War With A Mate - Episode 72: The War Room, Part 2 - Rules Of Enragement

Episode Date: April 18, 2026

With two-thirds of the practice run completed, the guys attempt to make sense of the game they’re playing and the feelings their feeling, only to re-awaken the damming truth that they’re fighting an unstoppable foe. Not that the truth would ever hinder them, these people are foolhardy, as they find throughout the hour of recapping rules and regrets.

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Because we have your number. Welcome one and all to War with a Mate with me, James. Me, Andy. This is a bit of a no-frills episode. We've decided to dial it back, back to basics. the basics being playing the campaign for north africa which we didn't do we didn't do that today so we we stripped it back real real far because we've instead decided to amongst our busy schedule we got all sorts going on at the moment so we thought we'd take the opportunity to put out an

episode that's going to be more focused around the holistic view of the game because we're two thirds into the practice run we've got the end in sight and we thought let's take stock of what we've done right mostly what we've done wrong so we can learn from that and how we're going to change that going forward not just for the rest of the practice run but for the full game itself so we're we're off script usually we've got a teleprompter here telling us exactly what to say the whole thing's ai generated so we've decided to pull it back today and we're just going to freeform it because we're out of ai credits we run out of ai credits we usually fork out what it's 70 pounds a day 70k 70k 70k a day for ai credits data processing isn't cheap it's not

we've got a huge uh water reservoir we we record on the top of a dam so we need to and we use 100 of the power we sit in our recording studio overlooking a dark city without lights for an hour and a half a week when we record what i what i always wondered about you know sort of water consumption yeah or ai when when it's using like x amount of water what happens to the water is it just gone does the air drink it yeah it goes into the infosphere oh i see is that what the cloud is is it like evaporated water yeah right that makes perfect sense now i was stuck on that for a while it turns it into electrons and then simulates it being water in a cloud somewhere oh so it's all pretend water yeah but it did destroy the water we need somehow cool that's gone so we're running

out of water like fast yeah does it need to be fresh water i don't know the oceans are the same size i've had a look yeah i guess you can't have salt in your ai yeah that's a good point otherwise you get an i robot type situation yeah salty little sunny i've been called that before by my parents no they call me lovely things um what we what we should do i guess first of all is maybe try and highlight some of the the mishaps we've had and how maybe maybe we should um agony at this a little bit talk about how they made us feel oh okay we're gonna get vulnerable let's open up andy let's let's reveal ourselves let's peel back the layers i think first of all one of the one of the big glaring ones for me that really stands out is the issue we have with breakdown

points where we forgot that roads do have breakdown points yes that was that was probably one of the biggest ones because it just genuinely affects everything that's a massive logistical change yeah it means that my progress that i made with my convoy stuff it's all built on a house of cards because i've started to reform my supply lines so that they're working well but the the problem is that was all being worked on as if roads are this untouchable space where i can just bomb across them in my trucks and there's no cost whatsoever so you probably sorted your trucks out but you should have like 10 to 15 percent less trucks yeah yeah because that that top area where i'm i'm shooting them along from to brook to the airfields i've i've been lucky so

far because ever since we've realized what the issue is the breakdown cost is so low that i've not actually suffered any breakdown shifted back yeah even with the hot weather yeah the turn or two that we well the round or two upstage or two where we had hot weather impact that they still didn't lose any so that's lucky but it means when i'm having those huge treks from tripoli and tripletania at the start of the game when i'm moving those trucks over i need to bear in mind that there's going to be quite a bit of attrition from those trucks possibly and if we start rolling hot weather like we did the first time around or rainstorms or anything that really basically anything but normal weather and you love something that's not normal weather we still haven't had a

sandstorm we haven't that's something i hope we get yes because that's another rule we haven't run into sandstorms weather overall we've been quite fortunate to have a bit of a mix we did mess up a turn where we thought we were doing sandstorm yes um the episode was called the sandstorm yeah it's just another rainstorm but we learned from that we now have a list keeping track of it whenever we roll it do you yeah oh i do i guess i can let you know there's a little safety net on the weather awesome because i've just been keeping a very vigilant eye on what i'm adjusting stuff with knowing what the weather is i know it was definitely normal there we haven't rolled for the next one have we no um we rolled initiative but not weather yeah yeah would you

believe it you've got the initiative i think we mentioned that last time but just to just to say it again rub that salt in the wound rub that salty sunny in the wound i think the road thing for me as well is i had no breakdowns because i was just using the road from alexandria to mersima true so my convoys also became pretty much faultless yeah my whole bombing run on the road was to try and create some aspect of breakdown for you yeah it turns out that was actually just stacking on top of what should have already been breakdown yeah i guess the good thing for me since we started doing that is mersima true and alexandria are repair facilities so at least for that leg It's like, oh, the trucks are broken down, but they can be up and running pretty quickly.

