War With A Mate - Episode 86: Decimation

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

The last flights of the practice run have been flown, and James’ final movement takes place. All eyes are on Bardia, and it’s a mad rush to see who will be left standing along the North African coastline. This week, Andy’s History Corner covers simply the worst boss, and Common Ground helps us all ensure those at the top remain subtle and humble. The end is in sight.

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Because we have your number. Hello and welcome to War With A Mate with me, James. Me, Andy. This is the podcast in which we play SPI's The Campaign for North Africa. we've been playing a practice run of six turns and we are now on the final upstage of the final turn of our one and only practice run before we start 111 turns we've rounded the final bend on the warm-up jog and it's been a nifty 19 months to get to this stage yeah we've flown through it so the full game should be

breakneck speed well you take 19 months and then yeah just carry the one and then divide and yeah this is going to take the rest of our lives that's crazy it's fine I'm not doing anything I'm not busy

I'll tell you what you are doing this yeah this is going to take up quite a bit of time it's a shame really when you think about it we do so much with our life and we've chosen to do this with ours i've got one life and i've ruined mine oh it's very mark corrigan it is it's a long game peep show part of our origin story yeah we used to watch a lot of peep show when we lived together

we watched the same episodes over and over again for reasons season two yes over and over for yeah a good nine months or so yeah in the first year we lived together oh jolly times and these are times that while they may not be jolly in their entirety there's been the ups and downs during this practice run but wow it's been an adventure and today we've got just about to the end and it's building to a real crescendo we're ready for it the conductor has his hands in the air he's ready to bring them down and then raise them back up for one last crash of cymbal one last blow of brass and that will be it because today we've crossed off all of the air movement we've crossed off my land movement some of it we didn't we're halfway through yours i guess i guess my

movement's done the combat isn't i guess you might move again i yeah yeah that's the second phase stuff but this is it's a it's a big it's a big session it is it's it is realistically the penultimate session yeah if we don't finish next time we've we've got very distracted well i'm gonna i'm gonna do something bold andy and something that we we tried not to do previously but i i will i will do it now we used to do it a lot in the first few episodes but i'm gonna make a commitment we made one big commitment we don't need to make little ones the commitment is next time is the last time next time is the last of the practice run we were literally talking about how it might not be depending on schedule it will be okay i guess i hope our friend is continues to

be ill yeah our schedule kind of depends on if our friend is ill or not as to whether or not we can have a weekend day to finish this but we we will okay i have faith that our friend will be i have poison i have toxins available we're gonna wrap this up next time andy this is the penultimate next time it's over it is and we should i guess before we go into the recap no you know what we'll do the recap first yeah let's do the recap first you're gonna do before the recap we'll do what we think is gonna happen next time it was gonna be how do you feel but i feel like maybe if we talk about what happened that will inform our emotions will be more easy to understand so let's let's delve into that we started off with our air phase before that i moved some boats around oh sorry of

course that is that is another part yeah i always forget that the stuff before the air phase because we very rarely do it well it's only one in three it's once a turn for the fleet so yeah and there's very rarely stuff like organization especially at this point in the practice run organization and construction what would that look like now just dropping tons of supply you could technically build a supply dump but who for me i'm not building you more supply dumps that you've already used and abused some of my supply dumps i'm not giving you more to use at the end i'm not that kind seems harsh so what we did have was the air phase after your ships moved around your ships moved around too they're just ringing bardia of course that's where it's at bardia is where's

games ending it's all happening in bardia it's popping off in bardia bardia is the final frontier to go boldly beyond where all of the units have gone before except some of the ones that have been around there before some guys who just didn't leave you used to hold bardia that's a weird thing to remember you had guys in bardia your truck bandits lived in bardia for the better part of turn they did yeah did you forget that you owned bardia yeah so i guess i've not all at once but i've hit the free win conditions just not that doesn't count once i know we've we've really stringed the boat out with mine but at least i held all of them at once i forgot how much damage the truck bandits really did they are by far and away the mvp of your side of this this play run

i think so yeah i mean just the mobility is so big they took so many trucks they destroyed your convoy uh convoys for quite a while they destroyed madalena the second time around i believe yeah they've taken i think five or six convoys and they were big convoys yeah and they also cleared out you had a couple of other sgsu's on map c that are gone yes yeah there were some around there so you've you've eradicated pretty much all of my air force on map c with them you took so many trucks they are gone but their echo their echo is is still here ringing out across the deserts of my mind but when it came to bombing run i mean you surrounded bardia with your ships i did you've got the seventh right outside bardia yes they're literally in contact with bardia so i had to do

something drastic and i was weighing up my decisions all through the week and especially today and i was thinking bombers i've got a lot of bombers do i go for the guys that are a hex away from tabrook to stop them from getting there and having a lot of cpa yeah do i go for the seventh and strip them of cpa when it comes to their attack or do i go for some of the guys further away and stop them from getting to bardia yeah it was the latter yes you went for the fourth All day I thought I was going to go for the guys outside Tobruk But I thought In the end when I was looking at the board

Tobruk doesn't really matter They're not taking Tobruk in an off stage Tobruk if you take it Tobruk on it's own you win If you can hold Tobruk and you can supply Tobruk You win The supply is also the issue That is a big thing which we will have to look at at the end of all this

Yeah because I don't know if I can supply Bardia Even if I take it I didn't want to look closely i i kind of i've kept my eyes averted a bit it's sort of you know when you send like a risky text message and then you kind of like leave your phone because you don't want to see the result uh yeah it was kind of that vibe for me where i'm like i don't want to like lose bardia and then know it's definitively over i'd rather if i lose it know there's a chance that something else could

still play in my favor i can get the supply line maybe no i can while i still have some of my movement to go yes sorry i'm just i can second wave logistically possible it's logistically possible yes yes you you do you do have means to get there if i can put enough units in the way maybe not yeah because that's also do you count units when you're tracing supply lines or is it just the pure supply line you count units because zone of control because that is relevant yes because if you have to go through a zone of control you don't have a supply line yeah i just wasn't sure if the i would i would to be fair it's not explicitly stated in the rules it makes sense it would include the units that are there but i could also see it being like

just trace the direct line because direct line fair enough but i think because in theory i could have you know a truck convoy on map a when this wraps up and say i have a wind condition and it's like well i've got the route and i technically have trucks that exist so i could move them there yeah in another world if you bridge it closer to reality you could have trucks that are within the route but they are for example surrounded on all sides by my units for some reason it's a weird tactic but you know i fuck with it and in that situation would you then say it's a supply line i wouldn't no so by the same merit i would say if any zone of control prohibits that route you have to go around that route yeah that's fair yeah that makes sense so if that's the the basis

then i i guess it's a difficult one to to work around yeah because that's what i had for my win condition i'm doing inverted commas with my fingers there because i had a truck convoy moved down so they could in theory go to seawood yeah unobstructed so it meant i could supply every wind condition area yeah to where i need to so i hit all of that you maybe could i think seawood for you is the question mark i guess you don't need to supply seawood because oasises have i think it says you need to we'll have a look at we'll definitely have a look at the win condition part of the benefit of this is it means that there is still excitement at the end yes whoever wins we do still have to get into the rules and the winner could be the loser because i was thinking

about uh using the organization phase and just having every unit on the map make a supply dump oh okay with their remaining stores and then you've got checkpoints to move your trucks everywhere right but it costs cpa yes so it's expensive i'd rather take bardia and not supply it than have the supply line and run out of the cpa to capture it yeah because you might be able to bullshit excuse your way through having a supply line but you can't do that for not having bardia yeah body is very black and white you're in there or you're not and also it's like i'd rather just take it it's a nicer feeling lose than not take it yeah like well that's kind of what i had in the end yes i'll take these positions for a moment and then lose so with that being the case i thought

i'm gonna bomb the guys outside of bardia because i could bomb the guys at bardia the seventh and then i'm fighting half a division and well i guess everyone else that shows up in terms of their capability points or i could fight all of the seventh and no one else gets there yeah and that is that's my plan so i decided to go for the fourth indian yes down by the escarpment where i had my had a bad couple of upstages yeah they've really been getting it stuck to them because i've got two blackshirt divisions and my my to brute garrison they're just the infantry well to start with i had all of them there i had all of them there ready to go so i thought right let's bomb the fourth yeah tear them to shreds i dropped 489 bomb points i want to

