War With A Mate - Episode 9: The Vow

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

Here ye, here ye! Appeals and promises a-plenty are a tall order today from James and Andrew given how long it’s taken to get out of the starting gates, yet here we are. With talks of Kinder Bueno, doxxing and Dirty Dancing, if you squint really hard you might see that behind that, they actually make some steadfast progress with the game.

hello welcome to more with me with me andy and me james we play spi's campaign for north africa in its entirety an unfinished board gaming masterpiece i thought this was the podcast where i run out of disc space halfway through a recording and then we restart again is that not what this is don't let the listeners peek behind the curtain the curtain is humanizers this is the podcast where we lose 10 minutes of solid goals that we just recorded because i ran out of disc space on my laptop that's what this is but it also does cover tangentially spi's the campaign for north africa a really long board game that we're trying to play while also trying to record a podcast and not doing a very good job of it of either so what did we do today in the game in the

game i'm glad you prefaced it with that because i was going to go off on a tangent from dot i know you were yeah i'm keeping this focused for 10 minutes and then it can go wherever yeah we'll do a 10 minute catch-up as to where we were then we can get and we get silly with it yeah we are wasting the 10 minutes now talking about after the 10 minutes oh god i'm excited for after the 10 minutes i'll let you know but in in the meantime what we did today was we're already we've started the game we you know that from last time andy doesn't think it's starting the game but i think it's starting the game today we spent a lot of time taking little pieces of cardboard out of plastic baggies and putting them back into plastic baggies there was a step in the middle that was

very important oh yeah we put them onto the game map which is again very long we have to play it on your floor because there's no reasonable space that someone would have in their home to have that board game that isn't purpose-built. I mean, you have to have a room for it. Or you just have to be so antisocial that you're like, I don't have a living room. You just lose a room. We have a lovely three-bed terrace here.

We have the living room, the dining room, two bedrooms, another bedroom, the master bedroom, en suite. And this is the Campaign for North Africa room, where you put a board game that's just unfeasibly big. That's where you put that one. That's what this room is. It would be nice to have a specific room for it so I could have my living room be a living room.

You don't live in this room. I spend some time here. You thrive in this room. It's my thriving room. I've always said that about this room. I come through here and thrive. Is that why it smells like this? It's the smell of success.

Is it? it smells like sweat and despair yeah that's you put the sweat in and the despair and eventually you get successful blood sweat and tears that's how you get sweat and despair oh right i'm not putting any blood into this and i just put a base level of sweat into everything i'm doing that's that's beautiful that's that's that's beautifully transparent like sweat so yeah we spent a lot of time today we got the game map out we ruled it out unfilled it all the map come i don't know if we've said before but the map's in five pieces it's so big you have to put in five pieces it actually reminds me of that pizza we got once and it was i think

40 inches and it came in four separate pizza boxes and you had to assemble it yourself afterwards you got a quarter in each box yeah that was i don't know why you bought that that must be more expensive and two it's just too much pizza well we were hung over i actually know that's a fine that's a good reason yeah we were both over not all of it i'm pretty sure it did no because what we did no that was my grazing phase we ate about four slices and then i went well we can just eat this all week and then i probably ate it all week you might have yeah i wouldn't have i'm pretty sure that got finished i don't eat anything that's left over from like the day before it's just wasteful it's not wasteful well no it's exactly that no that's the word i'm trying

to get better at that but you know here we are talking about wasteful wasteful of time four minutes in and yeah we promised 10 minutes of focus and that's not happened well we we we covered uh a bit of what we did what we did is get the pieces out we did a lot of bootkeeping again that's that's just the game we we kept track of all of the uh the pieces that we got out where they had to go we had to refer to a lot of spreadsheets that we did last time to figure out where all the pieces go on the map and then when we put them down on the map we then had to later on pack them up into different plastic baggies and relabel them because we got them out according to where the game says they need to go and then we put them away afterwards according to

