War With A Mate - Episode 77: The Lamps Are Going Out

Episode Date: May 23, 2026

The conflict is truly heating up as James suffers a heavy assault under Andy’s advance West; what’s new there? With only one Op Stage left of the penultimate Turn, the losses feel very real on both sides. Obliteration of the game forces is gently countered by a mailbag welfare check for the guys, a History Segment about a very well known Duke, and a frightfully dangerous Common Ground. Different strokes, and all that!

good evening one and all or morning it's me james hey andy welcome to war with a mate it's the only podcast ever that will ever exist that is centered around playing the campaign for north africa where we're involved i can assure you that might be shooting down future opportunities i am i'm burning some bridges right now but i'm happy to do so that's showbiz andy you've got a you got to burn bridges to make bridges if you want to make it big in showbiz you got to crack a few eggs they've always said that the showbiz people the celebrity on the couch he always says that he is mumbling that stuff tossing and turning in his restless sleep i'm curious to how much of his mumbled advice is worth taking seeing as he sleeps on my couch well i heard about a sequel to

one of his films that he mentioned and it's a film that doesn't really need a sequel so i guess i should really back off don't dox him oh the day's coming there's no there's not very many sequels that don't need to be made coming out it's not the main type of film yeah that's a good point all films now are original yeah it's a golden age of cinema you know what today's a golden age of war with a mate it is it's been a really solid play session this i i hazard to uh to say this and this is this is risky but this is one of the best ones yeah i'd say so i'm interested it's interesting you think that as well what so and that that comment will i suppose become more understandable as we as we go on

i haven't had the best time today in terms of my results in the game session but it felt like playing a game today yes that doesn't always happen it did feel like dynamic and a lot of decisions were made from by both of us it was it was a long one it was in depth there were a lot of moving parts to it a lot of combat a lot of combat so i guess why don't we dive straight in and we'll start with where we started we started with me i am the alpha i will be the omega it's no it's player a and b there's none of this greek shit yeah alpha and boomega okay there you go boomega isn't that what they have in new york the shops oh yeah you go down to the boomega for some cigarettes and a sandwich that just is a lot about your lifestyle that that's what you buy at

a bomega that's what they sell at bomegas oh so anyway aside from aside from bomegas i decided to move because that's part of the sequence of play and in moving i only moved two guys which is a lot for your recent that's actually groundbreaking development so i decided to move some people i moved specifically black shirts if we're narrowing it down if we're getting specific which i suppose i will i'll break it down granularly since no one else was here apart from us two and i guess that's what this podcast is so i moved two black shirts i moved the the fourth are in the same place so i moved the first to to brook and i moved the second the first moved from bardia to to brook that was a pretty straight transfer up along the road

they aren't motorized so it was a bit of a trod they i think they actually had to overexert in order to make the journey perfect but shut up shut up mr truck and the other guys that moved were the second black shirts now that was a bit more of an involved movement i moved the first because you recently put the fourth indian division in fort madelena i don't like it when you put your guys there because it means that you've massacred my sgs use but sylvie so i thought let's reinforce to brook because that is one of your win conditions if you hold to brook and you can trace a supply line back to your city yes then i'm in trouble that means you've won so i don't want that to happen i won't allow that to happen so i'll reinforce it the alternative move i made

uh would have been to i guess surrender to brook and try and stop the other win conditions but i think to brook weirdly enough is the most likely win condition and it's the most difficult win condition yeah because i've sort of surrounded all of the other areas to get to bardia i have to kill like 250 000 people but you can do a bit of a convoluted supply line that just kind of horseshoes around them well i could go from my supply dump yeah build one at fort magdalena And then one more. That's my worry. It's that you're going to snake around

and create a supply line that I can't do anything about because you've boxed me in. So Tobruk needs to be reinforced. The other move was moving the second. Now, the second black shirts have a bit of a conundrum because you pinned a bunch of them last week. Yes, they got my entire Air Force drop bombs on them. Yeah, which, not great for me

because you pinned five and we had to do a bit of admin rework because i only had four of them noted as pinned so five of them were pinned so those five had to stay behind the remaining second black shirt division they decided to trot off away from map c and onto map d and i'm sure this will be a saharan detachment situation where the guys you left behind will catch up maybe maybe well we'll actually talk about that today because you know what happened oh spoilers foreshadowing right you were there don't be glib because you've been you've been glib enough glib's one of my better moods what what are your top three moods then if

glib is one of your better moods ecstatic ecstatic where are you putting that i'd say one one all right ecstatic from you is a bit grating so i'll put it at three okay euphoric euphoric when have you ever been euphoric when i'm not hanging out with you oh you're hearing a podcast unravel live folks this is my final episode of war with a mate i'll be getting in a replacement host and then the third one is glib okay i i disagree but we we agree to disagree there's a little mini common ground i think your moods are bad you shouldn't show emotion i try not to you should just be a sounding board for me to say things that horrible don't stretch your shirt over your knees like that why not because it's unnerving i'm creating an a difficult silhouette to manage you look like

you've got really saggy naturals it's really bad that's very saggy it looks like yeah because you've got your hands placed on your knees and you're sitting down in an office chair it's not a power position in no culture or society has that ever been a power position it looks like you're giving berth now you look like a spider stop making movements stay static please yeah bow your head and shame so my black shirts they moved yes and in amongst that movement they they had to do a bit of maneuvering because leaving five infantry behind is is tough but they're all motorized everyone involved is motorized bear that in mind for those keeping track at home they dotted off under map d they've made it a little bit further along a track and they've dipped over or down a

slope so they are only four or so hexes away from mercer matruh yeah they're probably like three along and like four down or something they're very close yeah they are right around the corner so that was a nice comfortable position for me i thought i'd really snookered you because i've darted off into the desert i'm moving towards your areas that's dangerous and i've also reinforced to brook so i thought nothing he can do about this however the horrible reality of the situation is we're talking about divisions at this point we're not doing truck bandit stuff anymore it's all divisions for the most part so you decided to retaliate i did and how did you do that well we'll start with a not very big one my polish division who'd be hanging out in cairo have

moved for the first time they're now sort of halfway between cairo and alexandria so they can get to either in an upstate if they need to that was interesting seeing them start to move didn't expect that don't know why i guess precedent was they've never moved yeah yeah historically they're not known for moving yeah i moved in reaction to you sending your second i moved the 16th infantry back along the road to most of my true yes so you can't swing i'm in behind me and take that then i got a little well then the seventh attacked the maletti again for a classic they've done that three or four times now got 50 losses uh yes overall it was 40 but it became 50 because you didn't retreat i did not retreat it was a smart move well why would i

yeah and while that had been happening i'd moved the fourth up from four magdalena a bit so they were two hexes below your wall near hellfire pass just below bardia which concerned me because immediately i'm thinking if you end your movement within two hexes of one of my guys you get to move again yeah within that same upstage that that was the option yeah so when you did that i was thinking where's you gonna move and you moved in mysterious ways yes well the seventh attacked maletti did like 50%. Then I attacked them again and did like 10 or something. It was like not a great.

Because they fought them twice. Milady? Yeah, the 7th fought twice. Oh, yes. Oh, no, sorry. What happened? The first one I didn't commit very much. Yes. And then the second one I was like, I'm just getting these guys out of here, so I overcommitted.

Yes, the first one was 25%, I believe. No, that was someone else. I'm losing track. This is a fun recap. Yeah, we've noted it down. Anyway, the 7th attacked them twice and did a chunk and then 50% of whatever was left. Yes, which is a heavy loss for guys who are already not doing great.

