guess with a bit of truck maybe yeah because we've got your movement i don't know how much you're doing but that could be a big chunk i think it depends on how these conflicts wrap up so the game session fairly cut uh in and lean but the the thing i can't help but think is yes that went bad for me but what else was i expecting what a bad situation to put myself into and expect any different result yeah it wasn't like uh i wasn't surprised and if i was i'm stupid are you surprised no i mean it completely tracks because i've got my guys in a situation where i've used them as human shields and then they've been attacked

pushed back and gravely wounded yes so it it's one of those things where i put them in that position and i was like right now he's gonna have to grind his way through them all yeah and now i'm all of a sudden sad when you're grinding your way through all of my men and they are dying i think it's knowing that there isn't a way to fix this it's over some of these guys are just going to be completely useless in a few turns well not a few turns a few op stages a few real weeks yes and i won't be able to use some of these guys anymore i will see the end of a division or two in the next month probably yeah i'd be shocked if the malady may get through unfortunately yeah but also it's like at a certain point the hammering out the last 10 to 20 percent is probably not worth it

like it'll be interesting to try and work out that sweet spot where it's like i've damaged it enough i don't need to worry about it kind of like the tanks today like if you just moved around them they'd i mean we found out again water wise that actually have to move from checkpoint to checkpoint but aside from that their combat capability against the division is null and void well tanks alone are just null and void because of combined arms yeah they'd be showing up and be a zero so the differential is going to be bad from go yeah the division size differential is going to be crazy bad so if i just roll them up to you it's to sacrifice them for no gain yes it's surrender play what i'd have to do with them if i wanted to do anything is zip them east along your

road and have them surrender at alexandria they just let them through mercimature just we know where he's going lads the saharan attachment are on the boat just holding the door down wait wait there's one more we've got some tanks for you as well we are traders now i wouldn't put it past uh bad guys in history to be traitors no there's a lot of traitors throughout history we we know for any uncertainty that mussolini killed his own man yes balbo yeah i mean yeah i mean yeah they say it was an accident speaking of i do like that you're now a believer in such a niche conspiracy theory. Mussolini killed Balbo.

It's fact. Oh, Balbo's plane just did that. Speaking of accident, I saved this little anecdote for you for the podcast. On my way here, I popped into the shop near yours, the bigger one near Subway, you know the one,

and I went in and I watched a dog Voided bowels in the middle of the aisle They let it in Was it a service dog or just No no just a dog It didn't have like a It didn't have a jacket

It wasn't wearing clothes So I presume it wasn't a service dog Dogs only get clothes if their owners are rich Or they have a job Yeah and this owner was Not rich I'm going out on a limb here Not dog clove rich

Yeah definitely not dog clove rich and and also i just think not conventionally rich and um it's one of the few occasions i've seen a dog in a like supermarket and surprisingly it proved exactly why because it was everywhere it was the easter egg aisle i guess that's a very seasonal aisle but it uh it's they use it the rest of the time they do and i guess regardless whichever way you cut it there's food in that aisle i guess it's better than like the fruit and veg aisle or like the fish counter i guess there's not food out of wrappers that's gonna get dog particles on i was just thinking the particles that's the bad part isn't it so when the particles get on it that's when you know it's bad

thankfully i don't think anything got particled and the stuff i was buying i was buying liquids and it was in a few aisles over i just go down because that's the aisle you go into as soon as you walk in which means there's going to be a smell lingering there for the rest of the evening dare i say a week because that is a pungent it was a mess i don't know if the dog like saw all the chocolate the easter eggs and was like oh shit and like it triggered some natural response surround a dog with that much chocolate it will naturally freak out that's actually not the dog's fault that's on the own depending on some dogs chocolate is toxic just in the vicinity, and they'll start

to evacuate their body. The dog was trying to astrally project. So, I'm glad I got out of there quick, because that smell... Oh, man. I feel like I've been through the wars. Well, that's a charming

anecdote you've hit us with. I just thought I'd let you know. I saved that one for you, and now I wonder, maybe I should have saved a different anecdote. I don't have many anecdotes this week. But I know where we can get them and usually at this point i'd say let's go to the mailbag but we've done something a bit different instead of the mailbag we've branched out a little we've decided to diversify the war of the made portfolio it's still the mailbag but not as we know it jim i that would have worked

better if you said it we should script this from now on i guess if we let's put more work into this let's put more admin on top of the admin we a couple weeks ago put up a post on our instagram saying if anyone wants to hop on board a call with us for an audio version of the mailbag then let us know and you folks did it's something that we thought we'd give a go at and it went tremendously well yeah really good shot we had a few submissions and the one we went with was one of our longtime listeners hewitt who's been a an emailer an avid emailer from back in the old days one of our first emailers actually from way way old back the way way old back the way old back times and he's still listening now what a devout man so he hopped on a call with us and for the

mailbag we're going to hop into that call we're going to take you there with us through the power of technology it's almost as if you were all there welcome to the war with a mate very first audio mailbag with uh me james me andy and me hewitt hewitt's also here hi guys and and we're all here with an absolutely terrible audio delay and we've spent a good 25 minutes trying to figure out how teams works i've shilled out for team's premium and i'm going to get billed 85 pounds annually because i don't know how to cancel subscriptions or i'd neglect to um i'm not known for being organized but we're here we're doing it we are we're advancing more with a mate we went from an idea to a podcast to i guess it's always

audio so that doesn't really track any further uh we're staying in the exact same format but there is another person hewitt's here and hewitt has been a longtime emailer fired off some grand questions in the past and is here with i believe some more questions whether or not the game related is to be seen so hewitt you may take the stage well thank you guys for having me on and i'm so grateful to be a part of the the podcast that's bring brought me so much joy over the last year of listening so it's brought us nothing but torment so i'm really glad that it's had a positive impact somewhere in the world yeah thanks for listening brought to me lots of laughs and good times but um i had some i brought i wrote i wrote up some questions uh kind of

briefly before um earlier this week about the game that i thought i would shoot over and then i had some some other stuff that i thought we could talk about too um but the the first question i i have for you guys um and it stems into a question about the game have you ever seen or did you grow up watching thomas the train oh uh yes um so that this feels like a scripted question um yes i was um clinically obsessed with thomas the tank um it's something i can write them all off um james uh you know he's vain but lots of fun that's the the tagline i choose to adapt that in my daily life um you've got gordon edward henry henry of course gets locked away in the tunnel because he doesn't want to ruin his paint job fat controller doesn't like that percy gets