Same with Tobruk for me. I've got a nice spot there in the middle of all my sort of supply runs that they can realistically come out of there and join up with any convoy. Yes. It's keeping on track of breakdown, moving from breakdown points to the actual repair stuff. We've been pretty lax with that too. Yes. I know I have anyway. I have as well.

i've that's been like a notebook or on the thing having like 20 of it broke down but not having a singular i didn't have a singular like this is my breakdown tracking sheet for a long time which just meant whenever i was well we sort of forgot about it and then when i was trying to get it sorted i was like oh jesus christ uh i have no idea where anything is how much of it how long it's been broken down for so that's definitely one messed up as well good thing is i i do have a track of everything that broke down or where it broke down it's remembering to repair them yes because we'll get to the end of the turn things become a frantic buzz of excitement because we've ended another upstage and i forget the repair phase yeah because you don't have anything to

repair because you don't know where it is or it's just in one of the cities ready to be repaired yeah i think i've got that for loads of stuff now loads of trucks yeah ready to be repaired which i haven't done and as it started to get later into the practice scenario i've just sort of allowed them to remain there broken down yeah which i sort of see as it being a not that i've done the game wrong that i've made a very strong tactical error yes by not choosing to repair stuff it's sort of a tactical error from laziness which is i guess still a tactical error of a huge proportion laziness or not i'm losing out on resources so having fewer trucks fewer tanks fewer fewer everything is at my own

discretion that's another that's something we'll have to keep track of during the game in good detail that's one of the things we'll have to build a real strong sheet for because for the units we've got real solid tracking for that now yeah i'm very confident that my tracking methods for the units are solid all we need to do is put in the formulas that you've created to be able to automate the management of fuel evaporation water evaporation water usage and store usage yes that will be a godsend because that admin during the week is just such a chore i'm spending like an hour or two every week having to go back through those and adjust for stuff that needs to be corrected yeah i need because that is all just rote stuff so yeah um i'm

automation sort of slipped between being busy at work and other stuff but do two turns left probably need to start moving that up the priority list of things to do as it were yeah there's so much there's so much stuff to keep track of in this game it's it's getting back to the point now where as i see the full game on the horizon i'm starting to realize how how much i need to keep track of yeah because while i've got record of everything i don't have record of it all in one uniform place it started to drift away from just being spreadsheets like it was in the first two turns and then turns three and four as more action started and i started adjusting stuff on the fly ad hoc i feel like the record keeping has started to get away from my spreadsheets and onto pieces

of paper and the notes on my phone and i need to now refocus all of that into spreadsheets again yeah because i've also like some of my spreadsheets have got to the point where it's like i was keeping track of like uh it's moved so it's used this much fuel this much water and then oh there's a combat so this much ammo comes off but i have as i've been doing some bootkeeping uh after turn four i have just on some of them now just got turn four op stage three and then from the notebook it's the stuff yeah which i don't want for the main game because i do we do want that like record well we want to be able to put it out as well yeah that's that's the biggest thing when it comes to the shift from

practice scenario to full game is having that visibility with maybe like a turn lag or so just so we can not reveal exactly what we're doing as we're doing it but be able to put that out there so people can follow the game we still get messages now comments on episodes or direct emails web forms of people asking if we've got written reports and being able to share that would be such a great thing because we'll be putting videos and pictures out of the game more frequently actual ones that you can see on the website and having the spreadsheets there means people can follow it with really granular detail and that's to and keep us honest as well and also so when we say we've done it

we can point to the thing and be like hey he's a record of our entire game because right now if I was to show someone I'd have to invite them around to look at hard copies they would have to first of all find all of the hard copies because stuff is gone now

there's notes that I've written down on notebooks that are probably lost well I've just done a big clean and get rid of paper in this room so some stuff will will have gone good point we're currently in the new war with the mates setup yeah 2.0 yeah 3.0 floor yes we used to do it on the floor when we didn't have the setup for the picture frames yeah then we moved to picture frames and we'd have them all set up along furniture

and now the furniture has been rejigged there's a couple of new pieces of furniture going on yeah and we have a new setup that's going to be even more streamlined when it comes to setting up the game and give us more of the room yeah you're gonna have a bigger living room by proxy you've actually given yourself space yes it's quite nice what in the house and leave house and leaves is this house of leaves there you go house of leaves mark z daniel looski 2000 good book i like how you've you've mispronounced it and then you've essentially given the first sentence about it on wikipedia like if i didn't know you personally i wouldn't think you'd read the book i don't know what book you're talking about i need a i need to read the other one

tom's crossing it's massive book uh yeah that's the one with the dead people yeah the cowboy yeah that's uh that's nothing on the game no uh this game is my house on ash tree lane this is going to be the the puzzle for me because putting those spreadsheets together man i don't want to have to do that that time between the the practice ending and the game starting is going to be some of the worst period of my life it's going to be it's like stressful yeah because while we don't have like a set deadline to do it in i don't want to spend a year no no so i'll always have that like ticking pressure building up where every time i can't figure out what i want the spreadsheets to look like i'm gonna get angrier yes angrier and i'm gonna learn to resent the game i'm actually

feeling i can feel my blood pressure rising right now just thinking about it i mean that'll be that'll be fun because it'll go back in what do you mean that'll be the energy we had at the start and we were like why i don't like that i found a nice solid balance in my life i'm happy my life feels like it's it's it's got a nice flow going to it and i don't want this game to fuck that up but the thing is i know we're in a positive period and the game it's sort of low stakes because it's the scenario so any like thing we muck up isn't gonna have consequences for a decade at least yeah we've got into a nice streamlined system we're gonna hit a wall i feel a little bit like you know when it's the the first few lessons in a school year or you're in the first couple of weeks in a job

