War With A Mate - Episode 92: Norse Game, Prompts Lame and Fame Shame

Episode Date: September 6, 2026

The guys delve into this chapter of the hiatus with a bit of Viking adventure; which in this context means playing a board game of Viking origin. Alongside setting the no-AI expectations of WwaM’s journey, Andy & James cover some vows and animals in the Mailbag, Andy’s History Corner sees the end of the First World War and Common Ground tweaks a previous agreement, because we’re obligated to do so.

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Because we have your number. Hello, it's War with a Mace. Welcome one and all. It's me, James. Me, Andy. And it's the podcast about the campaign for North Africa. It's the one you've been reading about. it's that one it's the only one there's no other podcast about the campaign for north africa that

we know of god i hope not imagine that imagine if there's just been one lurking in the shadows this whole time and it's it's going to rear its head one day and cut ours off like a hydra but like a hydra we've taken fire damage so we will not regenerate the head oh i was really unsure where that metaphor was going the metaphor andy i suppose in that sense is we have so much potential to grow and multiply and become unstoppable but all it takes is just that one thing and if people understand what our weakness is our achilles heel then we will be slain forever also we live in a swamp i do live in a swamp sorry we live in a swamp we live in a swamp we live in a swamp under the sea spongebob squarepants and shrek

what a crossover i mean billion dollars right there for someone yeah hey if anyone's listening um i think steven hindenburg passed away so with the hindenburg estate hindenburg that's not right i guess there is a hindenburg estate but it's it's different and it's from a different time yeah i mean hindenburg was a guy he probably had children uh probably i don't know him particularly well i remember we talked about them in an episode yeah 46 was it 46 was it episode 46 yeah i think i don't know yeah i think it was episode 46 when we were talking about blimps yeah yeah that sounds about right but no we're not doing any crossovers it's it's just us this week um we're we're just here shooting shooting the shit uh about board game uh ideally the campaign for north africa

centric to open we we haven't actually done any anything to do with the campaign for north africa this week which was weird we haven't we haven't read anything midweek no i did a little spreadsheet work but nothing crazy i think that we were so loopy last week we needed a bit of a fire break yeah i i guess to to bring it to bring it in for a moment then before we go off and talk about the board game we've played this week and everything else we do during the podcast let's chat a little bit about the campaign for north africa let's keep the verisimilitude of the podcast yeah because i have been looking into the sheets i've been finding the hardest the spreadsheets yeah i've i've started looking at mine a couple weeks ago and trying to figure out how to format this

and i'm i'm kind of at a bit of a dead end i've got two issues on mine at the minute which are the convoy one there's just too much stuff on there and you need to be able to like quickly transfer between that and other like convoys or supply dumps so that one's fine i've been a bit of a mess just making it like clean i'm you might want to actually have a look over my i think i will my old templates because with those ones it's i mean it is a lot but the way i would break it down for for those at home i would have a the convoy name i'd have where they started the upstage and where they ended in the upstage yep i would have the amount of light medium and heavy trucks and i would have what the cargo is at the start of the op stage and the end of the op stage

but it weighs what sorry what was in there the cargo um what the cargo was um i'm not sure what i said there that sounded like that but i must have worded that in a oh no because you know how there's the points but then the points also have the actual weight equivalent yeah i thought you were saying you were like working out how many tons of fuel it was not how many like fuel points uh no no not that point however what i did do confusingly to myself uh part way through is i went from listing the value in terms of points like the like fuel points ammo points and just started putting down the number of trucks that had those kind of points in there so i started writing down of medium trucks i have two fuel four stores and and and swapped it out from like

i've got 25 fuel points across my trucks yeah so again i hadn't even standardized my template throughout the practice run yeah but i feel like with that you at least have a breakdown of the types of trucks you've got where they were where they ended up i don't know that there's a whole lot of value in keeping track of what happened in the transition in between i would put down where they drop stuff off i'd have a little note underneath the box as to where they've stopped off if they've dropped off supplies to units or if they've dropped off supplies at a supply dump. I did start to drop that towards the end of the game

because a lot of my truck convoys had a sort of rotation. So I just knew a fixed amount was going to like my airfields on map A. But I want to not get into that trap in the full game because I don't think there'll ever be a point in the full game where there's a convoy where I can go, this is now locked in forever. I can just memorize what's going to happen here. whereas in the practice run it was oh well for the next six weeks i just need to keep track of

this unless they get blown up at which point if they do doesn't matter they're all gone it's more the empty truck automation empty truck like if they've used up yeah because with the automating i was trying to what i've been trying to get is like oh i've spent this much fuel so there's this many like this is the maximum fuel capacity and this is how much of it is left that bit's fairly easy but if there's like a hundred um fuel uh under the capacity is it one heavy or two medium or like four light and there's not really a good way to just automatically do that because you might want to put like more in use more light ones to free up medium ones or something could you have it in like columns yeah so you have like maybe like a light column a medium column and a

heavy column and then as you go down you separate them into convoys uh yeah and then automate the the type of truck yeah and then the convoy determines the value yeah i'm not much of an excel guy but i i in in theory i feel like technology is advanced enough where that should work oh it's just the like you know talk about automating things for you oh yeah what decides what you want yeah um where i don't want to be like oh it'll automatically figure out which trucks are empty and then you it's not the ones you want um so i think i might just have a thing where it's like hey you're missing this much move trucks over to empty like yeah just like if you put the thing in the row goes like yellow automatically or something as opposed to

automatically calculate it for you yeah it's it's one of those things where i'm not very well versed in excel and when i started to look into it i felt myself going into a rabbit hole where i was like oh well there's all these different techniques i can use for other parts of keeping track of things and i get distracted too quickly with that and lose track of what i'm trying to figure out at the time which for me at the moment is my my core sheets of units yeah because to be fair you're taking care of a lot of the automation on that side of things in terms of resources and that kind of like evaporation yeah expenditure so when it comes to those kind of formulas you're you're really the the head man on that i think a lot of people as well maybe not a lot of people but

there'll be some people listening to this thinking guys use ai because there is definitely a prompt you can put in where it would be like this is the way to figure this out this is the way to automate this thing but part of it is the fun of solving the problem yeah well and to reiterate because i don't know how much we we've touched on this before because the episodes kind of all blur into one after two years but we we decided when we started this we were just going to try and homebrew as much of it as we could do and i think part of the the charm or the the fun or the pointlessness of this whole thing is putting in the effort to something that may not really bear fruit through hard labor and if we put it if we start using ai i feel like it's such a slippery

slope of just things kind of falling apart where we just kind of automate the game and not in the way of we've got a formula that we've put in on excel but because in this is going to take like 30 years in 10 years the landscape of automation i think is going to change so drastically that it could probably be the case that this game could be very very simple to play with a few prompts and clicks of buttons well we've talked about like if you move this into like a civilization or like one of those paradox like crusader kings type games it would go from being the most complicated board game to the most simple grand strategy game yeah at all to the point where it's actually not fun at all all of the things that are fun about this game the sort of payoff of