say 39 times 12 like just under the cap i remember yeah 471 is the cap and i had 39 times 12 whatever that is off the top of my head i know it was like four below or whatever yeah so maybe three three six seven it was a big number so i thought i'll drop that all on the fourth yeah and that way i can keep some of them back but you were prepared for this that was my only air mission i've got no fighters, Madelaine is gone, it has been for a long time, you counted I did I sent most

of my fighters and all of the good ones over the 7th, so all the Hurricanes and Blenheim Mark IV fighters some more Reigns basically everything other than the Gladiator

which I split because I thought, if you bomb the 4th it's kind of bad if you bomb the 7th in a big way it sort of curtains I reduce the CPA of possibly half of the entire

division and they can't voluntarily get in combat and they're on the attack you can't oh we're going to involuntarily attack this fortified city yeah it means that it's only when I go for them which I will be, I will have to go for them

because of the position of my guys yeah but it meant that at least this way i i accepted they will be there but i'd rather go against all of them and no one else yes then you managed to bring other people up to the doors and then cause a kerfuffle so i dropped that bombing run you took out two of my planes i did i took out three of your planes yes the gladiators are really quite bad it was one squadron of mine that took out three of your planes just the golden squadron oh yeah they were on top form and what a golden performance from this squadron from my last air move of the entire practice scenario 18 months yeah of this whole thing and my final play of air was to have one

squadron kill three guys in a defensive bombing run and also to then drop a bombing run that pinned i believe it was four of your yeah four of yours because you had six infantry and i pinned the middle four so one and six are fine pin the middle four which means that for the indian to move they will have to i guess realistically break off all four of those infantry and then leave i guess the kind of benefit i've got at the minute is when i'm attacked it's involuntary so they are still able to defend they can defend in any fights coming now but they can't get to bardia and take part in that because then you've got guys who their cpa isn't going to be enough to even get there no and even if it was they can't choose to engage no so it means i've i've kept them at bay

you can splinter them off however because of where things were left afterwards will probably not be the case but that's land movement you had air missions yes i did um screening fight over the 4th and the 7th of fighters, and then that ridge line, I bombed the second

black shirts? The 1st, the Tobruk, and the 4th. Yeah. So I bombed the 4th, who are the northernmost. 1st are the northernmost. Okay. Yeah, they're the best guys. Yeah, bombed them with 210? Yeah,

202. Yeah, sorry, because it's i knew you didn't have fighters so i just yeah you you you boarded it yeah and it was a good move and then i did the and they got four wasn't it they got three and you put two on tanks and one on infantry yeah you pinned my whole tank yes because uh armor costs two for air bombardments yes um but i figured that's your punch oh yeah like if i've got those guys around yeah and that's a huge benefit and you also got one infantry yes so they had to stay there that that's where they are they have to they have to remain and then you went for the tabrook garrison yeah one hex south uh hit them with two two or two again uh yes and you got three yes went for

all guns on that one the first three guns they are all pinned one of them is a 15 barrage rating that you pinned sweet so that is dastardly that's very good that's one of my really good guns pinned and then your last blow was on the fourth yeah that was 130 slightly more weakened to the fourth still pretty solid but and also i rolled a 66 on that one so it was also free so they all ended up being the same regardless of the bomb yeah amount so they yeah they ended up with a uh the three pin which you went all guns yes which i was surprised at that garrison has got some scary guns so you want more guns coming yeah and also i don't want i want to reduce the scattershot pinning yes which isn't completely gone no because now those guys are still around and and with that we we

moved on to land because that was the air done yeah that was it we moved quite swiftly onto land movement my final well initial land movement and i broke the guys up a bit i decided that bardia needs backup it's not a bad plan it's a it's incredible plan it's the only plan to be fair it's the only thing i can do now to win so i moved the to brute garrison round i drove them back broke them off from your guys and then slid them around and down an escarpment which was costly and then moved them along the coastline and put them into Bardia. Yes.

So they are now in Bardia and as well as that, I swapped them out and moved the Oreska regiment out of Bardia. Yeah, so now it's them and the 1st Libyan in Bardia. Yes.

The 1st Libyan division who are torn asunder. So they have one guy left. They have one infantry. I think that's it. So they are one infantry and a shit ton of guns because all of the Tobruk garrison men

had to stay behind at the ridge yeah they had to stay by the escarpment because i don't have the cpa to move them down an escarpment and then to bardia yeah so instead i've moved them around there i'm i'm having to split them around a bit so they're all gonna have to scatter around that ridge which does mean i have a nice sort of horseshoe of defense yes so if you get past one line of defense you then have to go through an infantry battalion and then i think there's even a second wave of infantry battalion so it's a hard wall to pass oh yeah i moved the first black shirt up towards bardia so they are now flush with bardia and the seventh so when this fight erupts which it will next time we play and it's going to be the the to brew garrison it's going to be

the libyan division and it's going to be the first black shirts all fighting against the seventh and the Commonwealth Navy. Yes. But they're not fighting the Commonwealth Navy. The Navy are just blasting them. I guess they're not fighting back. They independently will barrage. I've actually got something.

I need to do a rule check on that where I'm weighing it up. But I guess you can't affect it, so I'll just tell you. See what you think. I'm trying to weigh up whether it's worth doing a bombardment on secondary targets and try to reduce the fortification level a bardia oh or use it in the fight fights in bardia right like is it more of a overall benefit to reduce the fortification level or is it more of a benefit to have them help fights yeah if we're going for other um other gameplay scenarios are you going to go for the debuff

or the dps yeah and i think if it was longer getting rid of the fortifications makes sense because it's just an incremental advantage every time you fight yeah if we had this going for another two turns remove the fortification yeah but now i think it's a pretty decent coin flip yeah i think both of them are beneficial i'm weighing it up and i i don't think i can do it split no which is the problem i don't think you can i don't think you have the uh the cojones i was gonna say cojones yeah you're gonna say cojones yep there we go common ground and i i don't know that it's even worth it uh i i think when it comes to going for the fortification is that really worthwhile now now i'm thinking it might be well because i'm talking to you about it

oh no no no it's fine or this is uh reverse reverse psychology it's psychology because there's another thing i didn't do this tin i think would have messed you up but i don't think i would got the win from it yeah which is when you showed up uh do a reaction with the seventh and just have them go along the road supports to brook and just make all of bardia a bluff which you could have but the journey to get there means your cpa is shot it's all road it would cost seven cpa for the seventh yeah because they're already on the road yeah i guess so i just yeah i think i've got enough units close by that you would follow them yeah that's why i decided not and also i was like i've i've put the ships here it's they're more useful as ships than as a bluff yes yeah

what a weird bluff because you don't get a chance to then use them later if you use them as a bluff they've just you never use them i guess i would hammer body a bit for what um so i i'm now in a position where i have a split defense i moved the the fourth around as well yeah oh and also the 62nd i moved the 62nd where were they they were part of the cluster that contained the seventh oh yeah and i moved them up so they are now part of that wall yes they are they're now part of the new wall so it's them the fourth and the huge swathe of infantry left behind from the to brooke garrison yeah so they are all hanging about the brooke garrison we are by the way acutely aware for those who are astute with the rules which it's wild that we get emails from

people who are aware of the rules that's an incredibly surreal experience because it's not something you can google so for someone to then people like playing solo yeah but for us to get emails where someone says by the way keep an eye out for this rule it's like normally right yeah well they yeah for the most part they've been right i guess not even normally i can't i think they've all been either i know two occasions where we've we've replied to them separately to the the podcast to say i think we've had to clarify what we meant because they took it from what we said in the podcast and we're not good communicators which is great for a podcast oh yeah and yeah we've had to go back and kind of go no this is what we meant yeah um so yeah it is good we've

people keeping us honest and rightly so so just to make those people aware we know that to brook garrison situation is very rules light because they were meant to stay in to brook which we found out fairly recently but they're out there now going back would mean setting a lot of it back it's the end we're willing to accept a bit of leeway it's something we will absolutely keep in mind for the full game this will not happen in the full game it is rules as written in the full game yeah so yeah bit of leeway there's a lot of units broke off i've got the infantry around there that is my stance i'm going to fight you in bardia i'm going to fight you along the ridge and on the beaches well that's what it is it's a beach and the last thing i did to fortify that