and you're you're learning thing you're learning the sort of like the rules of engagement you're sort of like 50 yeah like there's no real pressure because you've got the you've got like the sort of comfort of like you know the the person doing the training will be like you know well it's fine to make mistakes you're still figuring it out and then after like a week or two you you ask for help and they're like oh yeah did you did you not check some some resources we've got somewhere you you should be checking those before you come to us for help and i'm like all right yeah i know you're right that switch has flipped yeah i see so you are still encouraging me to go to the right place for help but there is a tonal shift and you know once that happens that it's only a couple

more weeks before you ask for help and depending on the workplace you're in you'll then get what the fuck are you doing asking me questions you should do this job now and i've worked in a couple of places like that i fortunately have been pretty lucky to not have anything that bad oh i have um they're places of course i no longer work at because why stick in those kind of jobs it's a bad environment and there is no trainer here there's no one to help and the game rules are always going to be the same which means it's all down to my interpretation of the rules hours it's not down to just yours no no there's some consensus has to be formed here well that's worse because then we have to have a discussion about it and since i'm going to be in a bad

mindset i will take it out on you so just a little uh a teaser for what's to come i'm going to be angry and i'm going to direct it at you oh good nothing physical not much physical oh good I won't leave a mark phone book yeah it's all going to be psychological cuts oh well they're not as bad

I've always said that you know trauma's fine just don't don't hurt me at all yeah stick some stones Andy will break my bones but words will never hurt me that's such a dumb saying

So why are all of those words in those rulebooks hurting me so much to think about? Why did they make it so... And I know this is a stupid thing to say so late on. But it's such a fucking long game. Oh yeah. And also we're not the fastest

at playing it. Well no we're not because we get sidetracked with stuff. Yeah. We get too whimsical with it. We need to lock in. It's been like 18 months. And we've finished four turns. That's pathetic

That's so long This game's going to take forever This turn only took a month though, right? Like six weeks Okay, so we are trending in the right direction We're trending in the right direction But that's going to change massively I don't think you are ready for the whiplash

That we're going to experience When a turn becomes four months again Also, the thing is You're thinking of like we'll just have a bunch of stuff to manage for a turn right i mean that's that's the biggest thing yeah yeah because it's also like i know what you're gonna say the like german army is going to arrive and then my counter for we're gonna like triple the amount of counters we have on the thing cool that's not what i thought you were gonna say you've added another problematic

situation because that is a huge thing that when it gets to the halfway point i mean before that we'll get reinforcements we've never had before but we get to it's not even the halfway point it's like turn 25 or something the germans show up and i have to we have to punch out pieces again i'll be we have to start that don't feel fresh again well how will it feel that's also bad i don't want to feel like i'm starting again that's the last thing i want to feel like you're starting again what will that be probably four years into it that's the last thing i want to feel 25 turns in that i'm doing it again and i've made no progress oh the spreadsheet i have to make for The Germans!

I don't know if there's more or less Germans than there are Italians. I think there's more. Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me. I think there's quite a lot more. Really? Yes, I'd guess so. At least they're better. Like, en masse.

In general. They are your more... Well, they're just... They're not Italians. Yeah, they're not Italian soldiers who have terrible morale. The worst tanks ever. yeah i get good tanks as the germans you do the the thing i was gonna say which is another big problem is analysis paralysis followed by kodov syndrome i'm going to be sat there with

good knowledge of the game i say good knowledge i'm air quoting that shit i'm gonna be sat there knowing how the game works but thinking how do i not lose because there's no there's no do-overs if i make a mistake it's that's it yeah it's forever buddy it's eternal and the worst thing is it'll be immortalized on the internet both as a live reaction to it out as a digital paper trail record yes exactly i'll have to make the mistake in the game know that that mistake will have a knock-on effect that will last for decades and then i'll have to at the end of that week sit down and listen to myself talk about it as i edit the episode and then have our listeners email in and talk about that mistake that i've made again and how it relates to some event in history or

how it it sort of ties into their hey when you made this mistake it sort of lines up with this loser from history and it will be an interesting comparison about an event we don't know about but it'll make you feel very small well yeah it'll be that that's like emotional hey have you heard of the charge of the light brigade you ever heard of custer james i'll i'll be i'll get that like adrenaline rush of like oh we've got more mail in this is going to be great let's read this one and then it'll be yeah james you've actually made a mistake when you did this not only did you make a bad decision you've got the rules wrong and i'll i'll just be devastated because we'll have to wherever we can not make those mistakes and if we do make them accept that

unless it's a a game mistake that affects us both equally then we'll have to sort of look at trying to amend that where we can and backdate any changes or like breakdown points for example we'll have to actually go back and change that to be in line with the game yeah but if it's something where i've just lapsed uh a utilization of something like i haven't repaired something i could have the game rules don't say you know you need to repair stuff it's you can repair stuff so if i miss that and someone points it out i'm just down a handful of trucks yes i'm down a collection of tanks at which point it has a real material impact on the rest of my life this also brings me to a rule i'm scared about for the main game that i've not touched on yet yeah just my

whole production thing like i've got to produce units but only a certain amount throughout the course of the game and then send them and that's obviously by looking at it it's like you i need to engage with that system to have men to have men and replenish things i won't be able to just use the arrivals and because we're going to be playing each week it means you have to learn as you go yeah and we have to keep up the game because you plan two months in advance so i didn't do it for this because it's six weeks it's two months in advance yes but from turn one i need to plan for turn eight oh my god i'm so happy i don't have that yeah i guess it's my equivalent of the convoy thing but i also have to be like

