War With A Mate - Episode 79: Backing Track

Episode Date: June 6, 2026

The guys are back from the first WwaM Live Show at the UK Games Expo, and have returned to the eternal trenches of war. The final Op Stage of Turn Five is underway, with a very lopsided Air Phase due to inclement weather. The mailbag brings to mind Andy & James’ other boardgame exploits, the History Segment sees an escalating situation for the Ottoman Empire and Common Ground really challenges the way we go from Map A to Map B. Sorry about the noise!

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We're back. We're back from our first ever live show. And by back, I mean we've been home for about a week. but this is the first episode since our foray into the real world but you'll be happy to hear that we're back in andy's living room and we've been playing the campaign for north africa the thing we always do every time every time if it's not every time then we've kind of misadvertised what we're doing here there's a few episodes where we get an excuse not to play yeah i guess so i love those episodes i love an excuse not to play i love not playing the

campaign for north africa why we like having guests guests are great because we don't have to play about the game we can just talk about previous times we played the game it's like an episode but we don't have to do the hard work but we've been doing just that we've been doing the hard work we are in the midst of upstage three turn five this is it we're closing out the penultimate turn we're not quite done yet we're not quite done with turn five we've just done the air stuff today yeah quick air stuff because of the weather quick air stuff for me because of the weather see for those who are i guess just in case we've uh we've picked up any um stragglers who were at the live show um who will at this point i guess know what's going on because they

were there for it we're playing the campaign for north africa it's never been finished before we're gonna finish it we've been playing it for 18 months more or less i guess not all of that was playing the game and we're nearly at the end of the six turn practice scenario so that's the that's the highlight that's the gist and the nitty-gritty is air combat yes because last time we finished off um i'm taking the initiative for this op stage you're going first yep by your own selfish volition i let you go first twice in a row yeah i know and now i feel like it's being rug pulled from under me you set a standard and now you've taken it away from me is that fair is that just you know what that's just not right that's what it is entirely on you

no you have the complete autonomy over this you're in charge of your own attitude yeah my attitude is bad andy bad heart shoot that's what i'm calling the episode bad andy that's fine no it's not you don't want that you want that reputation out there that you're a bad man i'm a bad andy of all the andys you're subpar that's mean i mean it's a good job and what are you doing you want to go cough yeah i paused go on did you just catch yourself mid-cough well i was gonna cough and then you stopped talking cough now there we go good boy good andy i was gonna say it's a good job that the celebrity on the couch isn't called andy otherwise you'd be kind of neck for neck as to who's the worst andy

it'd still be him i don't know but now we know he's not called andy we're gonna do we're gonna do a sort of guess who for the celebrity on the couch and figure out who this guy actually is well we've been accidentally narrowing it down we do need to stop until it solidifies on a single person i know who it is okay i just haven't told you who he is i know who he is i'm looking at him yeah he's asleep again yeah bastard never really contributes no and to be fair neither did i today in a way because you gave me initiative i'm sorry you know you ruled initiative you give yourself initiative i'm thinking of my fantasy world where i got to go first which means you ruled the weather and that's why the weather's bad for you why the weather's bad for james

yes because there's a sandstorm going on and it's actually a sound from this guys it's not a misremembered race no yeah we promised this time it's not like the last time we called an episode the sandstorm and it was wet this time it's just a hail of little grains of sand hitting us all over the place our body our face our mind you're saying our but it's not affected me in our past well we are a collective in this we're in it together we're against each other that's yeah but we're doing this together we're friends okay i know i'm just saying the sandstorm is not affecting me you know what you it's not a shared problem right okay i'll make my common ground good then because right now you're making me dislike you intensely why because you're saying that

you're not friends with me i haven't said that at all i'm reading between the lines such you mean on the podcast because of that sandstorm on maps a and b which are for those keeping track at home my maps the ones where all my guys are my only airfield in map c is Fort Maddalena. And you may remember that name because it constantly gets raided by Andy's fucking guys. Not happy with that. So, I'm stuck.

Schitt's Creek. No paddle. What's going on? So I can't fly anything. You've instead been flying your planes around like you're Amelia Earhart. Yeah. Except I didn't crash, I guess. I guess bad example. Didn't lose any planes.

You weren't killed by crabs. No. We saw that crab. We did. keep him in Budapest Zoo yeah I can't believe that guy's got parole the legal system in Hungary is interesting it's weird they extradited the crab I guess you have to there's no legal system or judicial process

in whatever island it was was it like coconut no coconut crab isn't it yeah I don't think they actually know where she landed they've got a good idea I don't think they found her body did they the crab's got her yeah they eat everything there's no yeah they eat all sorts my guys however they're not going

to get eaten by crabs they have been chewed up by bullets though yeah so i did six missions you did six missions however you had a bit of a false start i did because i i got excited and i was like i'm going to strafe some trucks giddy boy uh turns out you can't strafe things in major cities how would that work just think about it there's too many skyscrapers andy there's not there on there's not a single skyscraper on the continent i think the chrysler building burj khalifa you may have heard of it neither of them are in africa and both were built after 1940 i think close margin on both sides close margin on both sides no it wasn't far off actually the chrysler building might be before i don't know i doubt it anyway you're giving me too much

cadence and credence yes anyway so i decided to bomb the second black shirts because they'd well they're on they're on map d they're on map d they've darted away from the front line which is a great affront it is it it's it's a dangerous spot for my guys to be in it's dangerous for you and it's dangerous for me bad for you because if they get anywhere closer to your guys they're going to tear them apart it's bad for me because they become a real target yeah they become I mean, I've seen it happen before with the Saharan Detachment. You really start looking at them closely. And when I look at guys, it's from planes.

You look at them from above, you throw bombs out, keep them in your little satchel. That's a callback. It is. To something that happened nearly 100 years ago. More. More than 100 years ago. Yeah, that's a real long callback.

Yeah, like 1911 or something like that. Yeah. Wow. 1911. What a year. what do you have for aerial bombing real jumping off point yeah so yep bombed them pinned free of your four infantry in there yeah didn't love that i've had better days big fan of that nope uh then i bombed yeah 63rd serene serene yeah they are the ones pushed up

against the precipice of an escarpment so if they want to run away down that that's going to be painful yeah it's gonna look a bit like that scene from 300 yep with a few more armored cars and trucks madness this is escarpment and then i add an extra six to my cpa oh that's rough yeah i don't want to have to do that however the the plus is they can't because they're pinned yes they are i got three of them as well yep you got three of those three of they've got more guys though they've know like seven they've got seven yeah they've got seven the second have four because the the second lost five that they split off from that you immediately butchered so of the of the second most of them are dead and now most of them are pinned those who survived the 63rd were a mostly

intact division before you got your hands on them recently and now you've you shaved off i think it's maybe four groups within there. Something like that because I think I hit them for 50% but that five took some of it. Yeah, I think you took off all of my tanks there

and a few infantry and now you've pinned more of them. So they're not in a great spot. And because you couldn't strafe inside the city I instead decided to strafe some of you guys. Yep.