was to move the second libyan division along the little ridge escarpment coastal section behind the fourth yeah so the fourth and the 16th infantry battalion are boxed in pretty badly between the escarpment and the division coming in behind them yes so the the second libyan will have an independent fight with the fourth indian yeah and then the guys on the ridge will have a second fight against the fourth indian how does ordering on that work do you think i don't actually think there's anything to say what president is there i don't think there's anything where it's like the bigger fight takes place first where like the biggest attacker goes first yeah or the smallest or the most units on hexes i guess it's you initiate in combat

and an upstage is like two or three days yeah so i guess from that perspective it's like does the attacker just choose i guess the logical way to do it would be whoever gets there first so the units that are already in contact have their fight first if I've moved a unit in during that phase they go second or if I was moving both groups it's the first

one that arrives in sequence that I move them seems the way that it would go technically because it all happens simultaneously in the roles that's what I mean where it's like if you move them both in game terms they've arrived at the same time

but i guess i could touch one piece first and move it yeah i mean that could be the way to do it i was just i just think the attacker would pick i guess so yeah because there's enough like i guess the thing is radios and communication like they would be like we're on top of the escarpment we're gonna like hammer them and then you come in behind them would like it would make sense as a commander or you could be like you guys come in behind them and then the guys on the top of the cliff will go i think it makes sense that the like attacker can choose that order i suppose the benefit is with my ruling of you know whichever pieces move first it's the same as yours yeah it's all the same thing it's i get the definitive decision of i move the guys

and that's the order it happens in so i guess we've we'll double check the rules but basically it's the attacker picks the order and what we do know from the clarification last time is that these are independent fights yes there's no flanking benefit you don't have everyone lumped in together the second libyan have an independent fight yeah if i can pick and i based on what we said probably can they'll go first the second libyan yes because i'd rather they have the sort of weaker of the fights and maybe whittle down you know 10 percent yeah of those guys on a good roll and then they get hit with massive bombardment from the top of the ridge and then they're stuck and there's fewer guys to hit.

So that's the tactical mindset I've got. And then when it comes to Bardia, fuck, it's every man for himself. The battle at Bardia is going to be pretty intense. Well, it's the end, Andy. It is. It's the climax of the practice run. It happens at Bardia, which is perfect.

It's beautiful. I still have a scheme up my... Well, that's bad. I've got one last scheme. I think, and I guess it depends on what happens in the combat i think i'm out of schemes andy i think i'm actually done i think i'm spent i think i'm done with schemes i think i've moved my guys i think after 19 months from unboxing the game punching the pieces putting blue tack and magnets on them i think it's all led to me being here

right now out of schemes out of plans i've moved my guys i'm fucking ready for it well schemes are a bit like money you want to spend the last you have on the last day you don't want to have them in the bank when you're gone that's true you can't take it with you yeah i don't want to have like three or four schemes left that are unrealized from the sense you've never been a dm have you yeah i have i'm dm for you how dare you oh yeah i'm planning a campaign for you at the minute yeah that's exciting because we're not only wrapping up uh this we're also wrapping up our 10 year story yeah in which uh i've been dming and at the end of this 10 year narrative arc which will be very emotional and dramatic

as it has been the whole way, you're going to take over a sort of firebreak campaign. Six to ten. Yeah, mini campaigns. That'll be exciting. I get to sit in the player seat around the same time that we wrap this up, so I'm going to be in such disarray psychologically

where every constant in my life is falling apart. Going to go home. Oh, I need to plan the game. Oh no, that's not going for another few weeks. I'll do some D&D. Oh, damn, I don't have anything planned. If I've got nothing to plan i spiral i i need to keep busy are you gonna do what i did then where i sent you like 10 page long google docs of character plans of course andy i've already got like seven pages

typed up for my character and i don't know what class they are i'd love to see those pages as i'm writing so i can yeah so yeah i've i've i'm just i need i'm the kind of person that needs to keep busy but i'm not talking like i'm gonna go out for a run or you know i'm gonna do something necessarily no it's busy from a chair yeah it's busy where i'm engaged all the time whether it's it's brain rot on tiktok i need stimulation i if it's if it's going out and socializing if it's if it's playing the campaign for north africa or dming i need to have something prepared for tomorrow and that keeps me busy and it's a permanent cycle so this this maybe the practice run ending is not such a good thing i get a bit of psychological warfare before we start

they'll put you in the mindset of being an italian well this is a good place to look at it then andy how do you feel doing that good all right okay no um let me set the stage i was gonna say how do you feel knowing that we've come to the end of the practice room we have one realistically one more play session of this practice run and then it's done nearly two two fucking years of this and we finally

wrapped up this practice run and you feel good why we've done we've done it there's a week left but I think if you'd said two years ago you'll finish the practice scenario

I would have given you like 20% odds yeah that's fair i i'm constantly surprised that this has held up and become something yeah i wasn't sure where this was gonna go i didn't think it would be us finishing the practice run i didn't think it would be people listening to us finish the practice run i didn't think i'd ever do a live show in my entire life ever so yeah that's crazy yeah don't know where that came from but that happened we did a live show we finished the practice for nearly it's it's a while two years so yeah i'm feeling pretty good about the overall like i guess project yeah and you know what i dare

say i feel the same that's good how are you feeling in game well that's why i sort of called out the whole feeling good thing because if we're looking at it from afar i feel really good yeah the project as a whole has been brilliant we've had so much excitement compared to what i expected the board game isn't just the board game we've had so much engagement so many people listening yep we've got to this stage now where we're wrapping it up and we can finally put our name on it and say we did the practice run onto the full game we'll be the guys playing the full campaign for north africa not the guys who are going to play the full campaign for north africa it'll be good to to take that veil off it will be good to tell people i've started it rather than

them being like oh that's going to take ages how far through are you i'm in the practice as someone who talks about this all the time to everyone i know and they ask how far along i am i'm like oh i'm i'm in turn three of the practice run and like what does that mean and then i tell them and they they become it's like it's pity that i see in their eyes where it's like oh so you it's what the look is it's you're not gonna do the full game it's you're gonna play the practice run and you're gonna finish it and then that's it you're gonna get bored and you're not gonna finish the full thing we are gonna finish the full thing of course get lost or die trying all these all these naysayers i won't have it no i guess no one that's listening i suppose

a lot of people be very nice you know what we've not really had anyone to cry we we had we had our first troll the other week last week yeah that's we had an internet troll who said we weren't playing the game you he really got you yeah he did well i got into a discussion with someone who was discussing in bad faith at first i thought they misunderstood the rules of the game and slowly it became apparent they were negotiating in bad faith and that they were saying that war of the mate isn't playing the game because it doesn't have eight players that's not how that works that's not how that works i'll not hark on it too much that's no let's not god damn it i'm easy to bait i'm really easy to bait i mean i still think about the heathcliff comic that got

emailed to us just because i don't understand it yeah that was in good faith i feel it was sent in by someone pretending to be jeff bezos i don't know good faith i don't know i feel like it was a a listener i feel like it's someone who's been around for a while i mean they said we'd enjoy it and they were right yeah they i don't know they said we'd enjoy it and i i remember it and you spiral for like three weeks. But yeah, spiraling, I guess, in-game, I feel tentative. I don't know if I'm going to win.

I don't know if you're going to win. This is, I think, psychologically the best place I could be in for the end. Yes. Because I wouldn't want to come into the end thinking I've won. No. Or lost.

Because then I would submit myself to it's already over and I'd already be thinking ahead. Let's get this out of the way. Yeah. I'd already be looking at the full game at this point. And we've got a hiatus in between. I would have already moved into that headspace of

it's over, let's think about what we're doing to prepare for the full game, what the full game looks like, but instead I'm still thinking about next week. I'm still thinking about what is going to happen to wrap this up. That's a good place to be in. Oh, yeah. I'm nervous.