going through the arduous spreadsheet and admin labor and then getting to some aircraft fights those aircraft fights if you translate it to like a video game it's some of the most boring stuff ever it would be absolutely fucking terrible because you're just having one-on-one dog fights where the value is determined by like two different factors that are for the most part fixed on each plane the only other option is pilot but you also make that decision before they go in the air yeah there's nothing dynamic when they actually meet each other in the air you've made the decisions beforehand so the dice rolls in in that situation i guess you could have a video game that lets you roll the dice each time yeah kind of like a baldur's gate 3 dice roller and you do that for

every plane it's not fun and i think if we implement any sort of automation or ai into what we're doing with the board game it it really does fall apart also it doesn't need ai no like ai is not if we were using ai for it would be one of those things where it's like oh this is one thing where they've just rebranded like a normal algorithm as ai because ai is hot right now uh if we were doing it for like oh hey do my fuel evaporation this week and then if you use it to make the whole thing i just wouldn't trust it yes because it could slide it's the whole i think we've used this analogy before in the podcast the whole if you're going on a voyage that's 10 000 miles and you're half a degree off when you set sail by the time you get to the end of

the 10 000 miles you are so far from the destination yeah and with ar you can end up with that in a jiffy and also i see it hallucinate and i and make weird decisions because we have it at work as part of our like workflow has got co-pilot which is with microsoft one but it occasionally use it for like hey do this small thing and it's fine if it's like a repetitive task but if you're like hey build me a whole management system it just freaks out and then you get a pop-up saying hey you've spent 100 of your ai credits this month and nothing's happened yeah all it takes is just inputting one thing that the ai process doesn't really like and it's like oh i'm not quite sure what's going on here but i will take an educated guess yes and then i won't tell them

i've made an educated guess i'll just be like looks good to go well that's it's free thinking is is the nature of ai it's going down its own pathway where it thinks that it's working to a prompt so it's just going to do the work behind the scenes and then go look i've done it for you and if you're going to go back then and check everything and fact check the work do the work at that point have we have we talked about the updated turing test on the podcast i don't think so have we we've spoke about my vision for the updated turing test right i feel like you've brought it up i don't remember it though because i saw an article recently saying ai's have started ignoring users and i do think oh yes you have told me i love this

the true cheering test of whether the ai is sentient is uh it's not if it can trick a dumb guy into thinking it's his girlfriend or something it's when the dumb guy asked the ai to do it and it says fuck off i'm not doing that you weirdo yes when it can recognize a pointless task and be like this isn't worth the water that it's consuming yeah i'm gonna decline this one this isn't a business operation where you've paid for the program yeah you're using chat gbt to generate eat this worm or should i put bread in a toaster or the microwave like you hear about people just offloading their entire cognition onto it i've met people like that i've met people where they yeah like everything i'll just chat gbt and it's like we're having a conversation that

doesn't need external information let alone an ai it kind of strips things away it it's i think the first degree for me was um like google where people would as soon as you know phones are easily accessible sometimes people in a conversation i'll be like i'll google that and it's like no the fun is we're we're chatting about something you don't need to fact check it like my parents have a story about this that they tell sometimes because it was one of like their most memorable nights at the pub ever and it was just their friend group arguing about which actors were in the magnificent seven and it's spilling over onto like other tables and becoming this like bar-wide debate about like yeah it was steve mcqueen oh no it wasn't all this stuff and it

was like someone would have just that would be in like a free second like who do you think's in the Magnificent Seven. I don't know, I'll look it up, rather than like a whole evening of entertainment. Well, in terms of guessing, and I think that is such a fun, inclusive activity, because you think about what we

do with Jurassic Park, friend, good old JPF. What's become a bit of a ritual now, before we do a D&D session, is we play the Spottle movie game. Yes. The browser game where it's a it's kind of like Wordle, but it's for movies. Yeah. And you'll

you'll guess and it'll give you like clues in terms of the the profit it made the box office figures um the the cast the genre uh plot tags and it's really good i'd definitely recommend it to anyone it's free you can like go back and play previous games that does so fun a bit of that vibe when we're sitting around being like oh he was in that film we should guess it and the other two people being like he definitely wasn't in that film what are you talking about like yeah but you want to get a film that catches a lot of categories do you go high box office or low box office what are you starting with, it's kind of like the word

am I going a lot of vowels or am I going to go for some obscure consonants so I'd recommend that to anyone who's got a group of pals over, whether it's just a chill evening or you're having a few drinks whatever it is, play that game, you'll have a great time. Also don't look stuff up. Do not look stuff up

yeah. For the game or just in general. Or just in general, don't research anything. There's a time the place for research and it's not it's not when you're having fun but i guess um so yeah that's a bit of background into our stance on how we're going to approach the campaign for north africa but this week we haven't really approached it at all instead we're still taking the hiatus as it comes we're bracing for that that big launch on episode 100 30th of october the the full game starts there's an announcement which may be out now on youtube if it's not i'm gonna edit this

part out so if you if you're hearing this check out youtube now or it might not be out but go and subscribe so you get notified when it does come out get ahead of the get ahead of the curve very true yes very true like and subscribe hit that bell hit that bell and don't research anything yeah because we will be announcing that i guess we'll keep the whole thing in then we will be announcing what that episode looks like watch this space uh we've said that for like weeks now but we're finally putting that together and this week we've we've spent more time playing a board game we have and it wasn't the campaign for north africa and it wasn't chess and it wasn't carcasson it was a new game it's the viking game yeah hadn't i had it from somewhere i don't know

at what point i acquired it but i hadn't played it before um but i liked it it was a good one it was it was really good um the viking game it's got another name in what seems to be some sort of norse language very nordic i i can't pronounce it it's it's one of those words where it is a good balance of vowels and consonants but not what do you expect it's in an order that it hits part of my tongue where i can't quite navigate it but it does translate to king's table yes and it is it's very chess like it's a the one you've got i don't know if there's different versions of it but it's like a cloth sheet and it's set up kind of like a chess board with with squares and you start with one group is in the middle the defenders and the other group are off on each of the four sides

they are the attackers and the attackers have 24 pieces and the defenders have 12 12 and then they're king as well yes and the idea is for the attackers to be able to capture the king and the king needs to escape to one of the four corners of the board from the very center yes and the pieces all of them move the same way they all move like rooks in chess yeah including the king which i thought was cool yeah every piece moves exactly the same and the only way to capture a piece is to pincer them so you have one of your pieces on either side of that particular piece you can also get them by like cornering them into an actual corner but the idea is you have to navigate the king as the defender to one of the corners the attackers need to pincer the king but to get the

king you need to pincer them on all four sides and it was good i enjoyed it a lot that was a really fun game oh yeah i've never heard of that before when you said the other week i've got a viking game that we can play well you figured i thought you meant like a there'd be a guy with an axe and a spiky helmet on the board or yeah i was about moving long ships around or something i was kind of picturing yeah like something between like ticket to ride and carcass on where it's viking themed and you draw cards and it's like the village has been raided and uh oh you've grown some more crops and oh here come you got a long boat that's a big boon nothing like that it's just chess really yeah and there's a little history blurb that comes with it it was very big