Striv the fourth You did Yeah I did do the fourth I got a tow of them Yeah they've They weren't as bad as I thought they were Their cohesion's bad Have you checked for the

Have they had any stationary Upstages to get the five I need to double check because I think they have I think they were stationary last upstage So if they have then they've regained Five cohesion which puts their biggest bracket at 0 which is great

and it puts some of the lower brackets at minus 6 which I guess doesn't matter unless you split them off I just feel like you're going to pin them and I'll have to split them off so I feel like it will become pertinent at some point ok then I did strafe the

second as well that is the one I got very lucky on because I got a toe but the one I decided of your four was one with one toe in it uh yes so the non-pinned the unpinned guy uh got killed um yeah it was my it was a recon guy yeah and he had four close assault rating three close defense so really good unit recon guys are really good i've noticed yeah that could have really swayed a fight to you know if it's a small conflict

where i'm going up against you know a few toe points that could have really been the clutch move i needed to push it up by one or two yeah so that would have been beautiful but you strafed them and absolutely destroyed them not pleased about that but you can't go back can you no we don't have a time machine in the game that would be crazy unless you found that rule somewhere that would be too much if we were doing this but also in parallel like you know the is it four or five yes yeah if we were trying to do that with the campaign for north africa now that is a lifetime commitment but it has to be a full-time job as well and you have to be lived to several thousand years old yeah i think that that's not gonna no maybe in the future when someone can you know

if anyone's listening to this in the year 4012 and they get really inspired please do it and if you have a way to travel back in time come back into this living room now and tell us about it nope nothing i like that the version of that is so funny with the um you know the stephen hawking did that oh yes but then he got outed on the epstein list so it's like so people wouldn't want to come to your party anyway it sort of disproves the disprove you've ruined the opportunity for someone to travel back in time because you you have negative connotation It also makes me think more might come out More

More stuff about him Entirely predicated on the fact that No one showed up for a time travel party If anything for me to have this cynical view I believe in time travel I mean time travel's real Well in the words of the monkeys I'm a believer

Well we're all time travellers It's just not multi-directional When I saw her face I'm not helping you with that I'm a believer So I also strafed one of your trucks Convoys You did

Strafe's all got one across the board for this I'm fine with that It's worse than zero for me But it's better than two Yeah I don't Strafing doesn't I've gone back and forwards On whether strafing's particularly good or not

It is it definitely is yeah because you're committing a relatively low force because it's fighters as well yeah your fighters realistically are going to be strafing or they're going to be doing air patrol yeah especially good like fallback thing for them in a situation where i can't launch aircraft oh i can't think of a better use of fighters in that case there's like not really reason not to yeah i don't know if i'm missing a very good function of fighters but i think air patrol and strafing is is kind of it yeah some of them can do recon yeah we've never really dabbled in recon much i think part of it to be fair is because we're very transparent in the practice

run yeah but also share a lot you kind of i've because i've been making note of it when you give me like you know when you bomb and then you've got the options of infantry armor and gun and how many yes like i've been making a note of them so that kind of acts as like a recon i think the recon gives you more info it gives you like how many tow or stuff like that it might but i don't know if it does yeah i think it's worth checking yeah definitely is that your neighbor very loudly playing music. Yes. Cool. I wonder if that gets picked up when we get hit with a copyright strike.

Soundwave looks alright. Yeah, I don't think it's getting picked up. If you hear any background music, we're not doing that for your ambience. That's unfortunately a neighbour. It's getting late as well. That's inconsiderate. We don't do this early in the day. No, it's a bit... It's dicey

to start now. Starting at... What's that? Quarter past nine is a bit, yeah. that's a bit much it's a bit not on man well anyway oh yes the fruit zone

just thought we needed a break from that music I'm gonna go grapes or pomegranate pomegranate no it's grapes the fruit zone the music's still going yeah I don't think we're getting away from that

didn't know why i thought it would only last another 10 seconds good effort though ambitious yeah so we got movement coming up for turn five op three you got much of an idea what you're doing um not much of an idea but our music's getting louder yeah also keep talking my laptops you're not right okay this is falling apart at the seams welcome new listeners it's great to have you here glad anyone who's just picked it up today there's just a loud music blaring and and he's plugging in his laptop frantically oh is that the wrong charger yep oh i plug wait what how's mine no i unplugged mine i only unplugged one i didn't unplug one and then get mine over here miraculously okay folks sorry about that i'm now battery enough of that slander

yeah so my my plan i've got i've got land movement to tackle and realistically my plan has to be defend yeah i can't do anything other than defend so it has to be a case of batting down the hatches and make sure that you don't invade my space you don't get to bardia you don't get to debruke so you're just keeping the line as it were i'm gonna have to i know the line is kind of broken at this point but some semblance of what the line was has to be what I keep I don't think I'm going to be able to continue the wall

the way that I did that's just not viable anymore I think I've maybe like swung a bit wide on it yeah I mean it's going to fall apart a bit sorry that music's so loud I don't think it's being picked up sorry

it's being picked up by me it's like is it Jimi Hendrix it sounds something in that in that in that vein wow so wild wildly loud it's so fucking loud sorry back back on track oh he's either stopped completely or he's just stopped the song no this is going to continue for a while then so what's your plan andy well i think i just have to keep pushing up into that wall as hard as i possibly can once i guess also the advantage is once this last uh store expenditure comes in

no more stores so they can just be basically refilled up with ammo until they as much as they need to so hopefully a lot of fighting yeah I hope not a lot of fighting but yeah I've kind of ran out of the opportunity to get rid of your stores

I have to cut them off now but even then then I'd be betting that you don't have enough to give them stores for this turn this coming turn I did do a stock up at the start i just yeah i guess if in a perfect world i would find a way to damage your supplies you have on

you yeah strafing would be a good option for that but i can't do that if i had a way to get rid of your trucks that would be ideal and then stop more trucks coming in yeah because then you can't go on offensive pushes which right now would be a coup de grace yeah that's a you sort of i win to fuse the bomb yeah it means that you're just stuck in a defensive position for the last turn of the scenario yeah which would be insanely good for me just stale me out the last turn not thrilling i guess the episodes would be dog shit i can promise that but instead i think it's going to come to blows so i need to figure out a defensive position that's going to hold for three op stages yeah i've got this op stage to i think establish it and then after that there's nothing to really stop you from

just going for it yeah so i need to make sure that whatever i put into place now is the the foundation and the framework to stop you from getting to bardia to stop you from getting to to brook yeah and it's not going to be easy but i just have to hold out long enough yeah and i do have a a worst case scenario i guess there's the theatrical version of this defense which makes for a bit of fun gameplay and some back and forth and there is the unfortunately mundane version and I'd rather do the theatrical one. What would the mundane one be?

I'd just get people to the gates of Bardia and Tobruk and just lock them in there. Oh, just bring them in and then... And then I'd just absorb all of the damage and don't move them. And I think I could probably swallow up enough CPA per offstage that you can't push them out. Yeah.

It's not thrilling. No. But it's a fallback I've got. I'd rather push you away outside of that area yeah because it also does give you it's a better possession for you i'd rather the game ends in the best state it can for me yeah i don't want to just win by the skin of my teeth i think i might but i'd like it to be a bit more extravagant than i just plant them in the cities and wait yeah because those off stages then just become i guess funny in a sense because you just become more and

more frustrated week on week knowing that you're fighting an unwinnable battle it's it's the nightmare for you is that it becomes monopoly where the ending has already been determined and it's just killing and it's just a huge amount of time yeah you'd fucking hate that i would yeah i would love that i think that would be the perfect cosmic justice especially since at the live show your common ground was monopoly related yeah you decided to make a a games expo themed common ground yeah i've monopoly's bad it's overrated and it's never the best board game to play and i gave you a pretty strong rebuttal yeah but still no we're gonna we're gonna put that up on youtube and we are some other places so if uh yeah you didn't get to see the live show we were

planning uh a friend of ours recorded it so my girlfriend yeah she uh she came along she recorded the um the whole thing bar five minutes or so so we've got the the vast majority of it um i like you trying to obfuscate the fact that it was my girlfriend i'm making a vega i was at least leaving it up to you i guess yeah just that'd be an awkward one to go back and be like yeah so uh listen to this episode yeah so our friend came along yeah we're not that close i guess we're together but only as friends um so yeah we got pretty much everything but five minutes recorded and it was about an hour on the dot yeah so it's uh it's good it makes up a solid episode and we we hit common ground we did game

recap uh we didn't do a history segment we felt like that might not have flowed very well for the live show although in hindsight i found something on the way there that was like that would have in a perfect history segment for the Games Expo. I'm going to save that for a similar circumstance, I think. Yeah, that would be good. Well, I guess that is

kind of where the game stuff wraps up. Oh, also, I guess, just you said we had multiple segments. We also got a live fruit zone in, because Perrin got one of their friends to ask us. Yes.