I'm excited. I think that is it. I'm excited. I didn't think that would be the mindset I'm in when we're wrapping up this practice run i thought early on i would be just such a disheveled shell of a man who's come to despise this game so much that i can't stand another moment sat in front of this microphone talking about it i'm also glad it's built to this at the end because this would be the last step off

point if the game was like it was like there's nothing to this this would be the final natural breakpoint where I could wrap this up and go, I did a practice run of the campaign for North Africa. I promised big, but I did do something, and now I'm going to leave. Yeah, I could easily go, this isn't actually worth my time. I'm over. That's it. It's done. But no,

we're doubling down. I will be committing to this. Yeah. And it sounds as though you will be too. Oh, yeah. So, that is the penultimate game recap. Also, just my feeling on the game, I think I'm going to win. Yeah, you

said good you you think you're gonna win i'm up in the air so i'm gonna i'm gonna slap a maybe on you as well i'm gonna tell you your opinion i think i'm gonna win but it's like 60 to 40 okay it's not like i'm gonna win 90 i just think the odds are in my favor because of my unknowns of the truck situation and because i don't actually know how balanced these fights are gonna be i am actually at a 50 50 yeah i'm i'm not well informed enough and that's crazy as someone who's playing the game i'm not well informed enough to know who's gonna win no it's it's dice rolls it's cohesion it's cpa it's the campaign for north africa yeah and we've got one more time one more thing to do we'll pick up the game next time for now we're gonna do

everything else around the game one more trip around the sun before we do the the full shebang uh it's gonna be mailbag we're gonna have to go in we're gonna have to see what other people are saying maybe it's related maybe it's not that's the excitement the mailbag yes so this one's uh real life d'olympics yes okay so immediately we're we're trying to bring people down but it starts hey y'all perfect lover y'all lover y'all being a listener from around the time of the first few episodes and oh gee yeah and of course love the show my web form i sent got lost in the great web form kerfuffle of 2025 my condolences apologies that is a me problem from top to bottom those web forms were complicated we didn't really know what

was happening with them they were meant to forward to the mailbag they were meant to forward to the mailbag no the yeah they were meant to forward and then after that we sifted through some and we realized we had read some out independently and we lost some in the shuffle you could it's not all on you andy okay thanks man but it is to quote you it's it's 64 that's that's more than fair it's reasonable i hate that that's a phrase you've taken to today it's more than fair it's reasonable reasonable is lower than fair reasonable is the baseline of any interaction that isn't unreasonable fair fair is better fair means both sides are equitable reasonable just means you've not been you've not taken it too far so you can you can pack that in agree or disagree

i'll get back to you um so i decided to email on a completely different subject the most recent common ground in episode 78 about the delimpics reminded me of the actual events around the 1904 olympics men's marathon it was a combination of the vegas event that inspired the common ground and the stuff y'all were talking about the first guy across the finish line got there in a car and was banned for life because of it i love that the winner drank brandy raw eggs and strychnine during the race. Oh, it's Gaston. Isn't strychnine just a poison?

I don't know. It feels like it's one of those chemicals that border on poison. It feels like it's not conducive to running. Also, running with a stomach full of raw eggs. And brandy. Yeah. Acidic

alcohol and eggs. That guy must have thrown up so much. That alone, independent of whatever this poison might or might not be maybe he needed the poison to balance out the brandy and eggs then he didn't need the brandy and the eggs it's a concoction of his own making this guy's an alchemist and he didn't need to be uh yeah uh one guy took a nap during it nice one guy got chased by dogs scary a cuban postman ended up in the race and ran in his regular clothes sorry you're telling me the postman isn't the guy who

got chased by dogs that's then this isn't the cartoon that feels wrong yeah this doesn't make any sense anymore i think i've actually seen a oh first name um you're about to go on a tangent the dust from the track was so bad it nearly killed a few of the runners there were no water stations and the temperature was 32 degrees c thought you'd all get a kick out of that uh adam uh aka some dumb ninja i like i like the moniker yeah um also no water stations and the temperature was 32 degrees shout out download festival 2023 yeah we we did this race but just over three days yeah we did this but it was it was when pucifer and bring me the horizon were there i'm pretty sure i broke my foot you you nearly you must have caused some sort of permanent injury to that foot

because the way you went down it was so bad you were and then i dumbly walked on it for two days and then spent a fortnight after the festival like not being like using a fitbit to be like do as few steps as possible i remember that night we got back from the uh like the party tent yeah in the the evening of download festival on i think it was the second night the first day we yeah we got there on the wednesday it was the first day i think so it was before any of the bands started no because that was the time um metallica did oh yes it was it was the four night one and i remember we came back from that tent and you were yelling at the top of your lungs as we went through the campsite because you were very drunk and then you were just stumbling all over

the place as well and i tried to stabilize you and i got really angry and frustrated at you fair and then at that point you just went down on yourself and yeah borderline broke your foot because it was they have the big plastic mats for the pathways yeah to like go over the top of a hill and i my foot went in like perfectly and then the rest of my body went downhill while my foot was jammed between two of the plastic struts and then it was just purple like the rest of the festival yeah i was debilitated on the last day with hay fever yeah to the point where i couldn't see i'd slept in a field not a good idea and you couldn't walk it was fun but it was also my last festival ever i was meaning to go next year i'm hoping to because i think it's meant to be bring

me the horizon again and blink 182 that's the rumor that'd be awesome but i guess we're getting away from ourselves that was the last line of an email and what a testament to tangents just one more tangent before you start your email yeah you know that secret base we talked about who had like the bob emergency video and the mattress video we got sent oh yes that was really cool i think they have a video about this i might have seen oh because this is ringing some bells this does seem like something you would do a video essay on yeah but yeah this uh really awesome stuff adam because if it's a a race where someone's cheated and a dog chased someone that wasn't a postman that's the kind of absurdity i like where reality just kind of diverges from

what should happen just a guy the postman running past looking at the guy getting chased by dogs being like i know what the hell's going on what kind of wacky place is this center of chaos i'd love to know you know the guy in the car got caught i'd love to know the guy you probably wouldn't know because they wouldn't say but like how many people have won like you know there's like super long races in like the desert or like the ultra marathons or that kind of how many of them have been won by a guy in a car there's gotta be it's more than i can count on my hands yeah easy but thank you adam a lovely email of of wacky nonsense uh we love a bit of hijinks and speaking of which the next email comes from milan with the subject i hate cars

so milan writes hey andy and james milan here from texas again texas of course uh for the uninitiated home of one of the 70 millimeter imax screens showing the odyssey it's isn't like four of them i think it's like most of them in the world yeah it's like 10 of all of the screens that can do that your common ground on episode 79 really resonates with me as i hate the fact that we are a two-car household but we have no choice texas is one of the worst states in the u.s when it comes to public transport and it shows my local metro has a population of over one million people wow and we have exactly one train that goes north and south this train often has over an hour between leaving my

nearby station, and on weekdays stops running at 8. God, that's a nightmare. We're at like 300,000 and we've got two lines. Two lines, and it stops running at like half 11. And they're, for the most part, every

15 minutes, in theory. Terms and conditions apply. I mean, you like hate on it, and then you realise like, oh, it is actually very good compared to a lot of cities our size it's i guess it to scale it when i look at our train system and the fact that it's meant to be every 15 minutes but it's realistically every 25 or 30 it's the same way i look at the

tube and people complain about missing the tube and then they have to wait four minutes for the next one yeah and i'm like come on get a hold of yourself if you've left yourself four minutes to get to work or whatever important event it is that this four minute difference is going to counter then you are actually the problem yeah and maybe to be fair milan would think the same of me if i'm giving myself only half an hour leeway when his situation is you know it's it's not ideal but you shouldn't have to plan ahead to use your local train that much no you should be able to walk down and like get somewhere at that point it's not a local train is it no at that point there's nothing local about it it shows up where you are but so do national trains you know yeah

and compared you know the uk to texas you are looking at a national scale for our equivalent oh yeah so you know what milan you're hard done by because nationally we have much better transport links texas needs to step itself up whenever i travel i always take buses and trains because it's a much nicer way to travel and i loathe that i can't realistically do that where i live enough about that rant though my son who is now two months old congrats milan i remember you announcing the birth in one of your mails so very glad to hear that he's now the ripe old age of two he's plugging along he is he's getting there he's going to be a fully grown man by the time that this is over oh god with kids of his own really true yeah that's not yeah i'm not being hyperbolic

He may have his own kids. He may have grandkids. He's probably definitely going to be an adult. He will be an adult. He will have paid a lot into tax. And I still enjoy listening to your podcast, especially the recent history segment on the Ottoman Empire. It was a very good one, Milan.