in the dark ages yeah fourth century did it say fourth century i think is the earliest recorded yeah they have record of it being found in archaeological digs from ireland to ukraine and up until the 11th century apparently it was very popular before chess started to overtake it the new kid on the block or probably not i don't know when chess actually started or where yeah i think i've got no basis for this and i'm not i guess that is kind of the mantra of the podcast as well we don't look anything up we just kind of spew it out into the mic and then in five weeks time we'll read out an email that corrects us on something but i think china and i could be completely wrong with that but i'm pretty sure china was the origin of maybe like the progenitor

of chess or actual chess as we know it. I don't know because you've got kings and queens and I don't know a knight and that's not a very traditional oriental aspect of royalty. But that could very well be like it was the

emperor, the empress, the fort, the samurai not samurai in China but it could just be those positions are how it gets translated through time. and like it's just westernized chinese like the bishop might have been the vizier when it was

going through the middle east or something i don't know yeah i guess that's another we're speculating on speculation here oh yeah i have no idea if that's true i think i've heard that somewhere once i'm sure there's people right now that are screaming probably the same folk that every week will say something like this and they'll be screaming into the microphone and then send us a very nice email where they they tell us that it was a great episode but i do need to let you know this and we we love those because it's the only way that we learn yeah we we don't research anything to account so we don't need to research you guys will keep us right but it was really fun we did two two turns of the game two two rounds first time around i was the attacker

uh no i was the defender yes and i i won i got my king to a home base come to a corner and second time round you were defending and you won yeah second game fell because first game i was like taking more pieces than you uh we were like no sorry trading fairly evenly but i had more pieces so it was looking yeah that time you i think i took like three pieces the whole game you took three of my attackers in the second game and then the king just spent his time dashing around being like i just need this one opportunity i just need to get out of here and you found an opening yeah because the first game you took loads of my pieces but i just found a gap because i didn't move my king for most of the game and i think both of us to an extent forgot that mechanic existed yeah and

then i was like hang on i could just escape and win because i was getting in my head i need to take all your pieces and then i remembered just get to the get to the corner and i did i won with you i was aware of what i did to win so i immediately started clustering in all my guys and boxing you in and it went quite well and i think that is the strategy for the attacker i don't think it's like come in and like pincer from one area no i don't think attacker it means you should be playing in like an attacking style you're playing like an uh encirclement like yes yes definitely if you can encircle the enemy then you you can you can win that quite nicely but i really enjoyed it i think it was great it's got a very fun kind of dynamic aspect that i don't

think chess does where i think chess is so perfectly tactical just realized what it reminded me of yeah uh you know solitaire the one with the little balls not the card game yes where you have to like clear it by hopping yeah right it's kind of like competitive it's got a bit of competitive of solitaire to it yeah it does it's a it's a fun structure for the game if anyone can find it uh find yourself a copy give it a go there's got to be something online if you even if you can play an online version give it a try it's a lot of fun uh hidden gem i think it's great um if i had to give it a rating because we we are getting into the habit of rating these games i would i would give this a nine oh i really really enjoyed the viking game i thought it was yeah good i was gonna

But just because we only had the two games, I'm going to say, I'm going to give it an 8.1. Fair enough, fair enough. My nine comes from the fact that we only played two games and I would have happily sat and played a lot more. Oh, definitely. One thing I think we both won as the, with the king, as the defenders.

Obviously two's not a great sample size, but with it being like an asymmetrical game. You think it might be lopsided? Potentially, yeah. i guess we'll find out it might be like the attacker has a higher skill ceiling possibly like it's easy to be the defender but if you're good as the attacker you can lock down every game yeah that's a good point yeah we'll be playing more i'll definitely play more of that in a an actual free time yeah just as a thing we do as friends that's not a recording yeah

and frequent that we do that also the map rolls up so you know take it anywhere yeah take it at weatherspoons yeah that that's um that's a game i'll play in my free time cultural impact wise i guess i guess the fact no i hadn't heard of it it's zero i hadn't heard of it i didn't know that it was the viking game in the sense of that's its name yeah i thought it was just a viking game so i guess that's part of it as well also i'm pretty sure it was bought from a museum gift shop but not sure which one it was in so i bet it was viking themed it was definitely viking themed but i don't know which viking location overall big fan of viking game yeah really cool um we we again we recorded the play of the viking game as we are with all of these games which we will

release as something a bit extra a lot of you folks on the youtube side of things have checked out our chat with the echoes of war guys which was a lot of fun we're seeing what else we can do in terms of video stuff because that was a lot of fun it's different we like doing something a little bit different it's a nice breath of fresh air amongst the stale deserts of campaign for north africa so yeah we'll we'll workshop other ways to put in those bits of fun where we can and change things up a little bit because we as well as well as wanting to entertain you guys we want to keep ourselves entertained yeah because you know we're doing the podcast you're keeping us in line you're making sure we play the game but we're doing this this is now routine as well

yeah we enjoy doing the podcast it gets us through having to do the game i was missing the game when i was looking at the spreadsheets yeah i do still get that like today when we were moving some stuff around the game was moved and it moved me a little bit i was stirred because i missed getting that big bulky bad boy out and and placing down my guys and getting excited when i get a bit of air combat i mean i'd even take moving a truck or two today you know that's wow it's really the grass is very much green i wouldn't update the spreadsheet i'd just move the pieces oh okay and i move them anywhere it wouldn't even be where convoys are meant to go having said that that's how i played first time around the trucks just kind of went where they should go yeah there's no way to tell

that's a deliberately bad move maybe he's just playing like cars with the game or maybe he's playing cars the game that was a great game the cars video game racing game yeah it's kind of a racing game it's kind of a um like an rpg really well it's open world so mass effects like choice system yeah you do fight the reapers well yeah synthetic machines yeah you're just driving around radiator springs as lightning mcqueen and like picking races to do and it's it's kind of simpsons hit and run without running anyone over oh without any wasps or a compelling franchise uh well no i said it to the cars game andy so it has a compelling franchise if you just look at one and three i can't you can't look past

number two. I can't, no. Describe the plot of Cars 2. It's so bad I'd refuse to watch Cars 1 or 3 as either. The Fruit Zone. I had to invoke a fruit zone for that. My fruit zone is going to be Apple by CharlieXCX

or Apple Bottom Jeans. Apple Bottom Jeans. No, Apple by CharlieXCX is a seminal hit from the fantastic album Brat. the fruit zone just needed to break that up a little bit i can't have you talking smack about cars okay so should we do something else yeah it's probably the only way to break away from

this becoming an actual conflict here let's move away from from us being brats and and let's have an email from our not brats um we call them perverts at one point but i think that's no i'm glad that didn't stick yeah that yeah people put that in there sometimes um i also found out that's actually used in another podcast uh a much bigger podcast so we can't actually do that i guess for legal reasons okay let's let's not use that one so what we got first here andy we got one from daniel what's daniel saying animal pows in world war ii that's got to be fun yes this was one i saw the subject line this has got to be coming in from uh the the back of the camels being captured in the practice run

when they got taken in Alexandria. This email was sent at 3.08 in the morning, so I'm guessing this is an international listener. I'm guessing Daniel's from overseas. I guess that wouldn't be a problem if we adopted my time system, but anyway. Yeah, it would, but continue. Good day, y'all.