Yeah, but because you decided not to retreat, I had to change a plan because the plan was the 7th were going to go up and join the 4th, and those two were going to slam into your Bardia guys, causing some chaos. Yes, yes. but i'd have to use too much cpa to get around your wall because i was fighting the seventh like in the middle of it and they'd have to go down and then around yes yes no it's all coming together now you did 25 on the milady yeah but it was only 25 of my committed forces yeah and

then you really went hard and then you took off 50 of everyone yes and that was a heavy hit so they are they're not doing particularly well yeah the the artist formerly known as milady division is really bad so that's a shame because they started off this this game this scenario pretty pretty solid yeah i think i remember you saying you'd put them there because they were one of your more robust divisions so they that's why they like anchored the wall yeah they took a few licks beforehand but they were still ready to hold off but now they've ended up in a sort of libyan division situation where they've just been absolutely chewed up and spat out yeah so they're they're in a bad spot i've noticed the libyan division is up at bardia now yes both

libyans yeah because they both took a mauling didn't they yes first and second are both next to bardia one north one south yeah um because i i dipped them into there to resupply briefly yes i took them back out and then i put the first black shirts in so that left me in a bit of an uncomfortable position where you're battering the maledi and i've left behind five infantry from the second black shirts yes and your response was to pincer them yes because the fourth weren't going to make any headway up north yeah they looped back to the east oh yeah and then because the attack wasn't happening there the second new zealand who were on the coast ready to move up and take advantage.

They decided to loop around the escarpment. Cowards. Sure. It's actually one of the bravest moves you've made. Yeah. So, your remaining second black shirt's five companies of infantry? Yes.

And the sixty... Sixty-third serene? Serene. I got them in the pincer. You did? You really boxed them in? And I hammered them. after some interesting uh discussion about whether or not you'd retreat it was an it was a difficult one because that one we sat there and i debated that for about 45 minutes i was looking through my my stats all my guys and the position was kind of a diamond shape where my guys were on

the south of it yeah you had guys on the western east and then the 63rd serene were in the north of that but they were pushed right against an escarpment yes the same escarpment that i plan to use against you so my options were i could retreat the 63rd and push them over the escarpment swallowing up most of their cpa and probably destroying all the attacks well that's it my tanks going down there would be absolutely obliterated yeah so that was a risky move and it would also mean committing the black shirts left behind to death yes because they we're not going to win that fight no so i decided i'll stick in i'll go for the fight i'll fire off a couple barrages i'll see what i can do because the the black shirts that are there they were

there because they're pinned they can't retreat before assault so they were there regardless my initial plan was if they could break off and retreat i would have them dart over the escarpment and then sneak over to your trucks towards the northeast it's city barani and then take those trucks and dart off and truck-banded it. Yes. But I couldn't do that. And the 63rd, if they go down the escarpment, will not have the CPA to get to those trucks. No, because it's

escarpment into rough and then either through quite a bit of rough or like a loop through clear, which is longer and probably would have been about the same. All in all, it pans out at something like three times the CPA they could actually expend within a

single upstage. Oh, wow. because i've got infantry in there they're not motorized oh so are they eights as well or i've got i've got eight in there oh so yeah they're the so eight cpa for the which turns to 12 if i over exert them because infantry can only go 1.5 times yeah so that becomes an untenable situation it almost becomes that just to move in the retreat yeah it's not a nice position that is the thing about the escarpment is it does really pin you, even if you can't go up it, can you?

You can't go up with motorised vehicles. Yeah. You can go up non-motorised, but I think it's a plus six. Yeah, so it's all you do in that turn. Yes. So it's crazy expensive. Which makes sense because, like, thinking back to the Libyan Sand

stuff, when they were going up that escarpment and they had to, like, lower the things on, like, literal ropes because it was so steep yeah these escarpments are just cliffs i think if you go down an escarpment with motorized it's a plus eight yeah to cpa and it's more than that it's like 60 in the breakdown is it or is it eight to break it's whatever it is it's nuts it's dastardly that's adding on top of the hex movement itself yeah so all in all i'm boxed in there what am i gonna do i commit to the fight i dropped two barrages i didn't look at the 63rds guns beforehand so all i've got are shit guns shit barrages yep

so i dropped two barrages yeah so i dropped one barrage point on each of these barrages yeah and i go for two of your infantry on the fourth indian which to be fair has worked quite well for you in the past sometimes like scattershot approach rather than like focus fire and today again it paid off 53 53 or higher it hits and i got a 54 yes so incredible work i managed to pin one of your infantry so happy about that oh my god they are absolute marksmen with these weapons so i i do the dirty on you and with that beautiful shot pin one of your infantry doesn't help no doesn't help a lick because then the fight comes down well before that i oh you barrage to counter i pin one of your tanks and one of your infantry you pin two infantry and one armor did

not miss one of the infantry no you got oh yeah yeah you got no yeah they were all like 60 yeah you got you got both infantry and you got my armor you probably think of my missed infantry barrage maybe yeah so my armor's pinned two of my infantry are pinned you're taking away from my already lackluster fight which means when it boils down to the actual combat we have a pretty nasty differential of plus 11 in your favor yes um that comes from my minus one morale on the 63rd i add plus one uh plus one uh plus two morale sorry yeah so free from that three from that and that that differential was was nasty so i end up on a well you've got a plus 11 that puts me into the overrun category and you hit them you hit them hard you roll for 40 and because they're

pressed up against the precipice of this escarpment it means i can't really afford to be swallowing up that cpa no so they stay in place and by staying in place they lose an additional 10 that's 50 50 loss on that attack that is a full division that hasn't taken any losses before as well as those five infantry left behind yeah it was well those five infantry when you were dismissing the cavalry uh the casualties uh they're all dead all of the five infantry left behind are killed in that fight and so are my tanks from the 63rd so you've you've essentially gutted the majority of the infantry from the second yeah they showed up in that situation they arrived in that garrison of the wall as a fully formed division that have just come from

Tripoli. They were the ace up my sleeve, and now they're mostly dead. Yeah. That is one hell of a swing. Yeah, this was definitely the highest casualties for an upstage.

In terms of actual lost battalions, yes. I think I might have lost more men overall, where I've managed to keep together battalions with one or two toe points. Oh, yeah. but with this you wiped out five battalions entirely yeah uh so the four bottom divisions of that wall from what i can tell are all in pretty bad condition now they are all now fighting

a battle where it's less about beating you in the fight and more about delaying you in the fight which brings me to something that this session highlighted for me and i do not have an answer four and i need one for the main game i think which is how to break through these impenetrable walls of steadfast guys who will just swallow up percentage loss it's how to finish a division yeah cause the percentage losses you can just sit there and because you cannot retreat if you don't want to and take the losses it's like the losses are capped like if you do very well you could get 60 percent losses yeah but that's like 60 and then 60 and then 60 until there's one toe point and then i think like i don't know the exact finishing state well it becomes very much a game

of chess because if you can force a surrender but that surrender is into another zone of control then i surrender immediately like if you force me to retreat but the thing is you cannot retreat and take the 10 i can but i when that 10 starts to stack up if you're hitting me with overwhelming odds where it's 50 and then 50 goes to 60 with the extra 10 and if i'm starting to lose 60 and i'm halving every time yes it will take a while but that also starts to stack up where the cohesion drops yeah i guess it does build up to the surrender which is is it 14 you need 14 sounds right i think before surrender becomes like an option yes so at that point you you have a few different ways to get me it's through the four surrender with the retreat box

yeah or the cohesion drops massively because i guess if you get over 30 casualties it's free um three cohesion loss yeah and then also every hex you should have had to move and didn't is one one or two one or two yeah so if you have to do three you might add three and the big benefit we found today we were looking into the rules and i i did a bit of a a delve into the rules today and i felt quite proud of myself because i remembered a lot of working parts when i was looking at this little plan i had to take the retreat before assault and grab your trucks yes which is that stacking points do affect retreat so if i'm trying to retreat i can't just dart through one of my units as if they don't exist i have to factor in their

existence in a hex yes just because i'm moving through them doesn't mean they don't exist yeah they add cost don't they like from division to battalion to like company is like i don't know the exact well it means i can't pass so i need to bear so for example the 63rd are five stacking points they're a division yeah i had five individual battalions there they are all one yeah i could only have moved one of them over that guy because it's six on a clear yeah i couldn't have moved all five of them in a retreat right okay i see now so that was something i factored And also something we found as a fucking great bonus for me with my non-movement over the last two op stages

is every op stage that a unit does not expand CPA, apart from training, you regain five cohesion points. That's big. That's insane. Well, that's two lost fights, basically. Yeah. Which is a big, yeah. And it's only one op stage.

