War With A Mate - Episode 83: The Great Game, The Beautiful Game

Episode Date: July 4, 2026

Op Stage One is over, and the guys have been caught unawares by the outcomes - who’d have thought it? It’s all turned on its head, and the end of the turn is looking as uncertain as ever. This week’s History Segment shows that the British Empire doesn’t understand what loneliness is, the Mailbag takes to the skies and Common Ground teaches the world a lesson in what REAL sportsmanship is.

hello one and all ladies gentlemen friends family lovers no it's not that kind of show welcome to war with a mate with me james me andy it's not that kind of show at all this is family friendly family encouraged actually bring the kids along for a day out bring the wife bring the dog it's going to be a lovely day out cover around the radio stare at it like an old painting from before tv and that's the best way to encapsulate what we're doing here we are capturing the past but bringing you into the future into a one in a lifetime one one in history event this happens once ever we're playing the campaign for north africa board game never beaten by anyone else that anyone else has proven but we're here to do it and we are

currently in the midst of the last turn of our six turn practice run it's been a long 18 months and we have finished upstage one of turn six leaving only two upstages to go how does that feel andy it felt like the end was miles away and now it's very close it's right around the corner and i think that was made even more apparent today because we beat the upstage in one go in one sitting we sat down knife and fork out we threw away the chopsticks we threw away the dessert spoon and we just wolfed it down we devoured it no scraps and what an upstage yeah this was a biggie this was a hugey i i had a hell of a time there were some some losses on both sides some tactical wins some tactical whoopsies and it's changed the game state it's

put us in a much more tense space i suppose instead of teasing it anymore we should probably just get into it yeah so you've kicked it off of your air stuff my air stuff and wow i was jolly this time round i didn't get air stuff last op stage because of the the sandstorm that really prohibited any kind of aircraft taking off what it didn't do though is stop me from refitting some of my guys so i continue to refit so i had two op stages really of refitted planes is this pretty close to like a hundred percent of your bombers were in use i wouldn't say a hundred percent because uh i mean first of all a hundred percent even if we're factoring in the surviving planes from these squads because a lot of them have missing guys thanks to you and your guys

we're still looking at not quite capacity because my roles for italian aircraft refits are hindered i have to roll the die and add two to that result and going higher in the numbers is bad you need one to get 100 so you it's impossible yeah so it's been stacking up those values and it has meant i had a lot of them which were at the capacity i could use them in which is eight planes at a time yes so that was that was good and merry so i ended up launching my bombing run and because of the rainstorm positioned over maps d and e you couldn't launch any close air patrol to defend you guys yeah which is a bit of a shame it was perfect perfect for me because that meant going into it i was able to drop bombs with no recompense whatsoever there was no knock back on

me so i've got to just pick and choose and pick i did choose i did with a lot of bombs as well yes a total of two bombing runs one was a dropping of 480 bombs on the 7th armored division yes and i dropped another 84 bombs on the second new zealand yes the second new zealand i managed to roll fairly well and i pinned two yep that sounds right yep pinned two of your guys i went for your infantry decided let's stop those guys because they're they're difficult to move at the best of times so if i can half their capacity for movement that's perfect and as for the seventh you may or may not recall last time i left them boxed in a little bit between all my guys i thought what better way to galvanize that horrible situation than by pinning them pin them i did i rolled

nice and pretty i managed to pin six six groups six units and i picked all infantry yes because that will then slow down your combined arms rules when it comes to helping your tanks out and means they can't really get anywhere yeah well it's half half cpa and even though they're motorized so it doesn't really matter all that much with infantry i guess it still breaks up combined arms and that's the biggest thing for me because your tanks when they're rolling around it's pretty decent toe points and i've got a suspicion probably a two for the attack values three three wow okay so crazy yeah so if you're looking at you know even five toe points you're looking at 15 yeah that's already when rounded up that's two actual strength points yeah so i can't

be dealing with that so bomb them i did i was happy with that so i thought the only thing left to do there is move on to land because we did all the little bits in between which was uh nothing no construction from you andy nope no anything uh yeah well construction's not going to finish in a meaningful yeah time at this point you can make a supply dump i think you can fix a bit of road yeah i'm not doing any of that yeah why fix roads when no one's driving over the damn things yeah so instead i decided let's waltz on my guys so what i did was pincer the seventh with the 62nd and 64th two divisions how can that go wrong against a seventh armor division that is almost entirely pinned infantry wise yep that's a sure thing doesn't actually help you for what you were

doing though now andy i forgot that yes see i thought it had the same effect as barrage but i forgot that air barrage is secondary bombardment yes it's a different thing so it doesn't actually stop them participating in combat and in the excitement i will admit that slipped my mind a bit it would stop them if they were the aggressors they couldn't start a combat uh you can't do you can't do voluntary uh combat but defense is involuntary so they were fine and with me having the fully fed 62nd and 64th ready to go and able to make offensive movement i brought them in and it was looking good until we actually looked at it and when you take the numbers and when you look at the morale difference morale wise i was fine we went into combat ruled morale and i ended up

with a zero which is better than minus one yep you ended up with a plus three that's not great that puts it to minus three for me division size we're both divisions so flat still at minus three then we start a bit of looking at the uh the ins and outs uh barrage wise i went for some barrages i took out a couple of you guys i think it was only two and from there the differential really got me yes yeah i forgot that these guys are bigger than me and also your barrage managed to pin everybody meaningful i had in the 60 second yeah well we actually had a sort of a thing about barrage where you need a 50 if you just use one barrage point you need a 54 or higher to pin an infantry yes which on the on the 36 system you've got eight it's eight out of 36 odds on just a

random one shot which is that's good odds yeah it's better odds than solidifying them up the table at least it feels like it yeah well it's nearly a quarter of the time you're gonna hit so if you whereas if you could if you get up to four barrage points you're nowhere that's one column along isn't it yeah what yes but one and two is one column then three and four and so on and that continues all the way up to 17 so if you instead of having four separate barrages you just condense those down into one barrage of four points well at that point you're already wasting stuff because three barrage points is the exact same value yeah and like everything else to get the the points you need to divide by 10 so you're talking about using 40 raw barrage points

when you could get away with 30 you get away with 30 you can get away with 26 26 yeah so you're wasting 14 barrage points yeah so it's crazy if you do that so instead you can drop it down you can drop six raw points which drops to 0.6 it rounds up to one yeah and you can barrage so if they have six barrage or higher they can just do ones so you do that that is the logical thing yeah that's exactly what we did yeah i don't i'm not we've not done the maths but i just don't eyeball test there's no reason to group them yeah it feels better doing this as well the scattershot approach it's the rolling more dice thing it's it's fun yeah it's exciting it's adrenaline filled so if it's both more exciting and better mathematically i don't know i would take the

more exciting you know it doesn't matter if it's mathematic no but the problem is the more exciting is also the more mathematically yeah so why would you ever do the opposite it's less fun would you ever do anything but so we did exactly that we decided to spray and pray and i didn't pray hard enough it would seem you sprayed pretty hard so i ended up having all of the 62nd pinned all being two infantry and one tank yep but one tank group uh so they were useless apart from some of their forward placed guns and then i had my 64th i think you pinned two of those as well yeah i got pretty lucky out of five i think it was six on one and then five on the one where i got two in the armor yes yeah so it was uh it was a it was a mess yeah i realized

it was going bad at that stage and the differential threw it out of whack i think it was minus six yep which had the unfortunate result of me being hit pretty hard because uh first time around it was zero each yep um we we took no losses either side i thought hey in that case i'll do it again yeah this time around you didn't pin all of the 62nd you did pin some of the 64th i believe and then we went into it and unfortunately primarily i had less pinned guys which was a big thing spiked my defense score because i could get them involved significantly the end result there i think ended up being minus eight yeah and that unfortunately meant when we rolled the dice i took zero off your guys you destroyed 50 of mine yes now 50 is a big number yes because