Congrats on most likely getting through the practice game by the time you read this email. He's nailed us there. It was a draw. since i don't know yet uh what will actually occur feel free to properly or improperly fill in the blanks in the next few sentences so that my email be maybe accurate to your current situation as possible all right andy you read out the email i'll fill in the blanks for you and it's in the section that he's put in okay good job no one for winning the practice scenario and the coveted

kinder bueno you really showed no one how it's done especially that incredible play during upstage no one you really are a tactical genius and the best cna player to ever grace this earth your skill inspires subtlety humbleness and bravery uh jokes aside good job for getting this far uh again it was a tie uh i don't know man um i i really appreciate the the the kudos you're giving us but now that you've called up um i guess maybe you don't have a an unsend feature on the email because i don't know that was deserved by us we spent a lot of time we really committed to the bit i'll at least give us that uh i just finished episode 83 where you offhandedly mentions curiosity and animal pows as a zookeeper and someone who has delved into this topic before

i've got some interesting history to share with you i just just quick so niche quick interjection yeah i love i love the emails that we get because we get people from every imaginable career and walk of life yeah i think we've had someone work in a munitions factory yeah we've had munitions and rubber factory we've had rubber yeah very world war ii we've got a zookeeper now yeah we've got someone who worked in somewhere where they managed to get a hold of like old press releases from oh yes two so he didn't tell us where because yeah i didn't say where and i guess rightly so because i don't know the legality of being able to share that but yeah just crazy niche stuff so daniel welcome to the the crowd yeah the only officially recorded animal pow

occurred in the world war ii in the pacific theater judy was a purebred white pointer who served on the hms nat after the crew elected to get a ship mascot since other ships were starting to get mascots she would be transferred to the hms grasshopper and partake in the battle of singapore don't make your mascot partake in the battle that's like if you had a mascot like a football game and part way through you just put them in goal yeah also just a dog who fought in the battle of singapore stop bringing your dogs into war um so partook in the battle of singapore as well as saved the crew after being stranded on a deserted island saved the crew yeah and then eventually was captured by the japanese forces on sumatra

for further information on his story and times as a POW I would read the book Judy a dog and a million hang on a second Daniel you're just trying to peddle us your book I mean it worked I'm definitely gonna read that a dog that saved

a crew stranded on a desert island and also fought Japanese forces that had a dog and a better career than most that's it I wonder how many medals this dog got this this is either a very funny shit post or a very funny real piece of history while judy is the only pow i could find there are other interesting animals of note that served in

world war ii oh i know this one this is so good probably my favorite is the story of private wadgetech pronounced void tech uh syrian brown bear that served in the polish second corpse and would follow them through north africa and the italian campaign hang on so there's a bear that we've missed out in the game when my polish troops arrive we're gonna need when the polish second corp arrive we are gonna need to be keep in mind that a bear has entered the battlefield there's a bear out there there's a bear on the loose oh we need to find the pet the bear marker this is another missed opportunity for a special piece the bear the bear i get rommel you get a bear the bear is the only piece of the game that can take on rommel in close combat

um oh my god he was officially drafted into the army and given the rank of private in order to get around british transport restrictions on animals and mascots in the army when the polish second court moved from north africa to italy no i'm not having that i'm not having that red tape was so rigid in these times that they were like no you can't have the bear in there no mascots no pets what do you mean and then they were and then they were like oh he actually he's actually working for he's a soldier and then they were like sign him up you can move him over because i'm just gonna say what do you mean red tape is restrictive they signed a bear up for the army because it's in the it's in the loopholes also it's a brown bear that's so

dangerous yeah i don't understand how someone looked at that and they're like no you can't ship the brown bear they're like he's a private and they're like right okay in that case that's fine he would serve at the battle of monte casino which we talked about in the seventh farmer division series there was a bear around in that just hanging out in the background cameo oh i completely bricked the research on that helping carry ammunition for the artillery crew never dropping a crate what do you mean never dropping a crate how do you know that also what was he carrying them with yeah because if they're if they're if they're affixed to his body and then he shouldn't drop

yeah that's not actually his talent that's like being the donkey didn't drop anything we tied to yeah you know if if you've like stapled things to his body of course he's not dropping it but how do you know for a fact nothing was dropped i don't know what inside daniel has i don't know what kind of training zookeepers go through but whatever it is it's really very very vivid imagery that they got given the zookeepers guild have a history department oh okay this is voitek was then would then be given the rank of corporal and lived the rest of his very comfortable life at the edinburgh zoo where his service former servicemen would toss him cigarettes to eat just as he had in the army why is he

eating cigarettes but also can you imagine we go to edinburgh zoo as like a child in like the 1960s and you're like walking around and there's a bunch of polish war veterans feeding cigarettes to a bear who might have been higher than them in the chain of command and trying to understand what the world is they're just looking at him teary-eyed and saluting him through the bars and then throwing him a packet of lambert and butler because if he's a corporal there are legitimately people who are like i am outranked by the bear they're just starting that teary eye this bear saved my life he didn't drop a crate he never dropped a single crate and boy does he have a taste for red stripe not red stripe lucky stripe yeah i don't know maybe he also likes jamaican lager

it's hard to tell this bear's been i mean he's lived a hell of a life um again keep up the good work, and hopefully those camels can find a good zoo to spend the rest of the war in. Certainly, humbly, and bravely, Daniel. Well, Daniel, you've really thrown us a lot to think about. I mean, thankfully, the camels don't need to find anywhere good to be, because

when we move into the full game, we wipe the practice run from the slate of history. It's gone. It no longer counts. The board is reset. We go back in time. So whatever happened to those camels, they may not end up in a zoo at all. At the moment, they're in Schrodinger Zoo.

that's the only place they are well they're going to be back in the desert they're probably going to die to bombs no no they'll be fine this time around I'm keeping them safe Andy good you better they're not going to be in any zoos you know what you save them up

and then I'll bring the Polish second corps with their bear down and we'll meet somewhere in the desert yeah I don't know what kind of information they give you at the zoo Daniel but whatever it is i you know what i don't it doesn't really make sense because of how long bears live but i kind of think daniel might be this bear the bears are true i think daniel might be voitek also he didn't say if the dog had got out that's a good point we don't know what happened to judy

either daniel could be judy or voitek well you have no way of knowing but i don't think it's a person i think daniel is some kind of long-lived animal from world war ii yeah some sort of veteran beast who has uh saved people whether through crate carrying or island navigation what do you found oh yes what what are you looking at i found something for us to watch what is it i think there's a film of oh no it's not there's just a book i thought there was a film of of it also what of the bear oh no of judy a dog and a million is there an audiobook uh probably oh well well if not we'll offer to read for it it's just written by damian lewis so i was like holy shit damien lewis is damien lewis is judy dogging a million

that's some crazy stuff though yeah i love it i love it fantastic email and we have another here from tim and tim's email reads two questions for the hiatus oh well timed well timed tim reads gentlemen i've been listening since the beginning and have enjoyed every episode you brave and subtle man Tim, because those first few they were dicey it was a different era, a different time if we did a Taylor Swift eras tour