And it also works very nicely for your, like, because you've had quite a static defense. so it means if you're cycling the divisions through like you have been you can prevent that build up yeah if you can't get through in one op stage then I've recovered what I've lost for the most part

yeah so I was incredibly happy with that so I've lost a lot of the second black shirts the 63rd have only lost some tanks yes well all of their tanks, they've lost all their tanks but I'm happy to take that, I'm happy to swallow that

the issue is going forward I'm kind of I'm in a bit of a situation I don't have anything to do with that wall anymore apart from just pivot the wall round Yes, it has I don't know how to describe this

it feels like the axis of the wall has gone from north-south to northeast to south-westerly Yeah It's gone diagonal and it's sort of wheeling towards Bardia a bit Yeah, I'm going to have to loop around and cover Bardia

which i mean i have to that's how the game works but this second black shirt push has to come in clutch it has to be important yeah otherwise i'm i'm sacrificing everything i described it to you when we were playing the 63rd situation it felt a lot like sacrificing a queen to win the game yes thankfully instead of sacrificing a queen i just sacrificed two bishops but that's still bad that's still terrible that might be worse, that's more pieces I think you can

be a lot more sacrifice happy at the minute because you're not losing stuff for 105 turns I think I'd feel if I was doing what I'm doing to you now in the game I'd feel very good about it

if you pull this off in the full game then I don't know what I'll do i don't know how i'll be able to continue to play well it'll get to an operation compass thing where the italians are wiped out and it's just germans coming in that yeah that's a very good point you might just hold north africa for five or six turns and then rommel shows up because i can't win until turn is it 34 or something and i think that's because there's historical precedent where i just lose yeah you kind of are with the historical accuracy um although i don't think the game

captures how good O'Connor was or anything, but yeah, they did wipe out the Italian 10th and 8th armies. Okay. I've invoked Fruit Zone. The Fruit Zone. Raspberry or watermelon?

Raspberry. I'm actually quite into watermelon at the moment. The Fruit Zone. I mean, yeah, you say wiped out. That's not going to happen to me. We'll see. I just had a moment there to think about it. Okay.

And I don't think that's going to happen. I think I'm going to be all right. Okay. I've still got a unit coming from Tripoli. For the scenario? Yep. They're still walking over. Where are they now?

Somewhere off map. Oh, so they're not going to be... Okay. The 410 Army. Oh, how are they? They are... I think they're like 5-2. oh because when you said the

vortex army i was like is that multiple division is it like an army an army's made up of multiple divisions uh no i did some sort of like shell unit okay so yeah i think they've got like a max two of ten okay but they're they're actually

quite pitiful yeah it's a max two of ten and they have one or two on the close assault defense thing yeah so it's like why would i spend the replacement points to bring this up to full strength it's not worth it it's not worth it at all no so i'm not going to be too concerned about losing entirely i think i can hold you off until normal shows up if i play carefully next time or i just go hard and i wipe you out from go yeah well that is i guess the advice that's

that's the advice from the start guys and yeah is that and also i guess it was meant to be an offensive and they didn't do an offensive in real life. And it didn't work out. But if we're trying to capture the verisimilitude, then me losing is actually being true to history. So either way, I win. I'm either a historian or

a good guy when it comes to wargames. So, take your pick, Andrew. Historian? Or should I say Andy? You can say either, I guess. Don't know why you're switching it up, but you can. I call you Big A. weird don't like that it stands for anus i know an asshole i knew that's what it stood for that's

why i didn't like it uh one of your your top moods number four contempt it's less of a mood and more of an emotional baseline yeah that's where you start most most play sessions i feel yeah it's a mood if i get off that you get off if i get off that stop getting off during the game you freak you pervert why don't you let me have any fun don't get off during the game you sick man god it's an old board it's a 50 year old board game so different strokes speaking of different folks have we got some mail i didn't say different folks it's a different strokes i was doing a transition all right fine well i'm gonna allow that we've talked about the game that's where the game wrapped up so i suppose mailbag seems like a

fair transition so yeah we got off turn five up stage two trucks to finish next time yeah we're approaching the end of turn five that's crazy what else is crazy are the emails that we've received they're not particularly crazy they're actually just quite normal emails so our first email comes from brooke and the email reads good day mates one of your australian listeners here emailing from the not so distant past of episode 60 i was going to wait until i caught up to email to make sure i wasn't copying someone else but your common ground about returning to 22 episode season was i think entirely correct and as anyone who knows me could attest i never stop talking about it dr who was mentioned and i think that's a very good example even if it

previously wasn't quite as long as some of the long season shows the show does not work with so little breathing room this is also why i think the best thing marvel studios ever made for tv was their very first show agents of shield which was great both at season-long narratives and at monster of the week with an overarching thread i did watch like the first season of that and i enjoy it i haven't seen agents of shield but when it comes to monster of the week balanced with overarching season arc um buffy the vampire slayer is the apex at that and i'll hear nothing else there's a reason that it's beloved in a cult classic one of my favorite television shows of all time maybe even number one and that's because that is absolutely fantastic at monster of the

week while having an arc that continues through the season and multiple seasons the show itself but it's still got the fun campiness of the you can have an episode that's self-contained enough where you pick it up on a re-watch and it's just that one episode yeah like a casual fan or someone has not seen the show can watch a one-off episode and for the most part it will just work as an hour of television on its own yeah well when we used to live together you'd quite often have it on and i'd just come in and watch it and then just occasionally be like well who's that but like it it's a show you could drop into especially with someone who has watched it a lot oh yeah it's it's great for a number of reasons and i think having that opened up the likes of doctor who

i think is fantastic for that i can't think of a better suited show for that kind of season arc then doctor who yeah no like if if doctor who made use of that my god the stuff it would pull off but it didn't um but that's not why i'm emailing rather i have a couple of history things firstly while i'll only elaborate if you want me to brackets i wrote it all out but then realized i was halfway through writing an essay the ancient egyptian pyramids for the most part were not in fact built by slaves though they also were exactly a shining example of free labor i think that's a weren't um they weren't exactly a shining example of free labor that checks out yes i also have a suggestion for a history segment which by the way is certainly a highlight of

the show for me as you've occasionally alluded to this part of the conflict between italy germany and britain was entirely fought in places that definitely are not italy or britain in other words it's a colonial war i was wondering if it could be interesting and useful context to do a broader focus history segment on how modern libya and tunisia came to be under italian rule great minds think alike this sounds familiar and how egypt ended up with britain fighting a war on it how did these colonies get colonized and what was going on before then what's the status of the egyptian government right now well if you've listened to the last five or six weeks we've been doing how italy got libya and we will be doing how britain gets uh egypt because that's