the hex on the map that they were in yeah we're devising a system because we spent so much time today this was an obstacle we came across today we realized that we're going to be playing this for like four hours a week but at the moment about an hour and a half to two hours of that is us just setting up the game it's putting the pieces down on the map and then disassembling the game and putting it back away we need to get faster at that realistically for us to finish in a reasonable time we need to get that down to like fast down to fast down to fast i'm not gonna put a specific number on it but we'll fast what we did have as an issue is where we thought let's do a different organization system on the way of disassembling the game which is let's put

all of the pieces into a baggie corresponding with what hex they were on and then we realized as we were doing that we've ran out of baggies because of the way you've organized your pieces no yes wow okay no that's exactly okay a couple of things i had exactly the right amount of bags you didn't you had to borrow from my stockpile of baggies they're all my baggies well you might have bought them all but some of them were assigned to me and still

we had to bleed into my supply to make up for your logistical fuck up my supply not a logistical fuck up the only logistical non-fuck up in the whole thing is me buying the baggies that's not the only logistical non-fuck up

it's the only one I can think of well i can then you greedily desired more bags any bag i give you you should be grateful for i should put all your pieces in one bag i use the same amount of bags today as i started with you had to go and get more from whatever hidey hole you've got them in which is going to look really suspicious during a police raid by the way when they burst in here and go we're here to raid the the home of the uh the most successful podcast where they continuously running out running out of disc space and and try and play a board game and talk about dirty dancing and then this is a very long bursting into the normally it's like freeze police well at this point that

right first of all we're not in a cartoon and secondly they're already in the house and at this point they're wandering around they just keep the same attitude because they've came in here with a lot of adrenaline running through that okay they're gonna find baggies full of little cardboard pieces and they're gonna go what is this is this mimo no this isn't anything this is a board game i don't want to do whoa you just said it you said it yeah i've been negative now that's fair because last time i was dead yeah get on my feet i have no energy here but today i've had two big energy drinks and about four coffees when it comes to energy drinks by the way i found out that um there's a lot of i think it's b6 okay the vitamin it's like 710 percent of your

recommended daily amount and i had two of them that's like 1440 percentage daily intake of b6 yeah now you don't need to have b6 for a fortnight oh oh uh fortnight reference no yeah time reference uh doctor who over here referencing his time i think overall we did we did good today we've made some real solid progress in not just putting the game out and starting to put the pieces down and think a bit tactically but we're also streamlining this because at four hours a week we don't have much time we can't be spending two hours a week

setting the game up no it's just simply not terrible it's really not but we've made some real good real good progress

we should be proud give yourself a pat on the back Andy no what? I'm not going to do it really? why?

I don't want it I'm not going to continue until you do this is okay see you next week folks do you want me to come over and pat you on the back?

no I swear to god I will you'll knock stuff over there's nothing to knock over apart from this bottle of Panda Fruit Twist which I put in your fridge last week and now it's a solid block of ice. Yeah.

Regulate your temperature, man. Regulate your temperature. Don't do that. My fridge is overperformed. ASMR. Most fridges get to maybe three degrees. I think mine's rocking along at minus four. That's insane. That's not a fridge. It's colder than the freezer.

Maybe I just put it in the wrong one. Who knows? Yes, this is your mistake. say it with a bit more belief man put your backbone into it this is your mistake put your back into it before you pat it I'm not patting it and I'm not putting my back anywhere right quick pop quiz

I just realised it's the 10 minute mark I'm going to diverge a little bit to what we were talking about in the segment that was scrapped because I started singing Hungry Eyes from Dirty Dancing you told me I should stop singing things because I'm off key and I'm referencing songs that aren't known

yes and then you said a bunch of famous jennifers when we were trying to figure out jennifer gray who is the actress from dirty dancing yeah she's the baby she's i've done a bit of research between uh so i know she's the baby right you haven't done research you've you've done some sort of scatterbrained skim of the synopsis on wikipedia probably no i don't use wikipedia what do you use hang on a minute you've got it up right now because you're looking at the screen you haven't even changed i think You'll find I get my information from the Internet Movie Database.