Well, I was going to say, we've kind of wrapped up the gameplay there oh yeah we could maybe touch on a little bit of of the the games expo the live show i guess this works as a nice intermission between game recap and the mailbag yeah so yeah the expo the live show it went really well we had a we had a great time it was a lot of fun it was great getting a live fruit zone that was that was not on my bingo card nor was somebody pulling out in the crowd shout out james a reference to the celebrity guest there at the live show because we had a spare seat next to us so that was a fun reference it was crazy having our first war with a mate live show but also the fact that it wasn't just our first chance of doing

the live show but some of you actually showed up that's crazy yes thank you so much to those that did yeah james jack uh perrin in spirit your your pals came along on your behalf um and thank you also uh we got a lovely gift from perrin delivered by his friends a four pack of kinder buenos yes what an on theme gift um they went through some interesting chemical changes that weekend because it was very hot and stuffy and they were chocolate bars in a bag yeah unfortunately they're in my bag it was very hot and then they traveled as well they traveled on the bus back and we we took a night bus at 3 a.m after the expo yes because i guess we also because we didn't want to get an airbnb two nights we decided oh we'll just go after the expo but we wanted to have time so

we could stay at the expo if we wanted to so we finished the live show yeah left the expo and then spent about six hours in the pub waiting for the bus yeah we we got to experience uh some of birmingham's nightlife which i i've mostly only experienced around gigs i've been to birmingham twice for gigs uh rise against boston manor trophy eyes fantastic bands so i went there for them and i'd only been in like four locations i've been to dead wax in digbeth really cool bar uh we went there on the first night yeah and uh i'd been to two gig venues and the places i stayed which have been a premier in and travel lodge previously this time around we stayed in an airbnb really cool really big tv but all we did there was

either sleep or plan out some of the live show stuff. We didn't really spend much time there at all. So getting there, we got the bus down. We got an Airbnb for the first night. Second night, we decided we'll not

get another Airbnb. We'll do the live show. We'll leave the expo and we'll get a bus at 3am back home. Which was a six hour bus journey. we arrived at 10 no we arrived at half 10 yes yes six hour bus journey with an hour intermission yes well we had to get off at manchester and wait there for an hour

at like 6 a.m also just a side note if the buses are running at a location the toilets have to be open yeah what's with that that's not acceptable in any way the toilets at bus stop opened and i think it was 15 minutes after we departed again yeah which was a nightmare especially as the bus for the first like the toilet was broken on that yeah it was just overflowing with urine so that was brilliant thankfully i'd put away a little bit of brewski before setting off so i slept pretty well on the bus on the way there on the way back oh did you first leg i got enough sleep all right that i didn't feel like completely wiped so that wasn't too bad

but I guess away from the woes of the travel that was grim but live show itself we really enjoyed a lot of people took a real interest to it and the turnout was great as well, we more or less filled the room which I did not

expect, wholeheartedly went into this thinking we'd have maybe the couple of guys shout out, yeah, James and Jack who showed up in person let us know in advance uh and i thought that would be it so it'll be those two my girlfriend came along knew that she was going to be there and i thought maybe one or two stragglers maybe someone who was bored during the day but we filled up a room of i think there was about maybe 40 50 people in the end

probably 40 ish i'd say yeah yeah which really good turnout yeah and uh anyone listening uh off the back of that uh welcome and hello thanks for coming but uh yeah we were talking afterwards and to if we can sort them out more live shows hopefully in the future i know there's been a bit of mention of them in the emails in the past and we weren't quite sure how it might work but i think we've got a pretty good idea now well we know it works in because that was almost the episode that we did live almost works as a new episode one it was a sort of overview recap of the game yeah so that was a lot of fun to put out there and when we put it on youtube everyone can have a look and you know there's some hearkening back to the the days of yesteryear where we just

kind of rag on the complexity of the game we got some interesting questions some that we've had on the podcast before through the mailbag so it was fun seeing that through the lens of people there in the moment seeing it for the first time and what springs to mind yeah we got common ground we we did fruit zone we yeah q a it was great camel discussion we hit the greatest camels came up so we do definitely plan on doing another live show that worked it worked well we had a great time it was a lot of fun to meet you guys in person and shoot the shit about the game and just the ridiculous nature of all this and we we have some really fun ideas as to what a live show could be when it's it's you guys who already know the show know what we're doing so that that'll be

really fun we've got some stuff in the works as to what that might look like so watch this space we hope to bring that in maybe this year but probably next year probably next year I'd say we want to give you guys as much notice as possible so you can make your arrangements come along you poor guys in Australia I don't know how you're going to fucking manage that

one day we'll go to them Australia, Chicago Australian world tour the world tour is Chicago to Australia why are we so big in places we can't get to uh but you know we had a great time so thank you everyone for coming everyone who's messaged us saying they wish they were there you'll be there one day we'll we'll do another one we'll make it

work but uh yeah a brilliant step for the podcast it really felt like a big milestone so whether you were there or not everyone who supported every part of it really means the world and we had a great time we're we're glad to be back playing the game we're glad it's all continuing the way it is and there's no end in sight and take that the way you want i oscillate between whether that's good or bad but there's no end in sight folks this will continue for a very long time yeah this is not the like oh you missed the band's one reunion this is the first off this is the grassroots gig in the back room of a social club what's coming is is the big stuff so keep an eye out but a big part of that is interaction from you guys and i think the best way to move on

through that is to tap into the good old mailbag let's do it let's go delving into that big old mailbag that burlap sack of bravery that heroic bag of goodness the first email comes from jordan with the subject finally caught up. Hello, James and Andy. How are ye? My name is Jordan. I sent a web form a few weeks back, but it seems to be lost in the desert somewhere.

Yeah, we're working through that bit by bit, but if you have sent something through the web form, you're welcome to send it again through email, just in case. I found your channel, like many others, from Cam Sandwich and had to catch up. It took close to a month, but I did. you saved me from listening to a robot reading reddit post from my daily drive to work

i've been there i've been there jordan i know the pain of going through either i'm not sure if you mean you've had like a text to speech thing or if you've been watching those youtube videos they're just like a dnd horror story and it's just reading it out in the most horrible monotone voice and it just i mean i say that i've got a monotone voice so it really breaks the stride i left this comment on episode 60 but i've put your youtube videos in a playlist in order for easy viewing hope you don't mind that's you yes jordan i've seen that i've seen that playlist thank you that we don't mind at all i do i do try and check the youtube comments where i can we don't have like a notification that comes through when we get them so sometimes it means when i get a chance on an

evening i'll go through but i have to click manually into every single video and our rss login doesn't allow us to log into the YouTube channel directly for some reason, so I can't reply to YouTube comments. So it means I do read them, but I don't really get a chance to

reply to any of them. So, yeah, thank you for that, Jordan. I've seen that. I think there's a couple of playlists put together, so thank you for doing that. Question-wise, the only real one I have is how would ye, and I love the use of ye. It's y'all, but it's old-timey.