a fucking bizarre story yeah in in our sort of monster of the week as essence of this we've we've covered that but it also has an overarching story of how we got to world war ii yeah as for if you've written an essay out and you want to send it to us honestly we might not read out on the show if it's too long but love to hear anyone's sort of area of interest or something they've done some research on uh so yeah if it's really long might not get read out on the show but we always enjoy people telling us about the interest we love your interest we love your crazy stuff your wacky stuff and andy will definitely turn it into a history segment if he can i'll turn it into a tangent if not so that works perfectly both ways so please send over your your big old essay brooke

we'd like that you continue if you couldn't tell i'm a student of history myself that said i'm more in the cultural history field normally i can never get into military history but your podcast makes it very interesting hey kudos to andy thank you very much i've i've struggled to get into history but andy makes it that much more appealing doesn't he he's just got that vibe one of our friends andy dev fan of the show friend of the show um said that you give the vibe of a history teacher or an english teacher i think was the description which is odd because it's history i'll take it but there you go somewhat related i'm currently writing my thesis on the board game of victorian britain and what they can tell us about the worldview of the people who made and played them

i wonder what the campaign for north africa will tell future historians about the worldviews of the 1970s and today from that time period i'd much rather write about dnd subtle humble and brave regards brooke uh well yeah i think if you're gonna dive into a board game from the 70s and examine its cultural impact do dnd first and then maybe yeah dnd i think quintessential board game of i mean if you're talking about impact on culture dnd is kind of the board game to go well I can think of half a dozen books I know started as tabletop RPGs, and that the authors then adapted into stuff, which is massive. Some of the biggest stuff, Malazan, one of my favorite series, The Expanse, one of the best sci-fi series ever, both started as people's tabletop

games. I wonder what incredible piece of media will create on the back of the campaign for North Africa. i don't know and i guess let that be a warning as well brooke don't step on our toes because you're talking about assessing the campaign for north africa and its impact i'm pretty sure two guys are already doing that so let's not get our wires crossed here you're on our territory here brooke it is an interesting glimpse into the past though just with the thesis of like board games like yeah from the like that we probably have never heard of

like their version of like everyone's got a copy of monopoly in like a cupboard somewhere what's the like victorian ubiquitous gaming i think just like chimney sweeping that was a good board game you don't see that one these days no i'm it's kind of good we got rid of that one i don't know i quite like the um tuberculosis dlc downloadable content in the victorian era is quite a fun concept down flumable but thank you for that brooke very interesting and um it's it's interesting to see people suggest something that has ended up becoming a natural part of a history segment anyway which is definitely picked up through osmosis of other mentions of the history

segments, suggestions. Oh, yeah. I'd also probably read that at the time it came in and influenced. Well, that's it. You're actually plagiarizing people's emails here, Andy. So, Brooke sending that essay,

we'll plagiarize that too. We'll turn it into a history segment. But we will give you credit if Andy remembers to. So, we have another email here. Yes, we do. This one's subject is, hello lads uh yeah this one is from i'm not gonna dox anyone hello lads i don't actually i don't actually think we have a name on this one so we'll we'll give a pseudonym gary

gary right gary right i just found your podcast relatively recently and with the amount of times you've asked for emails i thought i'd send one in myself ah so you're at episode nine then ah dark times i do actually have a couple of questions i'd like to ask once you guys get the hang of the game properly or at least as much as is reasonable to do so for any mortal would you ever uh consider releasing your own addendum to the rules to lay out uh what you have inferred uh to conclude it about specific rule interactions contradictions mistakes etc yeah i think we are gonna at some point um i think once we're into the game and more confident about them oh 100 we'll be doing that we have to do that yeah uh also just to explain yeah how we've differed from

the rule book when we have we read it like it's gospel we've never deviated from it and then interpret we have it in a glass case i have it in a glass case in my heart as well it's a bad place have a case heart-shaped box also what do you mean bad place to have a case what do you think a pacemaker is andy it's just not a glass case yeah inside your heart oh sorry you're a doctor now that's impressive where did you study where did you get your degree john hopkins oh okay i'm sorry i did the whole degree and then first day i figured out i didn't like blood or patients and left a doctor scared of blood now that's a book it's a short book i walked into the hospital it was horrible i went home cool you have horrible prose it's functional prose

as you uh are for all intents and purposes the authority on the game as some of the very few people have committed enough time to properly try and play the damn thing. I think it would be nice if you could tabulate all that into info and collect all in a single place to make the job of anyone following your footsteps a bit easier.

Definitely, we will leave enough of a gap that they won't catch up with us. But no, we will. Yeah, we're trailblazers. People won't be able to catch up with us. They don't have the time. They don't have the setup that we have. They don't have Andy's living room. It's a one of a kind. Without the resources, without the

infrastructure you can't do this the game doesn't actually work outside my living room which weird that you put it in there i know well it's probably in the rules somewhere i've not read the rules before so i wouldn't know but if you don't have two microphones and you don't have andy's living room you're kind of fucked if you try and play this game so let that be a warning gary speaking of people who are maybe trying to play the game uh point two have you reached out to slash talked with veil fisk oh they are another youtuber who has reportedly been working on playing a campaign for north africa for i think a little over a year but has yet to actually release a single video on it the video is forever just a week away i think he'd made a good guest on the

show as someone who's at least uh trying to make some form of content about the process of trying to actually play the game yeah we've been seeing that uh week away meme for a while it feels closer there was a reddit post but no we've not uh unfortunately we've not had a chance to talk to him or about the game or reach out but yeah veil fisk is is an interesting one because that we came across veil fisk's um connection with the campaign for north africa after we'd already started doing this whole thing well i'd actually seen this for is it four or five d chess you know the one where like they make it i'd watch those videos before we started just good interesting videos i hadn't came across any of vilfix uh stuff before we we started this um

definitely not as in joke so when we when we started playing and i found out that there was somebody who is going to be trying to well i don't even know if he's trying to finish the game he's just got this ongoing uh bit in his community that he's going to do a video because Veilfisk does very in-depth and over-the-top kind of wacky game scenarios like, yeah, 4D chess with time travel and diplomacy if an AI played it and that sort of stuff.

Yeah. So it's very sort of heightened, hard difficulty or wacky modes of games. So naturally, Campaign for North Africa video, that's very much in as a wheelhouse. But yeah, this video is sort of mythological. It's never arriving. It's always a week away.

but it sounds like from what i've heard rumbling that video could actually come out sometime soon which would be exciting because i uh because his videos tend to be like an hour to two hours they're big videos yeah i feel like this one would be a particularly big it'd be interesting to see like how you represent playing it or in like weirdly a two-hour video for the campaign for north africa is short form content well yeah and and veil fisk is big as well veil fisk is a very big uh youtube presence we've been incredibly lucky with the people we've had on so far we've had folks who've got a following the echoes of war guys they took a real shot in the dark by coming on to guest with us before we'd released an episode cam came on to the podcast who is you

know a great presence with a huge following and great quality content putting out there so we were lucky to get that we've had nate from breakup gaming society with a very diverse portfolio who's been doing it for years longer than we have so we've been very lucky with the people we've had on i think getting vilfis gone as a guest be a lot of fun i imagine we'd have stuff to talk about if he's been delving into campaign for north africa but how viable that is whether or not come on by all means people make some noise see if we can but i'm not sure it's it's on the on the cards but hey i also don't think i'd be playing a game for the rest of my life that i don't enjoy all that much we'll chuck it on the wish list we'll we'll get them in there i mean we've got