it's the biggest on the table it's half it's take all of my guys there that were doing the fight split them into two groups and uh and half of them are gone yeah that's it it's very simple math i'm sure you all know how half works but it was still a shock to the system it was an setting one and it was a moment of laugh or cry or i guess get angry that's probably what i'd usually go for but it's the end of the game i was excited and this was entirely my fault i can't blame any rules for this one i can't even pretend to blame the game this was james's fault so i lost half my guys some good growth it you know what i'm willing to accept it when it's not because of complicated rules half is simple andy okay and half is what i lost but glass are full half

my men are alive more than half because some were pinned yes and it wasn't an overrun i guess and it wasn't over it couldn't be by the metrics of it because i was attacking is there not one on the other hand no no you got an overrun oh it's just really bad isn't it yeah there's much more uh of a high odd of you losing more men when you're the attacker yeah as that scale moves along the attacker it's not in favor of yeah so you really need to go in hard and commit to it otherwise the attacker is penalized so that wasn't great with that happening i decided let's cool off a bit i pulled those guys apart you did i broke them off i've got them one hex away so they still have a zone of control bordering up against you and that meant because of the positioning of them the

maletti division and the tabrook no the bardia garrison it meant that there is a zone of control everywhere you go yes you can't go anywhere without being in a zone of control and because of the pin that i got from the air it means you can't actually go in there yeah i could have done like a weird only armor yeah you could have tried something it would have been a mess but you could have given it a go yeah but even then you can only do defensive combat no because the the non-pin the non-infantry could attack oh yes of course yeah no that's a good point yeah those guys cut off yeah so if you keep them all together it would be a pure armor and gun no infantry so the combined arms would immediately kick in and you have zero from the tanks and then it's just

a gunfight might end up with more than zero because it caps at a minus four oh yes so you could push through but that's a lot of tanks at risk because yeah for a tiny because then whatever you're losing it's coming from the tank it's all tanks yeah which i would have loved but you smartly decided not to yeah i'm getting ahead of myself so after pulling them away another bit of movement i had done was to move the guys away from the escarpment where the new zealand guys were yeah that's new zealand isn't it yeah so where the new zealand guys were just on the edge of the escarpment i pulled away the 63rd and the second libyan so that they were still at the bottom but they were just one hex away so if you decide to get the massive boost yeah if you decide to come

down you're going to be hit by them kind of on a forward flank from both yeah so it's not ideal positioning for you and that was my movement that was it wrapped up in a nutshell i was pretty pleased with it at first in theory thought it would go a lot better i was talking about it at work today saying that i was going to send the seventh armor division straight into hell it turns out no uh historically if anyone deserves to it's probably the italian fascists if we had to you know pick and choose so i guess this works out morally yeah i'm fine with that morally also like compared to what they did in the series we did on the 7th if they died in graziani's offensive it's that's a real fall off yeah i need to pick them apart before they come together we decided

this last time i need to really go in on them so then it moved over to you andy it did and this went, again, differently than we expected. Yeah. So, I didn't move the 7th at all. Smart move, I think. Kept them in their box. Same with the 2nd New Zealand. Seems, again, prudent. Yeah.

Moved some guys up from Mersima True to Sidi Barani. The guys who had looped back to fight the 2nd? The 2nd Blackshirts. Yeah. So they're all dead now, so those guys are coming back to the front. Satan rest their soul. and then the aussies showed up and they fought i think one truck uh one armored car yeah so

these were the guys i this is where i had a bit of my breakdown a few weeks ago so these guys were part of the 63rd 63rd serene the ones that fell down the escarpment yeah and the ones that i intended to have retreat into your supply dump yeah that's why I broke them off so they could retreat into the supply dump instead I had to have them retreat nearby and then when you went to the supply dump

I thought well they can't go there so instead I zipped them up the gap on the east side of the escarpment and held them at the top to try and block your trucks moving past yeah which is where they remained until you approached them which also I didn't realize because they wouldn't

they wouldn't have a zone of control would they they wouldn't no they're not big enough yeah so i could have just ignored them you couldn't move past yeah yeah but they were there and it was also the end of this aussies movement so you had to do something you gotta make it worthwhile so got rid of them uh it was not even close by the way you absolutely destroyed them yeah i thought they were bigger than one toe point so yeah one quite a bit good values um four attack three defense yeah i've noticed that the armored car like the recons are by far the best like they're better than a lot of my tank units yeah yeah same i've got some infantry that are five and seven but yeah well you pin some of them uh they were in the in the 64th yeah that's an interesting thing

actually so you actually have the more elite infantry if you boil it down to the scores yeah yeah i have fewer men oh is it because i've got one that's four six and it caps at three toe these guys are i'm not sure what the cap is but they've got two toe in the unit yeah so two two or five attack seven defense that's fucking crazy and i had one in the 64th one in the 62nd and you pinned both of them the first time one in each and then the second time around you pinned them just in the 64th yeah so yeah you took out one full actual strength point yeah with just those guys being pinned most of my guys are uh one attack one defense and five toe yeah uh speaking of armored cars the armored cars i broke off last time one of them whizzed down

so i now control seaway yeah that was an interesting move because you were humming at the board and when you asked about my garrisons down towards the south if those were the guys i left starving i knew immediately what was coming and it really painted the picture of i think what the rest of the game is going to be because you zip those guys straight down there they took sea workers there's no one around poor saharan detachment they are long gone yeah not long for this world so you just walk walk straight into the oasis drank from the magical waters i presume it's magical it's gotta be i think alexander the great went there to get some kind of prophecy oh well yeah so there is actually some mysticism i wonder if they've got any

prophecies when they go that's what they need to add into this prophecies it's the it's the fifth the fifth thing to keep track of fate you got your your fuel your water you've got your stores your ammo and destiny these guys are running out of destiny well clearly the saharan attachment didn't drink heavy when they were there they did not take a goblet each they simply looked and turned their nose about it lest they knew what would befall them at the gates of alexandria they might be having a better time than anyone else in your army i don't know there are some guys sat um the libyan uh i think it's the libyan parachute regiment they've just been chilling around in a village albeit starving yeah but

you know yeah but this is hard to touch we got a free trip to europe yeah but at what cost psychologically. They showed up in Alexandria and en masse decided, fuck, I'm not doing this anymore. Which in another world could have been us playing the game. If only we'd surrendered at the gates of the game.

My spirit animal is the Saharan Detachment camel. It's just your spirit animal's dead. Oh, but yeah, I don't know what happens to the camels, but apparently they end up in Europe. Yeah. They're in a zoo somewhere. They're in Edinburgh Zoo.

the edinburgh zoo camels are actually descendants of the saharan detachment camels we should go see them i wonder if this is going to be a dumb sentence i wonder if there's any zoos that have ever had animal prisoners of war since the exhibit it's a stupid question but i'm i'm 90 sure the answer is yes yeah i'd like to know the circumstances of their detainment yeah yeah because it's not it's not their fault no i guess a zoo is probably one of the better fates for an animal captured in war well the nature of a zoo is you kind of have to you have to be nice to the animals yeah well that's you're meant to that's you're not supposed to take animals into a zoo to abuse them i guess that's the same with anywhere animals that's also the

same with human prisoners and prison camps but zoos are like they're meant to preserve animal yeah you know meant to preserve animal and you said yours was a stupid sentence so i guess that's where the the camels are i'm also picturing some like ancient king captured like some other kingdom where they had like a favorite lion and then put it in their menagerie oh yeah or had it like in their throne room anyone who happens to know about the very niche topic of animal prisoners of war who ended up in zoos please email in info at warfaremate.co.uk i think the odds of that of one of our listeners having that niche knowledge is higher than the chance that there were animal prisoners of war and that's not because i don't think it's likely

there were animal prisoners of war it's because every time we mention some weird fucking thing on this podcast someone emails it and goes oh i do this this is my this is actually niche interest not only do i know about this but me my friends do this every week so yeah interested to hear from you guys about that whoever it is, look out for that one next week but that wasn't all you had one more thing to do