am i gonna need tanks and eight turns or infantry i'll be honest the the the convoy stuff the uh naval stuff is child's play in comparison i just plan a turn in advance and it's basically just how much cargo goes to this location yeah what routes are you splitting them across and how much of it that's that's relatively easy there is the the balance i need to strike of if you have certain amounts of cargo it increases the anti-air capability or the defense capability yeah that the ships have so maybe finding a bit of a balance of that but i guess the the problem is you've not really found my convoys before i think you found it once you did like five percent to the smallest one so all in all i'm not worried but what i am worried about this is another rule which

terrifies me and i've tried not to think about it much and i've tried not to talk to you about it in case you invoke it in the the practice game malta what about usage of malta well i've been using it it's been deeply unaffected but the thing is you can use that with more effectiveness when you can commit things freely with time and logistical planning yeah right now correct me if i'm wrong i think you've just been using a relatively bog standard you've assigned stuff and it's just kind of stayed i basically i've just used the it's on malta at the start yes so i yeah i've thought about doing some transfers but it's a turn yeah it's a turn and and we don't know how effective it is although i remember the echoes of war guys being on episode three yeah and they warned us of

how important malta is they asked if there's mechanics um when it comes to malta because historically it's like incredibly important well that's so it's surely because there's also you've got this whole thing where like you can send a third of your planes are like from europe and you've got a whole like air system that i for attacking malta that's like a whole nother layer that i need to figure out yeah because if i want to i need to tackle malta or i'll stop getting supplies in my supplies i've taken for granted so far because they just show up yeah every every turn without fail my supplies have shown up but if i can start ripping like 50 of them then my issue doesn't become your truck convoys are bad my issue becomes your truck convoys are

empty yeah the trucks are they're waiting they're ready to go where they need it but yeah i can have them zip around the desert and break down on roads all i want but it's sort of a pointless endeavor if they're fucking empty yeah i think what i am going to do in the main game is swap some stuff from malta and uh the actual north africa what like uh planes yeah because i imagine you've got different categories of planes yes what sort of that's something i don't actually know because i've never looked at your raid stuff i imagine you have not looked at it much either because you've never found my convoys reliably but does it does the attack that you launch against my convoys rely on

tack air and maneuverability, or is it just quantity of planes? So to find them, it's just the amount of recon planes. They have to have the recon attribute. Then after that, it's bombing.

Okay, so it's bomb points. Yeah, or torpedo points, which are just bomb points. Which I think are better. Yeah, they count as 1.5 bomb whatever the value is they're like that makes sense because on the table you need a lot fewer torpedoes to do the same kind of damage yes which confused me a lot because in the past i've looked at that and thought i'm dropping so many bombs this is great and then i realized i've

looked at torpedoes oh yeah i'm nearly half as effective in some areas no i've got a vague thing of like more than 50% of the bombs dropped have to be torpedoes for the benefit to be in play or something. Oh, so you need to be dropping mostly torpedoes with your payload. Yeah, because I've got sea gladiators, I think they're called.

They are like my torpedo ones that are in Malta but aren't in North Africa. Which ties into the boat landing airfields. Yes. I can't remember what they're called off the top of my head, but it is like for seaplanes. They're like floating airfield. Yeah.

Yeah. A flying boat. Basins? Basins, that's it. Yes, basins. Never had to really use one. Yeah, I don't know why you'd... Because they're just one thing,

and you need special types of planes to land on them, so I don't know why you wouldn't just build an airfield. And for me, I need to make sure I'm building them pretty far west, because otherwise your naval convoy will just tear them to pieces yeah naval convoy i'm really glad you've implemented that the way you have because i've had a real taste of the damage it can do it's a real like yeah once they bombard they have to be in alexandria for two upstages but it's a real like hammer you can drop on the coast and it's also like not using them but having them there

is a deterrent so yeah that'll be a thing as well in the game of like do I do the bombardment here or do I just leave them here so that there's a worry and hope that I use that worry to not

operate around them you have to like plan around them so it gives you another thing to have to deal with because my supply dump that I've got, supply dump one which is just down near Bardia, just down to the south-east. That can be shredded down to

25% of its value if you bomb it with all your might and succeed. Between a big air force raid and a coastal bombardment, I could destroy it in an upstage.

So I can't really be putting stuff along the north. And unfortunately, that's where I've been doing all my stuff. Because it's where the game happens. yeah that funnily enough a lot of the tactical movements in the campaign happened along that road almost as if that road's easy to use and get around and it's a very sought after area of north africa during that conflict i hate that it's so accurate and it's and the thing is as well i know historically your side won uh yes which means chances are you'll you'll win again but it was

pretty touch and go yeah but i don't know how to play the game probably andy yeah but i'd say we're in a similar level of like not being generals i guess if you if you had to take the full scale of like you know uh completely it's like zero the zero to one general scale yeah but broadened out if zero is zero and one is an actual general we're both like the start still we're both at a rounding error from zero and not a very big one either like it shrugged off immediately as a rounding error i think calculators wouldn't actually give you a value yeah this is just zero the decimal points that we're looking at here molder massive worry for me really concerned about molder concerned about

my air force in general i've not maintained them very well if i maintain them well then you know good on me but it's it's sgs use it's making sure that i'm getting those transported when they're getting killed off and getting them from fucking tripoli off map is to an air really bad When those guys are moving at a snail's pace. Yeah, what's their CP? 20. 20? Yeah. And I think with that, it's something like six,

four or six upstages to get onto the map. Like, that's rough, because, yeah, mine got, they come back a turn later, so mine just appeared in Alexandria. And then you can just zip them back wherever you want. And just zip them back to the airfields they were killed at, yeah. Yeah, your supply lines are much longer. Getting them from Nafilia all the way along as well.