the rest of our lives so there's plenty of wiggle room and speaking of not enjoying the game that much point three how much of the we really regret starting this fuck uh this we fucking hate this game is genuine and how much of it is played up as a bit whilst i do want to hear about the game from someone who's actually played it and it would be incredibly impressive to actually complete the game uh i'd hate to think that it was something you were forcing yourselves to do or something that actually actively detrimental to your well-being or relationship sorry for the long email thank you for taking the time to read it and good luck with the monumental task you set out on i hope you guys have a good time playing the game and may your opponent's trucks ever be fucked

well gary because we don't have a name so gary it is um well thank you for the email and thank you for the the well wishes and to touch on point three first of all what a lovely earnest comment what a lovely thought that you had in your mind that you're looking out for us because i think that's uh that's i don't think we've ever had a sort of welfare check in one of our emails before so that's really sweet in terms of do we play it up i can say comfortably and if you're sending this email early days i can say with complete comfortable nature no nothing was played up i was interested in doing this i kind of roped andy into it initially and andy graciously agreed to come along for the ride and we invested in this we built this idea and i was very short-sighted

with this i've got and i don't know andy maybe you'll correct me on this i think i've got a tendency to go off half-cocked with ideas sometimes, and I don't always think them through entirely. That's fair to say. I would also say anyone who thought this idea through entirely wouldn't do it. I guess that's a good point. It had to be kind of half-cocked. So when we did this, we had the structure of an idea. We thought, play a long game, do a podcast alongside it. When we started doing it, when we bought the game, when we got the equipment, when we recorded a few episodes and when we started reading the rules it kind of dawned on me and less less so andy you seem to cope with it pretty well but yeah i think i'm more i'm much more laid back than you in

general in general but you've also been candid that you didn't think we'd follow through with this i also i think part of my early calm is like this isn't real this is gonna end soon i'm gonna wake up so with that i did have a very overwhelming feeling at first of this is a bad idea i've wasted a lot of money i've committed to something i don't really want to do it has improved since and i don't i don't think i embellish how i feel with this this is very much i like to put in how i'm feeling with this so the podcast is yeah part of it is like a check-in on it how it is because i'd like it to be as genuine as possible i think this is more fun when it's real so we want to make it entertaining through the structure of it but if i'm talking about being pissed at the game i am

pissed at the game or today i'm having fun because it feels like a game yes and i try to keep that as raw and unfiltered as possible and andy does too in the sense of you when you're playing the game you do have days where you're just you're flat oh yeah because you're tired it's been a long yeah and that is part of it that is the i think the raw aspect of it is a lot of fun however to reassure you gary we aren't doing anything that is to our actual detriment i actually think it's been helpful in some ways i i think it's it's a lot of fun one the game's fun and two i think helpful for me has been doing research and writing something that has to be finished like every week has actually been a good thing because yeah my typical trajectory with uh projects is

start something be very excited about it for like two days and then never touch it again whereas me as well absolutely yeah whereas this is like i do actually have to like focus in and write something so that's actually been a good thing i think yeah the history segment that you do every week you're putting a lot of work into that you're reading books and then translating them into a history segment for the podcast um i'm editing the podcast that's a fun thing i've got to to figure out how to edit episodes and occasionally fuck it up because i don't know if anybody noticed but a couple weeks ago there was an episode where partway through the history segment the common ground theme just starts to play a little bit now that was meant to be a joke

because andy says something like arid ground partway through the history segment and i'd lined it up so it played the little quiet sting of the common ground intro because i thought that's a funny play on words then i fucked up the editing so that slid along the clip and it just played somewhere but it's a fun aspect of it we've got a lot of stuff i feel like um skill sets that we're equipping ourselves with yeah and that's a lot of fun and we get that from this so it's it's a sweet thought gary but we wouldn't do anything to damage our our mental capacity to live and we also i don't think you mentioned damaging our relationship i think well one we've got common ground to fix that every week so we're fine oh yeah we might not have even got to that by the

time you sent that email but also i mean hanging out each week playing a game that's horrible i think it's a a sort of baptism of fire it's it forges us together it's a yeah it's a pretty unique bond as well yeah it's it's something that's gonna last a lifetime one of us will die i think before this is up realistically so we are committed for life it's it's a bigger bond than marriage so i think we're in it for the long haul and i think it's had a net benefit for me personally yeah even if the game is insufferable but watch five years from now the crash outs are going to be real and big the crash outs are coming later this year because when we start playing this year when we play the full game and i start to realize that i now need

to not make mistakes that's going to be a different level of stress that i've never experienced before i also think going through one to six again is going to have a weird i'm not deja vu loop feeling which i think is going to be fun but thank you for that gary thank you for the email brooke yeah and when it comes to net positives what we do have coming up is our very first live show it's maybe our last live show depending on how badly it goes we've not done this before it's at the uk games expo in birmingham on the 30th of may it's literally next week when this comes out if you're in the uk if you're listening to this now then it's either already happened or if you're quick out the doors listening to this

it's happening next week on saturday it is in room four piazza suite it is 4 30 till 5 30 it is a live episode of the podcast and we've had some emails from people coming so if you are on the fence you could maybe meet some fans other people who like the show there's a few people who are coming who've listened to the podcast before so if you have and you're coming or considering coming or if you're not interested i guess email us let us know we don't have to email saying i'm not interested yeah we want to see every email from people who aren't coming uh yeah if you're coming along let us know we're trying to um bring something along for those that let us know in advance as a little little thank you so drop a message if you're coming along and we're excited

to see you there otherwise we're going to try and capture parts of it we're not sure how much of it will be available afterwards could well be an exclusive show who knows but that will that will be seen but in the meantime if you want to interact with us the way to do so is get us to read out the email by getting in touch the info at war with a mate.co.uk is our email address probably the best way to get in touch alternatively you've got the web forms on the website which is war with a mate.co.uk or the instagram which is just war with a mate and we do update that each week yeah put a picture onto the board when i remember to take a picture i will say um if you sent us an email a while ago um we will get to it we made that vow i think in episode nine yep we will be

getting to them but we do have we actually somehow have a bit of a backlog so don't worry they've not been like lost in the ether or being ignored no if um if you're hearing people mentioning episodes that you've not got up to yet or things seem out of order some emails are read out of order some of them in a different sequence do not worry about that it's it's in there we will get to it we promise. By the same merit, if you're worried that we've missed it, message back in a few months. It might give us a nudge. Follow back through.

Drop back in another one if we've missed it and you want to bump up to the top of the queue with another interesting email. We'll read it all. That's our thing. That's our thing. It's our USP. It's our USP stick. Oh.

USP stick. Is that just what people in America use to piss? their penis that would be a real great time for the fruit zone i'm gonna let you ride the rails but i've spent that so in our case instead of dropping into the fruit zone i'm instead going to force upon you andy a history segment and that takes a lot longer the men of the long-range desert patrols were quite a sight on their return to cairo from a The contrast between the east and west of the Nile is very marked. At this point, I gave little thought to my future, but I've always been interested in boats and the sea.

I am more or less in a position of a cactus in command of a ship, which is on the point of sinking because errors are present. We are absolutely not qualified to share views on history. So, Andy, where and when are we? Well, we've run up through the Italo-Libyan war and ended with that kicking off the Balkans conflict, which will ultimately lead to World War I. A messy situation. Yeah.

A new World War I, bad time. It was. It was a tremendously bad time for everyone involved. We're going to do the last bit of how we get to that, and then we're going to talk a bit about the various factions involved and some later ones. Okay, we're setting the stage. We're doing some World War I.