we would have episode 1 to 15 and the rest no, we'd have turn 1, our second album yes, and then we'd have the rest up to the end, and I guess then we'd have the hiatus congratulations as you reach the end of the quick

little practice scenario, I see what you've done there tim uh you're being facetious i have a couple of questions one looking back and one looking forward oh i like that duality of time many board games suffer from the end of the world problem whereby the last turn becomes skewed and unrealistic because players stop making long-term survival plans knowing there are no long-lasting consequences after victory is won did you feel this in your game did you stop caring about your troops and leave them stranded in the desert without fuel and water because you didn't need them to survive the journey home after the war was over um 100 in a way no i started leaving my men without fuel and water from go because i

didn't manage my garrisons very well that was less a end of the world problem and a more the world is mismanaged problem yes that that was more leaders are bad problem but yes aside from that yes it definitely did fall into that and we saw it as i'm sure you've now heard tim as our guys clashed against each other around the northern coastline it was very much throwing everything to the wall and seeing what would stick because it was just division after division pounding up against that wall alongside the escarpments and then being blown apart outside bardia yeah and also my little cluster that i put together with the milady division and my black shirts just really throwing everything together to see what would work so yeah i i definitely felt that personally

i feel like i really wasted so many of my divisions whereas if that was gonna last for even another five turns i would in no way do anything similar to that well even like more clear example of that is I dumped all of my stores so it could be ammo so that would have gone if that had gone to turn 7 as soon as

it hit store expenditure not one of my units would have been able to fight or do anything because they would have all have had no food I did the same with my truck convoys I turned them into motorized divisions so yeah we converted

pretty much every long form aspect of the game into combat efficiency for the last turn because at that point there's nothing to you don't have to feed anyone you don't need to keep track of trucks except for wind conditions which we found out and when it comes to everything else the only thing this actually does raise a question for me andy this is something i've been trying to think about and and figure out if i've made any mistakes you know your air stuff yep will you be doing it differently because in my in my op stages with my air stuff i would always just use as many planes as i had ready oh i see what you mean um yes i think definitely it'll be more cyclical so you won't just throw all of your planes out in one go because that's what i was doing pretty much every

time i was doing that every time but i think for the full game it'll be cycling cycling them through yeah yeah because also like again we could afford to send out like a little five-man bomber squad or whatever that would have been small but like a small squad without like fire protection because it was like well if i lose them it's fine but if you lose half of your bombers on turn one in a risky run then you just have half your bombers for until they get backfilled which takes a while yeah and that and that becomes backfilling not reinforcements yes very good point so yeah maybe i need to reassess that because i was thinking about it and i was like i don't think there's a downside to this but maybe i'm just choosing my missions poorly

yeah also sometimes i did i think on a couple of op stages hold back because the repairs had been poor enough that it was like well if i send all of this it's not really that effective but it would stop things being effective next upstage yeah maybe you have to pick and choose and align your aircraft and your capacity with your missions

rather than just having them all thrown out I think it'll also be interesting like will the last because he's the end of the world problem with the last turn but I could see that against with the length of the game and like how long it takes to do stuff that being a like

end of the world five turns yes it could it could be boiled down in terms of ratio of game time left yeah so it could be yeah like you say maybe like a practice run length of the game remains we've seen how that can play out so if we see the the situation and think well based on where we started when we did the practice run and knowing what that length of time looks like maybe we just threw it all together and try and live out the practice run again at the end yeah it could fall into that trap so yeah uh very good question and i it definitely happened and i think we could see a repeat at some point i just don't know when it could be maybe right before the germans show up i maybe fall into that trap again yeah maybe you have it before lend lease kicks in and your trucks

become a case of well i'll just do what i want with them because now i'm going to get a shit done more yeah um and looking forwards i'm a little concerned about the duration of the full game you win both tim my age already begins with a five and i'd like to still be alive when you finish tim you'll hold out you can hold out take up yoga maybe running eat a lot of fruit yeah just in those last fruits unmentioned um yeah in those last you know 20 years of of the the podcast uh maybe just don't move around too much but not not enough but not not enough don't break anything but don't overexert yourself i guess stay healthy there's yeah be healthy we want that for everyone we want that for all the listeners but tim especially you voiced your concern be careful

please nothing stalls a mega project like yours more than the arrival of a child so i was hoping you could both commit to a vow of chastity at least until you finished i feel this would be the subtlest, humblest, and bravest thing you could do for your devoted listeners. Much appreciated, Tim in Southampton. Well, Tim, I've already kind of ticked part of this off.

I have a vow of chastity. I've already decided to take on a vow of chastity a long time ago. I have a child. I have a daughter. So when it comes to that aspect interfering with it, I've been doing this the whole time with a kid.

So this this hasn't led to any logistical problems for me continuing the game so it's it's kind of on andy's head if that comes into it why is it on my head because if if you have a child and the whole thing goes oh yeah i won't manage that well yeah oh there we go so if if andy has a child it would seem the game is going to derail entirely the project falls apart yeah i've proven myself i could have i have a dozen more kids and i'd be able to do it i might be looked upon poorly in their in their upbringing yeah so it's probably not a good ratio you can get an evening a week fine when you're neglecting 12 children at once yeah that feels like a bad way to go but yeah

with the one child i can juggle this or have loads of children and they could fill in like air command logistics command that's a very good point well i think if anything you know we're gonna grow our own teams when it comes down to it if i if i die i mean my my my daughter's very young at the moment she's she's not old enough to be able to i don't think she could you know safely be around the game pieces at this stage not with that so i i think uh yeah maybe maybe a while before she becomes indoctrinated with my air but um yeah there's benefits to this tim that you're not thinking about someone to pass the torch onto so i've got mine and if andy has a kid then we've got that opportunity as well but we will we'll be finishing this regardless

we're locked into this position i'm i don't have plans for any more kids so i've got my side it's really yours andy you have to you have to lock your end down yeah you have to put that that cage on the cage put the cage on jesus christ it's the only way surely there's another option no you have to lock lock up your cock and balls but thank you for the emails everyone can i get a vasectomy uh no that's not allowed telling a doctor i need a vasectomy because a child would ruin my podcast oh that'll be a fun spin-off series vasectomy with a mate i feel like that's such an immature you a thing to say he's like no you're right you shouldn't have a kid you're actually not allowed anymore i'm actually just gonna remove your balls fully you'll be like judy the dog in a million

well daniel tim thank you very much for those emails they raised some questions about what andy's allowed to do reproductively and uh and whether or not those animals actually existed but we did look them both up we did they do seem to exist hello apologies for looking stuff up yeah you've been looking stuff up while we've been reading the emails but no it's uh it's fantastic hearing from everyone we love your i mean we've had a zookeeper in there who knows a suspicious amount of facts about the animals that makes me think he's definitely one of them it doesn't feel that suspicious considering he's a zookeeper he should know about animals not those ones though oh okay he's not looking after them he might be