uncovered from a a garb of sorts like a tarp um in short yeah it's an incredible piece of media my i do also have some history with it but it's on the other end of it i don't know if i've told this story on the podcast before but um there's an episode where some of the trains go on strike so thomas and his friends deliver everything and my mum walked in when i was about five to my dad going and thomas and his friends here are what you call scabs and we don't like scabs who cross the picket line and she's just going it's too early for this so bit of history with it for both of us that's funny um the reason i bring it up was so apparently there's a new game that's on steam that's like an open world thomas the train game and i watched it growing up a little bit

um there was another there was another version um called chuggington that was on i think it was on disney that i watched with my younger brother as well but there's a there's this video game and for whatever reason again i don't really interact with it but it's been all over my social media and it's been all over so i don't know if you guys have seen that game um apparently it's really popular and it's very good well chuggington i am aware of uh it is a heinous ripoff of thomas the tank engine and i'm i'm not i'm not angry that it exists but if it did exist i'd be a lot calmer and my cortisol levels would drop significantly i can't do anything about that except i guess come to think of it actually get angry but uh so the game itself what is what's so popular about

this game is it just a thomas the tank simulator basically i again i don't really know i've seen some i've seen some gameplay of it and i mean it looks like a good game it's kind of like there's there's missions you go on and um people are also like trying to test the limits of the game and um see how fast the the engines can go and stuff but i again i don't know why it got so popular why it was recommended to me in the first place but it's it's looked like a cool game it sounds a lot like whatever algorithm you managed to get us through is probably the same thing that's recommending you a thomas the tank simulation game it feels like the same area of niche and pointless but maybe a fun time if you're bored so i'm glad that it's uh i'm glad thomas the

tank is still in the cultural zeitgeist because that is golden television i'm not a fan of the animated ones that they've done i think they should have stuck with models and it's sort of like if you animated you know like thunderbirds which i think they did actually do not a big fan of that they should have stuck with models on that as well those freaky puppets have a special place in my heart well according to common ground your thunderbirds are going to be live action here pretty soon they are i'm in talks with um well i know the us have got a lot going on at the moment on your side um i'm sure they've probably they don't need my help um i don't think they'd take it if i proposed my thunderbirds or i guess frighteningly enough they probably would take

that plan on board so i guess i'll i'll keep it domestic i'll keep it is that a huel that you're drinking huet i've just noticed it is a huel i've and it is a huel oh i had a black edition is that vanilla it is the vanilla oh huet absolutely fantastic i had a i had just the sort of plain white vanilla one for my lunch today and oh it just hits the spot andy do you have any comments on on huel because i can't help but i can't help but feel ambushed here two huel drinkers it's something wrong with this i had never heard of huel until the podcast and i thought it was a uk thing only and i um finally i looked it up and it was in my my local target so i had my friend who works there picks him up for me when he got done with his shift and he was

like what is this so i had to explain to him why i wanted this and then uh i think the first one i tried was the chocolate one and it was it was okay and then for christmas the same friend he got me the strawberry one which i really liked and then i got the vanilla one recently and that's the one i've been drinking that is that is the way to go that is the natural progression everyone has they have the first yule and they think maybe this isn't for me and then all of a sudden they realize that. The question that your friend asked, what is Huel? Ambrosia, Nectar of the Gods.

It's indescribably good and Andy is indescribably misguided, but we love him anyway. He's got other qualities which are mediocre which means it balances out the really bad qualities. To just a slightly below average.

Yeah, and that's it. We're all 4 out of 10s. Well, not you, Hewitt. You're much better than the rest of us. But Andy, you and I, we're 4 out of 10. 4.5 on a good day. It's reaching. It's good to be ambitious. You've got to give it another chance.

Yeah, come on, Andy. I've too publicly made a stand now. It's not too late. It's not too late. I also tried, this was actually on Sunday, I got the greens drink with it. It's like a little, comes in a can. I tried that and it smells awful, but it tastes very good.

So I've been drinking that as well. Well, that sort of keeps in with the Huel vibe, where it's got some sort of offense on the senses in one degree, but then it tastes great because actual Huel, it looks pretty sloppy. It looks like something that you would probably have to give a character in Resident Evil to cure them of something or turn them into something. But then you taste it. It's incredible. So I need to try the greens one. If anything, Hewitt, you're a more avid Huel fan than I am, which I don't say lightly. that's probably the highest mark of respect i can bestow upon anyone so to that i salute you but i also realize we've um oh i wear it as a badge badge of honor yeah and not in front of

andy though he won't like that badge uh i realize what we've done is we've um in typical war with the mid fashion taken you off on a wild tangent while you were trying to go to another question which i believe was related to thomas the tank or at least the first question oh yes um i have i haven't written down here okay so my my campaign question with the thomas the train is it reminded me there is a railroad in the game right or am i crazy oh there certainly is there is yes that's uh the commonwealth it runs between alexandria cairo and then up to mersometru um and then once a turn i can move either units or supplies along it um i think i just sort of mentioning it but i have been doing it in the game but uh yeah it lets you uh just instantly

move a certain amount of guys so it's a pretty powerful thing for my side okay i i vaguely remember you guys mentioning it like i don't remember what episode it would have been but a while ago and then i didn't know if you were using it uh still or if it was going to be something that came in later in the in the full game oh i've basically just had a standing order for ammo um so every turn i just send as much ammo as i can with it because that's what i need if you've not mentioned it every week then does it really happen because i don't know that that counts if you don't say it on the pod it's not actually real so um yeah thanks again he would for um you know going with the script that i sent you so we can undermine andy at every corner it's

really paying dividends i will edit this part out and uh and andy can't do shit about it Sorry, Andy. I could, but I won't. But, yeah, so you can send, like, a certain amount of ammo or supplies, and then you send units as well on the train, like, once per turn, or is it once per op stage? Once per op stage, I can send, I think it's 1,500 tons of supplies, which comes to about a couple hundred ammo or up to two, like,

stacking points so like half a division um can use it as well oh cool yeah i i just yeah i the tom is the train thing kind of like i was like i felt like there was a railroad there was i was like there's other vehicles in the in the campaign for north africa universe that i i just couldn't remember so because i forget there's boats too there's like navy stuff going on as well yeah which is usually missed because andy tries to find my naval convoy at the start of every turn fails to find my navy convoy and and that's it for four months in real life so it comes up very infrequently but he does occasionally which has happened over the last few weeks or so um he does occasionally bombard my supply dumps along the coast with his naval force which is i think