Okay, let's do some prequel stuff. so quote the lamps are going out all over europe we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime that's the british foreign secretary sir edward gray just before the outbreak of world war one okay that's a that's quite an ominous statement yeah that's as far as quotes go that's one of the ones where it's like he had an eye on history when he was saying it i think it's a bit of the that guy hat and pipe silhouette type thing like i wanted to make a statement and that one that one sits that one has some stopping power yeah so before we dive in uh let's talk about some of the major power blocks uh that will go into world war one okay so you've got sort of

two sides um the triple alliance and the triple and tonte okay i've not heard that term before i'm definitely saying it wrong maybe i've heard a different pronunciation so the triple entente is uh that's france russia and britain france and russia have a formal military alliance britain has an understanding with both sides and like a framework for handling colonial disputes and has treaties with both of them but not like full-blown military alliance treaties it's an interesting way for them to have a an alliance yeah but what solidifies the trio over time is britain are very concerned about germany i think that's fair at this stage yes because what germany are doing at this stage is trying to build a fleet to rival britain's

yeah we wouldn't like that no because we're a fleet-based superpower or a big island yeah so britain's with those two because it's like that everyone's worried about germany um and that's britain's particular anxiety france wants to reclaim alsace lorenz primarily but also again doesn't like germany alsace lorenz is on like the border and in 1870 i think it was prussia at the time but would become germany nix it off them okay yeah and then um the russian empire is the third part of this um which is russia sees itself as like the protectors of the slavic people within the balkans and sort of they've got like a pan-slavic thing going on at the time okay so they sort of have a sense of responsibility over that part of europe and also it puts up on

them they've been fighting the ottomans the austro-hungarians they don't want the triple alliance they're europe's daddy yeah yeah i guess you could say eastern europe's daddy eastern europe's daddy yeah whereas the triple alliance you've got the german empire which is the power house of the alliance uh in terms of military and industrial relative new new country at this point but really on the come up uh threatening britain's naval supremacy which they've had since 1805 trafalgar and nelson yeah it's a mainstay they don't want to lose that no uh with them you've got uh austro-hungaria um which is large multi-ethnic but struggling with this growing nationalism you know the ottomans are struggling with it where it started to be like where greece

where serbian where monaco we're not ottoman yeah austro-hungaria is having the same problem there's a big identity crisis in europe yes it is the rise of nationalism which fights colonialism and then has its own problems yeah yeah i can see how this is splitting off into it's like one step above feudalism yeah in some ways it's they well like the austro-hungarians are run by the hapsburgs they have a king they want it to be feudal but yeah everything's changing out from under them it's a it's a divided time yeah and then the third member of the triple alliance you have is italy um who joined seeking sort of protection and support for their imperial ambitions they will ultimately refuse to enter the war on the side of the triple alliance and

will join it on behalf of the triple entente so not the greatest for the triple alliance but those are the two sort of power blocks in europe and they'll pull other countries in they're the big two sides though pulling a dare i say the rest of the world correct hey you would be correct to say that i see what they've done here yeah so on the 28th of june 1914 archduke franz ferdinand and his wife are on a drive in seriovo which is in bosnia but austro-hungaria have recently annexed it so it's for there's a lot of serbians in there who aren't happy that austro-hungaria have come in and just taken it okay so this increasing yes serbian nationalism uh means they go down for like a trip to try and do some like goodwill

building and while they're there um one of the people who definitely doesn't like them having taken over and is just against them in general is gavrilo princep a 19 year old bosnian serb who after a farcical sequence of events will kill the austrian air uh archduke franz ferdinand and kill him and his wife i don't know people probably know about the assassination so we're going to too much but they throw a bomb it doesn't work they go for a cafe franz ferdinand's like we should go to the hospital and see the guys were bombed they go down the wrong street and the guy just walks out of the cafe and shoots him it's such a it's one of those things where history is like no man you have to die like it feels like a time traveler yeah has has reworked this situation

to make sure it happens yeah and franz fernand is the heir to the austro-hungarian empire he's also one of like 80 archdukes it's a very weird system but like his like cousin committed he was also never meant to be but his cousin committed suicide and stuff and a few other people like removed themselves and suddenly he's the heir but he had this what his wife sofia couldn't inherit anything and his children with her couldn't inherit anything so he was the heir of the austro-hungarian empire but his children wouldn't have been able to inherit if they'd had them and they'd survived so if he dies he cuts off a lineage he cuts off like a dead branch right yeah so it's such a weird butterfly effect kind of situation where there's so many small parts moving towards this and then

the cafe situation because i'm this is what i learned about in school this is what i'm very familiar with because that situation is so it feels so convoluted yes it feels if it was like a television program it would be bad writing yeah you'd be like why didn't you just have them do the first time like this is too many there's too many moving parts for no reason because it happens not long afterwards it's the same people involved you're just doing the same scene twice yeah it's bizarre also just a side note i learned about franz ferdinand one no one liked him no one was actually like personally upset he died really also he was 50 years old at the time and he loved hunting and he estimated he personally shot a quarter of a million animals this guy is a walking

environmental crisis a quarter of a million animals that's what he claimed is he shooting every fucking animal he comes across seemingly it's insane it's like 500 animals a year it's more than one a day so on the day he died he presumably killed an animal and a half he must have done that's wild yeah numbers don't make sense i might look into that a bit more find a breakdown but that was the head like the yeah he loved hunting and killed a shitload of animals that's not very cool no so he and his wife uh die in hospital after the shooting gravio olo princep will have this to say i'm not a criminal i destroyed a bad man i thought it was

right i cannot consider myself responsible for the catastrophe the catastrophe he's referring to is world war one i mean i guess no one would want to take credit for it so i know i get where he's coming from but also buddy i will also give him a little leeway of like if it wasn't this it was something else like i think it's not like if he had never been born world war one doesn't happen well no it sounds like history was pointing an arrow towards the direction of world war one yes and he just happened to be walking along that arrow it was gonna happen by the sounds of it history didn't want it to not happen no so this kicks off something called the july crisis where all of the various alliances and treaties

start to get undone, pulled together. So let's start with Archduke Karl Ludwig of Austria, who's the current boss and Franz Ferdinand's dad, is pissed about his son getting shot, but more so at Serbia and that there's an opportunity here to take over Serbia as opposed to like, my boy. So he sends an envoy to Berlin to find out if Germany will back them

against Serbia for military action. Because also Austria really needs this, because for a long time Austria's strategy is just to pay people off. And to put it in perspective at this point, it's very badly managed. They shouldn't have gone into Bosnia, for instance. But they're spending 10 times less on their military than Britain is at the time, with almost 10 times the troops. Like, their military spending is entirely directed into, like, bribes.