how would you make slash hire someone to make a video of every turn and make it into a time lapse have it be a video that's looking at the board from above and have two arrows showing the movement and battles red for james and blue for randy and have each hex be colored in the colors of the person who has possession could be an interesting way to show off how much change in a turn or two can happen uh yeah well we we have plans for this yeah we do want to give the an actual sort of visual state of the map uh between each sort of upstage or movement or however we do it then i'll probably live on the website yeah we're gonna put that together the the thing is that yeah we've talked about this so many times but the this practice run is is

very different from what the full game will look like in terms of our reporting we'll be able to show off a lot more because we'll have a lot of time dedicated to that so yes, Jordan, we'll probably be doing it in-house I don't imagine we'll hire anyone to do it

because I think that means getting someone in here with a camera or getting someone to even worse pour through our spreadsheets and translate that to a some sort of fictional version of the board game digitally and i can't afford to pay someone's salary yeah you well we could get the celebrity on the couch to do it he wouldn't be good at it no i don't think he's ever done director stuff uh there's

a few films i think you might have uh beyond that the deserts of my minds are empty can you give a shout out to my friends kieran and ben hello kieran and ben if you're listening fantastic if you're not then you need to do a better job jordan they're not listening they're still not listening in fact jordan they'll bring this up to you kieran and ben this is this is my personal uh request to you mention this to jordan and say that we rag on jordan say that we tear him apart he says he wants to show a clip of this to them oh does he go on to say that i've talked to him about this and would love to share the shout out with them ah yeah i didn't i didn't read the next sentence um so i guess retract that kieran and ben i guess just a very lovely hello and jordan we try to play a

prank on you and it didn't work and he tried to play a prank on you and it didn't work yeah that's what happened if i can't gaslight jordan i'll try and gaslight you at least you know this is recording yeah we're putting it out yeah but i'm gonna edit it that's so it was all you okay it's gonna take a while but i reckon i can spice enough clips that it sounds like this was your idea i just don't have the editing skills to pull them off thanks for doing this crazy project and making the world a more enjoyable journey yours certainly humbly bravely well thank you for that jordan the journey that we're on is one that you're all part of and we mean that very wholesomely because if it weren't for you coming along

even recently in person then we would have quit this a long time ago. We need the mail. We need the messages. As for the time lapse thing, that's just another good little prompt to make sure we pull that off because we've had a lot of requests

for that. So we want to make sure that we're pulling that off. Next up we have Trendon. Yes. We do. 20th level characters in the campaign for North Africa a topic we've doubled on before

hello this is Trent I previously sent an email on my initial listen through and I've made it up to 54 on the subject brought up in that episode of 20th level characters in the campaign I'd say that Andy is partially correct and saying that a wizard would be the correct option

but I would say that an illusionist would actually be the best option due to the fact they can create illusions that become real they could create ammo uh vehicles and even camels uh the illusion is only real for a minute but that's long enough to fire some shells or create some very large explosives or even uh fake troops to confuse the enemy uh tangential question uh what is your favorite character you ever made in dnd from the deserts of my mind in portland oregon uh trent uh just with that talk of an illusionist and asking about D&D characters.

Don't know if it's my favorite, but it's one that certainly lines up with an illusionist wizard because he was one, which is Cragmore. Oh, I did love Cragmore. Who was an illusionist wizard, but he was also an alchemist, and he'd do a mixture of alchemical explosions that he made look like magic or the opposite or just constantly confusing people about his capabilities

because he was doing like alchemy as well as being an illusion wizard yeah he he helped create the the stronghold of bannered cas yes he bought the walls which our friend is always having a go at me there was a big tossing up point in that campaign as to whether or not you invest the money into this uh enchanted uh metal zoltenium which you could use to either make some weapons or line it in the wall so it was magically buried and it ended up the walls paid dividends it became a mainstay for several campaigns

it was less that there was any discussion about it it was because our characters had like their own business and stuff going on and my character just unilaterally bought him and then he found out it was something like three and a half million gold and he was so annoyed yeah you spent like

the GDP of a fairly sizable town on this wall then the town became a huge important yeah that became like a bastion against the war with the gods and everything it became like a last stronghold yeah for the whole world yeah and that i guess ties into what is probably my favorite character and i think it would probably have to be probably be nerko yes nerko the usurper um a uh god slaying um big bad to friend to very recently big bad again yeah uh he's been on a journey he was the main villain of a three session arc a free campaign three yes sorry three yeah not three session three campaign arc um

yeah he was a figure in the background he was the king of art of vessel a a huge sprawling city continent that had um it was like the clockwork yes all the clockwork creatures um and he's been a mainstay for a long time we've just we're coming towards the conclusion of an eight-year storyline which has had about 12 campaigns end games yeah 12 campaigns into it yeah we've crossed over all of the characters they've went on um missions to rescue each other from time and pool together all of the previous player characters and npcs that they could find to face against the threat of zenith a creature that lives beyond reality the air to reality a big universe destroying prick who i did not like at any point until the end at which i didn't like him i ate

his heart you did eat his body uh uh so you just managed to defeat him and then lo and behold would you believe it after all that nerko has come around again as the big villain playing you know the both sides and he's a real a real bastard i do for npcs i'd say he's probably probably the top one in terms of like character over time yeah he's been so much fun another favorite npc of mine is a guy called cormac who was an alcoholic sewer worker who my Fae Warlock, who became an Archfae, basically just dragged along.

Yeah, you started off, you met him when he was a sewer worker, and you got him when you were carrying out an investigation into what was happening in the town. You were led to the sewer manager office, and he was there pushing papers, and

you ended up bringing him along, owned his soul after about ten sessions, and then he's been around for about seven years in real life yeah and he's still around now as a loyal a loyal warlock yeah almost friend i dare to say yeah i think i think if you hang out with someone for at this point they've like their linear time is almost a million years i think you either kill them or you have to acknowledge you are friends yeah um another another one baldark the bruiser yes a guy who

broke dnd completely we had a guy we had a session where he got thrown off a mountain on like low hit points and you as the dm were like right this guy's dead and we managed to save him by like getting to the bottom of the mountain using magic as he was falling uh one of our friends characters ran up jumped off so he could trigger a feather fall and he landed uh which i don't know who's exactly how this should work but it's how it worked it was close enough yeah and you were like i'd written him off in my head as being dead how did you guys do that yeah the moment he was through because that guy had had so many ridiculous instances well he also because of a brief misunderstanding he started out as a human and then four sessions later because of his i guess

attitude and because we hadn't taken proper notes he just became an orc it was 17 sessions because he came in in session three he fought shiv uh our friend's character in the pub and then when your character talion founded the heroes guild the wardens he was one of the first three recruits yeah but then he was inexplicably a half-orc because i'd forgotten what race he was and i thought his mannerisms he seems like a half-orc i think we didn't even we thought about retconning in a reincarnation but we thought it was funnier that just he thought he was an orc so he was inexplicably he just decided he's an orc uh i guess favorite dnd character is very hard and also we could talk about this all day yeah we could we could easily do a whole different podcast

where we talk about a campaign no one's ever heard of apart from us but i will i i always like playing a sneaky character a bit of a schemer and i think the ultimate version of that is a character i had called rumand oh absolutely he is the creme de la creme of what he's maybe the ultimate con man in our campaigns he is the gold standard for con man yeah so our world had like the imperial line was at best could be described as shaky yes emperors were dying quite a lot so from level one my guy like even during his backstory was going around libraries all over the continent and editing the genealogy so that if the current imperial line died they'd have to like go up a couple and then along and then oh wow he'd be he'd be next in line for the throne

and he actually managed to pull out successfully, but he was also developing as a person and becoming a good person, so by the time he had to become Emperor, he was like I don't want it, that was a foolishness from my youth, and it was like the world needs you to be Emperor