cowardly if i had to put into a word but i suppose it is within the game mechanics so i'll allow it fun thing is about the railroad as well is he can only send troops as westernly as he has the railroad because if i dip up there and i have say the late and great saharan detachment and stick them at a point on the railroad he can't go any further than that so i can have the railroad i can even move further west from that point if i wanted to use it so watch the space andy because if you didn't make my saharan detachment surrender out of sheer terror they would be doing that yeah james would be putting the camels on the on the railroad to stop it probably in a rule yeah there's rules for dead camels on planes

but i don't know if there's any rules for living or dead camels on trains i guess if i was to deduce i guess live camels quickly become dead camels if you put them on a train track that would be an interesting episode of thomas that would be a the harrowing one but it would really educate on i guess what happens if you crash a train into a camel i'm not really sure where i was going with that one but uh it would be nightmarish come to think of it because the train has bases so they're gonna see you coming it's like that game uh did you guys ever play or hear of the dumb ways to die like it was a little mobile game yes yes it was and the whole thing was really just like an ad to not play on the train tracks which is something i take very

personally because uh as a kid who grew up loving thomas playing on the train tracks seemed like a really fun idea i've learned now that it's probably inadvisable but it would be it would be a lot of fun to pretend to be thomas or james i guess in my case andy you would be um you would be toby and that is an insult okay i was gonna ask because i'm not knowledgeable enough about thomas the tank engine i know the square one toby in the more modern song that they've got like the sort of intro song they sort of rattle off all the trains and it's like thomas he's the cheeky one um gordon thunders down the line and then when they get to toby they say well let's just say he's square because he's a sort of tram and that's all they have to describe him in the song

he's square it's it's a shape um but it's also i guess it works on two levels because it's a colloquial for being bland oh so you've insulted me in a number of ways i have i have it's uh it's it's quite a a sophisticated way to be mean to someone um but thomas shouldn't be used for that it should be used for education and when you're a bit hungover hey i don't know the the characters well enough to say who i would be um i i've seen all these like with the with the game i've seen all these edited uh like clips of like people doing their own voiceovers and two um of those but i i can't i wouldn't be able to put my finger on what character i would be i mean the fact that you've you've got huel uh you listen to probably the best podcast in the world

um presumably you listen to a good podcast and this one uh i would probably give you a good one maybe i mean percy's a dependable guy he's a he's got good character he oh you are percy because in the song it's percy pulls the mail on time and you've been there in the mailbag reliably you are percy through and through boom let's see that's a that's a that's a compliment percy is Thomas's right-hand man. If Thomas was to go to war, if Thomas was to go to North Africa, he would have Percy by his side and he would shed tidmouth sheds of tears. That is another Thomas reference for the uninitiated, when Percy is killed in the vast desert of Libya. so i think there is no higher compliment i will take it thank you uh were there any more any more

questions you would um my my other question was about malta and i was just wondering if we could do a refresher of some of the tactical advantages so like i know it's there and i know you can bomb malta i forget all the things that malta benefits um the players so good what mall is it yeah mall has been an interesting one because it's not felt very relevant in the scenario so far but in theory if i get enough like air force there it should allow me to severely limit um james's supplies so i think part of it i've not had very much my scouting's not gone well so they've not found anything which sort of made malta feel a bit irrelevant um but i think it's primarily where i harass his incoming supplies from and because his supplies all have to be shipped from europe he

doesn't have any like unlimited ones if that part of the game starts going really well he's sort of screwed on the map i think so i think it'll become a big part once we get bigger air forces i gotcha so more more in the real game or the full game uh it'll be kind of more of an advantage when you get a bigger air force there yeah i think so more bombers so you can store like potentially knock out like 50 and then also enough scouts to like reliably find multiple convoys um so not much use yet in fact i've even sent some of the planes from malta well i'm planning to send them from malta to the africa like main map uh for the last turn of the game because they've not been much use in malta but yeah in the game uh i'll be interested to find out if it

is relevant or not i guess that's part of why we're doing it because the everything point towards it being scary but um i've not seen that scary moment yet i i that makes me worry that like a lot of other functions of the game it'll get to turn 15 20 and i'll realize that i don't understand the game we're playing anymore i'm excited to see kind of how it progresses after after like once we start the main game and then get past the like the uh turn six and then kind of into uncharted territory how uh some of these units that haven't been introduced yet and some of these rules really start to to play out and kind of uh affect the the landscape of the game well if you remember how despondent i was at the the start of this whole thing i think it'll sound

a lot like that um and for years this time so uh get used to get used to it not being a very happy experience and there's some special stuff in there like you uh you can do a one-off like raid on my navy that could potentially destroy it um i'm sure that'll that'll be rage inducing when it happens you always bring this up and it's it's such a cop-out because it's like well you get to do that one thing over the next 40 years which might be some or it could be a complete waste of time and it's gone at which point i've got nothing to look forward to which seems like a psychological trick to get me to not use it so i've always got something to look forward to i don't know what kind of mind games you're playing here andy but i feel very insecure right now

yeah just you hold on to that like a minion you can fall out like you want that at the end of the game use it for the final boss turn 111 get rid of my navy i feel like that um that part needs to be live streamed in some capacity because i feel like that will make or break most of the game and will be very very hyped for us listeners that's a good idea actually i think that should be one that we we have some sort of live reaction to because i'm gonna be uh ecstatic if that goes well i'll be insufferable and if it goes bad we won't get any more episodes so we may as well live stream that one yeah it's even the end but i'm also excited for when uh you guys start the the main game because it will bring back my one of my favorite uh taglines from the podcast of

the first 15 that we actually started playing the game i was re-listening to some of the the old episodes um and every time you guys mentioned that you were starting to play the game it makes me just smile yeah we'll we'll be able to drop that one back in for a good few months because that will be a shock do you happen to remember how far out we are from actually starting the game when we say we've started playing the game is it like 10 episodes i i re-listened to a couple uh this week before the call and i remember episode four you guys had mentioned that you were you started playing the game and that and that all that entailed was that you got the game out of the box um and then he i believe episode seven which is actually one of my favorite i have that written