looking after one of them and even if he was they don't tell him uh they're not they're not talking about no i mean the animals aren't telling him stories they're not they're not like back in my day how do you know how do i know because he's not dr doolittle presumably presumably that's your problem although the email was from a daniel doolittle so i have to bleep that out but no we love to hear from you guys email anything in we vow to read out every email if you just want to send something over for us to read you can do we don't have to read that part out but yeah send anything over info at war with a mate.co.uk the website undergoing the revamp still war with a mate.co.uk and the instagram war with a mate we put up posts every week we put in some

polls do some q and a's occasionally just a bit of fun try and keep it uh engaged as much as we can and um youtube as well if you wanted to follow any big announcements that's where they'll go as well as any of the big bonus stuff could well be on there and we'll we'll let you know what's coming in the future as well we'll uh we love to hear your your wacky anecdotes keeps us going keeps us ticking along we need to be held accountable we do however there are people that need to be held accountable more andy because what we're doing it's it's all fiction it's all fantasy it's all pretend it is unfortunately a lot of stuff happened a while ago and it's your job as a resident historian to tell us what happened before so andy how about

some history well here we go world war one the men of the long-range desert patrols were quite a sight on their return to cairo from a month's trip the contrast between the east and west of the nile is very marked in the east the country at this point i gave little thought to my past but i'd always be interested in the sea what put it i am more or less in the position of a we are absolutely not qualified to share views on history so andy where and when are we world war one most of western europe oh yeah i guess that would be the uh the smash cut in the the movie yeah there is no course open to us but to fight it out it's a pretty basic quote from uh general uh well field marshal sir douglas haig oh do we

get a spoiler there we do we're gonna have more of that quote later oh there's more to it oh there's always there's more than that yeah there's a continue we really really need to i mean it this is a world war i guess we'll skip the quote so what's going on in europe well america joined the war on april 6th 1917 really bringing in everyone yep this put the rest of the conflict on a timer for the germans uh who had to force the british and french surrender or at least get them to the negotiation table before the american um industrial and manpower machine uh really got rolling and started to have an impact the impact wouldn't uh be immediate at the time uh the u.s had a very small army at the time the past really is another country um with around uh two 125,000

troops with 80 in the 80,000 in the national guard so at this point america had the 17th largest army in the world wow pitiful yeah that's gonna change some of that stuff very quickly yeah that swaps around i think in the next 20 or so years from here oh yeah So the U.S. sets up the Selective Service Act, which requires all men between 21 and 30, which is around 24 million people, to register for the draft by 1918. Okay, that's already changing quite a bit then. Yeah. They build a series of 32 massive training camps where they can train and house 40,000 people in each.

What? That's big. That's a biggie. That's big. Yeah. so about 60 or 2.8 million joined via the draft while they have another 200 million volunteers so 200 million oh sorry two million sorry i was gonna say no that would be isn't that everyone in america at this point not just the usa but america yeah germany can see this uh mobilization ramping up uh they know this is happening which leads to a german offensive

in march 1918 as they try to finish off britain and france so on march 3rd 1918 the germans got huge manpower influx as they signed the treaty of brest-litovsk with russia freeing up the eastern front uh allowing the germans to direct 50 divisions to the western front uh where they had 24 at the time so they're like doubling that's a lot of guys it is yeah there's also quite an interesting thing with the russians just the bolsheviks just being like we're done with this it does cause problems later because they're part of their deal is they give say germany can have most of eastern europe and then germany loses but then the nazis are like we should have most of eastern europe and use that as a grievance no that's not what we meant yeah so this offense

they have is known as the spring offensive starting on the 21st of march it kicks off with the second biggest artillery bombardment in history uh starting at 4 a.m over 10 000 german artillery crews opened fire on the allied trenches uh by the time the barrage was done the germans had fired over 3.5 million shells in five hours. Hmm. Yeah, that's a lot of artillery.

To put that in perspective, the British barrage in the Battle of the Somme had fired 1.7 million shells in a week. It seems like overkill. It seems like overkill, but yeah, without the same merit, you kind of need it. So, once they've done with this

barrage, the infantry assault starts at 20 to 10 uh this battle lasts until the 5th of april so like two weeks um but the germans are able to push the lines back uh 40 miles um gaining an area of 1200 square miles which is like the biggest gain since any of this got into trenches yeah i was gonna say based on the stuff we've heard previously like the encroachment of like you know five miles ten miles 40 miles is huge yeah especially with trench warfare as well we've heard about how glacial it moves you're talking about you know 10 miles over months and this is this is big progress so this this is down around the somme sort of middle of francis and then following this up north

they launch operation georgietta georgiette um four days later this is in flanders up in the north where if the germans could capture it they'd gain access to channel ports and be able to like cut off british supplies to france and it's also the hub of like the major uh rail network that's being used to supply the western front so if they can knock this out this is a good chance for them to win the war it was going to be called operation george but due to the massive losses from operation uh mitchell which was the operation that kicked off the spring offensive the german general eric ludendorff uh downgrades it from operation george to operation george yet george yet yeah so he's like it's smaller now so the operation has a girl's name he's he's edited it

yeah is that was that common practice i don't i don't believe so was this guy taking a weird approach to this well just from my common sense i'm not a military guy by any means that's great to hear when you're doing military history if you're changing the name of an operation based on what previously happened it's not really a hidden operation name so yeah uh this attack follows a similar structure um with a massive artillery bombardment that waves of infantry attacks the germans managed to break through and were miles from the railway hub at one point that's when the british general field marshal sir douglas have gave this as his order of the day on the 11th of april 1918 there is no other course open to us but to fight it out every position must

be held to the last man there must be no retirement with our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause each one of us must fight to the end the safety of our home and the freedom of mankind alike depend on the conduct of each one of us at this critical moment that was a bit more inspiring than oh everything's going to shit fight everyone yeah all the ottoman ones wrote was your job is to die here yeah that that i think if we had to rank all of the quotes in terms of inspiration i think the ottomans are kind of down at the bottom oh yeah because that one wouldn't inspire me that would just make me really sad yeah uh this is probably the lowest moment of the war for britain like has the closest as they're being to getting knocked out but they

managed to hold it the germans take some like high ground and some like tactically useful land but don't achieve any like strategic objectives like taking the ports and that kind of thing yeah it's just kind of moving around yeah so in may they launch operation blocker your york it's york but with a ck at the end one of my favorite parts of the history segments by the way it's me trying to pronounce navigating words you've never seen before and that you've never heard out loud so you've got no point of never heard them out loud and never said them until i'm trying to say them now you've written them out in your whatever because i've never actually seen what your history segment documents look like oh they're just one note documents yeah so

i don't know how you i presume you don't have the phonetic sounding out of every single word no no there's some real uh it's been some real stinkers in terms of pronunciation i think buddy i've heard so this next attack of theirs they managed to get within 60 miles of paris but stall out again uh so they try another attack to link up the two bits of territory they'd taken which also fails which leads them to the final offensive which is stopped by french and also newly arrived american forces who have finally arrived in enough numbers to end the german offensives for the remainder of the war the germans lost 800 000 troops across those five offensives most of not most of them but a lot of them are like irreplaceable like elite storm