Well yeah, he was caught by the Imperial Inquisitor, the Drow, Yurei Greystoke who found out the scheme and was a real hard ass for this kind of thing, so he banished you to carcery um which you did voluntarily to save your friends lives because he found out what you were doing

and then a campaign later when uh everything sort of came to a real head you were forced into a situation where the imperial line had been killed in the conflict and the only person that the people could rally behind was the air quote true emperor roman de la fleur yeah also de la fleur just the ridiculous name and also he stole that one as well he was a commoner who stole uh an elderly noble was about to die without children so he faked that and then he made that family line his name wasn't even rumon so yeah i'd say there's some uh some dnd chat for you guys yeah we'll uh we'll try to put that in spare only because yes we will get carried away we will talk about that for weeks at a time that

was the reason we thought we could play the campaign for north africa because we played dnd for so long that we thought the skill set translates i thought it was just a case of doing something for a long time yeah we thought board game long time dice and all basically the same it's tangential and speaking of tangential thank you for the email uh that was a bit of a bit of a tangent we went on but it is i guess related to the question but it is an answer to the question but thank you trent yeah um we we welcome all and any emails related to the game closely related to the game or not and anything anything at all to be fair we vowed to answer them all so thank you for that you can get us on info at war with a mate.co.uk the website

is war with a mate.co.uk the web form is on there but we i would suggest through we have we have a backlog of that to sort the email is definitely the best place to send the web form is working we are getting them it's just we we have a backlog of those to email yeah so the email is definitely the best place i'm sorry if you've sent a web form we're getting there feel free to send an email again you shouldn't have to but if you do when if you want to you can and we probably will be able to then marry them up um and the instagram is war with a mate um we we have a youtube as well which we have an unboxing video of the the board game for the first time and we will also be popping the first live show on there in its entirety by the five minutes that we lost due to a phone dying

um but yeah that is that is how you reach us that is where you can get us and for future live shows we will keep you in the loop we will do it we don't know when or where but it'll happen guys i mean if they have us back we will be at the games expo next year oh yeah we have every intention of going back next year if they'll have us then you can almost definitely find us there as soon as we can confirm that we'll let you know because that is on the cards yeah so mark that down too but i think we've talked enough about our own past we've talked enough about what's happened last week we've talked enough about the recent history as in a few hours ago so i think let's take it one step further andy yeah shall we go back to mid-august 1914 that's my favorite place

the men of the long-range desert patrols were quite a sight on their return to cairo from a month's trip the contrast between the east and west of the nile is very marked in the east we are absolutely not qualified to share views on history so i'd usually ask when and where are we but you've told me that and as well as that when we are we is uh it's it's listening to very loud music from your neighbor which if that is being picked up on the episode by the way we think it might be so apologies if it is because that's that's fucking annoying shut up stop playing your music loudly you can probably hear you good so you definitely can't hear me over this that's insane but i digress history yes so

swimming in a sea of military defeats the ottoman leadership it seems should have opted for less war not more in 1914 the generation at the helm of the state however welcomed the july crisis not as a reprieve but as an opportunity to end the empire's international isolation as a quote from mustafa aksalka uh with an essay the limits of diplomacy uh the ottoman empire in the first world war okay so yeah we've had the goblin and the breslau arrive in constantinople yes they are starting to drag the ottomans in with their ships and their fez yes they're fez'd up is the plural of fez just fez or is it fezes i think it might be a sort of sheep thing yeah furry

no oh like mousse what like creamy no like the singular and the malt doesn't matter I'm not going to try and earnestly talk to you the amount of times I've had people say that to me listen to them

I can't I have to rebuke so yes they've arrived in um constantinople at this point the ottomans are technically neutral which means via international treaty at the time they shouldn't have allowed a warship up the strait anyway this is part of the reason they transfer the goblin and the breslau to the turkish navy um they have a small ceremony for it uh the goblin is renamed the yavust sultan selim and the breslau becomes the midi limi anyway the crews are exactly the same except they now sail under uh ottman flags and as mentioned before wear feathers now fantastic so on the 23rd of september Sushan, the admiral

from last time, gets appointed as commander-in-chief of the Ottoman Navy. The British are initially fine with this because they see it as a German threat has been removed from the Mediterranean. Yeah. And as the Ottomans are still neutral,

both sides are... well, not both sides because it doesn't quite work like that. Everyone's negotiating with them. The British, the germans the austrians because they're there's the two blocks the triple entendre and the triple alliance but they're all also doing deals behind each other's backs that's been the whole thing it's all backhanded it's all secret underhanded secret yeah it's all it's treaties on treaties it's a hat on a hat it's a fez on a fez oh yeah so the current leadership of the

ottomans empire at this point is the cup party which comes out of the young turk movement haven't got into that too much because that's a whole huge thing um but the ottomans actually see this as an excellent opportunity to gain leverage because as more and more countries get pulled into this conflict the value of powerful neutral countries sort of rises well yeah you want because you've got more chance to get concessions to be brought in on either side yeah everyone's trying to win you over yeah so the ottomans want an alliance uh which uh mehmet talat the minister of the interior and one of the three co-rulers of the ottoman empire in 1914 they have a sort of triumvirate going on i love a good triumvirate yeah they're always like

stable and work well um but he wrote in his memoirs turkey needs to join one of the european country groups so that it could organize its domestic administration strengthen and maintain its commerce and industry expand its railroads and in short survive and preserve its existence so they're on a 300 year losing streak basically they're like we need a powerful ally and we need to be sort of pulled into the european folds um well i feel like that's coming um in a way so in order to survive in a world dictated by European great powers

there's this idea that a nation has to be a nation in arms that's capable of going to war at any necessary moment okay which is difficult yes because naval powers are particularly important right now

yes and I feel like a navy it's a difficult thing to just muster up yes a navy the germans have been really going hell for leather trying to beat the british in terms of a naval arms race at this time and in fact they're better technologically the problem germany has is fuel on a global scale okay like a british ship at this time can basically refuel anywhere or close to

because Britain's spread out enough. Yes, they've got enough reach where they can port in so many places. Yeah, and they've got oil fields in the Middle East and coal and stuff. Germany sort of has an energy crisis. Oh, okay. They've got the boats but not the fuel.

Yeah, that's a... Because the thing is as well, Germany, coastline, I mean, it's not as big when you've got the UK, you've got England, it's an island. yeah you don't have that benefit in germany no it's a relatively small coastline on the north which means also to access the world you have to go through through the british channel you have to go real close to scotland so it's yeah that's the geography thing it's like why russia is always

trying to find like once crimea and will will is desperate for constantinople throughout its history because they don't have access to the oceans really yeah like locked off in a lot of places because russia is so it's so vast but that's not necessarily good no having a lot of coast isn't always good if you're that big especially when the north of it is just ice like you can't sail ships up there or like do any useful economic activity you have one of the largest coastlines in the world but it's not you're not a coastal nation they're in a lot of ways europe russia's kind of a landlocked european power with a big like you know in always sunny where they have the extra room in frank and charlie's apartment they never use it yeah that's kind of like russia

the living room is european russia and then the empty room is the bit of russian northern russian Because it's just space. I don't want to use it. I like being crammed in. Contrast to that, Australia. Yes. Just coast. Yeah.

The middle doesn't exist. Yeah, they kind of have an inland sea of sand. I also just love, on a side note, that they've got the outback. It's just, oh, it's outback. Yeah. It's the shed. It's very lazily named. Because the other name for it is the bush.

Yeah. It's just, it's a bush. Outback? Yeah. I don't know, the bush. The thing we don't use. Hot land. So at this point, the Ottomans are actually looking to the east,

in particular to Japan, as a sort of inspiration. Because Japan has recently fought Russia and won in a badly conceived war by the Russians, to be fair. but in like 1904 or five uh there was like a russo japanese war that russia lost so the ottomans are kind of looking at that as like oh a european great power got beat what can we sort of take what can we learn from japan well on the back of that the russo brothers did um avengers yeah so they had a real sort of like pendulum move on that i see what you mean now but i'm not talking to me honestly

so there's also a belief in the ottoman press um that in the things i was reading was kind of presented as not as being like a oh this misapprehension they had but actually i'd say the ottoman press firmly believe that european diplomacy is just poorly just a poorly disguised tool of colonialism and any humanitarian veneer is just that a veneer so there's like a deep distrust of any like cutting deals with colonial powers as well i'm i'm kind of glad it seems like it's an idea of coming to sense a little bit yeah so the party the cup who when they took over they'd been supported by the germans who'd invested heavily in the new regime building like investing money they also sent like military officers over to train the ottoman military okay so germany's

been building like close ties with them and in fact the ottomans strike a secret deal with the germans on the first of august brilliant more secret deal yeah so this is first of august so this the war started on the 28th of july so this is three days after the war starts great um the The deal is basically a defensive pact where Germany will help the Ottomans if they get attacked by Russia, and in return the Ottomans will fight with Germany. In the event of war with Russia, Turkey will take direct and significant action.