yes, the 4th Indian I was really ummed and aahed about this yeah, and rightly so and it ended up being I think the wrong decision, but not for a reason I foresaw, so they left Sidi Barani and they whizzed along the coast

and they attacked up the escarpment against the tabroot garrison uh we've got two op stages left so my thing was i if i'm going for barley or i need to you need to break a move now hellfire pass i've i've got a lock on that yeah and that lock is the the tabroot garrison they've been sat there for like two turns now nearly and they are terrifying i put them there a while ago and i was thinking when i've got them there and there's a slope just to their south when i put a division there and there was a division sat there for a while i thought if you show up there and try and go up that hill they are going to hit you from

the escarpment yes which means you'll be fighting up an escarpment the rule overrides so all of it's an escarpment fight yeah and then you're fighting a division as well and i was just looking at the guns and the guns alone their barrage capability is insane was it 12 guns it's uh no i think it's eight i think it's eight guns and it comes out at about 322 raw barrage points yeah so 32 barrage points yeah and 32 barrage points the table caps out at 17 and as we just discussed that is just 32 individual barrages yeah and that is exactly how that went so i had seven infantry in the fourth and i think you bombed all of them at least three times and some of them four yes the first uh bite at the cherry because you attack twice the first time i pinned all of them all of the infantry were

pinned comfortably yeah that was the time i lost so the first time they attacked they lost 20 or was that first time it was 10 10 it's actually less the first time and then 20 the next yeah so i took off 10 the differential was not in my favor the differential was minus sorry it wasn't my favorite was minus four for the first one yeah i think it was minus four for the first one because the first one because you'd pinned all my infantry but i had a tank free yeah i you cannot attack if you have no one who can attack you're not like forced into it because you left that tank i had to go in and then because of combined arms it came out it came out of zero so i got very lucky to not it much worse there yeah the morale came in clutch because i had minus three you had plus three yeah

that was a difference of six and then the division size shifted to two more columns in your favor yeah but then what brought it back was the fact that i had seven commitment points of strength yeah and because it's up in escarpment it moved three columns to the left as well so that swung into a minus four i took off ten percent of your guys and you went again which i did not expect my logic there was you've done a huge barrage oh god yeah if you've emptied the tank as it were this is probably my one chance before you resupply to like because if i because i did in the second attack force a retreat yeah you just decided not to go for it because if i'd if you'd done that retreat i would have been job done that you would

have achieved exactly what you wanted to do yeah because i used up a lot of ammo i couldn't do the same barrage again i had to do a much smaller barrage which is why i ended up with the differential was like zero before we added like terrain and size and stuff yeah and then i think it was plus four in your favor in the end yeah everything else so plus four to you i managed to take 10 percent at 20 off you that was crazy good yes 20 percent loss for you you were all really low didn't you 11 yeah so we had two 11 rolls this session yes one of them was on me losing 50 one was you losing 20 so on our respective op stages we lost the most we could lose in that combat yeah uh and i lost 15 which went up to 25 because i refused the one hex retreat yeah so i i held my ground

i used up a lot of ammo which was only mitigated by the thing that followed the only other thing you move back to i then moved back because i was like if you get another like as you mentioned that is a just a death you could move the guys who are around it yeah i could move i mean the fourth black shirts at the moment are just down the road near madalena yeah i can move them up it's going to be costly but i'll take that cohesion hit to blast you from that escarpment yeah so i was i was definitely going to do that but you pulled away you're one hex away from that point now so then we did trucks which was super just super fast because we both abandoned any time any time yeah we've abandoned any form of long-term thinking on the trucks because we've

got two upstages left so there's no like there's no future yeah there's no this needs to be sustainable so i think i've attached like most of my trucks to units now yeah as one-dimensional creatures we can just think about sticking our trucks on guys put our guys on wheels i've got two convoys i've got one that's supplying my airfields around map a and i've got one that is in bardia which has some trucks left okay so your airfields on map b are gonna be done yeah I didn't use any of those in this bombing run. I've still got some planes left, but my fear

was if something goes wrong on map A and I can use map B then I'll keep them. So I've got one last ditch. Do you have no fighters left? I've got no fighters. I did. I have fighters. They're fitted, but

they are both on map A and they have no SGSU. So they can't even do a transfer flight to get to... No. Right, okay. How did that end up happening? I moved them.

They were the guys who went to Madalena. Oh, the SJSU? Yes. They went and got picked off. Yeah, the SJSUs went along to Madalena. Yeah. So I guess it is the fate of all SJSUs that if they're working with fighters,

they go to Madalena to die. Yes. It's a bit of an elephant graveyard. It is the Trenzalore of SGSU's Doctor Who reference. I know. It's a niche reference for those who aren't Doctor Who fans.

It just sounds like a weird place. Hoovians? Hoovians, that's what they call them. Henry Hoovians. And they're about to go through the thing that a lot of fandoms do where they don't make any new stuff for it, so the fandom gets really fucking weird. The thing is, Doctor Who fans have done this before.

Yeah. They've had this before. Well, not really. yeah because there was the gap between the old ones and the new ones well yeah mccoy i think the people who are like really into doctor who now aren't people who ever watched the old series as it was coming out like this will be their first hiatus i for i guess there will be the majority i think there'll be modern fans yeah definitely but uh yeah that probably is the majority but there will definitely be some where the fan base en masse it's happened before there's law there's canon to uh hiatus and because like my parents watched the older one it was coming out but then

they were like not that interested in the new one that's interesting they watched it with me but once i moved out they never watched it again yeah i guess it it is totally different in a lot of ways yeah so yeah that's that's what they'll be going through we'll have that soon we'll have a hiatus soon yeah i mean we'll be recording episodes still but we'll be getting ready for the main game yes but we've still got stuff to finish off yeah i will say um i don't know if i mentioned it that that garrison is so not what i was expecting like that's changed the way i look at the tiles even yeah because there are two on the the stacking point value so they're not a division they're not the weird one in the middle which is a three yeah there there are two and they

have 10 infantry 10 units of infantry yeah which all have individual toe points and by the way some of them are more than five yeah and then they've got eight guns and some of the guns have barrage ratings of 15 yeah which means on their own with one toe point they would be able to do two barrage points yeah and i none of the things i own have 10 inventory in them yeah or ever did um well they were so big yeah like i i was worried at first i wasn't going to be able to use all of the barrages because of ammo but then i had a look and realized the massive discrepancy between toe point and barrage because of how high the ratings were yeah because at first i was like oh my god like 322 times four and i was like no that's not it divided by 10 james and i was like

that's still insane and then i was like oh it's actually all right i don't have to do that yeah so yeah it crazy crazy destructive value but i uh i managed to do some some nasty damage with that um move my trucks as well i just resupplied my airfields i zipped my guys from bardia down resupplied the bar the taboo garrison yeah so they now have more ammo i've even dropped some there on the tile for them to have yeah and i also went down and supplied the 60 second because they are the only guys in that little box cluster around the 7th that I could get to. Well, I could get the Mileti division, but they're kind of fucked,

so it's a waste of time to supply them too much. I mean, the scattering of divisions around the 7th, correct me if I'm wrong, but they are ravaged. Yes. Like, there's not a division there that's even close to healthy. 64th is still good, but that 50% loss that they took, they're only good in comparison to their neighbours. Yeah.

i've got the fourth which are nearby they i don't think are too badly beaten up i might be wrong uh maletti are very bad the 63rd that went down the escarpment are terrible the second libyan that are down at the bottom of the escarpment they're okay yeah they're actually i think entirely intact i think they even have positive cohesion and they're now fully motorized okay so they're pretty cool but all in all i've got a a real messy situation going on there but it's enough i hope to keep you boxed in well that's what i was going to get to is even even if they're shattered they still fill that hole the line roll yeah they're still because what they are though i'm guessing the way i'm looking at them i don't know is i'm looking at them as cpa sponges

rather than, like, a threat, if that makes sense. They're not going to cause any damage to the 7th, but they might take 10 to 15 CPA to get past. Yeah, at this point, after the 50% loss, I know with 100% certainty they won't take out the 7th. No. They won't take out the 4th. They won't take out the 2nd New Zealanders.