I did like that one. I knew some of the big picture stuff, but learning the details have been a highlight. Given my Serbian heritage, I'm rooting for the Ottomans to go down. Spoilers. Tangentially, I hope that when you get closer to World War II, you take a look at the yugoslavian partisan movement as they were able to accomplish

extraordinary feats against the nazis including royally pissing off hitler himself on multiple occasions no questions about the game this time but i'm looking forward to the finale of the practice round milan sent from the deserts of my mind well milan tune in next time for the very end and when it comes to yugoslavian partisan movement andy any any take up on that uh don't know any about it currently but it's gone on the list perfect there we go that list is i need to now edit that list what it's long but we will surely get through it all oh yeah so in that case milan i'm going to make a promise for you now from andy it will happen and it will happen in the next six months nope okay it will happen though it will happen cool we're not going to get to the nazis

till they show up in the game right so if anyone's eager for any nazi history that's probably two three years away. You're on low ball on that, because they all turned 21. Yeah, actually. So, if you're around for the Nazis, then hunger down. You've got a ways to go. I never thought I'd say that.

But, yeah, seems like Milan was rooting for the Ottomans to be swarded, and they have been. Yeah. They've been taken apart. The Ottomans were an interesting one, because they were pretty cool early on.

well relative to like the rest of the world they seem really really yeah they seem really progressive yeah and i i thought they they might have been maybe an empire that were kind of maybe ahead of the time and you know they had some things going for them that maybe we didn't really recognize and then they fell by the wayside and were certainly plucked apart but they didn't keep up no they did fall apart towards the end they they made some decisions where you can't actually justify them anymore so no i mean genocides yeah that that's that's the point where it's like as soon as the big g comes out that's it yeah you're written off as an empire that needed to go unfortunately that's not always the case but thank you milan for getting in touch glad the

little one is doing well very good to hear it and thank you adam for a little delve into a common ground and some of the most fun mailbags we get are when someone analyzes our common ground with a little cross-section of history yes a lovely crossover especially one where the timeline matches up as well can't get better than that and anyone who has anything to add to it the mailbag can be reached at info at war with a mate.co.uk we have an instagram which is just war with a mate the website is warwithamate.co.uk big overhaul approaching during the hiatus between practice run ending and full game starting keep an eye out in general as well for that because the hiatus will be slightly different because we'll be talking about different things as we

approach the main game we've got some things to keep us entertained so it won't all be tangents we'll keep the main beat you'll get your history you'll get your common ground don't worry keep you updated on what we're doing um yes we're just we're gonna take this we've done the practice scenario we understand the game enough now to we just want to get everything right before we start yes so there'll be a bit of picking the game apart we'll get into it a lot probably next time when everything's wrapping up we'll let you know what the future looks like but uh big things coming and expect big things for the start of the full game it's going to be a a real grand occasion we look forward to it and having you all there but get in touch in the meantime we read everything

out we'll get through every single thing that's sent it doesn't need to be entirely game related i mean hell half the podcast isn't so that would be a bold request but that is the end of the mailbag which means speaking of tangentially game related things our future is one thing but the past is where it's at 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. At this point, I gave little thought to my past history, but I've always been interested in boats and the sea. I am more or less in the position of a cactus in the land of the ship, which is on the point of sinking because errors are present.

We are absolutely not qualified to share views on history. So, Andy, when and where are we? we're continuing with the italians in world war one we've done three quarters of their front which was the high alps which was a nightmare uh yeah this might be worse but we'll figure it out well that'll be impressive because last time was just absolute hellscape it was the quote this is a fun one well you'll find out why as we go along esto es una cardona which means this is cardona in argentini argentinian slang okay uh which is slang for something worthless useless or a very poor quality right okay well this could be italian tanks maybe that's not a bad guess okay

that's the only thing i know of in terms of italian i guess infrastructure around this time yeah they don't have tanks yet this is world war one even the tanks they have which are a joke they make after world war one i think okay yeah i don't know if they had any sort of progenitor in world war one that were maybe even worse no where it's just a guy with like a metal helmet and a gun and they call it a tank no not quite um i think the first tanks were world war one just not on this front yes yeah well i've seen pictures i used to uh when i was in school we had this like uh history book and it had pictures of tanks across the ages and i remember that being world war one tanks yeah and they look kind of goofy oh yeah but yeah i guess the italians based

on world war ii probably didn't start that early no um so the main front they fought on wasn't the alps it was along the isonzo river um which runs at the time it ran parallel uh to the border with austro-hungaria it's sort of uh you know where the italy like curves around um and then the alps finish it's like that bit of land between the alps yes uh east of venice cool um so it makes it one of the only accessible routes into Central Europe to get into Austro-Hungarian land for the Italians, because

as we covered last time, you can't go through the Alps, really. Yeah, it turns out that's a bad idea. The land isn't as mountainous as the Alps, but this is still mountainous terrain. It's still pretty rough, steep plateaus, that kind of thing. Yeah, it can't be as

bad as climbing all that way up to mount the guns and put the ammo into them. No. It's made of rocky limestone ground with a river in the middle of it. Limestone's incredibly hard, which makes digging trenches almost impossible without industrial equipment. Well, limestone's definitely hard. I've seen the adverts. Where, you know, dirt and limescale building up on your tap. Yes.

Yeah, I know how it is. But limestone does have a feature, which is that it's very brittle, which means when explosives go off the rock shatters into shrapnel and yeah so this entire battlefield essentially essentially has a buff to explosive damage okay that's interesting and the austro-hungarians hold the high ground ah yes uh there's almost constant fighting between june 15th and september 17th but there's 12 major battles to understand the 12 battles they'll fight on this river you need to understand an important character general luigi cardona ah we're bringing another luigi into the fold yes

we haven't done that since early episodes yeah and this is the namesake of that phrase at the start okay um it's literally named after him oh right um so we'll find out why um he's a bad general and a bad person um which is not fun for the people fighting him his father had been an important general in the unification of italy uh he conquered rome uh so because of this luigi essentially nepo babies his way through the entire army and he's also a personal friend of king emmanuel the third oh as you do yeah um so he gets offered the position of chief of staff of the italian army in 1908 and he turns down the job because he doesn't want any political oversight he did however accept the job in 1914 uh so just before the war breaks out convenient well before

italy joined he's a brutally uncompromising man who is unable to take personal accountability and has some interesting ideas about war uh he doesn't view his soldiers as people but an instrument of power and he believes the army must be more terrified of their commander than the enemy okay you kind of describe my play style in the game uh well it's a very it's a very italian play style apparently you've been doing it historically accurately the good thing is my pieces are i guess inherently scared of me because i can move them with complete control they have no way to push back against me they don't have morale and cohesion i am their god okay you and this guy might have had a similar wars yeah for me it's it's better though because

it's cardboard because they're not real yeah his people had souls oh yeah um he's got several policies um such as no leave for frontline troops that's not nice so you don't rotate out at all what that you know what that's great for morale i'm sure oh yeah um he also uses influence in the with the government to block them sending aid to italian pows because he thought if they were treated well his own troops would be more likely to surrender what which contributed to the deaths of a hundred thousand italian pows out of a total of 350 000 cool ratio so more than a quarter of his guys who get captured die because he's not sending the thing is the countries don't have to provide everything but they have to let like red cross and stuff through yeah but it's sort of

like we have your pows but you need to help feed and supply them yeah it's like yeah we've we'll let you in if you want to give them something and if they open the doors up and no one's there to provide anything it's like oh your food didn't come this week yeah and they're not they're fighting world war one hungarians so they're not going to be like have our food because yeah it's not this board game where we have to do it there's no red cross in the campaign for north africa you have to shill it out yourself whereas here i guess yeah if you don't have your guys vouching for you if no one comes for visitation you're on your own yep same with food on top of that he thinks soldiers should get no downtime so if they aren't fighting they should be doing physical labor

partially so they're too exhausted to complain what the fuck is that mentality yep this overall leads to insane morale problems of course but he's got a cunning plan what is the plan kill his own men execute people on your own side until morale improves no yes fuck me this guy is basically for anyone who's a 40k fan this guy is a commissar when my joke response is the actual decisive move of the command it's bad italy executed more of its own men than any other western side in the entire war cool so they are uh moronic yep and barbaric there were over 750 official executions but he also gave orders for uh gave standing orders to his officers to immediately execute any soldier who lagged behind showed hesitation or tried to