down it's one of my favorite episodes that's the michael mcintyre one that you started bookkeeping and that that's just the whole game that it's all bookkeeping and um that you were um i think episode eight that was the one where james was very tired and i think all you guys did was put um the pieces in the little baggies and like punch out the pieces oh yes i remember that that wasn't long after new year that was that was a horrible time in my life yeah well new the michael mcintyre episode we did on new year's because that's why it's such a mess yeah we'd had a little bit to drink i believe and we became quite merry and i'm pretty sure i was singing at the start of the episode i yeah i think that's that's right um i wrote yeah you

started playing the game i had wrote some some quotes down from it uh you had mentioned the blindfolded turns hopefully that makes an uh a appearance later in the in the full campaign i'm sure that will go very well and then since michael mcintyre did not come on the podcast uh i believe you guys deemed him the worst comedian of 2025 that's uh oh wow we really alienated hollywood from actually he's not hollywood that's fine to say he's i did come around to him i remember coming around to him partway through the episode uh he's a he's a steadfast comedian is what michael mcintyre is i actually had not um i think

i'd heard of him but i don't really know who he was until that episode and then funny enough it was like months later after i listened to that episode it was um i was watching i'm a formula one fan and i was watching the the like pre-race where they're like walking by like all the cars and they're interviewing celebrities and he was there and they interviewed him and i was like oh my gosh there he is what's he not doing on the podcast right i guess he's at monaco watching formula one oh coward the uh the only two accounts that the war with a mate instagram account currently follows uh it's huel and michael mcintyre so that's you know i've still got that dream of of building the bridge and and making amends you'll never hear this but i'd like to

think that he'll you'll come around on this one day i think he should he should come on the um the show when you guys uh do the navy um the the navy thing to see if he wipes out the navy and he he can be the one that rolls the dice that's a good point that's on him i like that i think this should be michael mcintyre's responsibility this whole thing kind of is his fault in a way so you get to use the raid if you can network your way to michael mcintyre it's sort of like how there's the rules about you get extra stuff if you're related to an actor if you can get michael mcintyre you get to do the raid you know what how about if i can get michael mcintyre i got a second raid that's fair you know what i'll give you it i'll give you that if you can get

michael mc he has to roll the dice for us he can't just do like a cameo he has to show up but if he does you can have another raid you want michael mcintyre to come to your house i've got to make it slightly difficult for you it's slightly because otherwise it would be a done thing well uh here do you have any any final question um i was gonna say um my one other i thought we'd we'd revisit the the kettle common ground i feel like that would be only only fitting to end this out okay it should be fun to kick andy off the call in a second so again one of my favorite episodes i wrote down my two was the michael mcintyre one and then actually the um episode 62 was the the other kind of luck which was the mailbag uh it had like a really good mailbag

segment and that was i think after the kettle common ground where uh people were chiming in and frankly being quite mean to andy over his idea and then also james's uh story with his co-worker about um the golf field about him winning the scenario that was a that was a great episode it reminded me a lot of the of the older episodes in some of its charm but i was gonna say with the with the kettle common grounds i have um my parents have this a thing um it's like a kettle and you can just keep the water in it and flip it on and i feel like you could put it anywhere in your house and it again it boils the water and you can just keep it in there my brother uses it all the time to make tea so i feel like you could put that anywhere in your house andy this is the billy

tap i was talking about that's exactly what that is i have discovered since that common ground there are a wide range of products that solve the problem i had without having just a kettle in every room um yeah of all of my common yeah of all my common grounds as well i thought is the least expected to have like a visceral reaction from people i really didn't think it was that like that bad of an idea it seems pretty tame compared to some of the other ones i feel like the common ground that made me the most upset uh was the one with cam and you guys were uh talking poorly on roundabouts i'm a i am i am a um big proponent of big roundabout so oh i see we've got hewitt villain arc coming up as well

justifying the roundabout there's so there's so much easier than than uh like stoplights i feel like we just installed one at my university and people all the time like talk about how bad the roundabout is and i'm like i it's so much better than just darting across traffic yeah i think it's neither of you just going yeah neither of us drive so when cam was talking we were like well yep that makes sense and now yours it's like yep roundabouts are good because we really can't have an opinion on that as if we have any basis to talk about it uh but well are you a driver hewitt i am yes yeah i guess i write immediately we're really outranked yeah i um i have my car and then i i actually ride a motorcycle as well and i did almost recently almost get hits on my motorcycle

in the roundabout because someone didn't stop so maybe maybe there there's some uh caveats to it But I think as a society, I feel like we should move more towards roundabouts. Well, I'm not sure where in the U.S. Cam is based, but that could well have been Cam. There is a good chance he tried to take you out. But if you're on a motorbike, bear in mind, you can be airdropped, I believe, in the campaign for North Africa. Any motorized units that are on motorbikes, I'm pretty sure can be airdropped. So that's a little perk of your vehicle of choice. It sounds great. It was kind of like the last episode where you guys were talking about assigning listeners to units.

Yeah, which is something we are looking at. We're going to try and figure out a logistical solution to that, but we probably will do that. We've had a lot of people suggest that now, so I think it's a fun little way to keep the excitement going where everyone's wondering, has my guy died this week? It means that it's not just me worried about that. i think i think that would be such a cool implementation oh gosh uh uh it would be so cool to implement uh for the viewers to make it a little bit more interactive and especially again like kind of what you said with starting the main game that we'll be able to see some of the bookkeeping along with it i think will make it definitely more interactive oh but that's what we're trying to make sure it's a shared one go ahead andy oh yeah people will be able to be like

i'm that toe and then oh crap he hasn't fed me i'm on half i'm so crap he hasn't fed me now that's a soundbite now it makes sense in the context of our very narrow field not what i put that on as our only tiktok video it won't that's gonna go big that's gonna be massive that's what she said so i guess on that note we'll we'll wrap that up but it's been a pleasure having you on hewitt thank you for the questions before today and thank you for the questions today and and coming along and spilling your your law on cam trying to kill you and your uh i guess reinvigoration of thomas the tank in my spirit because i'm gonna go and find that game tonight that's that's my evening sorted well thank you guys again for having me on so this has been awesome it's i can't wait

to follow it along for the next 40 years we can't wait to get this over and done with but thank you very much which is also a way of saying you can't wait to be 70 oh it'll be great i'm telling you life begins at 70 is what they say it's what i say you gotta lay that emotional groundwork thank you by the way for getting in touch of course thank you guys thanks for listening And there it is, our first audio mailbag. And for us right now, that felt like seconds listening back to it because we didn't listen back to it. I'll be listening back when I put it in,