But the Ottomans put a clever little clause in this deal, which is they will only go to war if Belgium come with them. Is it Belgium? Yeah, I think it's Belgium. um i might have got the wrong country there but uh to be fair so have they yeah they've almost definitely got the wrong but i think what what they do is and they talk about this with the other country beforehand they go right we're both going to tell germany we won't enter the war if you don't which means if neither of us join the other isn't forced to join so we've got a little

thing as like as long as we coordinate we can stay out the war it's a nice thought yeah but the germans believe uh that this means the ottomans should immediately help them because the germans are actively fighting the russians at this point that's more that's just a strong want not a need so the ottomans want to delay it also partially you know you hear the like home in time for christmas type thing yes that's a that's a big mainstay at this point everyone still thinks this is going to be a brief thing like the germans have planned a 40-day campaign to take france other countries are thinking this is going to be like a we're going to do a bit of bust up and move some territory around for like a month or two and then everyone will get to like the

negotiation table and sort of confirm the new reality yeah it's like a clash on the border and then you know a few dozen miles maybe a few hundred miles get shifted yeah germany takes paris and then it's like we own france and britain is like well we're not you already have france is sort of what they're thinking but obviously it doesn't yeah it doesn't pan out like that for anyone that's not the way any of that goes yeah so so yeah it is belgium and the ottomans have that pre-planned like i'm not joining if they don't like hopefully neither of us have to join on the other side of this the british has territory in egypt it has territory across the arab peninsula up to modern day iraq so in terms of european powers that are like a local regional

threat to them britain are one of the biggest ones for this and then you've got russia who arguably if it's not russia it's the hapsburgs but russia is probably the ottoman's greatest like historic enemy yes because russia uh as we were talking about with the uh with the geography there they need to go through they need to go through constantinople and then through the state of dardanelles to get to international so at this point in time even though they're about to go to war a quarter to half of all russian exports go through ottoman territory like by ship so they're like we want to just take constantinople because we just don't want to deal with you guys we want to own that so we can export our own stuff

so this is sort of like the political situation here the ottomans very much don't want to get involved in the war they want to use it for leverage uh the germans very much do want them in the war so what will happen here is something called the black sea raid this is a sketchy operation all around uh german admiral wilhelm sushon who commander of the gobern uh is very much in favor of the ottomans joining the war on the side of germany understandably yeah that seems like a vested interest and envar pasha who's one of these one of the members of the triumvirate he's also pro-war and they sort of hatch a plan they go around the rest of the cabinet and go past military chain of command they're going to sail into the black sea on the

pretense of doing training exercises that's not what they're doing going there for i believe that so on the 27th of october 1914 sushan's fleet and is the black sea envar pasha is of the belief that they'll attack russian ships at sea and then sink them and then claim provocation because they're the only survivors basically and they can be like they attacked us at sea what a cowardly move yeah sushan has other plans to say the least because he's there and this is a quote to force the turks even against their will to spread the wall so his fleet instead of running around the black sea trying to like run into ships um they they go directly to five ports in the black sea and bombard them from the shore damaging several

ships as well as like infrastructure in the ports they destroy a sugar refinery a bunch of granaries for like just food and like a shitload of oil but they don't actually do any like huge strategic damage like their plan was we're gonna knock the russian black sea fleet out of the war before it even like becomes relevant that's ambitious and they didn't quite manage it but what they did do so they don't achieve any well they achieve some but they don't achieve their like overall strategic goals but they are perfectly placed to achieve their political ones because as his ships sail away sushan uh sends a message to the ottomans that the russians had shadowed all the movements of the turkish fleet and dis uh systematically disrupted all exercises and as such he had no

option but to open hostilities which is just not no that's not what's happened but what has happened from the russian perspective is a bunch of ottoman ships flying ottoman flags wearing ottoman military uniforms have come and bombed the shit out of them with no warning right okay this is making a lot of sense yeah i can see what's happening here yeah so on the 31st of october the ottoman press uh reports that they had a preemptive assault on the russians because the russians were about to mine the bosporus which is the bit of ocean that goes through constantinople oh yeah yeah they're planning a bomb uh and then destroy their fleet this just isn't this isn't true but also the ottomans are working on a false apprehension that the russians

attacked them in the black sea but the germans are just lying to both of them um this is so messed oh yeah so yeah that's the 31st of october the next day the goblin actually gets back to constantinople because it's been like away sailing for days in the black sea the same day um sorry yeah as the goblin's getting back into constantinople russia declares war on the ottomans i mean i i see why yeah the next day there's a major battle between the two sides they're not wasting any time then no as this battle's going on the um the grand viziers are trying to tell the allies that it wasn't their military operation and that the germans are responsible oh yeah sure the germans did this that is the

that is exactly it they're like obviously what are you talking about um and then also as well as that as well as most of the allies not believe them russia also just goes we don't care we're at war now doesn't matter why it's happened we're fighting you now yeah so um so on the 5th of november the united kingdom of france also declare war on the Ottomans. And then on the 11th of November, Sultan Mehmed V declares a jihad against the Entente

powers. And that's how the Ottoman Empire gets pulled into World War I. Two truly disastrous results. I do love the Russian approach there of like, well, you know,

the Ottomans are like, well, you know, the Germans they told us this. It was a trick. It was a trick. It's like, we don't care you still fucking did it yeah it could be a trick it could be a lie it doesn't matter it happened one we don't care because it happened and two we've been looking for an excuse to conquer constantinople for about two and a half centuries oh there's just something quite juvenile about like well he told me to do it it's like yes but you did it yeah your actions have consequences in this case it's the devastation of an entire

empire yeah you're gonna be removed from the board and your excuses they said they tricked me yeah that's not a valid excuse i'm sorry and it's also there's a bunch of stuff of this like it's historians have had to put it together because like a bunch of documents get destroyed when the ottoman empire goes down like they yeah cover a bunch of shit up so it's like this is put together but it's just like we do not want to be part of this war this is an opportunity for us to rest and rebuild. And everyone around them is like, no, you are going to be part of this war.

That went from 0 to 100. This history segment has really shown them getting completely out of their depth. Oh, yeah. And also, there's a bit of irony to it as well. They join the central powers, which is Germany and then also Austro-Hungary.