They've got to snake up all the way past Benghazi and then up through, you know, I guess if I'm replenishing SGSUs around that area, but I think realistically, you're probably going to hit my fighters first, just at a guess. Well, they're the closest. They're the most available to me.

Yes. So I don't know what I'm going to do with my airfields, man. I don't know why you're asking me that. I didn't. stop putting me on the spot what is this an interrogation you're the air police no i'm not the air police oh okay i misunderstood your role in all this i just remember the video of the guy doing magic on the plane to make a rose appear and he uses a lighter and the air marshal just stands up we need to go

why would you bring a light you can't no you can bring lighters you can't bring a lighter on a plane just don't use it i don't understand why you're allowed to and also don't bring flash paper yeah don't bring flash paper don't bring any form of magical equipment onto a plane i think that's that doesn't even need to be a common ground just no magic stuff on planes yeah consider that this week's common ground since we're not doing the full segment don't bring magic on planes or lighters what possible use do you have for a lighter on a plane because by the time you come out and you're in a place where you can smoke again, if you're an avid smoker

you need that nicotine here. You have your bag. Yeah, at that point you've got your bag. Well I guess some airports lounges have smoking areas but that feels like, use your lighter and then before you toss it in a lighter bin

when you're going through the actual gate. Well this comes back to the common ground that we did, the library of useful things kind of vibe. Yeah. where just have a little thing in the smoking area at the airport in the lounge where you've got the outside bit

where you just, kind of like a car cigarette lighter. Yeah. Just do that rather than allowing people to bring lighters onto a plane. Or, because people are getting off, give their lighters to the people. So if you're a smoker, you go to the airport, you put your lighters in the bin

and then if you get off the plane, you get a lighter out of the bin. I think a massive bin full of flammable liquid is probably the last thing they want. In an airport. Hmm. Airport petrol jungle juice. It's good I'm not in charge of anything.

A plane is probably one of the last places I would want to be around a fire that breaks out. Well, there's two worst places I can think of, but it's a short list. Is one of them in space? One is the International Space Station, and the other is on a submarine. which is just an airplane in a more hostile environment yeah one of them is yeah both of them are areas where if you because at least on a plane if the hull integrity fails there's a chance you get sullied yeah you don't you don't die instantly but if you're in a submarine or in space and the hull gives way for whatever reason you are instantly killed or the submarine

breaks, your bit's pressurized, but it can't get back up to the surface. Oh, so you get the bends. And no, you're just in a box waiting for the oxygen to run out at the bottom of the ocean. That's worse than the bends. Yeah. Don't go on submarines, guys. Speaking of fire, Andy, I have a story to tell you.

Okay. I had an encounter with fire the other day. Ooh. Fuck you. Now you're gonna tell me something, like, heartbreaking, like your house bit down. Yeah, that's why I'm covered in ash and I've brought all my stuff here and I'm going to move

in for a bit. No, I was making some microwave popcorn the other day, but I caught fire. It burst into flame in the microwave. You've overdone that. Why would I do that? Because you fucked something up. Right, see, it says on the packet, because I

immediately looked for the customer services number on the packet, because I was like, I need to tell them that this thing caught fire. You are such a Karen. It caught fire in my fucking house, man. that's a normal thing to be frustrated about if any other product that you had burst into flames would you not be angry no no i'm pretty chill give me a lighter i've got something i want to test i'd be angry if you burn it all right okay but i would never blame a corporation for anything

you shallow coward you nothing man it shouldn't it says on the packet that they will take no responsibility for misuse of the product or microwave that causes fire. Seems pretty cut and dry. I'm like, fair enough. But what about when your bag just bursts into flame in my microwave? When I've used that same microwave, same settings,

same brand of popcorn, in the same multi-pack even, and it's never had this problem before. Why did this one burst into flames? Did you leave a fork in there? I didn't leave a fork in there. It was the bag that caught fire. There was no extra apparatus. I didn't leave any bits and bobs in there. It was just a bag of

popcorn kernels. and ignited you must have messed something up i didn't it was spinning around so it wasn't stuck in the same spot it wasn't on a higher temperature what kind of anomalous situation occurred aberrant popcorn behavior that causes fires come on well to invoke occam's razor you fucked it up no no no i'm i'm i'm invoking james's razor the fire's coming for me Okay. Big popcorn's part of it. So Occam's razor is a logical tool

and James' razor is a paranoid delusion about sentient fire. It's not sentient fire. You said it was coming to get you. Yeah, it's more like, it's like fate. The fire doesn't have a choice in it. Like at Final Destination, like the

wires that snap on like a cable bridge, the wires aren't sentient. Death made it happen. Okay. It's some unseen force that's coming for me with fire as its weapon of choice. Yeah, your personal incompetence. No. My personal incompetence is not sentient.