but there's been no gap between when we introduced the call and right now. A little peek behind the curtain, guys. But it was a fun time. Yeah, really good. Thomas the Tank, eh? What a guy. What a train. Trained. He's a scab. he is you don't like him you don't like old thomas i'm a big fan i got a lot of good stuff

to say about that guy nice man hearty humble we will probably get back to another don't look at me like that we'll we'll get back into that audio mailbag at some point because that was that was a lot of fun to do it's good to interact with you guys on a one-on-one basis and hewitt was a shining example of how that can go well so we'll reintroduce that in future i think next time we'll mention it on the podcast rather than just the instagram that was sort of a pilot run so keep an eye out for that an ear out rather you won't be able to see it you crazy folk you can't see the podcast video so listen out we'll introduce that again and for the more conventional mailbag which will be the vast majority of when we do this you can get in touch with us at info

at warwithamate.co.uk the website warwithamate.co.uk has a web form and the instagram is just war with a mate we also have our very first live show possibly our only if it goes badly that's coming up at the uk games expo in birmingham on the 30th of may time is tbc i'm not doing roman numerals we just don't have the time yet don't convert that in your roman calculator i don't know that seems like a huge number ah yes 1 million pm so keep an eye out for that that that could be fun to go to we're gonna be there if you're at the expo come along if you're not come along anyway yeah if you are at the expo please do come along so there's some some friendly faces in the room as it were yeah and he's and

he's nervous yeah the i never do public speaking and when i do it doesn't go well well what we'll have is a flip where you'll go in really nervous and probably collapse into it quite comfortably, whereas I'm going to go in very confident with it and realise I'm not ready for that. That'll be fun. So if you want to watch a breakdown of one of

one or two and various flavours, UK Games Expert. The internal war with a mate. So we'll release more details as we get closer. But for now, we actually have to get a lot further away from that. We have to go way

back the men of the long range desert patrols were quite a sight on their return to Cairo from a month's trip to 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 past history

but I'd always be interested in boats in the sea I am more or less in the position of a campus 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. Yes, we're going

back and we're going east. So... Good. Good to keep going? Yeah. Oh, I thought you were pausing. I will edit this. Yes, please do. So, either I conquer Constantinople or Constantinople conquers me. Uh, Mehmed the Conqueror.

oh spoilers oh hey you know what if you if you get a job you love you'll never work a day in your life that guy loves concrete does exactly what he says on the pocket yeah so we left off with italy uh headed up by victor emmanuel the third laying the diplomatic groundwork work to expand his kingdom across the mediterranean what a guy um yeah so we're gonna do a uh a whistle top stop tour of the ottomans who are waiting for them now i'm excited for this because the ottoman empire something i'm interested in very interesting never understood it properly no weird fairly unique from what i can tell so yeah starts in well doesn't start as an empire obviously but

what will become the ottoman empire begins in 12 uh 99 uh in anatolia started by a man called osman uh the first uh who founds the house of osman or westernized to the ottoman so despite finding it's founding one of the largest longest lasting empires in history very little is known about him there's no contemporary sources uh related to him uh the earliest writings come about 100 years after his death so there's a lot of like myth making in there it's hard to get the details on such an important guy which i find quite interesting so when he's coming up the byzantine empire i thought you were saying bees there yeah it should be a fun twist the byzantine empire is weakening uh which controlled the area before and also to the east

the rum sultanate is also in decline so there's a lot of weakened powers around so he conquers territory through military might and alliances he attracts warriors by offering them land and loot uh which allows them to capture territory succulent deal yeah it's the classic empire deal fight for us we'll give you stuff that's what i do for work yeah so in approximately 1323 slash four uh he dies and his son orhan takes the throne the ottomans continue to grow their lands and power from here start taking towns and cities in 1326 they conquer the extremely wealthy byzantine city of bursa which will be their capital for a while which of course becomes bursa matru yes it's in libya not anatolia after this you get an extended civil war um for about

100 years until Mehmed the Restorer calms things down. So at this point they're a regional power and then along comes his grandson Mehmed II who elevates them from a regional power to one of the great powers. He does this by conquering Constantinople which has served as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire for a thousand years and thrown off a lot of sieges over its time. but the ottomans are one of the first uh guys to sort of figure out hey we're gonna use gunpowder for war a lot so they pound the city's impregnable walls uh for a month pregnating them i guess i i hate every part of what you've just said what a fucking weird way to describe that was that off the top of your head yeah that i didn't script that bit what a horrible freestyle

you've unleashed so they capture the city um which announces them as a superpower uh sends shockwaves throughout uh europe and they immediately make it there well pretty much immediately make it their capital from there they're on the rise from here so let's have a look at some of their like features first off i found this interesting the only noble inherited position in the entire empire is the sultan okay so there's no like noble houses of a there's no like hereditary nobility outside the sultan okay so you you're at the top and you inherit that or you're not anything or it's a sort of meritocracy almost so does that include anyone below so there's no kind of like you know you in like a monarchy you've got your sort of princes

and princesses you will have princes um but you won't have like dukes and counts no spin-offs aristocracy yeah which was like a very intentional thing because it stops anyone making like a power base against you yeah that checks out which along those lines let's talk about the princess here so at that because uh just a general thing for this the ottoman empire lasts 600 years and goes for a lot so this is sort of general stuff at best uh because it will change but at various times it's either the oldest son or it's kind of like a survival of the fittest almost hunger games type thing where all the princes are like currying favor and assassinating each other until one comes out on top like the film stardust with charlie cox

and michelle pfeiffer robert de niro yes that's a good film i do remember it being good it's incredibly good take that did the the song for it rule the world wow what i hate it's like if you go over a wall there's like no magic yeah well if you go over the wall there's no magic because you're just here oh okay yeah and then you go over the wall there is magic and he tries to catch a star which is actually a woman yes i don't remember how was any of this like princes killing each other for the throne there's a bunch of princes who try to kill each other for the throne oh then yes it's It's a one-for-one translation. It's just like that.

I think it's actually based on the Ottoman Empire, but that's only based on this conversation. Okay. So then, once the sultan dies and the new sultan rises, kill all my brothers or imprison them for life. Again, it's this stability thing, like no one getting a power base against you. Pretty cutthroat, then.