You know what? It took me so long to realize that's what that stood for. It was only November at work. Somebody said Internet Movie Database, and I sat there and pieced it together like I was Sherlock, like I was Benedict Cumberbatch himself, and I went, that's what that is. Is he famously slow?

He's famously got a really fun name. You can compare it to other things. I mean, yeah, it's fun to play around with his name. Benadryl Cabbage Patch. I like that. Doctor Strange. That tickled me, Andy. You did good there.

Great film. Get yourself a pat on the back. No. No one's touching my back, not even me. Why? What you got in there? My massive back pieces. Back pieces?

I got a big tattoo. oh what's it of the podcast really the one that you cobbled together in paint constructed yeah in paint right okay it's a different thing right okay it's the fact that it's in paint that i'm bringing up it's charming though isn't it pain is great you can do anything in pain except rotate things then you need to download pain.net that was one of my favorite things about our last dungeons and dragons session with our friend here where you had to explain the fact that in order to rotate part of the logo you had to download a separate thing

and then rotate something and then you immediately deleted the program. Yeah. Well, Payton's good enough except for that one thing. Rotating a logo. It only does 90 degrees. Why did it cap out there?

They're like the main ones, the corners. The corners. The corners of turning. The deserts of our mind. dirty dancing so why did you want to bring up dirty dancing it was just to reflect on the the gold that we lost we'll never get back to the um we'll never get back to that recording that we lost oh it was beautiful it's a bit like the very first pilot that we did for this with the one microphone oh yeah and it was absolute treasure and we can't release it

because the audio quality is just unfathomably bad it's just not not legible in the listening sense hey if you email us i'll send you it i'll just send you the file that's uh i think i've got it on my laptop you have to ask for it but i will send you the file yeah it's a bit like a um a gdpr uh request for for information um if you want a data subject access request about our data just email us and we're legally obliged to send you our first pilot because you have the right to be besotted you have the right to be beguiled consider yourself charmed by us it's a legal requirement under data protection laws in the european union you need to be enthralled by our presence and don't forward the podcast to anyone if i email you it no you don't know

they need to email us directly or we won't they can't have it yeah and they can't forward it They can't forward it. Also, why has no one emailed us? We were pretty explicit about the email. We keep on telling you the email. Why is no one getting in touch? Well, you don't want to know anything about the game. Yeah, we'll answer other questions.

Will we? What will we answer questions on? Anything you fire over, I will fire back at equally uninformed position. Tell you what, let's actually make a promise here. the first five emails whatever they are providing they're not entirely inappropriate in the sense of being inflammatory

or offensive to the point where we're just going to get in trouble if it's not that, the first five we're going to answer them on the podcast whatever they are, game related or not ideally game related because we are straying so far from the game already

if we're not game related we have some to answer yeah, what really? yeah this fella joe from rss.com keeps emailing me i was so excited you horrible gate there's also this email from me that says test right what do you make of that um also you're not speaking into your microphone at all she's not picking up a damn thing i'm very sorry guys uh that was just a test email though that's it that's it there's no joke that you can sort of swing into that right well yeah

that's our promise made so make of that what you will and when it comes to the game we're making real steadfast baby step progress we're starting to streamline the process what part of it baby step

I imagine the baby does dance steps she does yeah she dances quite a bit in the film Jennifer Grey pays for two abortions apparently does she really yes that's in the thing

in the thing in the in the summary right she pays for one abortion for a guy's partner and then she fucks him at the end and then I assume

there's another abortion that happens off screen you can't say fuck on the podcast makes love in the act it's a very romantic film I don't believe you it sounds dumb and stupid

it's not as romantic as Ghost if we're going through Patrick Swayze films But it's more romantic than Roadhouse I mean, Roadhouse I've only seen the remake, but that's fantastic No, it's not Yeah, it is