Not the defense I thought you were going to use. Your Honor, it's not sentient. The rules, though. Yes. I feel like I've drifted off a little bit there. I've really gone off topic uh construction we've done a bit but i feel like it's an untapped sort of resource we've

not had any minefields and i don't think we've had any fights at an area someone's fortified construction i have a bit of a different feeling about than the other rules that construction feels like one of the last few parts of the game i'm excited to use okay it feels like an exciting thing it feels like it's optional benefits it doesn't feel like something that's going to be make or break it feels more like this is a good way to use your resources if you've got them available which will come to you as availability if you've used everything else well it's like a little bonus oh so you're kind of thinking like if i've done all my trucks right and stuff after store expenditure i've got enough supplies to like build a supply dump then that's like a reward for

doing the trucks well yeah it's like it's usage of a surplus it means that we're in a tactical standoff that hasn't resulted immediately in clashing together and i've got a bit of a time to to use that i can i can implement that and figure out as i go in fun and creative ways it doesn't feel like a vital part of the game that by not using it i kill myself right i see what you mean but everything else feels like what i've just described okay everything else in the game feels like i'm going to ruin my life so construction's your safe space construction is the thing I'm excited for, of all the rules that are yet to be used.

I'm not even excited for the flatelli raid. Because I get that once in the whole game, and if I misuse that, I'm just upset. Fair enough. Because if I don't use it, I've got the potential of it. As soon as I've used it, I've spoiled

it for myself. I'm looking forward to getting the SES. I'm kind of concerned about that. Because that seems to me, it's the good feature from the long range desert group which is their mobility and invisibility

but with enough weight and impact they can be like the truck bandits when they actually arrive somewhere. Better than the truck bandits I would probably imagine. Well yeah, they have specific like raid condition stuff to destroy airplanes and things. So

I don't know when I get them It must be It must be before Rommel. It's after the siege of to no because rommel i think it's because rommel's sieging to brook is when sterling made it i'm remembering from the show yeah i know on the show it's um after yeah because rommel is like the the sort of big looming um like villain so to speak in in that show um but the yeah because my my thought was the game mechanic would allow you to have them ready for when rommel arrives so oh actually no come to think of it the long range desert group

can go after rommel it doesn't need to be sas yes so my my logic doesn't actually track there i'm just they destroy messerschmitts and stuff on the show so they must be after the germans arrive yeah yeah and it's also when things are going shit and they're like let's try some crazy stuff that's a good point yes it is when rommel is out and about yeah i i think i'm gonna i'm gonna waste my rommel oh you think because that's an interesting one because if the long range desert group don't get him you can't lose him but that's it there's there's two ways i can misuse rommel and i will do one of the two i won't do anything in between i'll either hoard him like mini nukes in fallout and i will not utilize him at all because i'll be scared of him getting captured by the long

range desert group yeah which means he's pointless he may as well not be on the board apart from for initiative bonus yeah or i'll treat him like he's some invincible piece i'll use him like a queen in chess if i don't care about losing and just send him off to alexandria yeah with a cluster of men around him and just have the men surrender at alexandria like the saharan detachment and then he has to fuck off and then he has to shamefully drive down the coast road by himself not listening to am radio yeah is it fm or am he's got uh i think it might be am i'm not sure yeah because i know that we did flirt with the idea of the podcast being called no fm for rommel i'm glad i'm glad that was not the one we landed on i just think having rommel's name in the podcast

title because it's maybe for an actual devout history podcast yeah if you were doing like a podcast about Rommel, where it's like the Desert Fox 10-part history thing. Go for it. Yeah, that would be fair enough, but we don't have the... No. It would be gaulish if we did that. We don't have the

tenacity or seriousness to start referring to Nazis in our podcast title. It just really puts you on the back foot from day one. I still think we should have called ourselves The Elephant. I'm glad we didn't.

I think we... Maybe we should rebrand when we do the full game. No. I think rebranding is a good idea. You just put in business cards. I do have hundreds of business cards sat at my house. So I guess, yeah, let's rebrand. I mean, I'll buy more business cards.

If that's the only barrier to us rebranding to the elephant. Those are my strong objections. So? You're only one half of this. i think that deadlocks us the name stays we'll get a we'll get a we'll put it to a vote i don't know who we'd get in because i don't want to ask the listeners because i know what their answer will be yeah unless we've got some cheeky chaps out there who want to cause havoc i don't want to get boat you make boat faced oh that's a good idea we'll we'll we'll just put a poll out and just ask what the name of the podcast

should be. Radio Rommel coming up. Radio Rommel? That's the Queen song, isn't it? I like how you were going to go that's the good one and then realize we've just been talking about how Rommel being there was

bad. Yeah, I don't want that soundbite to be captured at any point. So in terms of other rules. Well, I guess off construction i think i should have been building like a supply dump or a fake supply dump at least once a turn so you make a good point with that i thought the same thing until we last played oh okay and then i realized no there's something much smarter i can do just use villages i should

have just been using villages because they are already supply dumps yeah the best part is i don't think as far as i'm aware we will check this and correct me if i'm wrong and you know it i don't think you need to mark them as supply dumps if you're just putting supplies there and they're already a village everything else you need to put down the token yeah because you can't dump a certain amount of stuff in the desert you can't just leave it right on the ground yeah i've done that on a hex yeah you don't know which one and i don't think you'll ever come across it because of where it is yeah but i have done that i've left some stuff somewhere some stores so it's only 50 though you can only do 50 stalls and 50 ammo makes sense you can't just dump liquid