But they could hold them. They could hold them. They can chip away at 5% or 10% in a very lucky combat for me. Yeah. and more importantly waste your time that's the big one because i really thought i've i know i'm going back to it not to sound like salty but i really thought i did a good job of peeling everything away from the pass you did a really good job and then i had a two left uh i just did realize it was a big old meaty two uh so and even with the losses you inflicted 25

percent yeah that isn't that much when you look at the guns because the guns are small toe points that weren't even involved in the defense because they don't have defense ratings yeah what you took off was the infantry that were there to i guess placate the combat the barrage is what that thing is that it's a barrage machine with a meat shield yeah it's got a meat shield so we can play in combat but realistically i just need that there while i move a division in and that's where that ends you don't do anything while that's there you don't get up that hill while that that is there with a division no that will delay you for the rest of the game you need to move those guys or find another way to bar you yeah which is easier said than done i mean that's been what

you've been trying to do for the last turn yeah so with the state of play now andy we have two op stages left we each have a land combat phase we each have if we're lucky air combat which i guess no we did have one more thing to mention yes we've rolled weather for the upstage two and because i've elected to go first in upstage two look at me i will be rolling the weather i have rolled the weather and it's normal weather all aircraft will be proceeding next upstage yes that will be interesting because i think you're going to go hell for leather i mean yeah i will have to my refit is going to be interesting this time around because my ammo is not going to be as plentiful in some areas so yeah i'm i'm not excited for that as much as i was this time around

but we've we've got these two upstages how do you feel andy i'm really pumped one this felt like a really fun just gameplay session it this is i think this was the most tense i've felt yeah during a play session where the heavy losses on both sides the fact it's at the end i don't need to worry about like playing the next 10 years so i don't have like an anxiety i had at the start of the practice run yeah like turn three four where i was like well i've got months left if i lose a division now i can't play the game anymore yeah but now if i'm losing a division it's like they had a good run did they serve the function in this fight because all i have to do is survive two more fights yes but it was still nail-biting when i took that 50 loss i had no idea where the rest

of that was going to go, if you were going to sneak up on those guys and blow them to smithereens. But you, I think, rightfully so, ignored them and moved up towards Bardia. I'm in a... I'm very happy this isn't going to end with

your wall just holds. I push against it, but don't get past it. You've still got the wall, but things have broken up a bit, so it feels like a more interesting game state. Yes. And I am leaning towards I think because

because it's hard to dislodge a unit I think I'm going to run out of time to take Bardia that's my hope yeah and it's the game state wouldn't be

like this if there was one more turn but I think if this had been seven turns I would think I was going to win now i think you're gonna hold on to the win condition because i'm gonna run out of time which is what i'm praying for yeah i can't pull out another win condition so all i've got is the pseudo win yeah which is the only way we can kind of measure a definitive victory because that's also why i whip those guys down at seawear because i feel i think the worst feeling would be

I get lucky and do a good job tactically, take Bardia, but then don't have time to get to Siwa so I don't hit... If I took Bardia and didn't hit the win condition, I'd be so gutted

that I'd just have to send those guys down there, even if they would be the ones that let me take Bardia. Like, if they would be the, like, thumb on the scale. Because I just can't. Well, you don't want to miss it by a technicality yeah because at the moment i'm winning by technicality so if you lost by technicality that would be devastating that would be unfair yeah if you take bardia at any point

that's a win for you oh yeah so you are you're on the the cusp of it i'm i'm with you i think i can hold it long enough having said that i went into this today thinking and albeit i forgot about bombardment rules on one side i really thought i was going to be able to chew up the seventh so it's not impossible that something could still go awry yeah i don't know what but i know there could be something there's so many rules in that book and i've got one thing left to use that will have a big impact which is i get one more upstage of the fleet to bombard something yes that could do some spoilers it's going to be bardia i know i know it's it's either going to be a spite bombardment on bardia where i don't have any guys to take advantage of it and i'm just bombing the

shit out of it or it'll be yeah maybe the thing that like gives them the edge to take it and you know what i mentioned earlier today that i have a contingency that's still active it's for the bombardment from your ships okay interesting i have a contingency ready air force uh no i can't rely on my air force because of the fact i might not get to use them at any given stage huh i'm interested it's not to stop your coastal defenses it's to it's to work around when they do go into action oh okay i think i know it yeah i don't know exactly what you mean by to get what you're getting at yeah if they if they drop their bombardment and fuck up bardia i have a plan to keep bardia defensible okay interesting because they can also they can only do one bombardment so

it's not like i can put them off the coast and every fight that happens next to them is a it's the one yeah and i i think uh this this only really works i think if you bombard them next upstage i don't know that it works in upstage three what your contingency or just the whole thing the contingency right i think i need enough prep time that it needs to be an upstage two but we'll see well i think here's the thing realistically next up stage i need to get at least one unit in contact with bardia if you don't i you don't have i don't have time or cpa to win what i will say is seventh for on 10 cohesion yes they're they're sitting pretty the fourth pushed themselves but because the retreat that then didn't happen they're on four okay and then

the second i think have nine maybe so basically i've got a lot of coherence to burn okay yeah so you're actually you're all right you can double tap you can go in for extra hits what you didn't do you weren't able to resupply the seventh with trucks no because they're boxed in so i'm hoping i can starve them out of ammo just by having them chew up in that group i don't think the seven gets to bardia no but i think if the seventh hold what what are they currently pinning like i know you're pinning them but in a way they are also pinning what five six division they're pinning three divisions and a big gun garrison yeah the bardia one uh the uh yeah the bardia one yeah so they are doing

what you can't really ask more of like you are you've given consistent losses and delayed like five times your number well they're doing more than pinning them they've destroyed them what they're pinning now are skeletons so there's nothing

really left of any might if I put all four of those together and round them up against the seventh I think the seventh wins against all four of them so all I can pray is that they can hold you off long enough my goal i think is a mini objective don't let the seventh get to bardia just as a point of pride so i can yeah so i can say they did their job because i moved everyone out of the wall to start going on the offensive to just try and do some damage and mean that even

if you do break through the wall at least i hit you hard first rather than letting you just churn through my guys and then get to bardia and you're dealing with just wrecked divisions yeah i've kept some guys back and i threw those guys to the wolves and they've done some damage to you oh yeah that the seventh of i've had to reinforce them with infantry from other places yeah so that's so they're not it's not just the seventh there's two other inventory guys attached which i'm pleased to have done i'm amazed we've got to this point yeah and it's it's coming down to the wire it's still it looks like it's me who's going to pull this out but it's also not certain so i'm excited to see where this practice run ends i'm excited to end the practice run

i'm terrified of starting the full game and i'm glad it's not ending in my garbage time no it's it's exciting still yeah and today again it feels like one of those bright shining moments of this is a game and i'm enjoying playing it yeah because i flip-flop on that quite frequently but i'm glad it's i'm really glad we had this session after last week last week because last week wasn't a bad one um no the week before the last week wasn't it wasn't like a i'm out yeah like this one now it feels like the gloves are off yes and i'm glad to see the gloves come off and see what that looks like when we're throwing all of our guys at each other and just seeing what sticks yeah i think it's a yeah i think those your garrisons are really interesting

as well because i guess you've got the thing of like do you move them out early because they're like beefy and powerful yeah well or because it's going to be 111 turns those boys should stay yeah like how are you because if i like if you move them out and then i like destroy the to Brute Garrison on say like turn 40 you've got a problem for 70 turns in a way you wouldn't now

yeah there's so much to measure up in the full game that hiatus where we're sorting out the full playthrough is going to be really intense tactical plan and that I don't know I've got the capacity for so I'm excited to see where it