Austro-Hungary. uh as a austro-hungary is the hapsburgs so these and the siege of vienna like they've been fighting these guys for 500 odd years and then both empires die together on the same side oh it's such a you kind of like picture them in the situation looking at each other and it's like what went wrong yeah what happened because also this is this is all put together later but like we so many secret deals going on like at one point a key factor in this is at one point the british ambassador to the ottomans is on holiday for august and then it's like well i'm sorry guys we're we're negotiating the start of world war one and the british ambassador was like

away just imagine sending that email and be like look we need to discuss these terms something horrible is happening across the continent and you get that out of office and i do not appreciate you emailing me about work stuff during my time off i was just expecting the automatic response just like hi i'm sorry i'll be out of the office until 1915 if you'd like to reach me you can catch my supervisor on this email oh oh what a what a kerfuffle what a mess yeah absolute travesty of negotiation travesty of fibs yeah just so many fibs so many so many obfuscations and also just like the germans just be like no you're coming at a war man like it's like when you've got a mate who's like i'm going home and it's like you're

not you're coming to the next pub well speaking of dragging someone else along to the next location i'm gonna take your hand here andy okay i'm gonna take you from the the hapsburgs and the happenstances and i'm gonna take you all the way together me and you we're going the distance because if we're going to keep this going there's only one way to do so need some common ground we need to find some common ground and now for something nicer a little oasis in the war it's time for some common ground i'm trying to intro the common ground i'm recording maybe so common ground is the only chance we have in amongst this conflict to become friends again

And we alternate each week with a topic And it's my topic this week It is, what have you got? I've got one that we need to agree on And I'm coming in broad and bold here But I think it's one that we can agree on Oh, this is going to be a narrowed down one I'm guessing

Possibly We need to get rid of cars Get rid of cars? Yes Agreed Wow, holy shit That was easier than I thought i guess you can go on give your rationale uh fuck okay um wow i didn't expect it to be

that easy um yeah we need to get rid of cars because my my the way i saw this going is i say we need to get rid of cars and you would go that's crazy why would we get rid of cars and i would say andy i guess this is now for the audience who are in favor of cars i would say andy if i said to you andy there's a chance here for you to be able to walk faster you can now walk considerably faster however the the downside of that is i will now roll the die every day and it will be a big die there'll be a lot of sides on it but a lot of those sides there's now a chance that you just die yeah the risk of this faster transport is you're dead yeah it's a quite a quite a cost on it there is a cost that for me personally is the immediate

thing and for context everyone listening we don't drive yeah we don't drive so we will have a fairly jaded and cynical perception of driving cars but i've lived my whole life without driving a car as has andy yeah i've been lucky enough to live in places we we live in the uk where driving around everywhere isn't necessary i know there's areas in the world you've got america i know in the states it's a massive thing where you can't just walk down the road to the nearest shop you can't just you know stroll over and grab your shopping and walk back home but even in suburbs it's like there's not pavements at least the some of the suburbs i've been in america uh like visiting family it's just road and gardens yeah like me and my mom went for a walk because we'd

been there for a week in american food and not doing anything so we're like we need to go on a walk and like two cars stopped us stopped and we're like oh have you broken down do you need a lift to the garage or something we were like oh no we're just on we're just on a walk and they were like oh yeah it was like oh we were doing something weird and that that's so peculiar very alien i also do in some parts of america though it's like your neighbor is like 40 miles away like you literally can't socialize without a car yeah or like live and i think getting rid of cars and what i want to say is i want to get rid of cars for civilians here's what i'll i will say actually we've come around i'm not fully on favor now okay i think you need to get rid of cars from

cities like you can have them for like intercity yeah like motorways and stuff yes and then you design the cities around the concept of not having cars i guess have you seen the it's like a common image that goes around of like the it's the image of the a street with the like chasm where the roads are and it's like all the like lost space i've seen yes yes that's a really good image um if anyone wants to check that out it's some sort of artist uh who who did that and it's just yeah it illustrates really well the amount of area that roads take up yeah in a city you've just lost so much room dedicated to traffic yeah and i think if we could get rid of that space that's a massive positive you get rid of that i get well actually if anything i think what i'm going to

propose might actually maintain that it will maintain the road in that sense we could maybe reduce it to an extent but we get rid of cars that are non-commercial maybe we keep them for the countryside getting from a to b in vastly deserted areas yeah but we also make it the case that in these areas where you can't have public transport it means now you have to invest in the public transport yes you can't just get rid of the cars it has to be part of a like a plan to remove cars yeah and the plan is and it comes from our journey to the expo okay it comes from that because we were talking about well i mentioned to you when we're on the bus that i had this revelation a few years ago when i took a trip to birmingham and i was like right well i've got to

get the train and i was like wow the train's expensive would a flight be any better no flight is more expensive right okay what are their options and i went there's a bus you can get you can get the coach and get the bus and the bus was about a tenth of the price it was insanely cheap compared to everything else yeah and i was like holy shit i can just get the bus and i got the bus and yes the toilet broke down on our way back and yes the bus can be delayed and it takes a while and it's warm and it's stuffy but it doesn't have to be because if that was the primary mode of transport you can invest a bit in making it nicer yeah it can be so much better and if you have that you get rid of the need for people to own cars and people always tell me james learn to

drive you'll have so much freedom and i think i guess in a sense but that freedom is kind of capped with a few rules already when i hear the word freedom i think freedom i think complete autonomy to do what you want a car is not that no a car is not complete freedom it gets presented as it though as i think as an excuse not to invest in public transport and infrastructure there's this like myth of the car is like the ultimate thing and like personal freedom yeah i'm like but it's and henry ford had his day in the sun we have we have five day working weeks we can he's already got that win can we not at least have this win where we strip back that legacy of buy the car but also it's not because you need public infrastructure to create

roads so you need public infrastructure anyway that's already there yeah so you can put publicly owned vehicles on there you can put buses you can put things that are well furnished and well maintained something designed to transport the masses that will be reliable frequent clean and comfortable better for the environment better for the environment massively because i think the reason a lot of people use cars for stuff like that they don't necessarily need to use the car for like short like going to the shops and stuff is because like the bus experience isn't great the bus experience is horrible if you go on a bus and you've got shopping where are you going with that shopping you've got a you've got to sit in a cramped seat and like bag it on top of you

if you've got three or four shopping bags especially in the uk i don't know what other buses are set up like but i can't imagine it's any different in terms of the cramped leg room the bus like they might be laid out similar but it's the same volume and like shape yeah you got you got a you got a bus it's all kind of the same structure everyone's been on a warm sweaty bus and it's uncomfortable there's no room to sit down you you can have to squeeze past people when it comes to your stop you've got to do the same on the way off and you don't have anywhere to put your stuff it's it's it's just uncomfortable it's it's horrible it might be more expensive than you want it to be some parts of the world i know it's more reasonably priced and then you've got

the car where it's a case of well i've already bought the car and everyone's told me to buy the car learn to drive i don't think that works you can commercially have it because if you need to add to this yeah i think as well as so you've got bus routes for um for people right yep yep if we're getting rid of cars i think you add haulage bus routes is that for like shopping and stuff or yeah so you'd like you could go to the shop you buy it and then you just like put it in a thing like you know when we got on the coach when like coaches have like the sort of like fold up like baggage area thinking this is like you know how you have the amazon delivery vans and stuff yeah you put it all on one system and it's like oh your thing won't arrive like at a

run like once a day at the end of your street at say it'll be different for each street but at like 5 p.m say within walking distance it'll come and offload like if you bought stuff online or you've done like a online shop and then you get rid of the commercial individual vehicles as well yes so you have people bus and delivery bus i think what what my what my thought is is for maintaining the autonomy of schedule because with that if you have it like once a day people are at work people have fluctuating schedules but i think that could be like you know like some people at work are like oh um my kid's school finishes so i take like a 45 minute gap to go and pick them up and bring them back and then do like another hour or two yeah if you could just be like well no my drop

off is at three i need 10 minutes at three and like because if it's a common thing it can be like built into like schedules and stuff i guess so but i was more thinking like with a bus you make it like a sort of coach style bus because if we're getting rid of all cars then we can now afford to do that so that money these manufacturers that build cars that sell cars instead they're making these coaches and these coaches would have a baggage area where and i'm talking like you know like usual coaches these things are like double the size double the length maybe with like the little joint in the middle and you like flip open the baggage area and you put it into like your allotted thing like you get like you get on the bus and you're like you know i'm gonna be in

b5 so they put this little thing in the bottom of the bus you drop in your car your bag and then you get off the bus it quickly pops open you grab your stuff you walk off you know what i'm actually the way you do that is um each seat you have them like you know those like ottomans or the ottoman yeah yes but where they like you can fold up in a storage in them yes so you get on the bus you fold the seat up yep put your shit in fold it down sit on it get to the other end pop it open grab your stuff but you just you've got the storage space yeah there where it's just there and you have a bit it either the front or the back middle of the bus whatever for the elderly for the disabled it's a big stuff if you've got a wheelchair bit and you know there's a maybe a