surrender this means the total number of what executions is well over a thousand what the fuck constitutes just lagging behind just at the back but someone's always at the fucking back beg out of the front that is how you motivate people no it's not but we know that's not the case because this guy you described at the start as this was a bad leader someone's always at the back yep there's no discernible way to no it's just enforce this policy yeah it's he also brought back the roman um tradition of decimation okay for when a unit failed or had problems but there wasn't a ringleader uh which is when they draw lots and one in ten of them are killed by the rest he was doing this in 19 like 15 right so so when we looked at world war ii and it was the case of

the entire approach of well we're going to bring back the roman empire yeah so this guy's trying to do a little bit of that in this guy's the worst way this guy's a roman general 2000 years out of like time and he would have been a bad general at that time yeah he's a bad roman general in this time with guns yeah um so to sort of explain this this is crazy he saw morale as the single most important part of winning a war in the game it actually does play a huge part so that i kind of understand in that regard but he didn't do anything to remedy it no he saw morale as the single most important part of winning a war but he had no understanding of human nature how morale actually works cool so i yeah i can write this i can write the rest of this if you

want oh no it gets worse man oh he viewed the natural state of people in particular the lower and working classes as inherently being cowards and that morale was the fear of commanders meaning orders were followed in spite of that cowardice so he sees morale as having the ability to inflict the basically your troops are more scared of you than your enemy that's what he thinks morale is right so it okay he also thinks anyone who's not a nobleman is an inherent natural coward who must be corrected through this kind of like insane that's so bad right yeah so you've got your bog standard guy they're a coward so you need to terrify them and make them more scared of you than the enemy terrify them exhaust them micromanage them so you could have a guy who is

a steadfast soldier ready to fight for his nation who has a vehement uh anger towards the enemy and what you do to motivate there come the air quotes again this man is you diminish any sense of worth you punish them you exhaust them and then they despise you when they were already against the enemy you've actually flipped it so now they might actually just be more against you than the enemy and also this is a nationalist italian war to free italian speaking places from an empire like that should be motivation like this if this story doesn't end with a fucking coup i would be bewildered if they don't turn on their own guy yeah uh because here i've got in fact i think he understands morale so poorly i don't think i could deliberately demoralize an army

as well as he did his own he also insane micromanagement which means no commanders on the field are allowed to make any decisions that change the plan even if it's like oh there's a machine gun there should we go around it's like no you have to go here or he'll execute or decimate your squad

what the fuck is this tactic so there's no there's no like initiative on in fact initiative is punished even if it leads to success why do we use custer is a point of tactical failure when this guy existed well there's a reason his name is

the word for useless and argentinian slang but this is like it's just actual suicide oh it's crazy killing his own men and i know that you know part of it is because he thinks it's you know morale based but he's also just killing his own men out of it's not principle it is a principle it's just an incorrect i don't even know if you can call that a principle that's just a yeah it feels like there has to be an almost contrival basis for it yeah whereas this is just kind of wow let's go with it yeah because he's also part of this outdated mindset called the cult of offense which is the belief that it's better for morale to be the attacker not the defender and it's sustained aggressive attacks are the way to keep discipline and morale high

and achieve victory that sounds like the most reasonable thing you said so far in terms of i guess going on the aggressive push you might feel like you're making progress this is an outdated mindset by world war one um because an entrenched machine gun emplacement can now mow down hundreds of men so there's no there's no morale well i guess like to that it's like yeah it's better to be on the attack when you're like besieging a medieval city yeah not when you're charging entrenched gun emplacements yeah when it's you know you know they've got more men than us but if we push we can keep on going yeah but if it's just a mechanism that puts metal into you that's going to kill a hundred of you in a few seconds yeah well it

speaks to it when you said he's just going to have your men run a gun emplacements yeah and when and anyone who comes up with another plan gets punished lethally. So it's like run into the machine guns all. At that point, I guess you've broke the morale, because if I were one of these guys, and I reckon even if I was some sort of die-hard

nationalist, and I was in that situation. I would frag this guy. Like, you know, in Vietnam, where they, like, kill. But also, an important thing to note for this, he spends the entire campaign pretty much not at the front.

of course not because he'd be dead he's doing it all on like he's also doing it all on like top down 2d maps he never walked the battlefields or had any understanding of the terrain other than a top down this this dickhead's dialing in on a team's call yeah because he doesn't want to get fragged this is the worst this might be the worst manager in history he's micromanaging but he's also not there yeah because he knows he knows for a fact i don't care whatever he he doesn't believe any of this works he knows he'll be killed on sight i think he because he wrote books about this before the war like he and he never takes accountability spoilers he will never admit failure who hired this idiot king emmanuel the third of it right he might be a bigger idiot

yeah we did the section on him he's oh no we no i know he wasn't a huge idiot he was just like a guy who shouldn't have ever been a king he was like seemed like a nice guy who got the wrong job from birth and then he hired this guy who is just wrong from birth by the sounds of it he's writing bad books oh yeah because here's a quote from him the offense is profitable and almost always possible even against mountainous positions that appear to be impregnable that's not true nope that's a lie so this is the guy in charge of the italian forces like i know we spent a lot of time on this guy but i you i could not understand this battle until i looked into this guy this guy is the worst so the first battle was june 23rd to july 7th 1915 he opens up with an intensive

artillery barrage followed by charging of massed infantry uphill through barbed wire towards machine gun emplacements carved into a rock that hadn't been knocked out by the artillery. He also... So after two weeks, the Italians lose 15,000 men for no real gain? Swell. So what does Luigi Carderana do?

Kill his own men? Well, since adjustments or learning from your mistakes is a sign of weakness, he blamed the failure on the quality of his troops and their commanders before planning battle number two. which would take place 11 days later. He would send his troops against the same positions with the same tactics so the Austrians were more ready.

This time, he loses 41,800 men in this two-week-long battle, achieving nothing. This battle only ends when both sides run out of ammunition. Furious, Kaderana continues not learning while he prepares his grand offensive, which he launches on the 8th of October, 1915. sorry sorry is it the same thing with more men which lasts until november 3rd resulting in set 67 000 casualties and no real progress right okay did he do the same thing again furious uh

carderona curses out his troops giving them no rest and launches another attack except now a week later except now it's early winter his troops aren't equipped with winter gear and fresh austrian divisions have arrived he loses 49 000 to death or injury for minor gains capturing part of the outer suburbs of a city called garicia oh i fucking hate that they made even the slightest bit of progress with this tactic it's just that is that is the situation where if you're defending if you're the the austrians in this situation and they come for a fourth time in the exact same way at that point you're like no this is this is a trick well he eventually calls a halt to that attack ending 1915 with a total of 170 000 casualties for minimum

territorial gain he repeats this process over the next two years managing to perpetrate three to 15 miles into austro-hungarian territory at the cost of a million casualties sorry maximum of 15 miles and a million casualties yes uh also to put that this is 11 assaults he's put the french on the French and British on the Western Front. I can't remember the exact number. But in this time, they did four to five major offensives with significantly more men.

Is this the biggest military failure ever? The numbers. This is such a bad military failure that it paves the way for fascism. But we'll get to that. You said three to fifteen miles? Yes. So there's a chance

it was fucking three miles? Oh, no, it's like various points on the border right sorry so like the deepest they got is 15 sort of averages oh okay i'm sorry i thought you meant like it was such a like gray area like a sort of messy situation that he might have only got three miles but also i'm sorry 15 miles also nothing no i've walked that in a day when we went on our trip not too long ago we walked 10 miles yeah and we were out of shape and had like bags full of stuff and like booze and stuff yeah and that was like over like five hours yeah and it was in like 30 degree heat i mean i got some blisters but a million people went injured or killed and doing that

over the course of two years yeah two years like i'm thinking about that journey that we made and the idea of covering that distance in two years and a million people died to take that area it's it's nothing i i'll be honest i'm no tactician despite the fact i've been playing this game for two years i don't think this works out well the thing is every single time there's some more greater successes and some less but the most is like a minor success every time he blames his troops he thinks his tactics are perfect and his men just aren't executing them so he's incapable of learning well that seems to be his issue yeah um but this does i mean there's been 11 battles over two years um so the austro-hungarians also aren't in a great place

um so they asked some they asked germany to send over some guys um and this leads up to the 12th final battle of the insonzo river the germans send over some chemists uh some mountain warfare specialists seven elite frontline divisions uh one of which was the alpencourt an elite mountain warfare unit which included the wurtemberg mountain battalion which was home to a young and up-and-coming company commander by the name of erwin rommel i know the name yeah uh those chemists they sent over by the way and the mountain specialist the mountain warfare specialist literally walked the whole thing and then came back and gave the like to make the plans like rather than him being miles away these guys like we need to walk