goes I'm scared all in all I think this is a net positive feeling yes so i'll take that i'll run with that and i guess that was a a big game wrap up of op stage one of the final turn so let's bring it back down let's take it out of our hands and put our hands instead into the mailbag where we'll find other hands hands of fans and they're holding letters and they're pushing them up out of the burlap sack uh that's that's beautiful that's beautiful so what is in this bag first email from daniel daniel reads or writes rather i'm gonna read daniel you write scribe this good day y'all a lovely y'all from nebraska

i've been a long time listener and now first time emailer well welcome daniel welcome to the fold i found out about the podcast through one of your early reddit posts on the hex encounter subreddit i think around episode 15 that'll be right i think that was the first one we put up i think that was us starting to play the game yeah should be another one fairly soon alas life got in the way at that time i graduated from college that spring yippee hey congrats daniel yeah well done we were busy wasting our time so it's lovely to hear you were doing something worthwhile yeah and i fell behind on your episodes this past fall i decided i'd email after i caught up and here we are i finished listening to your most recent episode 75 and i found the podcast a blast since

the very beginning well thank you daniel that's very flattering given how the beginning was i don't listen to many podcasts but your unique mix of board gaming history and general insanity has convinced me to stay for the long haul it's been a good piece of media to listen to during the more menial tasks of my job and while i play through my own hex and counter war games i picked up the hobby in high school and have been obsessed with it ever since your early escapades and figuring out how to keep the game set up inspired me to create a virtual wargaming setup of my own magnets included oh sorry vertical not virtual that makes more sense a vertical wargame setup a virtual game with actual magnets with actual setup yeah don't put

magnets on your computer that's not going to go well buddy i've attached some pictures of the setup at the moment and i went a similar route using poster frames and galvanized steel in conjunction with rubber channel magnets to hold the counters in place i'm quite proud of how it turned out and you should be because this is awesome yeah we've we've seen some stuff like this before online because we kind of debated doing something similar for this of going vertical yeah going vertical having those like clip-ons where you can like slide the pieces in because it it seems well one it like it won't destroy the game as much yeah and also stuff won't start falling off because we're using fucking blue tack uh which is insane i also whenever i see galvanized

steal i don't know if you've seen it andy it's probably not you don't watch like tiktok and stuff like that do you uh no i i'll fall into a brutal youtube youtube short hole so possibly it's probably the same thing there's a trend not really a trend but there's this animated like series where it's this guy it's like this voiceover where it's like bob moved into a tiny five by five apartment and needed to make it bigger oh is it oh i was thinking is this the where ai badly describes a movie scene no but it's also badly done because it'll be like he's got this five by five apartment it needs to fit everything in and it's kind of like how do you cram a living space into this tiny area oh like a tiny house thing yeah and it would be that if

every single video didn't include him creating a definitely illegal extension to the property using galvanized steel beams where they're just like and this is like a an apartment on like the 50th floor of a skyscraper and he just builds outward with these galvanized steel beams and creates like an extra 15 squared feet of space and it's like how have you done this then where is he like where's it based it's it's all like animated it's like a oh i think it's i don't know where it's meant to be but wherever it is i can't imagine this is legal even if it's some of the most like cowboy builds it's not fine to do it's unsafe so yeah it always involves them using that and it just it tickled me to see that that's the only time i've seen it outside of that context

i have a few questions slash thoughts about the game for you considering the air war my first war game i ever played bloody april battle in the skies over arras france 1917 model tactical flights between world war one fighter plane squadrons so i'm always interested in how games tackle betraying this unique form of combat well we didn't have any air combat today but we shall do our best dan hearing about you guys explain the rules and how they are implemented has left me wondering how you how you how important do you think the air war will play in the campaign game in most traditional histories about the north african campaign the air war is downplayed in favor of the epic tank clashes and maneuvers in the open desert but debatably the real war was

decided in the air do you think the game downplays its importance or do you feel it's properly represented um well i guess first of all i'm not sure we're super qualified to give the verisimilitude an analysis in that sense because we we aren't super knowledgeable about all the facets of the campaign itself but i will say that in the mechanics of the game it does feel balanced it feels like it will never you wouldn't win by purely dominating the air game

no what the air game lets you do is influence the land game very directly yes that's a very good way to put it it lets you like I think I'm going to fight this so I'm going to pin some of them to give my guys an advantage

or like i don't want that to move so i'm going to pin it with bombs rather than it being like oh i'm bombing that unit so i don't have to think about it for the rest of the game i guess you're not getting rid of toe points really it's a yeah you can stray it feels like a movement controller well today's a perfect example for that with the seventh yeah i pinned the seventh and in my short-sighted mind i thought that meant i can take them apart in land combat it doesn't do that It allowed me to pin them, but all I did was restrict their movement and their options, their decidability. Whereas when it comes to an actual fight, you remove that, they would tear apart my guys.

If I had that fight with them, the fight would have went probably the same. I'd lose 50%, but then afterwards, it's your movement. You march into them, you tear them to ribbons. So because of the air stuff, I could put you on hold, but I couldn't destroy you. Yes, I mean, that's a good way of... And strafing, it's cool. It's cool. It doesn't feel strong at all.

It feels like a fallback use for something. In the context, it's wildly powerful because one plane can take out, it can strafe like two points and take out like 200 men. And it's like an individual group of planes can tear apart 200 men. In historical real life context, that seems crazy powerful. but in the context of the game it's probably kind of balanced yeah it's not very realistic i think in that sense which is a crazy thing to say about this game i think it's not very realistic but it does maybe sacrifice that to make the gameplay more realistic in the way they're balanced you

can like chip away at enemies but without it becoming an overwhelming force where if you've got fighters in the air you couldn't just forget about being on the ground yeah you're never you're never gonna like get rid of something with your air force definitely not in the full game it might be a different picture because if you're strafing every single upstage and you're strafing the same ground unit and you're taking off two toe points ago that will add up that's a very good role it is it is a good role and it's committing a lot of planes so yeah you're talking about using a lot of your air force and having no resistance to it but it's possible you can whittle away ground units but again i guess that comes down to managing your air force well if you don't manage

it well the enemy can absolutely you know take advantage of that yeah but it's i would say yeah i'm gonna sit on the side of it it's balanced well in the context i don't think it falls by the wayside and feels like a side piece but it definitely isn't the most important either yeah so i think all in all game design wise i'm comfortable that it it works i think if you were going to break it down it would be air but air and then land and then trucks in order of importance yes yeah because air supports land land needs trucks to actually happen yeah and air needs everything needs trucks the game is trucks and fuck the trucks yes so yeah uh good good question on the air stuff uh additionally you've talked about infantry withdrawal in the

main game do bomber or fighter squadrons ever withdraw to represent being assigned to another theater or do they stay stagnant throughout the campaign only ever gaining new pilots and craft it could be interesting if say a german ace pilot was suddenly forced to head into the eastern front depriving the access of a key air unit on the front overall i think the air war could make an interesting history segment i've been reading the book the uh in christopher shaw's history of mediterranean air war 1940 to 1945 and i think it would be a good place to start for general information anyways i've rambled for far too long and i need to get back to work try not to get too lost in the deserts of your minds subtly humbly and bravely daniel and he's included a ps with

his photos of uh it's uh churchill's greatest gamble 1915 a board game and which he's got his vertical setup oh it's about gallipoli yeah yeah very cool 1915 yeah uh but to loop back around quickly yeah the um withdrawal stuff i don't think there's a withdrawal on the top of my head no i don't think so either i really don't think there's anything pilot wise pilot wise there risen i'm completely sure of that because the ratings of ace pilots you just kind of get a number and then you could pop them anywhere so i guess the only way they could do that is you have to move x amount of aces off the map and with the additional rule it gives you you build up your aces through kill count so i guess with that it would mean you're kind of fighting an uphill battle

where if you do that variant rule you'd have to earn your aces with the risk that you have to get yeah with the risk that you only gain enough to just cover the payment of distributing them back to another theater anyway yeah so with that i'm really confident there isn't i'd have to go back and look but i i'm gonna hang with a with a no on that one yeah i do think you your airplanes come in and then they're just kind of there you get more of them you get as many zero star pilots as you need they're unlimited you've got one for every plane if a plane exists you've got a pilot for it and the core rule if you will is that you get certain ranking of pilots come in every few weeks or months but i think in the main game we're going for the ace ranking yeah that's a lot