Which is probably why it lasts so long as well, but yeah, very ruthless. maybe yeah why didn't anyone else learn from this because this seems a pretty cut and dry tactic i think it's hard because if you've got existing nobility they'll be against like the british aristocracy would have had a civil war if they tried to introduce it you sort of have to do it from day one i think yeah and you don't often get to start a new empire no it's not it's not a common activity it's not a podcast you can't just do it with very low budget and yeah you can't just pop in and form an empire because you don't have anything to do on tuesdays ottoman empire by the

way why has nobody opened up a sofa shop with that name they must have that must exist we'll we'll fact check that afterwards because if not i'm going to go straight on to um squarespace and i'm i'm starting it up it's a million pound domain i'm buying it up don't anyone snipe that you better you better not snipe that yeah so under the sultan you have something called the devshirim system this is where they'd forcibly recruit christian boys mainly greeks serbians and albanians but basically any within their empire dev mentioned between the ages of sort of 8 and 18 this blood tax would happen every four or seven years and from there these children would be taken to istanbul and be converted to islam from there they're further tested and then sent

to various branches so they might get sent to the military or the priesthood or like bureaucrats some of them will get castrated and become eunuchs for the sultan's harem or personal house staff so it's like quite an interesting system these guys end up taking a lot of like very high level military and administrative positions throughout the Empire. Middlemen? Yeah. In a way. So they're technically slaves, owned by

the Sultan. Okay. But they receive a salary and a pension, and like, are treated quite well. Slaves with a pension is a hard one to wrestle with. Yeah, because they are forcibly taken, but they are also... And castrated.

Some of them are castrated, yeah, they're converted they spend time living long among turkish families after they convert learning like language and stuff um these are the janice series i don't know if you've i don't think i've heard of that yeah well they're called the janice series um so this is like you've got the one hereditary position of the sultan and then like slave administrators and military leaders where you have your nobility normally which is i think is also again another stability thing where it's like none of these people can topple the other because they're a slave so they wouldn't be accepted if they yeah they get to the top no one's gonna actually recognize their position yeah so

this system was designed to create like loyal armies and elites uh while also stoppering the gathering of familial or local power uh that forms and often has severe consequences for empires they're also one of the first infantry they're potentially one of the first standing armies ever and almost certainly the first one to use predominantly firearms as infantry so sort of the start half first half of the ottoman empire they're like technologically advanced when it comes to a ball um gunpowder game changer yeah that's a big one to get and also professional armies rather than like levying like a nobleman to come with like two or three knights and like his farmers you've got like professional soldiers so it's an interesting thing as well they use this

as well when they're conquering and making alliances because they'll be like if you surrender or you join us with less of a fight we'll have less of a blood tax on you so they also use it as like a negotiation thing because obviously there's a lot of resentment and families don't want you to come and take their children funny that yeah for the most part but it is also interesting some families wanted because if you're like a dirt farmer in like a field it's a chance for your child they won't be your family as it were but they will have way more

opportunity they could become like multiple grand viziers the like second highest place in the empire come from these like janitory slaves that are taken and then rise through the ranks so it's an interesting

it's like sending your kid to the wall in game of thrones kinda yeah like you're stripped of your titles you join a new thing but it is a position of respect yeah yeah religiously the state is sunni muslim but it's also very accepting of other religions for the time it has something called the millet system that allows religious communities to maintain their autonomy to a certain extent so like a christian area could have christian courts christian education they can do christian wedding ceremonies but like they're all allowed to administer

themselves and then just pay a special tax like the null blood triumvirate yes that's a reference to our dnd game so it's but yes that's it um so i can understand it yeah so that's kind of how that words yeah so um i think this is also part of their longevity because they're not like britain at the time they're like catholics and protestants are fighting uh other countries in europe uh as we'll get to expelling various religions whereas their muslims had special status but they'd allow other people to practice their religions and have some autonomy uh 17th century scottish traveler william lift grow uh said they permit to all and everyone to live and follow his own religion as he please if without violence or constraint another example of this attitude is when

king fernando expels the jews from spain in 1492 and at the time uh bazid the second is the ruler of the ottomans and he says you venture to call ferdinand a wise ruler he who has impoverished his own country and enriched mine and they actually sent the ottoman navy to like collect the jews and give them safe passage and to the ottoman empire and lands because he's like you're kicking all these guys out a lot of them with very useful skills we're gonna like gobble them up so they've like adopted a different religious group entirely because of their merit almost pragmatism yeah like bringing on like refugees from yeah a very yeah pragmatic mindset that's yeah that is an interesting approach that's not something i've heard a

whole lot of i don't think it's super common i know the i think the mongols had a similar attitude where they were basically like you can pray to whatever god you want but you also have to kind of like pray for me to your god they had a sort of oh we're like it's like stacking the debt where like some of you if any of you are right you have to you can worship whoever you want you sort of have to pray your god for my good favor as well kind of like elvis um because elvis uh and i think this is correct elvis would wear um a sort of pendant or something with loads of different religious iconography on and again i don't know how accurate this is but um there's a quote that i saw attributed to him where he was like well if i get to heaven i don't want to get

turned away on a technicality so i'll just do them all yeah and then figure it out at the pearly gates yeah so when uh when he when he passed on the toilet uh who knows maybe he he got through he cheated coded it yeah he got through wherever he was going he brute forced religion he believes in it whatever it is yeah just generally i believe in religion i'm faithful so the ottomans are sort of on the rise through the first couple hundred years this is when they're ascending and they arrive in sort of our area of the world in 1551 at the time libya doesn't have a strong central uh authority and the coast was home to the barbary pirates again another example of spain's fuck up because these guys will be a big problem for spain over time when they expelled the jews

they also expelled a lot of muslims who many of whom ended up traveling south and becoming pirates and then raiding Spain and most of Europe. They would raid like as far as Iceland. They were regularly raiding Ireland which I didn't realize they were taking for

several hundred years. They were taking slaves from Ireland some from England. Yeah. What did they think was going to happen when they cast them out? I don't... They're going to go and do something.