yeah that's evaporating yeah that's it's also just getting into the sand yeah because i picture it as like you just put out pouring the jerry can on the floor i'll be back for this just sucking the wet sand to try and get some water just turning around talking to the desert don't touch this this is mine i mean that's as effective as the stuff i was doing so for that reason i think there's two massive benefits to using the villages which are they're already there perfect and you may not will check have to declare them as supply dumps yeah so that because i think if you build a supply dump on a village it's got more capacity than a supply dump on a clear hex right no on a village villages just have an inherent capacity i know but i think it also if you supply dump on it

the capacities go together or like doubles it or whatever they add because i think they already have the capacity of a supply dump oh i might be wrong one um i think so anyway again we'll double check that but yeah i'm very confident that it does just have that but i think i'm gonna go pretty heavy on supply dumps and villages then um and have more than i need yes because they're not that costly i think that's like 10 stores which is not 10 stores and also they are like an ops like they're done it's not even an upstage you just make them in that stage and you can do it i think it's any unit with a tow it's like they've got like the loosest requirements you definitely don't need an engineer or anything no because it's just boxes

stuff so what also it does is right now i've got that one supply dump that is realistically worth looking at yeah which is supplied on one of along the coast if i had 12 supply dumps it becomes a question of which one do you attack yeah because at that point which you know which one is the most full which one is he going to use next you'd have to drop a string of bombing runs to try and take out that capacity and you might not know you likely won't know which one I'm filling up regularly you'll just see my trucks move over them

and at that point when it's the full game we won't be telling each other which supply dump we've just dropped stuff off at we'll show the route but they could just have gone through and not done anything I think I might also space them at least my like northern

main supply route so that if it is a rainstorm and the road becomes a track they can still move along yes so you're going to shorten the distance not to accommodate normal transport but brainstorm or heat transport and also that would mean hopefully smaller runs i'm thinking maybe smaller convoys between each one but so that they don't go over the breakdown threshold well that is the ideal scenario yeah you have supply dumps so frequently that you never tip over the breakdown threshold for your trucks yes and then you just have the logistics between them

you'd have more smaller convoys that would do like what a bigger convoy would have done over two turns yeah you you kind of do what i did at the start of the game with the smaller convoys but have a system where that works yes rather than that being a useless piece of crap it's a good way to put it i'm nothing if not eloquent with my words i think i think minefields will be i nearly built one yeah because they'd be very good in that like half a pass and also you know where the gap through that escarpment that would be incredible yeah because it takes up all of your cpa in order just to pass through it yeah so you're immediately eating into someone's upstage and those are places you can't go around yes that

place is is spot on for it um the end of the escarpment to the east where you've come up and we've up next to bardia um further past bardia um you know where we've had the fight recently with yes uh where yeah the bit goes down the escarpment into the rough yes yeah that area if i stuck a few minefields around there yeah then i don't need to worry about having a line of guys to defend it just becomes a line where you just have to continue down south away from the minefield and then cut west which just means I'm taking you

further away from your trucks or you just eat up a turn dismantling or going through them it would like let a division have a bigger zone of control almost because it could be like behind the mines on like a track

and anywhere you go over is going to delay a turn and then they can come up to meet you yes cut them off i like yeah that's actually a really good tactic my again that's why i see construction as a really good benefit if you've got a surplus use it and you've got a tactical advantage yeah if you don't use it you can still play with the cards you've been dealt it's just going to be sort of baseline bare bones rules as written yeah rules as written is a funny concept in this game so many rules as written yeah you can't really do rule of cool or some sort of loose interpretation of the campaign for north africa no there are abstracted rules yeah which haven't been tested yes so it's like you say that god

that might be more of a mess than playing the non-abstracted yeah because you just lose like a blanket amount of trucks um air air raids are completely different like all sorts of air combat but their missions are vastly different. Yeah, I don't know. It sort of takes the fun out of some of the most fun parts of the game, from what I can gauge. It narrows it down to just the land movement and combat, really, because it abstracts the logistics, and it also abstracts the air game.

Yeah. So you're just doing that segment, which seems a bit... Yeah, I don't know that I enjoy the abstract of games. i don't know that i'm enjoying the full game but i don't know if the ground combat's compelling enough to be the only thing i don't think it is it doesn't like carry the game and the logistic stuff is annoying but like it is a huge element of like decision making and you know the fun of the game in some ways it is the game's verisimilitude yeah it's exactly what the the game is it's what it's known for the evaporation of stuff yeah past the point is all tied into

logistics so if you don't have that you you lose the the mythos that the game has but it means we probably wouldn't be playing it so i i would have applauded that we'd probably be playing like case blue or some shit we would have found something else dumb to do yeah i would have found another way to waste my life at least this is relatively harmless uh yeah relatively yeah you're not filling me with any confidence by saying it like that well you spent the first 20 minutes of this episode having a breakdown so i was talking about breakdown so i thought you know why not play into the i'm method acting oh okay that's a truck a real daniel day lewis of yourself i i am this is my 12 years

as a campaign player. It's going to be longer than 12 years. Oh, yeah. And Yarmulke is the only bit of combat I'd say I'm, like, unsure about. Like, I know how it works,

but it seems when I've been, like, looking at the maths of it with the units I have now, it's very weak. Yes, I found that. i used it i misread the table and forgot that you need to do the division by 10 yeah the actual points and i realized that i i really have nothing that's worth anti-tanking right now no um i know there was like they become like pretty crucial later on but i think