of fun i'll enjoy that a lot i think that'll be cool for a narrative to weave within the story as well yeah as for the uh history statement on the air stuff absolutely um it's just a thing i've had with the tanks and equipment as well of like it would be for some people but me like listing specs yeah isn't interesting i don't think i i mean i personally don't find it that interesting to look into um so yeah just finding like narratives within that are about the air force rather than like playing comparisons or anything like that well you've got a you've got a recommendation for some reading yes i've uh bumped that that's gone straight onto my my reading list yeah you got a little uh a little book list from the the mailbag so i'm interested to see what kind of

stuff you can find from there because we've had some i think for the history for the history segments uh has been a good blend of the the narrative and the story and then stuff like you know the dreadnoughts for example yeah fairly recently they've been a cool one seeing the complete mismatch in terms of how they can tear apart but I guess it doesn't boil down to the granular too much yeah it wasn't like they have a like 18 inch

plate on 30% like that kind of yeah because maybe we've got too much of that going on in the game already it would become nightmarish to do it outside but I also think that's the part that's one of the things that made me think I wasn't interested in

history and in particular in military history because the details was that was the like specs on stuff yeah like is it like people arguing over doing top trumps on like tank specs and yeah these guys have this this thickness on their armor and the tanks and but again we covered a bit of that as well yeah i think it's it's good to mention but yeah it's just making sure it's not just a yeah one of the top trumps between stats but that sounds to me like an all-in-all there will be air history segments 100 there'll be history segments about all of it um there we go got long enough so there we go to disseminate it down daniel yes we shall have air history

segments by the sounds of it i look forward to them as much as you do and thank you for the email uh nice little delving of the air stuff we don't really get many air questions i feel maybe i'm wrong maybe i'm blindsided with all of the you know i was gonna say heathcliff we haven't had one like that in so long but it just sits with me so fucking hard I've got some sort of deep-seated trauma now about Heathcliff it will never leave my mind

whoever did that by the way never came forward it was Jeff Bezos it wasn't Jeff Bezos he didn't send the fucking Heathcliff comic so whoever did that is still out there on the loose and if it was you Jeff give me money I don't think that's how

you can't just extort it's not even extortion it's begging i'm not above begging to one of the richest people in the world i mean i get where you're coming from but if there's a reward to it but come on man not on the podcast do that in your own time okay i'll go back to bothering chepizos in my own time back to i hear that you're using this as just a springboard for your own pathetic e-begging and send them enough emails you'll send me a cool meal oh yeah i thought you meant like a mill like a like a windmill no i want a grain

i don't trust you with a grain mill no i don't trust you with any kind of industrial equipment well i'd definitely be have you seen anything about when people fall into those grain silos have i seen anything about when they fall in yeah uh i'm aware people fall into grain silos Well, you can't, like, get out by yourself. They need to, like, put, like, metal. Oh, no, I have seen this. They need to, like, build a thing around you so you don't get, like, sucked down, yeah.

Yeah, and it, like, it disperses out all of the grain and, like, fires it back up. It's, like, such a specific piece of equipment that it's clearly very necessary and used quite a lot. We should look up the name for that. Yeah. Although I can guarantee we're going to get an email about that. Yeah, we don't need to look stuff up.

We've got five people who will email us in. well thank you for that email daniel um i think that's probably all the time we have for the mailbag for now but thank you for sending that in some awesome stuff i hope the board gaming goes well some good war gaming going on and uh hope the college degree was worth the the effort i'm sure you'll be reaping the rewards because when you're committing years of your life to something it means something when we are at the end of the day we've just got a very valuable board game covered in blue tape. Yeah, we're not going to get a piece of paper that gives us opportunities off of this.

We get one hot meal, and that's at the very end of the full thing. Before that, we get some Kinder Buenos, some of which were gifted, which are sat, hopefully, they're not in the fridge. I've seen your fridge, Andy, so they are sat in inclement weather.

I know where they are. No, I didn't say you've lost them. I just don't think they're going to be safe to eat at this rate. I think they're still one of the best before. but they've just experienced way more thermal thermal stress

than the normal than the normal Kinder Bueno lifespan would encounter well anyone else who wants to send in your emails please do at info at warwithamate.co.uk you can also reach us on the Instagram warwithamate which we update weekly

and the website warwithamate.co.uk we have it we'd recommend holding off and sending web forms that way while we churn through the backlog, because some of those got lost by the wayside. But the website will be updated frequently in the full playthrough. And we also

have some more announcements coming up for some of the big things to do with the full playthrough. So watch this space. We tend to announce them around the mailbag. That just seems to be where they slot. That's where we talk to people. Keep an ear out for when we wrap up the

practice scenario. We've got some stuff to talk about. But right now, talking about that's what i'm gonna let andy do that's very much your wheelhouse right now buddy 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 in the east i am more or less in the position of a we are absolutely not qualified to share views on history it is of course the history segment in which andy will be waltzing us through the days gone by

yes so andy where and when are we well last time we covered um britain's uh domestic problems and primarily the fact they were all deeply ill um leading up to world war one yeah surprisingly progressive moves that they made yes some areas uh so that was their domestic we're going to look at britain's uh foreign policy leading up to world war one i feel like this may leave a little bit to be desired it might so the opening quote we have had no allies i'm afraid we have had no friends we stand alone okay and that's from colonial secretary joseph chamberlain after failing to negotiate with germany in 1898 sorry the guy saying we have no allies we are alone is colonial secretary yes as in places we have yes to be fair i guess he's got it dead on

they're not allies no but it it just feels like a kid in glass houses situation oh yeah to be colonial secretary and saying oh we've got no pals some fucking taking away people who could be your pals you're gonna have friends if you own people yeah it's a it's also that was a fit that's another interested what if history moment is that we failed to make an alliance with germany in 1898 but what does the world look like at Britain and joins the triple

yeah what happens if that gets cinched instead yeah probably bad probably really bad I mean yeah yeah so Britain have come out of their age of split land and isolation they've realised correctly that

they have no friends so they're going to start trying to make some treaties the first of these This is in 1902, and it's actually with Japan. That's interesting. I didn't know this. Yeah. So they got a few reasons to do this.

They both have a reason, an interest in containing Russia. Yeah, that checks out. And also, Japan's becoming a regional power, and it happens to be an island. So having an ally with the best navy in the world is very advantageous for them. Yeah, but we are miles away. Yeah, but we're in India. We're in Southeast Asia. I'm thinking the wrong way.

I'm thinking of the UK. You're thinking of what Britain should be. Yeah, I'm thinking of geographical UK and Britain. I'm not thinking of colonial. No, this is there. We own 20% of the world's surface, period. Yeah, and alliances. Well, there'll be one nearby.

Yeah. It's like Asda. So this is also advantageous for Britain because it's getting worried about Germany building its fleets, the USA, so it wants to be able to pull back ships from around Japan to Europe, Mediterranean, so it can focus its fleet where it thinks its biggest threats are. Okay, yeah. Tactically sound.