that we need to understand this area and the chemists are preparing gas attacks oh god um so the um yeah so an incompetent relic who existed in a military reality completely divorced from modern warfare who relied on micromanagement rigid inflexible doctrine was about to come into contact with a proto blitzkrieg oh god instead of large mass attacks against expecting enemies the german troops relied on stealth speed and surprise using terrain and weather to bypass enemy strong points and exploit gaps in the defenses and there are gaps everywhere because he's part of this cult of offense so he despite the fact he makes his men work when they're not doing anything they're not working on defenses because he thinks that's a sign of weakness

because the guy's an idiot yeah like a roman army would like arrive somewhere and they'd like dig a fort like you can still see them up through scotland and england where it's like a roman army camped for like a week yeah they built the like big barrack like but no it's like it's this roman idea without looking at any of the like what made rome so dangerous was every soldier was also like an engineer yes everyone was capable of a different skill set you're just throwing the army could build a road behind it every night they camped in a fort he's just not doing any of this it's just all like gold eagles and banners and shit yeah just right run our men into machine gun fire yeah um the germans also implemented a system called and i'm gonna fuck

this up uh afro rista gals just i'm not gonna give up hopefully for that word german basically it's mission control which is a concept that's still used by modern militaries nato uses it which is the idea and the recognition that top-down plans do not work in dynamic battlefields. So instead, each officer and soldier should be given an understanding of the strategic goal and then as much freedom as possible to achieve it themselves. Which is my understanding of warfare fundamentally.

Yes, that is how successful armies fight. yeah that's just how i i picture a combat situation unfolding in warfare yeah so these new dynamic technologically advanced germans show up uh the last battle of the insonzo river or the battle of caporetto took place between the 24th of october and the 19th of november 1917 so this is about three weeks in that time the germans advanced 60 miles driving the entire an army entirely out of northeast italy completely and then getting within miles of venice they cause 300 000 casualties of which a quarter of million of them are surrendered german troops because like there's this battle at this bridge and like rommel and his guys show up and the germans just

and there's like 10 of them and like almost a thousand italians just surrender because their morale is so so bad of course it is they're like literally waiting in like shallow ditches because they can't build trenches just waiting for someone to capture them while this is happening luigi continues to not take accountability uh this is a direct quote from him the collapse is entirely due to the moral cowardice and treason of certain units who shamefully surrendered to the enemy without fighting this thankfully is the final straw and luigi gets the sack on november 7th 1917 but by then the damage is done his failure shapes italy's post-war um which leads to the concept of a mutilated victory and paves the way for fascism uh he will never command troops ever

again but benito mussolini will make him the grand marshal of italy in an attempt to make him a national hero no no and that's the that's the ball battle of the isanza river and i actually i've now got this point of what i'd rather fight in the alps or any other front i've ever heard of than in a under this man flat grass field with this guy you i i agree i did not i actually now think the most dangerous terrain is a moron in charge i did not know what you were going to describe coming into this i did not think you would be able to paint another environment or landscape that would be worse absolutely this is worse because the issue is with the mountain you have a chance at surviving yeah you know it's horrible it's such a an aggressive terrain to be

moving through it's so volatile in in its its environmental risk the the fire that you're under the the weather but you might survive that the issue is with him you're up against a gun and it's gonna kill you but if you avoid the gun he'll kill you or even if you follow orders and someone in your troop doesn't and you pull the short straw in a decimation yeah you just get beaten to death by you so there is no winning yeah this is i had no concept of the italian front at all but this guy like the reason his name is now um synonymous in argentinian slang with being worthless useless or very poor is because the vitriol a lot of italians uh emigrated to argentina between world war one and world war two

and they hated this guy so much his name is now and i don't know this is just from my research i think this is just argentinian slang now like it's just his name is synonymous with failure and and it's good it should be synonymous with failure in more places and mussolini wanted to make him a national hero yeah he died as field marshal of italy in like 1928 like it's another guy a bit like Graziani who like dies without any comeuppance I don't know I think his comeuppance is I hope at the very least

talking about it now maybe this is a little bit of comeuppance but the entire time he's just he never ever takes account of it he thinks it he thinks he would have won if his like the working class had like

more courage dastardly working class what a piece of shit yeah um but this is like this is why italy gets doesn't get what get what it wants out of world war one well no because also he made this he made the he paved the way for fascism like you said because after this battle the french and english are like this is so fucked we have to send 13 elite divisions to stabilize the situation not to like push up that front it's just like that front we just need to stabilize

yeah this is a worse situation than the Alps oh by the way just the that entire thing for the Germans was 20,000 casualties against a million against 300,000

the million were over the that one battle where less than 10% uh yeah and rommel was an infantryman at the time but he wrote a book based on this that would get him the job afterwards and also lay out apparently it's actually a very fundamental book of like shock infantry tactics laying the groundworks for blitzkrieg so you've got like a roman style general who would have been bad in

Roman times against Proto-Blitzkrieg. Yeah, and Rommel who's still now considered one of the better tacticians of warfare in general. And he's just a company commander

at this point, but he does distinguish himself. I think he will do a Rommel series, but he earns the highest, like their Medal of Honor, the German version. Yeah, that makes sense. that's a fucking crazy story that is wild

that's insane that is far worse than I thought it could get and as I was researching it, it didn't make any sense until I looked into him because I did like the I was going to be in the battle of

the Nsonzo but then I was like, why are they making these decisions and like I deep dived on him you've told me about him, it doesn't make sense no because you need to go a layer deeper and even then i don't know that it would make sense no none of what he's doing none of what he is anything about this none of it makes sense he might be one of the least effective military commanders ever i don't know he's very effective but for the other side yeah he killed so many italians well uh as a guy who's you know getting

italians killed in the board game uh that that for me you know i feel much more confident in playing next time it turns out you can't be worse than a real italian general you know what i don't actually think i can based on the amount of men i have available during the ball game i don't think i can logistically be worse than him but unless i start actually setting fire to parts of the game i don't think i can be worse but it's also like graziani bagidlio like there's so many incompetent italian generals there's a difference between incompetence and just being aggressively negative and destroying your own accomplishments and possibilities i yeah i guess but they all fall into that bracket i yeah incompetence i guess if you look at it very broadly and liberally

if you're gonna one word it but to understand how incompetent you need i've got another word i'm not going to continue to swear too much on the podcast but wow well for for his sake because of the the fact that that's such a negative vibe and because andy we've got one more shot at this we've got one more go before our war is over and then we start the real war the only way we can brace ourselves one last time is to dip in to 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 for common so common ground apricots or papaya the fruit zone it's fruit zone um i'm gonna go apricots just because i don't really know

anything about proprietor same the fruit zone so fruit zone is done common ground that was that was a real shock and awe tactic that feels like an illegal move but okay uh common ground i'm coming into this now knowing you're dealing in bad faith by the way what a bad position for common ground i hope this will be a one that we can agree on pretty easily okay let's let's hear it to run for public office or if you want your net worth to take over to a billion either way you have to do two years of customer service or high street retail and live off it and then you can continue with that i okay so there's this i have two minds about this because i understand what you're presenting here it's to put these people through hardship so they have to understand

the nitty-gritty of what happens at the bottom level of all of this the whole pyramid yeah and there's none of this stop buying avocado toast and coffee or it's like no one's doing that that was a thing 20 years ago so when they're so i guess for the first part so when they're when they're doing this are they are they living off the budget of one of these that's part of it as well yeah yeah so they have to live with accommodation they can afford from the salary yep they have to live this way and then afterwards they get to then they can forward yeah so they are they already figures who you know say in the uk's they're they're eaten educated they i mean if they're running for office yes yeah they've eaten oxbridge and went to oxbridge yeah yeah and then

And did what? What's the one they all do? Like, poli-sci economics? There's, like, a specific one. I know the one you mean, yeah. So they've done all of this. They've already put their name out. They're like, I'm going to run for office. I'm going to put my name forward. And then at that point, it triggers, well, now

you need to do this. I think to do the forms, you have to, like, to put your name on for it, you have to prove you've done that. In order for them to prove it, is there a way for us to make sure they aren't getting, like, you know, like, stipends or any sort of, like, additional benefits or payments

from your mummy and daddy or anyone else. I think they have to prove they live. They have to, like, show the... They can set up a bank account specifically, whereas, like, the money you earn will go into that and not your expenses come out of that. And if you find out you've been using any of your other accounts, you're disqualified.