you guys and you've sent them to somewhere that isn't particularly arid or hospitable to life they're gonna steal stuff yeah a bit like what I did with my guys in the desert I just left them there for you to attack them yeah what did I expect

it all tracks like Thomas so there's not a great central authority but Tripoli is owned by the night hospitable yeah yeah who gave the city to them 20 years earlier after the ottomans had driven them off their

original home base the island of rhodes so the ottomans show up with artillery and about 10 000 to 12 000 men against uh 800 defenders that's that's feeling again very very familiar uh the siege takes a week and most of it is sort of negotiating surrenders is it still a siege if it's just negotiating surrender i guess they sort of couldn't leave was the siege and then eventually a hundred defenders do leave the others don't uh but um so from here the region uh around tripoli that'll become libya um is loosely governed by from constantinople uh but the local janitor series hold a large amount of power and have little oversight from the empire uh the janitor series collect taxes uh and most of the revenue

uh from the region comes from the barbary pirates uh and we'll loop back to them next time when we pick up the second half of the empire and some pirate wars oh we're doing a pirate session yeah oh i love pirates i didn't realize this these guys fought two wars against the u.s oh that's that's contemporary yeah oh man pirate one yeah i'm excited for pirate history yeah and i think i'll come back to the ottomans because they're so interesting and like different from european empires i've like read or know about well this explains why when i was reading about them a while ago i didn't really grasp it because it sounds like they've got a lot of stuff outside the norm yeah so i think i've been looking for sort of parallels and when it's not made sense

i'm like well this isn't how this part works i've misunderstood something it sounds like they just do a lot of stuff differently yeah and sensibly as well they also like they had public mental health things where whereas the like western europeans at the time were like that guy's crazy like lock him in an asylum uh they treat them with like aromas and running waters and flowers and music they had uh an organization that would look after retired pack animals like they had a bunch of weird like social infrastructure stuff that was almost like ahead of its time these guys had a donkey sanctuary and better help yeah it's just a very uh yeah uh popularized coffee houses oh a lot going on these guys got central perk going on yeah history history history the ottomans

ottomans ottomans yeah i would have i would have been not sure i was going with that yeah yeah i thought it wasn't sure i was doing a significant pause or if you just knock on anything he lost his train of thought halfway through the thought. So whatever I would have been, we'll never know. So I guess we'll just... Email in, what would he have been in the Ottoman Empire? Tell me what I would have been in the Ottoman Empire

or just if I wasn't wasting my time doing this. Let me know, what potential did I have? What potential have I lost? Tell you what there is potential for, Andy. A chance to make up. There is. Common ground. A chance to become friends and cuddle up on that sofa,

kick the celebrity off. He can sit somewhere else He can sleep on the floor He's snoozing all day Who the fuck does that? That's wild Just sitting in my living room cutting Z's Cutting Z's

That's incredible I will be using that an insufferable amount And now for something nicer A little oasis in the war It's time for some common ground I'm trying the intro for common ground I'm recording maybe

yeah alright I guess we're going to have to go into our usual segment of Common Ground a perfect opportunity every week for us to come together as friends amidst this war find a topic to discuss, debate and agree on

and since last week I did a first ever rebuttal Common Ground that actually puts the ball back in your court andy yeah so what is your common ground i've just sent you a picture on facebook if you grab that just so you know what i'm talking about but i ran across this idea this week that i thought was really cool uh they're called it's half a house right okay yeah i'm seeing this so they i just to explain to the listeners they're sort of built in such a way that they're like intended to be expanded so it'll be like the

frame of the house but only half of it in there yeah i see it yeah yeah that there's a big gap between these houses so yeah it is half a house it's very well described i'll put the picture up on the instagram this week yeah i just thought this was a cool idea because it's you could get a house as it were yeah get on the property ladder and then also if you make more money rather than like leaving your community you can like extend your house so you could have like a bunch of people move into an area at the same time and then not disperse and also you can one of them they put a balcony in one of them they're like a garret you can like sort of design the house as you want it okay and you think this is a good idea

yeah cool we're not going to agree on this one from the immediate okay we're going to have to wrestle with this one andy who owns the house when you buy it you but no when you when you go to buy it who you're purchasing this from a property developer so they get to sit on land a place where someone can live and what happens to the blank half that isn't being used that can be developed into well it's that it could be your garage you could just have some outdoor space like so do you own all of that area all of that land so why why is there a a gap so you have to buy it and then you have to develop it further you can yeah so this seems like a great opportunity for a housing developer to build

the titular half a house give you some extra land and go tell you what you do the rest of our job those lazy bastards i guess you could look at it that way i'm looking are you a property developer you can get a house cheaper than you would you can and it can like grow with you you sound like a pitch from these people well i guess the house can grow with you i like the concept so i guess i am pitching it to you what are you going to do next tell me you're a landlord no this is not that no i don't no this is this is lazy property developers saying because they will not charge less well okay these bastards will not charge what you're I'm just saying, the system's completely fucked

with property development, so it wouldn't. But, conceptually... This is Big House trying to sell Little House. I didn't realise you'd be so vehemently against this. But do you not, like, you could get a house relatively cheap.

I mean, yeah, in theory, I suppose. And then, if that's enough for you, you can just have it and then say you like have a kid or you're planning to have a family you can just add your things and it's got the beams and the walls there so it's cheaper so and it means you don't like yeah you don't necessarily have to move you don't have to move but these these property devs dev mentioned these property devs that are

so predatory and they're definitely willing to charge you out the eyeballs still for a house that's half built and then go well you could do this will be great you can expand into this it's a little diy project it'll bring the family together you want to have kids well this area that we failed to develop you can do so and it also means for that period of time where you haven't developed it they could have built twice the amount of houses double and that means that the housing crisis is exacerbated massively because now they're buying up the same portion of land selling it for probably a comparable amount and half of the people are being homed oh yeah i guess okay um but also the housing crisis has nothing to do with

how many homes there are. In a way it is. No, it's entirely affordability and artificial scarcity. But this is artificial scarcity by definition. Because they're giving you

half a house. Okay. That is scarcity. Halving the amount of house that you get. Okay. And then they go, well you can build into this. And if it's affordability that's the issue, then they're never going to build the second half. I'm still customising. customizing you don't even mean this anymore no i do i actually i really didn't think you'd be so

vehemently against this i just i hate property developers i think i think that's fair but they've ruined they've ruined full houses so what they could do here's a here's a bit of a counterpoint then why don't they build twice the amount of houses that are just smaller homes slightly and they just sell those at a lower price that fixes the affordability thing no it doesn't it means the house is half the cost houses aren't expensive because like oh they just finished one everyone like there's a waiting list to buy a house that's not why they're expensive but if you're saying that they're going to charge less because of the size of the house yeah because it's like they only yeah that's half the construction cost pretty much yeah so if

they're building only half a house every time and that's just the full house and instead of having this open space on the side they just build a second house then that means everyone's getting a house for half the price so now there's cheaper housing available you've got yes a smaller home everyone lives in little like rat dens but if you like these houses in the first place then you're fine with that well no it's you're buying like a two bedroom and then you've got the option to make it a four bedroom or everyone can start to afford that two bed and then if you want to get a bigger house you move out of the zone of mini houses and you go into a bigger house which is already fully built and these bastards don't get to build half a house

and and skimp on costs okay if we took property developers out of this because you've got just anything i mentioned to do with housing you wouldn't like because you don't like property developers they're evil okay not disagreeing okay but so okay so we abstract the property developer side of things yeah so you can have a community that lasts a long time because that's also a problem is that when people in like lower income communities do well they leave okay this side of this gives them a reason to like stay yeah you live in the area for the foreseeable and it can accommodate you expanding or doing well

well then if because i mean common ground we we get abstract with it let's get weird with this so how about all the houses are built fully however when you're moving out there is the option for your next door neighbour to buy your house

when you leave and then they can just knock it through and then take that no they'll just do what they did with council houses and become landlords no they're not allowed to if you're buying the house next door you have to knock the walls through Then you'll just sell it.