Yeah. The terms of the deal are pretty interesting. I don't know, again would love to hear from anyone who knows about this but it's a defensive alliance but only if they're attacked by more than one nation Okay

that's an interesting trigger for it. Yeah, this means Britain isn't obligated to get involved in the Russo-Japanese War and that Japan isn't pulled into the Boer War but what it does do, especially for Japan

is it has the effect of stopping russia's ally france from getting involved because if france gets involved britain will get involved so it's like it's a good treaty by the japanese to sort of keep most of europe out of the way yeah it means any of these like little you know side gigs that the britain has got at that point where they're going off and starting wars with nations if it's one at a time then it's not something that's going to bring them into the fold smart

this will also have a huge effect on the Russo Japanese war which is ends up being you know I mentioned a few episodes ago when we talked about the Ottomans that they saw Japan

as like we want to be the Japan of Europe we like have a commonality with them yeah it's because japan fights off and beats russia and it's the first time like a non-european power in this period beats a european empire yeah yeah which is a big big milestone yeah so that's the first one they set up uh the next up is the uh entente cordial in 1904 between long-standing rivals britain and france this isn't an alliance but it's a sort of solid move towards one uh they resolve some long-standing disagreements um so france france essentially sold its fishing rights near canada as part of this deal they also

they create a buffer zone between their various territories in southeast asia so they'll sort of set up sphere of influences and we'll be like we won't get too close to each other's colonies okay yeah yeah makes sense um part of this france recognizes british control of egypt which is the veiled protector at this point so it's like yeah you're recognizing that britain owns land that is part of the ottoman empire yeah yeah this is dicey and in return britain uh recognizes is french control of uh morocco which i've not looked into massively but from the surface level reading looks like a pretty similar situation where france is the power behind but yeah they're both basically pulling the strings of these two countries and are like you keep doing that you

will keep doing this yeah hey we we recognize that you're doing that you recognize this yeah yeah we recognize that yeah a lot of yeah a lot of it's not cool yeah it's not cool and it'll become a theme uh egypt and morocco are not consulted of course not that's why you have the bigger neighbors and go well france said it's fine yeah what does france have to fucking do with it so yeah this is it sets up like france and uh france and britain like been going at it forever but this sort of leads the way for them being allies 10 years later when World War I kicks off. Yes, yeah.

And then the third treaty here is the Anglo-Russian Entente in 1907. Similar agreement to the one in France, with them looking to resolve long-standing friction points between the two empires. Russia are also looking to reduce conflict because they've had a disaster in the Russo-Japanese War, which cost them a load of money and also deepened the rifts in the country,

which will be a contributing factor to the Russian Revolution, that this war goes bad and their, like, faith in the Tsars is lost. So everyone gets their just desserts. Yeah. It's also funny that part of the reason they lost is because of a deal Britain made with Japan. but yeah that's kind of left field a little bit yeah yeah but what what sort of binds them primarily is they're both very worried about germany germany at this point is it like a new

dynamic country it's industrialized scientific it's like the big upcoming threat for europe which based on the following 50 years yeah yeah i can see that being a problematic yeah so the pre uh treaty brings to an end something called the great game which is their decades-long conflict sort of a cold war uh in central asia between britain and russia uh for control and influence over central asia russia is looking to expand south into central asia like through iran and sort of down that way yeah britain is scared by this because it wants to keep the south of iran open so it has access to india um because they need that like overland route okay yes i can picture that yeah so yeah one of the main elements here is they create a buffer

zone uh between northern persia which the russians had and britain to have a yes a sphere of control in the southeast which is important for keeping india's route open russia also agrees to recognize afghanistan as a british protectorate and it will conduct any negotiations it wants to do with afghanistan uh through britain this deal pisses off both persia and afghanistan on account of them not being consulted what a horrible trend i see being said oh yeah and we're gonna go back a bit for the last important document as part of this which is one of the many treaties of london in particular we're looking at the 1839 version uh which is sort when belgium becomes a country to the point where apparently there was some dispute in 2005 about like the belgium something

to do with belgium's like land and stuff and it referenced this treaty from 1839 oh so that comes back by them because this treaty i might i might be getting some of this wrong it recognizes belgium as an actual country and it recognizes its perpetual neutrality right it also sets some of the borders for luxembourg but that's not important to our story um so german the german plan which again they'll do twice in the next 50 years uh is to go through belgium to get around the french line of fortifications so when germany invaded belgium on august 4th 1914 britain sends germany an ultimatum to withdraw uh when they did the german chancellor is actually shocked by this and there's like why would britain go go to war over a scrap of paper that's kind of why a lot

of people go yeah britain did though and it would use that line as propaganda against germany to paint them as aggressors um and also use it to spin britain which is wild to spin britain as a protector of international law i'm calling bullshit on that yeah but that's how they used it this is also obviously not just because we're defending the scrap of paper this is not an entirely principled thing no britain now has an interest in protecting france because germans are much scarier southern neighbor if germany owns all the ports on the channel and also has free access to the atlantic yeah britain and the british empire is fucked yeah we're now then we're just an island yes so that's they get into it there as well the british people are actually

like as a general attitude throughout the entire like july crisis that happens after archie france finland gets got for that most of that time most british people want to be neutral so most newspapers the trade unions, the liberal government which is in power are all pro-neutrality although the panic of impending war causes

the London Stock Exchange to shut down on the July 31st 1914 and to stay shut for five months which is also I thought quite an interesting thing of we're going to close the London Stock Exchange because we're worried about war. Five months later

we're deep into a war but we need to open again like i mean come on yeah an example of a newspaper that was a major anti-war voice is the manchester guardian this is a quote from them if we who might remain neutral rush into war or let our attitude remain doubtful it will be both a crime and an act of supreme and gratuitous folly it's the invasion of belgium that flips this round for the british people who move from neutral to embracing the war even the manchester guardian uh get behind it after war's declared with this being after war uh we criticize the policy which has brought us into this position but the government has now taken its decision and it is the duty of every citizen to support it and it was kind of that attitude there'd been huge anti-war marches

But the day the war is declared, so it's declared at 11pm August 4th, the country get behind it. The trade unions cancel any ongoing strikes. There's huge impromptu gatherings around the country, particularly at South Buckingham Palace. And over the next few days, roughly 30,000 men will volunteer a day to join World War I. And while the Boer War's rejection rate 15 years earlier was 40%, the first year of World War I, the rejection rate was only 33%. Hey, look at that. And then they changed the standards, in particular for height. It went from like 5'11 to like 5'2. those aren't the exact things but they went like they just dropped it right down they were just

like we need guys uh those actually got formed into things called uh the bantam battalions the what bantam bantam uh that's also like it's a weight class i think in ufc it's like 135 pounds so like 60 kilograms right it's the like bantam weight division so these are bantam battalions where it's like oh we now need to let shorter people in but all the tall people we've already recruited so you've got these battalions of like short it's the short king squad yeah it's the short kings um so yeah this is the diplomatic britain makes a few friends look at them and then gets into war over document they signed before the splendid isolation this old term of splendid isolation it's such a dumb term i hate it but it is what it's called

talking like they're uh some introvert who's just had a nice pleasant weekend if someone said splendid isolation and i hadn't done this history research i'd picture like the monk who was in the cave for 40 years reaching enlightenment yeah not the largest empire in world history there's nothing isolated about it you won't stop going other places stay at home and stop fucking doing that it's someone is they're not isolated they're just not making friends it's the guy who's like i actually don't need friends i like i just like spending time by myself and it's like but if someone offered you one would you take it let's say yes yeah you're

not isolated you're just a prick and no one wants to spend time with you you're an insufferable person yeah in this case empire biggest going yeah so it's not isolation no i can pack it in with that oh well what a lovely uh sight to see it would seem that we're brought back around to the usual terms of the british empire not doing good things no no progressive movement here more underhanded dealings of recognizing the control of other nations by nations more powerful, and it all blows up in their

face in the end. Yes. So I guess there's a karmic aspect to it, but was it worth it? No. It wasn't. Ah, splendid. Splendid, but not isolation. You know, we can't have

splendid isolation. Not in this war. No. The war we're having. in fact i would i would hate if at the end of this we end up in splendid isolation i would much prefer we each own a large portion of the world but have no friends that that is kind of what we do you know our empire stretches uh throughout australia chicago and some portions of northeast england the sun never sets on the walls of the empire and to keep it that way to make sure the sun shines forever bright we need to make sure at the end of this we stay friends and in order to do so i think it's important to implore we 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 the intro common ground i'm recording maybe common ground is of course the segment in which we come together we discuss a topic and at the end of it we become friends again at the end of these long drawn out pieces of conflict all across the campaign for north africa and it's my turn this week and i will first of all need that andy oh yes the fruit zone it is my fruit zone and i'm going to bring you up with a pineapple or watermelon whoo two returning two heavyweights two heavyweights pineapple watermelon so juicy