maybe a guy or two on the bus who will help people get on and they'll grab their bits they'll help maybe at this point you can incorporate it into shops have these bus stops outside supermarkets and you'll have like a guy there dedicated to help you load stuff on yeah and then they'll stand there at the bus stop they won't get on they'll wait for the next bus they help you get your stuff on and then have one guy on the bus and he gets stuff off the bus yeah and then that is you know no more taxi drivers because you've got bus routes that run reliably all hours of the day around the entirety of the city you've still got your commercial vehicles your lorries your goods vans trains that's all they have much less reason to be in cities well that's it which is also like

it becomes dispersed between cities you've got your like trucks and stuff you need that logistics but then you build your city so you don't need yeah the infrastructure now complements that lifestyle of not needing to to lean into that so i think you get rid of the car as a personal cost and instead maybe taxation goes up slightly but prices for buses and public transport fall dramatically you just publicly subsidize them fully yes free to get on and off yeah maybe free or maybe it's incredibly cheap maybe it's you know it's the case where you're paying like 30 pounds for a monthly bus pass so you're putting money in on top of the taxes but i because you're using it some people i know and this isn't very common but some people walk where they're going it's not very

common but at least it gives you still the option yeah you still have the option to do it well you're not paying into something where you exclusively pay into it most people will well you know how you get tax credits for having an electric vehicle yeah well i think you just you're because it's to incentivize green stuff i think this is so widespread though with that it's to try and transition people this will be the norm but here's maybe at the start here's the thing why are this is just gonna sound dumb i think but why are they getting like incentivized to do something where the people using public transport are infinitely greener than any car you can buy well that's kind of the common ground so i think it should be subsidized like yeah it

should be but i guess that's looking at it from now if you were to transition it from now to our idea then you should yeah but if we could like snap our fingers and it changes i don't think subsidizing it works as well i think there has to be a cost for being realistic someone has to put the bill because the money has to come from somewhere taxes yeah but taxes would have to rise quite a bit i don't think they actually would at all well you'd have far less road maintenance you'd have infinitely less traffic accidents yes which is like a huge medical reduction cost well that's a big thing for me how many people get like dying car it's like multiple people a day in britain isn't it well i know i know for us um this is a kind of very regional thing but i know

one of the main roads main motorways near us has had like five deaths in the last 10 days yeah and there's like a huge outcry about it so i think that's a big thing is that also what's i well it's that it's the the journey from the expo back home it's been a few things all together where i'm like hang on a minute what's going on with cars is this actually the best we can do it's just something where i'm like i know there's reasons and i know a lot of them a lot of them are just pound signs yeah a lot of those reasons are just cold hard cash because it's it's individualizing mass transit whereas the thing is it's meant to be mass yeah transit move people around yeah but put something in place to move them because all this you might maybe cut this but the british

like infrastructure is so bad that it's actually damaging to the economy well it is like it's so overpriced but i don't think that's bad that it actually just hits the country that's not really a political take though that's just that's the truth i guess yeah that that's that's blanket that doesn't matter which which government is in or has ever been in that is always the case yeah that it's poorly managed and it has been for for my lifetime oh yeah i know especially where we live public transport has always been unreliable i get the bus to and from work every day i used to get the the train every day that was bad as well i also multiple times a week see the same bus back like number bus back to back well i live at the end of a bus route i live in

the last stop of a bus route and sometimes when i go to get on the bus it's either not shown up and like two or three of them won't show up in a row yeah and i'm like well where the fuck does the bus go and sometimes i'll be there and i swear to god i've been there and five buses it's it's only happened once but five of the same bus have been there and i live in a ferry fairly like ferry a fairly out of the way place that's why i'm at the end of the bus route but five buses how does that happen well literally all the same number as well there was a bus track last year and i remember going like our nature is healing because i saw four of the same number bus on my street and i was like oh the buses are back on i think cars are a scam

yeah i certainly don't think there should ever be a requirement and if they are you've had like a failure of city building when it comes to america intercity connections need to be made public inside city that needs to be made much more viable of an option yeah and i think in the uk even easier the uk if anything is the perfect place to trial run this because space is like premium yeah so if you can reduce the amount of road like if you can just reduce it's such a huge because basically like i live on a terrace yeah your place is ramp when we play dnd this you could put an extra terrace in where the road

like an extra row of housing where all of the cars park because a massive issue is when we're playing D&D and our pal comes around he has to park on your street and it is just car back to back down your whole

road apart from the occasional break when someone leaves and if all of those cars were gone all those parking spaces were gone and they're just cars parked on the curb yeah outside your house if they were gone yeah you've got more room for housing it has a massive knock-on effect and i know yes you've got housing costs you've got all this other stuff to play into that but if you've just got the room and also that room frees you up to have the stuff where it's like well i need a car because i need to like go right here or i need to go like to

this place but if like you gain an extra 30 percent of space in the middle of a city you can put that stuff yeah put a massive store in there or have commercial vehicles be able to deliver more frequently more reliable again i think we just invented 15 minute cities in a sense but but the thing is it's 15 minutes in the sense of you can always travel around publicly yeah it doesn't have to be a case of it's a smaller city no with well that's not even what a 15 minute city is a 15 minute city is everything convenience is within 15 minutes walk yeah yeah that's it we're not doing 15 minute walk we're accepting the fact that distance can remain we're not asking to uproot the entirety of the city and its infrastructure we're just asking to

build an infrastructure which is at this point vehicles yeah get rid of the cars melt them down do whatever you need to and then just have big buses drive around I don't think that's as big of an ask as people think it is I could be wrong I'd be interested to hear people's takes on this because I feel like it's a

polarizing one given the fact that a lot of our listeners are in Australia or America both countries you do actually need a car I'd love to hear their takes would you be a fan of this? Would you be approving of us stripping back cars and making this work

because if you had reliable public transport, don't think of it the way you think of it now, picture it where it's idealised and it's calm, it's functional, it's cool, it's reliable Here's the way I think of it I think think of all the effort in your country

that's going into designing building both cars and the infrastructure they need and imagine all those like those minds were focused on making things directly more livable. Because that's also the thing,

there's no shortage, it's just an incentive thing. Yeah, it's incentive. And also, think about all of this costing you 30 great British pounds, or the equivalent in your nation, per month, to get access to all of this. To everything. You don't have to buy your car,

you don't have to pay your insurance, you don't have to pay for petrol, you don't have to pay for road tax, you don't have to buy the car. this would be it would require national infrastructure and like a national project for it i think so that 30 quid would also be i like the idea of if you are going to have to have a cost it's a 30 or whatever the price is that's your transit ticket thing yeah so it's local buses but also if you want to go intercity that's covered on it you might need to book a

book a seat on the train but it's free you've paid you've got it covered as part of it's just yeah there's a thing so each train doesn't become the thing because also they sell tickets for trains now but they oversell them and then people have to sit on the fucking floor like yeah this money would cover it so you can just book your space, and they have more trains. But I think we agree on this. Yeah, we're both anti-car people, and I also think we're both

because we don't want to learn to drive, and also it shouldn't be a requirement for, like, adulthood. It shouldn't. We've hit a common ground here that I think strikes a chord. Could be controversial to

the car people, but let us know. Get in touch. Info at warwithamate.com at uk that's how you reach us we will maybe see you in person one day until then until that day which will come we will be continuing this forever every week you've got us here playing the campaign for north africa shooting the shit common ground mailbag history segment game recap the whole shebang i've been james i've been andy stay subtle humble and brave in the publicly accessible deserts of your mind. Good night.

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