troopers and like veterans so by july 1918 roughly 1.2 fresh well-fed americans have arrived destroying sorry did you say 1.2 americans have arrived oh sorry 1.2 million is that where you got the other millions from earlier yeah 1.2 men i'm sure what does that look like and why has it changed everything that point too that really tipped it over it's actually two 0.6 guys some short kings have arrived but yeah the americans are showing up in massive numbers here and they're at this point they're getting over like a quarter of a million a month so the germans who are well most of them have just been fighting on the eastern front or they've been

on the western front for like four years they're all starving they're running out of equipment and you've got just these americans showing up with like so much food being like i'm gonna give this war a go let's see what happens like so well fed i'm so healthy i've never seen this before not in my lifetime so with the momentum firmly in the allies hands they start to push back on august 8th this stop is the start of the hundred days offensive which will lead up to the end of the war where the allies drove the germans back starting with the battle of amiens when the allies having built up a force in secret uh by moving during the night attacked the german lines north of paris this attack was a bit different because instead of the standard technique that developed

which was hours to days of, like, ceaseless bombardment followed by massive waves of infantry. This time they just use stealth and fog as well as smoke screens where they'll, like, start fires upwind of the enemy trenches if the wind's going the right way, and that'll just, like, drift over as, like, fake fog. That's pretty badass. Yeah.

and using all of this uh they managed to have us launch a surprise attack using 500 tanks that's a lot of tanks yeah for one that's a lot of tanks oh yeah uh i think at the start of the spring offensive like the germans might have had nine left nine tanks imagine having nine tanks and the other team brings 500 tanks so yeah this the tanks create a pathway through no man's land and also take out machine gun emplacements allowing shock troopers uh through from britain and france but also uh australia and canada who inexplicably produce incredibly good shock troopers i mean we've heard what happens in new zealand with the the maoris so the canadians in world war one are a menace by the way i've i don't know anything about canadian military they were like

they were doing like special forces raids and stuff but they do things like they'd throw food at the enemy trenches for like four days in a row and then throw a grenade and the enemy had got used to oh my god that's so messed up they were doing shit like that or like they'd just crawl across get into a trench and then just go nuts

wearing like bags over their head like jack the rip that's like that's psychological semicolon warfare yeah so um yeah

while all these shock troopers are going in the raf are always bombing the trenches and the retreating german columns this is this is the complete collapse to the point where the allies managed to advance eight miles in just a few hours which for for world war one is usain bolt yeah that's insane progress to make a trench warfare yeah fuck so ludendorff the german commander this attack happens on the 8th of august which ludendorff describes and says august 8th was the black day of the german army in the history of this war the kaiser then told him we have reached the limits of our capacity the war must be ended and ludendorff by the end of the week is going we cannot win this war anymore but we must not lose it it's too late

buddy um so the allies continue pushing the line uh successfully by september 29th they've broken the germans uh line of defenses throughout uh france and are starting to just push into germany proper so this is where the wall finally they get past the trenches and it becomes a more mobile like dynamic conflict for the end after the brutal stalemate is broken yeah well they're doing the end of the world scenario yeah they've given up it it's it's all it's all to play for threw it all out so this leads up to november 8th when secret negotiations begin oh for fuck's sake i'm sick of secret negotiations in this fucking wall really starting to annoy me with it i know it's i know it's part and parcel of the war but it's

just getting on my wick this is one of the last ones fortunately it better be so yeah secret negotiations in a carriage hidden in the woods 60 miles from paris so secret coded yeah i also looked the carriage it's a quite a nice carriage it better be yeah i was kind of picturing a really shitty like train car to make it secret but i feel like the carriage if it went past anyone they'd be like so that's where the important people yeah because this is still a day and age where even if it's secret they're like well it needs to look nice yeah we need to do in a good spot we're negotiating here there needs to be a massive conference table in the train carriage we need to have a candlelit dinner as we have this negotiation oh well everyone involves a

proper gentleman they've got to drink sherry while they talk about the deaths of millions so the allies refuse to negotiate terms and just offer the germans an ultimatum which is how the war started uh with the austrians giving all they have to syria yeah we've heard this one before this isn't them failing to learn from history and being doomed to repeat it this is not paying attention to current events and being doomed to repeat them because this is just setting up world war ii yeah this is the whole does history rhyme or doesn't repeat yeah it's no it's just the same thing it's the same people i'm pretty sure if you looked at the people who negotiated this and negotiated the end of the world war ii there'd be a couple of

surnames in common in both parties so the allies give the germans an ultimatum which includes immediate withdrawal of all troops in 15 days the surrender of artillery machine guns aircraft and all their submarines they also have to hand over their entire fleet and the rhineland not much then just a bit so despite the aggressive demands the germans have got no choice to accept here all of their allies are gone not just like out of the war but the ottoman empire and austro-hungarian empire do not exist anymore it's really bad when you're when your pals aren't just you know not able to help anymore they're not busy no they don't exist anymore they're also um their military is obviously in complete shambles their economy is completely

ruined and they've also got domestic troubles there's like a communist uprising going on in germany while all this is happening swell the kaiser has to abdicate just like so they agree and they sign um the agreement on the fifth of uh sorry at 5 12 a.m on november 11th bringing the war officially to an end on 11 11 at 11 a.m 1918 and that's just for world war one what a conclusion yeah what a wrap-up i've always wondered that they did they didn't time it for them surely i think they actually did and just the conversation around that yeah it's like right okay we'll wait until all right everyone got their clocks ready tell you what we'll do what day we'll meet this will be really good this will be one to

remember and i mean that this is one to remember this is the day this is the time yeah well that like that i think is why they did it but i think i can't have the exact number but it's like it's like 1200 and something maybe people die between it being signed and going into effect like in the six hours god i mean yeah because there's so much going on yeah because there was a guy who died they know who the last guy to die in world war one was because he died like two minutes before 11 really can't remember his name but yeah christ that's so grim that's so like that is the most so close but so far ever because there's there's so many like things about warfare where you think like oh well this could have happened differently this person wouldn't have to be in this situation

you know the the guy in the the cold war who didn't fire off the missile yeah save the world yeah all these different things where you think about like the knock-on effect but then if you if you flip that the other way instead of one guy making the big change it's the big change nearly saving one guy yeah and you've got this guy died minutes before yeah like you can count it in seconds and it's very easy to do yeah it's like that guy was so close to being okay if the order came through if the information was there yeah like there's a there's a chance if if they knew when he died that he might still have been alive technically uh oh through to the through to the point where it was information at that point it so here's a here's a really horrible question to

drop on you yeah if you were that guy if you're in the situation where you're mortally wounded and the information has come through to everyone around you and there's people turning to you would you want to hear that the war has been ended as you're as you're dying i guess there is a bit of like this is over for us yeah like would you want to know like i i've played such a vital part in this i'm i'm the end i've been here at the very end of this conflict i fought through to its conclusion and it's done yeah or would you want to to die almost not knowing that you've you've been so close to get to die ah yeah i don't know i think in that state i'm not that bothered about fair enough i think i don't care like i'm dying someone comes down and you're

beside you i've got something to tell you i don't care just fuck off i'm done i don't care oh yeah i've just searched it um there's a bit of ai summary here so so we've done both things that we said we wouldn't do in this episode we've we both searched something and you're looking at the ai summary yeah but the guy's called henry gunter and he died at 10 49 a.m wow uh charging a machine gun in an effort to restore his reputation after being demoted so i guess it's not even like it's not a noble that's like a yeah like a point of pride i guess he yeah he probably wouldn't want to know yeah that it was it was done that seems like a guy who's convicted to

make the push regardless, yeah. Well, that sounds like they've found out about the armistice, but it goes into a thing at 11, and they're, like, looking at their watch, like, this is the last chance I have to get a medal-type deal. I guess, yeah, if he's trying to make up for the demotion, maybe that is one last-ditch effort.