Okay, okay. That makes it a bit more comfortable of a process. and i've i would expand that i think i said high street retail or customer service because that is underpaid dealing with the public yes but i'd say nurses would automatically call like those kind of teachers would also count like if you're doing a job that's like currently underpaid but beneficial i the issue is at that point there it's too expanded well they're also in charge of people's future yes actually working in retail it's like you know they're excellent point that they're doing a sort of a low skill job where you're servicing someone who wants to buy something

and you're sort of the checkpoint for like health care or education yeah because you're shaping someone's future if you're a teacher and if they're just doing it and going through the motions so they can get a position that i think with those two you need qualifications you do but these people that means they'll just do that instead of this so poly econ socio then it means we have someone who's even less qualified to become a politician because they don't have any prior knowledge or qualification about the environment they're going to step into they've just done this to be a teacher to half-arse it for two years to then yes let's not um yeah let's go back but the core idea is you should have to deal with the public at their worst for almost

no money and then i hope it would incentivize let's increase the minimum wage like oh i understand the reality of what living day-to-day is like on the average like median salary yes and and i like this at its core for what it is and i think what what i want to do with it is grab both sides of it and sort of stretch them out to either end where they they want to look at this and they want to go right actually we need to actually give more money to people in these positions they need to be paid a fairer wage these are people who are underpaid for the stress they go through day to day and they are a fundamental part of society this is not fair for it's unskilled work but this isn't really balanced

It's also why I said high street retail, so they're not working at like Harrods. Yes. It has to be day to day. You can't be like, I did my retail thing and it was like... Yeah, you're not working for the white company, you're working for Asda. Even white company, it's like, if it's multiple,

it just can't be like a high-end boutique where you're getting paid like really well. so i want to pull that end out and make sure that they're they're in dire straits financially so they can see that but the thing is i don't want them to be in dire straits financially but if that role means they're in dire straits financially i need them to understand it well ideally people doing that job wouldn't be well that's why we put them into areas of the country where they would be in dire straits so they can look at it also you're like you're not in london yeah so you put them in these situations where they will be in dire straits yeah so you have to

worker next in sunderland for two years yes and i'm pulling it on the other side because you mentioned the dealing with the public at their worst now this is where i'm going to try and get another policy change in which is that people working in these roles have power against the public a bit more because i've worked briefly in retail when i was like 16 17 and that's not that's not all right it's not all right what happens dealing with the public since then i've dealt with public and consumers and customers clients from mostly remote roles i think they like call center would count but for something where it's like adversarial yes but i think with this we need to give these employees power to just shut it down because the issue now is a lot of the

reason that it's such a horrible environment to work in is because you get and not everyone is an awful person when they come in to buy something that goes wrong a lot of people go in they'll try to make a purchase it won't go quite the way they wanted because something's out of stock or it's a different price or there's any number of complications a lot of people turn around and go oh okay there's been a misunderstanding or this is just not what i hoped for i'll just leave it there or we'll remedy this in an amicable way but then you unfortunately get the bad bunch the karens the karens yeah where now it becomes a case of well no this is your fault you personally you retail representative that i'm speaking to who is operating a checkout at a supermarket

you have personally set the global company policy you are as the personified and i'm going to take all my frustration out on you yes like and you get some people where they'll drop in the i'm not angry at you i'm just and then first of all that's still not as okay as you think it is because you you're prefacing it with this isn't at you but i'm going to shout at you yell at you i'm putting a psychological burden on you still i've been lucky enough i've not had those roles which is also i shouldn't run for office so this is almost you legally can't this is a proves the rule like situation but it's yeah just the unreasonableness and like having to handle it yeah so it's the it's when they come forward and they say this isn't at you

but they still put a psychological burden of you're getting shouted at you're getting stuff dumped on you when you're just there to you know take their payment for i know this isn't your fault the equivalent of no offense but where it's like softening but it means anything that comes after it's just what they want to say i think i think it's maybe it's slightly better because it means they've got at least enough cognitive processing to realise that what they're doing is wrong to be directed at you, but then they

still do it. But then if they then shout. Yeah, maybe it's not that much better. It's like the people who are self-aware, like, oh, I'm terrible drunk, or oh, I get angry, and it's like, fucking deal with it then. Don't just be like, oh, Riley self-aware, handle the problem. Yeah, don't give me a disclaimer

and then do it. Don't do it at all. So there's that and then you've got the people who are worse where there's no disclaimer and they do actually direct it at you they they think it's you and they'll channel they become personal they insult you and it becomes a very personal attack because the purchase they wanted of a lawnmower or when i worked in retail this is one there was somebody who bought a like a hedge trimmer and they wanted to return i worked like a diy kind of store and they got a hedge trimmer and they tried to return two days after they bought it and we took it out the box and the cable the power cable had been

severed oh yeah and they were like well yeah when i was cutting my hedge i cut through the cable and it's like right okay you've destroyed a product that you bought at home and you would like your money back for the product you destroyed i bought this tv and threw it off a bridge and now it isn't working give me a tv yeah it's like well no you've you've lost the thing you bought something you've destroyed it you could you could have set it on fire you could have thrown it in the ocean it's been destroyed by your doing it was an accident fair enough i'm sorry that happened but my apologies will not translate to cash value yeah that's it your inconvenience is not a transaction here so when when these people come at you i think we need to empower these people who

work in these positions to be able to let loose and if they are getting it given to them they should be able to retort and it may be not it's not entirely conducive to a good situation no if if it's escalating and swearing and stuff but if this is an establishment if this is a business and you've got security on the doors and then the customer continues to flare up and they try and make it physical then they're removed but you're allowed to verbally push back as much as you see fit i think these have to be separate because if you can verbally push back it removes the impact for these guys well it it removes part of it but they they still don't get paid a fair wage they get to release maybe emotionally no but i think that's part of it is like it should

be essentially you should have the experience of like this average like a single mum of three who like hasn't slept can't unload on a customer she'll get fired yes so but but but but she should be able to if the customer is giving it to them oh yes so everyone gets this is two here yes so we this is a two-pronged approach where we're looking at alleviating the burden i guess for the working class where they're going to get paid better and they they aren't going to be abused by the public without being able to push back it's essentially pushing empathy down the throats of people who want power yes whether it's the customer or the politician if you're abusing your position whether you're disregarding people's position of vulnerability or you're

trying to capitalize on people's vulnerability you will have pushback you will be detrimented and because of that you're gonna end up on the back foot buddy yeah i think that's what we do and it also means like oh you couldn't get through working at primark for two years and now you want to be the home secretary are you saying that primark is more stressful yeah in which case someone needs to fix that and you clearly aren't the person to do it yeah and because also i think a lot of them just won't handle it they'll just be like i'm gonna give up on politics i'm gonna go and work for my dad's finance firm or whatever and that's it and like that would be that's a nice filter as well yeah dilute the finance firms into people who've been

emotionally hamstrung by the emotional weight of retail because i don't have the exact figures but the amount of prime ministers and cabinet members throughout british history who have gone to ian and oxbridge is in it's like the amount that that it like outweighs it's a it's a vast majority didn't go there yeah which is like it's crazy yeah so it's like you can still do the oxbridge course but once you finish and you've got your master's from oxbridge you now need to go and work in tesco primark the garden center well as always andy we've put politics to rights which is for a podcast where we've always said that we're not going to get political i think we've always stayed fairly apolitical in the general vibe but we we do put politics right oh yeah people in

general they should just be better yeah this isn't about left right center up or down this is about just stop being it might be about up and down i guess yeah yeah up and down is probably where we sit we don't sit left or right we sit up and down so that that's where we leave that that's a that's a strong common ground and that's where we leave the penultimate yeah that's where we leave everything until next time the last time because that's what it is next time next time you tune in you're hearing it for the end that's that's the practice run over don't even believe it myself i i have to so for for the penultimate time from me james me andy stay subtle humble and brave and next time we'll give you one last desert of your mind good night

We'll be right back. We'll be right back. personalize your comfort choose firmer or softer adjust cooler to warmer and right now save up to twenty five hundred dollars during our massive labor day event hurry into your local sleep number store today because we have your number