With Conor McGregor Yeah, just doing coke and walking around being himself And Gyllenhaal. You also can't take coke on the podcast Yeah, I can No, you can't I'll mark it explicit. This will be the first one to mark it explicit That's crazy, because we've sworn previously Yeah, we should probably update that

I think you swore at me when I loudly sang Feliz Navidad A few episodes ago Yes, I did Yeah, I think you might have sworn me last time when I was fairly low energy Because I was ill and tired And that's fine to do to people who are ill or tired Yeah, it's how they get better It's not

I get better through positive reinforcement I don't think you do Give me a pat on the back No So how are we going to get past this then? We're just not Without positive reinforcement, I'm not going to get anywhere My massive back tattoo is going to heal

And you're not going to get any positive reinforcement You don't have a back tattoo Yes What are you going to get it of? I don't know, email in Email in The fans will email and they'll pick my giant back tattoo You're going to have your back tattoo

Suggested via email It's probably going to come down to Joe at RSS.com The product evangelist To decide As he's the only person that emails us You know what, it'll be fun if he sends over a question Do not mention my name

We've removed you from this service You mean Joe Reginald Who lives at Postcode First line of address Terrace And if you live there and you're being harassed

Email in Let me know that I've doxed you That would be a crazy swing of coincidence That I've just pieced together that address but it is someone i know oh so you're just doxing someone yeah i thought that's fine to do it's fine as long as i don't know about it it's our platform you know about it now oh yeah then i guess it's fine anyway i need to cough it's just a little cough folks yeah a little cough break that's nice of him coffee break i've already had far too much of that today yeah i just thought i'd do that

you should again you shouldn't have and i keep on telling people this you shouldn't have caffeine for at least 10 hours before bedtime. It depends. But you were ragging on me last week. The issue last week was nothing to do with caffeine levels. What was it to do with? Hangovers. I don't think I was hungover last week.

I'm pretty sure you were. No, I think I was actually just tired. No, we recorded on a weekday. I was actually just tired that time. I was hungover when we did Dungeons & Dragons. That's what you're thinking of? Yes. Yeah, I was hungover for that.

Don't do that. Because we have a running joke that any session of Dungeons & Dragons that we play, since I'm the dungeon master, and I go by that term outside of the game as well, for anyone interested. You can just call me that in the street, in the sheets. I was hungover, and the going joke we've got is that whenever I'm hungover and we play that,

that we do a time travel bit during the game, because I just lose track of linear time. Yep. And that didn't happen last week. It didn't, it didn't. We did well, we did well. We kept things on track, better than we are here. Whoa, what is going on here?

So any tactics? Tactics, no, but you keep on giving vague, I think it's a threat. I mean, yes, it's leading up to a war. You've got a tactical idea as to what's going on. Strategic. Yeah, you've actually got a plan. Yes.

And I was sat there looking at the pieces, and one of the threatening things about setting up the game is realizing that from go when the pieces are down from the very start of the game it starts off with two of my pieces boxed in by

four of your pieces because if they're one hex away from an enemy piece they're in what's considered a zone of control which means that you have to fight them in some way shape or form when the turn begins. You can try and run away I think. You can try and retreat yeah that is an

option. So you can try and retreat but either way you're in a sort of combat situation so as soon as the game starts at least two of my pieces are in that situation and you're already concocting tactical plans yep and i'm gonna have to try and do the same but the ones that you've got boxed in are and i've already been candid with you so i suppose there's no harm in saying it in a forum that you can then re-listen to um my pieces that you've got boxed in are dog shit they are so bad so i think the the design is those two pieces just get killed off maybe i mean i don't i don't have particularly strong stuff against your guys yeah but you've got like you've got i'm hundreds of