So they're just not... So they need Germany's help here. So they're arming their men with influence. Yeah, and, like, I guess, old weapons. So yeah, they do really need Germany's help here, but Germany, under Kaiser Wilhelm, give unconditional support to them. something that'll be referred to as the blank check so they get this check on check on the 6th

of june but austria are going to try and take this and give serbia a deliberately unacceptable ultimatum uh with the intent here that uh if they don't accept the ultimatum it's like pretense for war and if they do you've just completely like humiliated serbia ah yeah it's a lose-lose then yeah it's deliberately set up to be like fuck you serbia but they hold on to this uh ultimatum uh for a while so it can have the best possible timing because again this is immediately being used for political ends it's not about the guy who died of course and just to give you a check-in on europe at the time franz ferdinand dies it makes the papers but not even like the front page like france have got like a very sensational murder trial going on at the time

britain's like it's ireland gonna have a civil war so like france ferdinand dies and then there's like a month when no one is like aware of what's coming other than like top level people so the reason they held on the ultimatum was because france have a state trip to russia uh and these two are allies and the biggest threat to the central powers so they wait until the day the french delegation leave russia so the french prime minister and president will be in transit so they won't be able to react to the message okay so they deliver it at like 6 p.m on i think it's the 23rd of june so again this is like almost a month after the guy got shot they've been holding on to that since they got the blank check on the 6th of june like it's that's a delay yeah so

yeah the reason for the delay um this french trip russia feels this thing of like we're going to protect serbia we're going to protect slavs in europe so austria composed the automation and then this is a quote from i think the minister who wrote it is being composed so that the possibility of its acceptance is practically excluded so they're writing this thing with the intent it will not be accepted um what a mess yeah so austria gives serbia 48 hours to reply to this like 10 point ultimatum shockingly serbia comes back and goes we accept all of them but one we'll accept nine of them this one is untenable but can we talk about it okay the one by the way among the ultimatums it's like we need to be able to you need to like shut down your

national newspapers anyone who said anything bad about the hungarian royal family austro-hungarians we need to be able point six which is the one of contention is austrian police and law enforcement would be able to act with full impunity within side Serbia, which is basically just your country doesn't have sovereignty anymore. Right, yeah, I get why that is the sticking point then. Yeah, because it's like,

oh, so we essentially become a vassal state if your law enforcement can just do whatever it wants in our country. We're not really a country. With complete diplomatic immunity. Under the pretense of hunting down anyone linked to the assassination, I didn't mention,

he's part of this group called the black hand which has two and a half thousand members amongst military politicians journalists it's like a serbian independence movement slash secret society terrorist group well what a what a fucking bad guy name as well oh yeah the black hand yeah come on it's a bit of the are we the baddies must have been going on like yeah who names their organization the black hand and doesn't immediately go by the way we're bad guys yeah everyone but because it's this secret society conspiracy thing if the austrian police go in looking for it they can essentially arrest anyone well yeah it's carte blanche when it comes to how they're going to investigate because if it goes up to the sort of upper echelons of society and you've got fingers

and all the pies with your black hand yeah then yeah you've got a way to just take anyone you want and disappear them or yeah do whatever you want really yeah and you've got a bad guy name as well yeah it's just completely untenable in terms of like we cannot accept this which is then means austria hunger the austro-hungarian ambassador when he hears this immediately kicks off and severs diplomatic relations between the countries. Britain tries to hold a conference to mediate peace, being like,

guys, come on, let's... And Berlin and Vienna don't even say no, they just ignore them. While this is happening, your mobilisation is happening across Europe. Like, they're aware war's coming.

And this is when the like mood starts to break in terms of the general public as well where you've got like the stock market crashes you've got runs on banks people are like panic buying and hoarding food it's like very abruptly oh shit like as he says the lamps are going out it's march 2020 yeah it's toilet paper runs on march 2020 yeah while there's some there's also huge anti-war marches in berlin paris and london like 100 000 people plus like very big anti-war but this won't help on the 28th of july 1914 austro-hungaria declares war on serbia on the 30th russia orders a general mobilization of all its troops in response the next day germany and france begin

their own mobilization and the same day uh germany declares war on russia over the next six days germany will invade luxembourg and belgium germany will declare war on france britain will declare war on germany and austro-hungary and austro-hungary will declare war on russia and that's all the ties pulling like alliances come in and you've got world war one what a fucking mess you may have noticed i didn't mention the ottomans once in this and they could maybe have not been involved at all but we'll find out why they did get involved and why it was the end of their empire next time well it's crazy yeah you've talked about what the global stage is i guess the european stage for this is i'm very interested to find out how they get roped into

this because this seems completely divorced from them up to this point and it could have been because again they're on their like a 300 year back foot they've just lost the first and second balkan wars it's like guys while europe's destroying itself take the chance to like rest and recuperate yeah but they won't and you'll find out why if you wait an upstage you get five cpa five uh five cohesion points back they could have used it they could have done their cohesion points must be dog shit oh yeah uh they're in the minus like teens at this point no wonder they had to surrender or whatever happens to them in the end because i don't know the definitive conclusion to the ottomans i guess we'll find out i'm excited

i love a cliffhanger i love a cliffhanger oh man what a just a crazy like one guy does something and then it's just europe is a tinderbox with a house of cards in it i don't i can't really think of any other point in history where you can point to i mean there will be you know courses taken by individuals but i'm trying to think of other situations where you can very definitively point to one person and say you did this and like have the fan out from them yeah like that that big spread of this one action is so defined and so clear that it caused such a knock-on effect because there's huge numbers of factors that created world war one we've we've you know you've done history segments on it you've you've covered huge swathes of conflicts and alliances and

agreements and political strife that have caused this but the fact that you can pinpoint one action that's so universally agreed upon to be the fire that starts World War I I can't think of anything else where it's so defined especially not on that scale as like one guy yeah because World War II for example

you don't have the one guy who Hitler would be the easy answer but you don't have there's not a single moment where one person takes one action and also I'm not a huge subscriber of the like great person theory of history where it's like certain individuals would like arise and

shape the world directly to their will i think it's a lot more like people are the result of their conditions like i think if you took hitler out you could still have had a nazi germany i don't think there's anything unique about him um and i think it's a similar thing probably like someone would probably have fucked it up and started world war one yeah it is interesting that you can't see the guy that did it the single action he took which was to kill one person well two people him and his wife and that is the that's the catalyst i think the only like comparable thing maybe is martin luther i was thinking like reformation not civil rights yes i was thinking that you've got jfk which yes i think you could probably throw

lee harvey oswald in there massive political upset on the back of it yeah but not a global conflict not not in the same sense anyway you got you got global conflict afterwards but it's not a hot wall i mean if if lee harvey oswald had kicked things off in the same way or transferred or not it would just be the world would just be craters like yeah we managed to get a bit of a backstop on that but that could have been the way that ends yeah well we only have we only have one way to stop that from happening here if you think about it because our life is is sort of a similar powder keg our existence is we're in the throes of war we are but the difficulty is with us we're not nations tied by weird convoluted and i guess

betrayed constantly pacts between nations oh secret pacts as well yeah we're not we're not doing secret pacts we we're just friends that decided to get in on this which means that in order to balance out this conflict we're going to have to find a way to come together and i think there has to be common ground let's do it 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 so in order to unite this common ground is it's my turn and i've decided that we should unite on the idea that the world needs more numerous dangerous locations naturally

interesting uh can you expand a bit because initial impression is danger but well that's the initial impression and that's good okay because you feel that okay you know who doesn't feel that no the powerful do they not i don't think so because right now if you think about all of the superpowers in the world yeah they're all kind of thinking about what they can do politically what they can do in terms of i want to take this piece of land i want to have this war we don't really have in a way we don't have a common ground globally we don't have dangerous spaces we don't have areas we can't go anymore okay so you're thinking it was kind of good when a map had a sort of here be dragons yes okay i think that's a good thing i think that's a good

thing to to go against okay i'm not talking about nations that are dangerous i'm not talking about countries that are going to become a threat or places you can't travel to as a tourist because this area is particularly dangerous for somebody to go visit yeah i'm talking about natural hazards so you're not adding like human danger no i'm talking about like you can't travel to this place because there's you know here be dragons okay so is it like releasing like dangerous animals is it like you get a bunch of like malicious evil landscapers to go in there and make like deceptively dangerous terrain like what are you thinking in terms of making them all dangerous well the way to do it is going to be difficult but the the idea i had came from i saw an article