the fruit zone and that's that now i needed to break that up a little bit because what i'm going to do here this is a common ground that delves into something that i'm not particularly well versed in nor you i would say in most areas sport nope my common ground is we need to make football soccer matches much much longer longer yes okay now maybe not in a way you're thinking there's a very specific way in which i want them to become longer now my idea is that every time a football player collapses down to the ground and are severely injured to the point where they need a penalty and then it's granted or not granted and then they shoot straight back up oh so they dive yeah yeah i see that as fraud okay these people are paid how much i mean we mentioned

it passively earlier because today there was an england match for the world cup yes and we were we were talking about the the pay discrepancy between the english football players and the team they were playing yeah the democratic republic of congo i think the average player salary was 20k a week yeah it was still and then britain well england was between 200 and 300 thousand a week yeah insane money yeah that's all being paid and i know that money is sort of it's not like tax we're not paying for it but all of the money is you know put into the industry by football fans yes so it's fraud if they're doing that if they're you know playing the game i see this as fraud it's at least cheating i guess they're manipulating the game in a way that

makes their team win or lose more or less okay so i think every time someone drops down to the ground we'll pause the game and we'll carry out a medical assessment we're gonna have doctors on site okay and the doctors are going to determine if there's an injury if there's an injury then the the thing is going to be granted or at least it will sway the thing if the guy you know runs onto the pitch and he punches another player you know that's black and white that's a penalty okay but if the guy drops down to the ground because a tackle was a little bit too much and he's rolling around on the floor just up until the point where the penalty is called or decried and then all of sudden he's fine you're lying that that is a lie it's a fragrant lie and we shouldn't stand for

that i'm not a football fan but the fan shouldn't stand for that so they're going to stop the game there they're going to get a doctor and there's going to be loads of them there and they're going to be unbiased they're going to do a quick medical assessment with all the tools they need fuck it there's enough money in it we'll have an x-ray machine on standby on the side and we're going to have a quick look and if it's found that they have been lying about this then that football player personally pays that doctor's salary for the next five months okay as well as that they are disqualified from that match okay so you wanna i guess you want to penalize diving and you've gone really deep end on it there's something about it because i watched a match the other day

and i'm not a big football fan but when the world cup's on i'll watch a match hero there and i watched one the other day and it was really boring it was it was one of the england matches and nothing happened through the whole thing and i was just sat there watching the amount of times people went down because they knew they were losing they knew it wasn't going well i mean they didn't lose but they didn't win either it was it was so bland so they were just diving all the time they were pretending they were injured and i was sat there thinking these people train for god knows how many hours they make so much money and they are not above rolling around in the grass going oh i think it's actually like i think they might get like trained for it and that

isn't okay no there's a first of all there's ego and pride yeah what are you doing do you not feel silly at all in front of the world jumping down to the ground going oh that hurts so much and then getting back up because it didn't no one can see it didn't and all you're doing is riling everyone up watching the match going oh you should have got that look how look how it made him feel look what happened there that was insane it was an accident first of all yeah 90 of the time it's an accident the other 10 it might be a bit of an overzealous tackle but it's very rarely that you can determine they're actually going for it the intent behind it is kick the ball but their intent is trick everyone yeah why is lying an aspect of football how did that come about and when did

become acceptable i think like over the last 20 years yeah i guess yeah there was actually a time scale on that yeah american football matches i watched a an american football match years ago at my friend's house and i was amazed at the amount of like stoppages in there but it's like part of the design of the game it is it's all like you know it'll stop there'll be an advert it'll be that sort of thing and it breaks the flow up massively i'll accept that but it's still massively popular yeah it's incredibly popular it's you know american football is huge not just in america not just in the us but all over the world this won't hamstring the game it'll make it fair but this isn't so much a common ground for me and you andy i think this is really a common

ground for the football the soccer because i was when you said it was going to be longer is that because you're stopping the game yep i'm going to come at you with another pitch for this that will also do what you want but i also think make football more interesting okay i'll hear it every single match is first to five there's no time limit it's just the first to five and if you dive you do have to get cleared because the match might last eight hours you diving to get a penalty and then being off for four hours means your team's probably gonna lose yes and more importantly i think we also introduce with this if you're sent off and disqualified for the match because you've taken a dive you don't get someone substituted no that's

just you're a player down yeah so you will absolutely burn through your team i want the test cricket version of football yeah like you know how test cricket's five days but then there's the like one day version and then even shorter version that's like the 2020 version yes keep the 90 minute thing as one version i want to see the endurance the game could last if they're evenly like you know that tennis game a few years ago or might be in a decade where they just kept going because you have to win by two yes do that in football yes i think we should have that yeah maybe we had a have a score limit as well but that you have to hit yeah because at that point the game could go over fairly quick and the players would want that surely it could make

the thing is it could be a 10 minute game could be a 12 hour game yeah and if you're taking dives yeah that's gonna cost you it's gonna cost you dearly and i think it should cost them financially reputationally and you know what it should also impact the fans i'm a big believer that you're supporting this culture you can't tell kind of fed up with football it's it's a few reasons for anyone listening back to this when it's not just come out the world cup is on right now yeah world cup's going on right now today we had a match and another thing football whenever it's on here whenever i'm in town and i'm trying to go home just the the streets are full and the buses are delayed the bus has to be rerouted because i have to go past areas where the bus yeah pass through

like areas where football fans are and they'll chop and change bus routes and it's so it takes longer to get home and it's just because they're walking through the street and chatting and it's like i get you love the game but what are you supporting you're supporting a crooked industry a corrupt institution and this isn't even going into the big stuff about FIFA this is ground level this is literally grass roots

because this is people diving on the field pretending they're hurt are you fine with that? are you fine watching a sport and watching your favourite player roll around and go oh and then he's back up are you part of that? fuck you

on the corruption thing you know how they had the mid the 30s olympics for nazi germany yeah they the world cup had one hosted i think it was hosted in italy like while it was fascist italy and i think like mussolini cheated a bunch well you know what there you go that ties it all back in centrally yeah do you really want to be a mussolini and people might think anyone who dives is mostly and you might think that's a star comparison it might be but it's the one i've drawn it's this is my podcast we got to do this we got to say this stuff and i'm gonna say you're mussolini if you're taking that dive

and if you're supporting it you're a balbo so maybe next time you're gonna go take that dive you think about what the financial consequences could be if we get in charge and we've got a long time to do this podcast what we do with that money sky's the limit also if you're just a football player cause everyone dives surely if you were the guy who like gets hit like pushes on stays on his feet and is like actually tough you'd

get tons of fans yeah I would surely you'd prefer to be that guy yeah but you get tackled you keep on going yeah you don't falter maybe at the moment when they think you're gonna drop to the ground you're going for another tackle you get them and at this point if they then take the dive

they're gonna be the ones who are stopped checked kicked off the culture changes i think it becomes more positive i think it becomes a less maybe in some ways a less angry sport and that's all i want andy i just want everyone to be peaceful i want a bit of happiness in the world oh we can agree on that there we go isn't that beautiful that's nice what a lovely way to end this yeah because i could feel my my anger starting to build a bit there so it's good to move i can see it yeah yeah football eh what's it like well it's got nothing on this beautiful game i think that is a great place to leave it if you want to get in touch for any means whether it's game related whether it's another question

a hobby to share a history segment suggestion common ground comment you can get us at info at warwithamate.co.uk the instagram is warwithamate the website warwithamate.co.uk is still under pending maintenance and will be updated regularly for the full playthrough. Keep your eyes peeled because there will be something coming for the start of the

main game. Episode 100 will be a big thing, big event and we will catch you next time. I've been James. I've been Andy. Thanks for listening. Stay subtle, humble and brave. And don't you dare take a dive

in those deserts of your mind. Good night. We'll be right back.