them you've got like several battalions to put into fights and divisions i suppose so but they're far away but it's good that we're like two hexes away well either way it's good that we're forced into a fight straight away means we have to actually reconcile with those rules immediately and on a set tone yeah it means we'll actually figure out what the combat looks like when it's not just a a safe bubble test scenario there's actual stakes to an extent yeah a meal no no we're not doing that for a fraction of a meal fraction of a meal uh you have to buy me i'm gonna go for a kinder bueno for this i'd also like whatever tell you what then we've settled on the state kinder bueno for the winner of this scenario oh white chocolate or normal i'm gonna

go for normal okay yeah white chocolate's hard to come by to be fair yeah i'm not gonna say where i am i mean it's hard to come by anywhere i don't think it's just because of the postcode that you have. I know where I get it. I've got a hookup. You've got a guy. You've got a Kinder Bueno white guy. That's impressive. I think the combat stuff will be fairly fun

when it rolls around. But I think, all in all, I don't have a strategy. No. You've got me there. You are definitely more prepared than me. Which is worrying. But you've also got the advantage of being the historical winner. It's kind of geared towards you winning.

Not this scenario. it is i get given initiative which means that for context i get to choose who goes first every turn so in the main game when we actually start the full 111 turns we do a dice roll to determine that it's modified by different factors but in this mini scenario i get initiative every turn which means i do it's just the first turn i'm sure it's the full thing i'm we just we had this discussion earlier. And I'm pretty sure you checked it and it's the whole thing. It's not. Is it just the first turn? Yes. Well, either way, I get to pick for the first

turn who goes first. So that means I'm at a disadvantage, inherently, if they've given me that. That's to even it out. That's my handicap. No, it's because it's Grizziani's offensive. So he has the initiative on the thing he initiated. You are

so far from the microphone that none of this is getting picked up. I'm sorry. This is insane. it's Graziani's offensive so he has the initiative it's Graziani's offensive I'm never going to pronounce that right don't disrespect my men

I'll disrespect any dead fascist I choose whoa somebody's liberal no I mean you are quite liberal no fair enough that's

alright I'm not liberal at all well what you are is as more tactically minded than me apparently yeah i'm a genius right that's not that's not just openly lie on a podcast where i can go back and refer to it in a court of law when it's needed well if you refer back you'll find out last time i said mensa was full of idiots which only a genius would do oh yeah yeah good thing about this one as well and i'm gonna do something i will deeply regret in future this episode is coming out on its own this is the first of the weekly releases yeah welcome to the new normal yeah this is going to be it week by week we're going to be doing this no more binges for you and the reason i say i'll

regret this is because i was editing an episode a week ago and in it i lie and say you'll be listening to this the same time as the last six and we had to break it up quite a bit so i'm saying this now if you're hearing this this is how it's actually played out this way if you're not hearing this then this is just for me and you right now buddy i hope they hear this me too i hope we actually stick to a schedule yeah i hope we know what we're doing a little bit better well i mean we're recording this so it should be released yeah i was saying that about the last 10 minutes we did as well but yeah be lucky to also get them if they email in yeah if you email in we'll send you uh the first episode and off cuts yeah we'll send you the outtakes just ask just be bold be

brave be humble be subtle and we'll send you it yeah and send a question as well and not just can i have the pilot please ask about the game i want them to ask about the game so they can sort of focus us a bit more yeah yeah speaking of which all right here's something that relates to the game because we do need to start getting more focused on the game and i made a note today that's where we're going and it was a note it was i added it to my addenda which i think we've mentioned previously yes i have my own little spiteful little addenda i do i do my angry addenda the addenda is the addenda for rules that make me want to fucking scream that's it and there's four entries so far and the fourth one came on today because as you may remember