Okay. You can't sell these houses to landlords. Okay. You have to live in them. Are we just inventing public housing? You can't. You have to own it. Okay.

And you have to knock the wall down. The moment you buy next door, you have to knock the wall down. It's a contractual requirement. Okay. And if you don't do that, then there's a really bad consequence. Okay. they demote you down to quarter house oh okay well they take away your upstairs yeah they seal it off and they give it to a deserving family because you're clearly not

welcome here jesus you're not welcome upstairs anymore and they put stairs on the back of the house so that the nice family can go upstairs and they're going to be really noisy okay They only move in noisy families. But they're welcome there, because they're nice people. They just have really hard shoes, and the floors are going to be thinned down to be really thin. I'm just making this worse. This is what you deserve if you're not following the rules.

Okay, that feels... Of the house. Okay. Would you not like to buy a house and then just... Are you trying to sell me a fucking house? yeah i just really liked this idea and then didn't think you'd be so against it i think what you want to do is a it's just a build your own home you just want to build your own home i guess maybe then then maybe i just want to go on grand designs tell you what find a plot of land and

build your own home i want to i can't afford to do that don't let a property developer trick you into thinking that they've given you an opportunity look at this area that we failed to build in this is for you this is going to be fun in 15 years time you get to build on this land

this land that you'll have to have inspected again because the elements will weather the earth and then you'll have to build foundations that's just the problem with homes yeah but right now you've got you take a full house not the program

you've already got everything there the structures there the foundations it's all kind of already in place but with this who knows what's going to happen to soil anything can happen to soil i will say this is a worse idea in britain i'm picturing this in britain yeah because land is fucked yes this is a better idea in places where land is cheap yeah i guess that's i'm also looking at this from that angle because i've worked in in the mortgage industry so i know how fucked it is and i guess that's also where my whole property developer issue is coming from yeah the deals that they offer on for me they never seem like good deals no i mean i've got some friends who live in new builds and they fucking suck i mean they're all built terribly they all have the

you know what i hate the contractual obligation the bathroom door they put it on the wrong way round so they couldn't get into their downstairs bathroom because it hit the sink with like an inch of clearance it's like how do you fuck that up like you put the door in and we're like that's done i'm not gonna test it which is swing it open like but also just in the installation of the door did you never need to go into that room at any point of like the putting the door together it's how do you make that like someone noticed and was just like fuck it

and another one had lights falling out of the ceiling yes so property developers for new builds in Britain suck so let's move the idea elsewhere I guess if it's in an area where it's sustainable

I guess maybe more so but I just think we're going to get ripped off I agree I just I guess I like the idea of like oh a bunch of people can move into an area in their early twenties affordably and then that

could just rather than people leaving you could actually have communities built I don't know that part I like yeah I like the community aspect of it and I like the people because I think you get problems

in areas where it's like not a good area so anyone who's like successful and gets their shit together leaves so then you don't it becomes a sort of the people left, there's not people around to look up and stuff

like yeah I get that, people wanting to leave the area as soon as they can because this is the only home they could afford and their reputation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because anyone with money then leaves because they don't want to be there anymore and it never gets investment it never gets developed local amenities fail yeah i guess it becomes part of a much bigger

problem so i think if we can find a way to have the i i say i i still think these half homes are a good idea but next door it's another half home yeah these are these starter homes and over time Maybe we give faith that the area will develop and that half the people will move out elsewhere, half of them will stay, and they'll take over next door when those people leave. Yeah, you could do it. Yeah.

Half the people in, you know, House A are going to be staying long-term. Yeah. And the people in House B, it's a mortgage with a fixed rate, and after five or ten years, the fixed rate expires, and it shoots up quite a bit. but these are people who have their sights set

on housing up and going to a different area so if they stick around afterwards it's going to be really costly or they could go move to another area, maybe another half house different place, but the guys next door they're ready to move in, they will knock down the wall and they take house B

and it all becomes house C yeah I can see that working that works build them in a way where they can be connected that's how we do this that's how we make this a good community you get your lasting community, we get the affordable

housing, and the developers have to build the fucking house here's another way, you can cut the developers out the initial stuff's done you know how you're saying, oh you have to pay the developers to come back in if you build that sense of community

you could have, oh like you know the um Amish barn buildings where they like descend on someone's farm and they'll like throw a barn up over like a weekend yes you could have like

oh we're gonna go and do Dave's other half bit yes so it's not you cut the developers out of anything after the initial good I like the idea of the developers being cut yeah

there we go so common ground we hate property developers I will just build a good house and build them just a bit less or something build them sturdier and so if anyone's got any land

for Andy to build a house on let us know but I guess that's a wrap we found our common ground and you found that you want to do a self build yeah I guess that is a thing I would love to do

at one point I'd help you I wouldn't do a very good job though that's fine I'd probably try and con you out of some of the land that's not fine like a land developer I'm going to take a little bit of your land

from your nice forest clearing where you built your home and build a high rise I'm a conglomerate giant and we are we're done, that's it it's over for the week but anyone wants to get in touch, you know the means

you know the email address info at warwithamate.co.uk the website warwithamate.co.uk and the Instagram warwithamate special thanks to Hewitt for coming along very good time, very good call shout out to his listening party yes, yes

if your listening party goes ahead Hewitt this is a shout out to them and keep an eye out an eye out, an ear out listen, watch and we'll be back with an audio segment and we'll be back next week with more war with a mate more campaign for north africa more of everything you love and from me james me andy stay subtle humble and brave

in the deserts of your minds We'll be right back.