recently about the fact that now the chernobyl exclusion zone has more natural wildlife than a lot of ukraine's actual parks and national reservations yeah i've seen a similar thing about uh hiroshima and nagasaki where because people have stayed away there's almost been like a impromptu like nature yeah reserve and it was a combination of that and and this is into the more human side of things um i think it's north sentinel island yes the non-conductor tribe yes they like killed a missionary a few years ago a few years ago yeah this missionary tried to sail over there and he he showed up and they they killed him because these guys are they're a tribe that have been left isolated so somebody shows up do you actually they're not fully isolated by the

way oh not entirely no because there was that guy in like the 1600s some british weirdo who like went there and like took a bunch of slaves and was like measuring their genitals and doing weird shit to them yes which to them is like yeah have the cultural memory of the guys on the boats are fucking bad yeah there'll be a passed down message of yeah people show up and they they do weird shit yeah there was that and there was a there was an ongoing relationship as well for a little while on that island where somebody was showing up and they had sort of ongoing contact but then it fell apart in i think was the early 1900s yeah and since then it became they've had a kind of sporadic contact and sometimes it's neutral sometimes it's hostile occasionally they'll have a kind of

positive interaction and i think that needs to be swapped around slightly because that's a that's a group of people who they're doing their own thing yeah they just leave them alone just fuck off stop bothering them and i think that needs to be enforced but with a different aspect of danger because, realistically, the nature of things are any nation could send a group of people there and it could be catastrophe. Those people would be immediately destroyed. This island could become inhabited by...

At the very least, you get the plague thing. Yeah. Because they don't have the immune systems because they don't have exposure. Best case, karmically, people show up to invade the island for no reason whatsoever other than to be pricks. and they get afflicted with some illness so you said like to protect the island you like release a kraken around well i not necessarily that island because i think that island should

just be left alone yeah but we should have other areas where we think of it like a like a video game where you have like difficulty scaling some areas you can't go to until you've got the like noob zone yeah yeah and right now we're at the point where anybody can kind of go anywhere like you know a global power i'd say there's very much areas where it's much easier but you know say britain the us yeah any any big power can kind of go anywhere in the world that isn't another area's border okay so this is uncharted island they can just they can they can show up at north sentinel island they can do whatever they want without facing any real consequence so this danger needs to be dangerous enough to like is a deterrent to government yes okay wow okay so i'm i'm talking

like a like some sort of you know if we're going down the monster route let's do monsters yeah you've got a you've got a godzilla type thing but this godzilla is chill he just wants to have his island so if you want to show up and take on this godzilla you can't just show up with what we've got now you need yeah you need something not necessarily bigger weapons that's not going to do it this this monster it's not going to react well to weapons we need to figure out something better who's making the monsters they exist naturally ideally okay so i was kind of picturing an arms race between weird genetic environmentalists and the world government no i think that's actually that's worse that actually exacerbates the issue i'm trying to to prevent okay which is

that we kind of need a united cause to kind of go well these areas are too dangerous to figure out on our own by being selfish assholes let's leave them alone let's leave them alone or work together and we'll take out what is in this hypothetical situation an objectively evil or damaging threat it's a monster it's it's bad inherently it's got bad intent it just can't leave okay so you kind of want to turn some uninhabited areas into like essentially like an mmo dungeon yes i want to create raids cool because i was kind of picturing it like oh this forest has got a bit small it's not being like conserved well enough let's release like a bunch of dire wolves into it you know that would have worked a while ago but we've we've gotten to the point where that's not

going to really do anything anymore so they need to be full on we can do whatever we want now that's the problem me and you can't but there are people that can they need to have their their ability tested a bit they need to really think about their critical thinking reinvitalize the man this nature story element that needs to be reintroduced because right now it's man versus man okay we don't have a and unless you introduce aliens which which feels like a cop-out and sort of a an end boss situation i think there needs to be some sort of place in the middle where the world needs to become dangerous enough where we're thinking about that again.

So like Jurassic World. Sort of, yeah. You know where there's like the islands, I think they're at the equator. Yes. Where it's like the right environment for dinosaurs. Yes, Isla Nubla, I think it might be. Something like that. But you want basically like islands

like that. Yes. Okay. And I think once we manage to get that sorted, we need to bring it down a scale as well. And we need to introduce that domestic and that would be the dire walls into the forest that's getting over yes okay so you just want to make the world more dangerous and wild i think so okay i want that to be a bit more it's a combination of a bit more mystery and also unifying us with the idea of well no one can go there

there are some areas where it's like well that's kind of dangerous and only the accomplished and brilliantly minded champions heroes great people can go there and it's not because they're just shits who get elected into that or they're part of dynasties that just happen to have the influence to go there we need to make it a bit of a challenge okay i don't want people to just have free reign going anywhere anymore i think we need to cut that out a bit i don't you go to the moon that's tough that's that's a natural difficulty going to the bottom of the ocean that is i think we've we've become a little bit too glib we've got too comfortable in our band we have and it's not right it's not fair we've got too many problems going on now it goes to show we haven't

actually earned this part i thought i'd be more against this than i am i actually i'm just kind of fine with yeah let's get some monsters out there and let's leave some areas alone because realistically right now the the barrier for you to travel anywhere you want is money yes and even if it's like also a dangerous area money will overcome it yeah you can you can pay to win at the moment right now if you had a billion pounds you can't go anywhere i do like the common thread for a common ground it's like we don't like late stage capitalism

but we're too dumb to come up with good solutions so we just put monsters in different areas so we release monsters into the world so what common ground is is just put monsters in places just dumb fuck

Karl Marx writing about like cryptids Why does it always pull down I'm just putting monsters in places Is this a stupid segment Put some monsters Around the world And just see what happens

See, but they have to be They have to be hard enough They have to be hard enough monsters to stop Like governments have a bit of a time with it But they don't want to do anything bad But they are evil So it's fine killing them But they won't do anything wrong

Unless you go to their area And then they'll be very territorial Exactly, yes. Okay. And no one gets to make them, they just have to appear one day. Okay. Does this work? No, but I do like it.

I do want a bit of the, like, yeah, he'll be dragons. And then you'd also have, like, famous monster slayers, which seems like a fun category of celebrity. You don't get that anymore. No. You've got singer, you've got politician, podcaster, actor, and dickhead are the five celebrity categories. Yeah. Sometimes they cross over.

Let's add Monster Hunter to that. Let's add Monster Hunter because I don't think there'll be much overlap between more than... I think you get Monster Hunter and they overlap with like one more. Yeah, there might be a Monster Hunter who likes singing. Yeah, you could get like a warrior poet. Yeah. Or you could get a Monster Hunter who becomes a king. Maybe not a king.

King feels a bit... Feels like a step back on things. Yes, that's not got too medieval. Or a Monster Hunter who is also a stage performer. Well, a lot of professional athletes sort of retire around the age of 30, but they're in great shape. They want the discipline. Head out into the world, hunt some monsters.

Do the world a favour. Messi's second act, he hunts and kills Godzilla. Because he runs really fast and he can kick a ball. And he's got the skills. Yeah, I know Messi from football. I know of him anyway. I don't follow football, but I know he's a footballer. I don't know what team he plays for.

Real Madrid? They're a good one, aren't they? Sure. I hear they're big in the football world these days Arsenal perhaps don't think so Chelsea they're big

I think he might be in America because that's what footballers do now they instead of retiring and hunting monsters they go America and cash checks they become the monsters so that's what I want I want a dangerous world

I feel like the anxiety of everyday life should be enforced upon the rich and powerful. By monsters. By monsters. I'm in. Are we not all facing our own monsters every day? It's not profound. But it is found.

It is. As is, I would hazard to guess our common ground it is here be monsters and we love it here be monsters here be dragons and by the very nature of that here be our farewell stay subtle humble and brave in those very dangerous monster filled deserts of your minds farewell and beware We'll be right back. Thank you.