we got an addenda that's included in the rulebook and we got an extra addenda which was printed off and was put in the game box when we bought it from the auction and the addenda says when it comes to setting out the pieces that there is a particular plane that i have which is noted as being 2501 when it should be 2s sorry it should be z501 but it doesn't say either of those things in the book it is 2s01 so the addenda is a liar yeah the addenda is wrong well i have a who am i'm meant to trust if the addenda is wrong i have another bit that goes towards that of someone i think part of the people who i have a unit called the welch w-e-l-c-h welch it's part of england no absolutely not the whole point is this it's an indian unit and it's referred to w-e-l and then

are just like oh that's probably wrong and it's this should be welsh it's like it actually says that sorry i was saying that as a joke no it's no the first welsh counter bears the same coloration as indian units it's referred to as the welsh regiment every other page i think someone was just going through this and was like i don't recognize the word welch uh that means welsh all right so it actually it means welch it means welch rather yes but it's welch throughout the book yeah i mean i'm just having a quick look and welch means to uh fail to honor yeah not a great name for a military unit yeah or for uh somebody's royal losers or somebody who's committing to something for a long term are we welches you're a welch oh i'm the only

a welch if we don't do it well i'm deleting this recording right afterwards so oh then you welch me yeah that's fair i'm gonna cough again maybe i'm coming down with something i'm coming down with something that was your exclusive last week yeah i'm still coming down with it get over it whoa be less ill respect me no please no in it how would i earn it from you what can i do to make you respect me beat me in this game right anything shorter no so i guarantee not we're going to respect you for seven years ever that's not the spirit i'm not i'm not winning at the game i'm finishing the game winning the game gets you a meal we've established that yeah beating the game

makes us heroes yeah immortals yeah so that's what i'm gonna do achilles yeah and other famous warriors well icarus came up quite a bit today we mentioned icarus when we were putting together the pieces and putting them on the board and i yeah i was referencing the fact that we've we've subscribed to a Herculean task. Another Greek guy. Yeah, yeah. They've really monopolised tasks. They have.

All the tasks and jobs and bits and pieces. Probably less bits and pieces. There's not many. And then he went on and did some bits and pieces. Homer's bits and pieces. Never really caught on, did it? Yeah. The Odyssey overshadowed that one.

Yeah, that's after the Odyssey when Odysseus is just sort of cleaning the house after being away for a while. Yeah. I mean you have a lot to clean up afterwards imagine getting back you know when you get back from holiday and you want to come back to a nice clean house his house would have been pretty clean

because his wife married someone else and then they probably cleaned the house until he got back oh so they were nice enough to clean the house and then go I think they thought he was dead so they were just living there but if you come back from the dead you get the house did he kick them out?

I think he showed up and fired an arrow for a bunch of axes and then the dude had to leave and he just slept with his wife again oh that's uh it's a pretty sad ending yeah i mean i think it's a tragedy they're all they're all they're all they love their tragedies don't they yeah well i mean shit world bad endings to your stories and yet here we are bad endings in a no here we are in a bad world our world's in turmoil and we're a bright spark in amongst it

this little bonfire we're lighting this bonfire of hope is the light let it guide you whoever you are listening the one listener we have more than one listener maybe I don't think we're going to keep them

they're not listening now they might have been here for earlier episodes but now that they've realised we're doing this once a week it's not something that they can just burn through when they're on a train journey to Edinburgh from Bristol Nice obfuscation I've just sniped those locations

I've just sniped those locations Out of nowhere Not even the country we're from No, no, sorry You're trying to hide where we're from That's not gonna, they know that we've got white Kinder Buenos They're rare but global

No, no, no, you're thinking of Cholera What? What? No, they're exclusive to scotland unicorns cholera oh what a dumb disease just wash your hands unicorns that's not how that works at all yeah just invent sewage and wash your hands invent sewage yeah that's a crazy there is a point at one point in time someone invented sewage i mean yeah i suppose

so in the sense of it went from just being human waste to human waste in a tube yeah that's a big invention that's probably saved more lives than any other bullshit um i mean no you can't swear on the podcast i am and i'm gonna continue to i don't know where these rules come from i don't know why i would respect it i don't know why you brought it up i think it's mostly because you don't swear as much and now that you are i'm deeply uncomfortable with it i swear when i need to or when i can't think of a better word to say or i'm bored or angry i'm not sure just any time Right, which one is it that's happening right now? The any time one.