whatever we've got at the minute feels pretty pretty weak and unsubstantial so it'll be like almost keeping track of like is this new gun that's arrived worth doing this with i think the germans get a solid shot at anti-tank stuff i think they get the yeah i think so i can't remember what the guns are but they do start to yeah pull out some weapons that are significantly stronger with anti-tank capabilities wasn't the echoes of hawkeye that like there's a lot of focus on the tanks but what the germans really had was their like tank hunting anti-tank guns could have been yeah someone has told that to us i don't know if it was that or if we've just picked that up through a history segment or like an osmosis so yeah maybe we've just learned it

because we're accidentally learning about history yeah and in your case very intentionally learning about history um i'm just i'm just scanning through the contents oh to figure out any quick see um the withdrawal is going to be a whole thing i have to manage that i'm a bit worried about that and i also this sort of ties into that i don't fully understand i think the rules around when a new unit shows up and it's meant to be part of another like when it's assigned but it's not attached oh that i kind of understand i think is it and and yeah you'll be able to give me some clarity hopefully so they're they're assigned to show up they're assigned to that unit but they're just not attached yeah that doesn't mean anything not really no cool right that it's just

a new piece but there's limits on attaching unrelated units yes you can you kind of one or two two you can have as many assigned as you want for well they should be and i think they'll always arrive under an hq but it'll be like the battalion hq not the division hq oh my god we're have battalion level hqs i mean i i started the game with the seventh scattered oh of course and you put them back together yeah i've got a very coherent structured units yeah you don't have any garrisons do you uh mess i'm a true is that a yeah because i've got like seven arrays yeah and i don't know where i'd have another garrison though yeah you don't have many i sort of have Mersa Matruh, and then Alexandria, Cairo.

I don't have a... Look, that bit the Saharans moved through. There's nothing there. Yeah, it just seems like vast desert. Yeah. So I've got garrisons I need to figure out if there's a practical use of them behind their existence. Because some of them are like one toe point.

Yeah. So if anyone shows up, they're dead anyway. I think they're probably just a historic representation of like oh there's a toe point here because they found like an order of battle or something that's like a hundred guys were in this village yep i'm probably looking at it too hard it's probably just realistic again yeah it's probably just the italians were sending groups of like a hundred guys out to do stuff why you know what if if they went a different direction in the past i would have such an easier life now there's a there's a there's a balance there like if the italians were

incredibly confident you'd be having an easier time in the game how does the world are you having a better time i think realistically they don't make a board game of it anymore no i don't think that the fascist government that we'd live under i don't know how many wars come about afterwards just endless until they start that's how they work they need to endlessly be fighting yeah that's a good point you know what i'm going to retract what i've said nice um yeah maybe maybe me having an easier time playing a board game isn't worth the collapse of societies we know it i'd agree put a pin in that uh but yeah the withdrawals i'm like so because they have to get back to alexandria or cairo to like do the withdrawal yeah but it's gonna be like

oh fuck these guys are like i need them to hold the line like it's gonna be a difficult to manage thing of like these guys are leaving in like two op stages yeah i don't i don't fully i don't think i need to worry about that too much i don't think you have withdrawals i know i don't think um the only thing i need to think about is how it's going to affect your your play style yeah i need to bear in mind that i don't need to worry too much about a unit if you have to have that unit then bugger off yeah but i also have no realistic way of knowing when that's gonna happen or who to i'm gonna get a the operation operation compass is like 20 turns isn't it yes because you get roman on like 23 and he shows up like a week after yeah in real life pretty hot on it i think i have a big

withdrawal wave on turn, likely turn 20 or 21, 22. Right before his arrival. Yeah, where they sent all those guys to Greece. Yes, that rings a bell. So that'll be one.

I don't think I'll have any towards the end for D-Day because they just wrapped this up and then went. Yeah, they just won here and then pushed further in. That wasn't them reassigning, that was them just moving on. Yeah.

so yeah there'll be one there'll be one as you get your big wave of guys which will be yeah awesome oh god we well you know we're an hour in yeah we've waxed about our our hardships to come our hardships of the past still excited about the game you've having more of a wobble but uh i'm excited about finishing the campaign for north africa i'm terrified of what that actually looks like day to day i mean that's a good thing to be excited about because you can be excited about it for decades yeah but i won't be give it five years this won't be an exciting project for me oh it'll just be your life yeah that's kind of what it feels like now except I don't have the crippling pressure of

if you start to lose, you just have to see this through. But we'll be picking up next time. We'll be playing the game. We'll continue on. We'll be starting turn five, continuing down that downward slope of the practice run and kicking off the full game at some point this year. Anyone with any comments, any questions,

anything to send in, you know how to do so. It's info at warwithamate.co.uk, the website warwithamate.co.uk, or the Instagram is just warwithamate we'll have a look at everything we vow to look at it all answer it all we'll churn through it

we've got our lives to get through it all so send it over, we'll get there we have to get to it we have to, we need something to get us through this but in the meantime I've been James, I've been Andy stay subtle, humble and brave in those eternal deserts of your mind

farewell and goodnight We'll be right back. stop wasting your nights on a mattress that doesn't get you experience the most comfortable mattress in the world the sleep number smart bed at the touch of a button you can personalize your comfort. Choose firmer or softer. Adjust cooler to warmer. And right now, save up to $2,500 during our massive Labor Day event. Hurry into your local Sleep Number store today, because we have your number.