Right, okay. So you're not bored or angry? No, not really. You seem quite angry. I'm growing fury. I've stepped over anger. I'm not really sure what set this off. I don't mean either.

Is it because I asked you to pat yourself on the back? I don't like that. And I resent you keep doing it. Well, what's next, Andy? What comes next time? What's the next step? You've sought out that naval phase, eh? No, we've got some more stuff to do before that.

We're going to have to put down our airfields because we don't actually know where they are on the map yet. Yeah, no, that actually feels important. We've got airfields and airstrips. Airfields are big. You can put a bunch of different squadrons down. Airfields, that's the same thing. Airstrips are just for one.

Yes. Airstrips, you've just got the one. We need to put them all down, and then when we know where everything is in terms of all of our guys and all of the airstrips and airfields, then we can put down the supply dumps because we get to choose

where some of them go. Got to dump down the dumps and then we're going to start putting down our trucks. Fuck the trucks. Then when they're down, I do the naval convoy planning. Figure out what I'm going to ship over and when

and where. and then you bomb it, and then we start moving our men around on the map. Yeah. And that'll be in like a month's time? Probably longer. Yeah, yeah. That's crazy. I'm trying to get more realistic about the time frame

of this, because it's slower than we thought. Yeah, but we knew it was going to be long. This is just painfully long. Yeah, we knew it was going to be long, and it's been longer. Yeah. Yeah, I don't love that. I don't love that at all. Because that's going to keep

happening it yeah it has consistently hey once we've done one full turn which at that point in the game rules tell you to stop playing uh but once we've done one full turn uh we'll have a sense of how long everything's going to take and when it comes to playing a full turn we're yet to figure that out but we will we'll figure out what a full turn means because we have no idea if that full turn, because it's three operation stages per turn we don't know if each operation stage is going to be

one week of play or two weeks or three well it'll depend on how many things are moving around and how much is going on it'll be long unfortunately it has to be long yeah having an operation stage is going to take us a long time

so again for those keeping track at home, 111 turns, three operation stages per turn and each operation stage is basically a full turn of the game where you do all the stuff like move everyone around have a fight uh distribute your resources and the little practice run we're doing six turns so 18 operation stages that's what we're doing yeah so that's that's what this is that's what the practice run is and it feels a lot more grounded now and we're gonna be a bit more structured than we were this is starting to feel like it's coming together a

little bit yeah we're starting to arrive at well once we're regularly playing and we have things to update we should hopefully be able to focus on them more it's pretty alarming the rate at which this is becoming a real thing i don't i don't know that i love it wait i what do you mean it's becoming a real thing as in now it's a board game like beforehand no beforehand it was just filling out spreadsheets and we had a box that we got from an auction okay i guess yeah this feels this is good though no this is good this is positive whatever's keeping you on the right track yeah i'm in good spirits man i mean i'm in real good spirit undercutting that with you know

logic or thought no this is good we should be yes anding not no butting I will no but you as much as I want don't you dare no but me I will you will break my spirit good you can't break my spirit

I don't know what this is it's my dreams you take you've gotta stop it's James Blunt I know there we go no James Blunt okay okay regardless of who's singing it you'll always know james blunt i mean it took longer than it would if anyone else had sung it in the entire world every right okay everyone listening

send in a clip of you singing any james blunt song and i will i will i will have andy listen to it and i'll immediately get it you know what that's another thing this is right okay here's a guarantee this is here's this for getting an email in all right one email any any email that has a question about the board game we will answer on this podcast of course yes but as many as we get yeah we'll answer every single one okay yeah that's a promise until we get far too many so we'll do this until it becomes in any way inconvenient for us yes and then we're out yes i like it keep us on track we've already we've already made it very clear you're an accountability

tool yeah you're all here to make sure we keep doing this in many ways you're the the mental equivalent of the bumpers at bowling it's a bit like we need you to keep things roughly in the right direction you'll know exactly what i mean by this um and i can't remember the exact strategy of it but you know when they do that thing with elephants where they so many things you can do with elephants they tie something around them and they're too weak

to move it when they're young oh this is a greek thing the bull where you can't break the rope oh yes oh it's greek again it went back to the hellenistic period of metaphor yeah you have some big magic bull and you put some like

rope on and then it gets big and the rope still chains it okay yeah so yeah as they grow up they don't realise that they're now strong enough to break it so that means that's the same kind of thing

that's essentially the same thing as what I've just said which was my point is one coherent okay let's hear it

lay it on me I think ultimately you are trying to bait me into trying to perfectly articulate what I've just said I'd love you to perfectly articulate what you said

I know but you've got a wry smile on your face and I don't quite like the look of it my friend okay don't look at me but articulate what you just said no not until you pat yourself on the back i'm not doing that now we're at a standstill my friend i'm liking this tension this what the it's sort of like a sexual tension isn't it no then what is it just tension maybe before a fight or an argument so what i was doing there um that sort of lost my train of thought was i was i was

checking because we were doing a lot of uh grease stuff i was double checking because in the game you have Malta involved quite heavily yeah? I mean yes and we talk about Greece a lot so I was just quickly checking, you know, is Malta classed as a Greek territory I, no I'd guess

not, don't do what are you doing yes, you could have just said it was he's just picked up his entire laptop and turned it round and just wires dangling off it As if you couldn't have just said the word no to me

So I just checked and Malta is not in Greece No, I think it's its own country Yeah, I thought it was in Greece Why? Because it's in the Mediterranean And you didn't know where it was There you go Malta's your place

Yeah And I know where it is Which is? In the Mediterranean Give me the coordinates right now 180.2 Oh my god Keep going

Jesus Christ He's a genius And now you can just remember those You can remember those coordinates And then never look a map up again If you go to Malta In some kind of plane For any Maltans out there

Hello Hi, thanks for listening Please email us Let us know how it is there It's probably very different to what we understand it to be what we understand it to be unfortunately is an airfield and a very frustrating component of a board game

and I'm sure it's very nice very different to that but we couldn't speak to that because for us it's just a source of frustration until we go to Malta unfortunately at the moment Libya, Egypt we're also annoyed at your presence

in the sense of the board game and we hope to overcome that I think Egypt liked me yeah but right now Egypt for us is just a place on a big game map that is just really

really riling us up the wrong way no I think it liked me and I liked it the map gave me a vibe it shouldn't give you a vibe it's several pieces of paper that's how tactics work you get a vibe I'm getting a vibe from you

it's a weird one sexy vibe you're just trying to bring back the hungry eyes thing from the failed 10 minutes. I'm absolutely not. I don't know what that is. I told you you were looking at me with hungry eyes.

So are you the baby or are you Patrick Swayze when you say that? I am the non-diegetic music. Wait, so they don't even sing that in the movie? No, it's just going on in the background. Kevin Bacon doesn't sing Footloose in Footloose. loose i mean i assumed he danced it though he yeah he dances to it because that's a song i mean that's a film called footloose it's about feet it would be inappropriate sorry it's about what

it's about feet being freed uh you know what you're not actually wrong so it would be wrong for him to sing and i think on that note we should call this a day where we found a common ground and footloose at least right now we can go home unified in this one thing i'm going to destroy every film you love from specifically the 80s i'm going to take them from you and if you do have an email please send it in we'll be back next week with war and don't touch that dial because we're not quite sure what it does we're not up to that point in the rules yet we'll hear from you next time please please get in touch we still don't know what the camels are for email us about that we're losing track of everything good night