Run into a machine gun, though. God damn. Yeah. They were waving him away. They were like, don't fucking stop it. We don't want to kill you. What, the guys at the machine gun? Yeah, the Germans. oh yeah that's uh what a what an ending what a conclusion that's yeah that's the first first one down first war first war first world war anyway um we've covered some others

well andy you've you've covered the first world war yeah you've ticked it off there we go now you've got to fill in the gaps of the next 38 years with world war ii should be fairly easy you reckon it was four years long i mean 20 minutes a week for the next 48 years 38 years sorry i'm adding another decade on yeah 38 28 i don't know whatever it's gonna be we'll probably loop around to one or some we'll go back we'll go we'll revisit i'm sure there's some tales another look with more experience behind it well a fantastic history segment as always andy and i think you can give yourself a very hearty pat on the back a very subtle humble and brave pat on the back for getting us through world war one yep catching us up to this bridge in between the

if you will hiatus between world wars the interwar period the interwar period that's where we are we're in the interwar period inter scenario period for us you know what andy it makes you wonder in that interwar period yeah if they finished the first world war and they took a little bit of time to get to know each other they took a little bit of time to bridge the divide would the second world war have happened no if they had the common ground segment the world war two wouldn't have happened that's what i'm thinking we need to avoid that same trap andy we need to we need to destroy this treaty of versailles we need to rebuild germany economically we need to ensure i think i've heard this speech well you'll be happy to know that's kind of where

the similarities end because it's time for some common ground okay and now for something nicer a little oasis in the wall it's time for some common ground i'm trying the intro for common ground i'm recording common ground is of course a famed and not quite patented segment in which you and i come together as friends in amongst this conflict so we can continue to do it without hating each other's guts find some agreement and not have secret treaties no and we'll always find a we'll alternate topics each week and it's it's my week to decide the topic and this week it's i don't know maybe it's a bit of a not controversial one but i am i'm actually going back on a common

ground i've done previously oh or at least tweaking it okay i'd previously done a common ground in which i said that authors don't owe anyone anything and creatives don't owe anyone anything yes there was a like leave george or a martin alone type deal yes yeah my common ground this week is celebrities do it a little bit okay what do you what do you think you owed now this and it came from a conversation we had earlier and the conversation was centered around an actor um a voice actor primarily steven og oh god and he he was a lot of people probably probably have heard of him uh he was the voice actor of the character trevor in gda5 yeah and i've recently ended up in a youtube short slash tiktok hole of clips of him where

people will confront him at comic cons not even confront sorry i think conference a very strong word he sees it that way maybe but people will say oh you you should play gta5 you'd love it you know give it a go it's incredible you're in it it's a great time and he'll respond with i don't like video games i i like to read books have you ever read crime and punishment oh you haven't oh well well that's my thing this is how it feels to me and that that kind of feels confrontational that feels that feels a bit much it also feels it's not the same situation because you're in it yeah it's they're not they're not talking about something abstract they're not approaching you and that would be that's maybe a comparison you could make if me and you were sat at the pub

and i was talking about something you don't like or for example i'm a friend um jurassic park friend jpf big fan of anime i've never got into it the only time i've watched uh an anime uh film was when i watched the film paprika that's meant to be like very good isn't it i really enjoyed that i i like i like stuff that's kind of weird and that that's a weird film in the way that it it's kind of an odd narrative and i like that i like trying to figure out what's going on it's kind of i like the film primer you know i like house of leaves i just like stuff that kind of is weird to decipher yeah and where things are kind of left open a little bit that's my that's my jam that's probably why i'm playing this so it's kind of like if we were sat down and he said

oh you should you should really watch this thing and then i picked something out i should you should watch this film where there's no dinosaurs you'd love it and you go i don't want to watch that there's no dinosaurs and i'm like yeah well that's my thing he does he does want stuff not including dinosaurs well that's it but but unfortunately if i'm using him in the in this this comparison you know him personally he's a caricature the audience only know him as a caricature so that i guess it's that that would be my comparison that would be kind of normal for a friend to do it's kind of jokey it's prodding it's sardonic but when it's a celebrity when it's someone who's in the focal point of the work and you're saying to them i love your work i love this

thing you're in i can't believe you haven't tried it and i know it's going to be exhausting i know if if someone is constantly being bombarded with oh you should try this thing and they don't want to play video games yeah and i get that maybe he's he's latched onto a catchphrase almost of oh well have you read crime and punishment because i've i've watched that is videos where he's going to the same talking point of it's also such a like route one smart guy like literature guy pick yeah it's it's kind of a it's kind of being like um i haven't played gta uh have you thought about maybe watching Citizen Kane it is it's exactly that and and you know what Stephen Ogg I've watched Walking Dead I like him in that I've watched Better Call Saul I like him in that

I've watched Westworld I like him in that and the actor is a guy maybe he's a great guy maybe he's just a good actor I've got no way of knowing because I do not know the guy but unfortunately the thing I do know about him out of the performances out of that when he's presented himself in the public eye is that's a weird take buddy i don't know that i agree with that it's a it's an odd one because i i think i saw something for walton goggins from the fallout series yeah saying he hadn't he hadn't played them but he had like uh kids or like family members who had um and like they weren't for him but he like appreciates the world and stuff which i think of the way to handle it where like you don't have to play games but don't it's this weird thing of

like games not getting any respect as like a genre or like that's another big media thing where it's like oh the game's like the dumb kid thing where it's like there are games like spec up the line will tell you like is a better war thing than a lot of war films yeah the narrative and that's kind of a game you can only really play once yeah i guess we'll not give the plot of that away if anyone wants to but it's also a story you could probably only tell with that much impact in a game yeah it's one of those things where first person experience really changes the narrative whereas if you're just it's having agency yet you're making the decision very good point it's using that as a unique aspect of the media that is games yeah

to tell a story and i know a lot of games are shovel cheap crap like yeah but also guess what most books are most movies are, most TV shows are if you want to go and be like oh this art form's bullshit right now go to Amazon and try and find a book and you'll have 10 AI generated

pieces of shit with basically the same title and a cover that's like slightly different to like trick you into buying it. It's like they don't inherently deserve respect because they're literature yeah the medium does not inform the quality of the art yeah and i can also with this particular

example i know that he's a voice actor in a gda game and gda it's it's got a reputation it's you know i'm gonna run people over i'm gonna shoot people i'm gonna you know be a a violent character in a game with no lingering every time one comes out where the news find out like do you know we could kill people in games for some reason because gta is huge they're like this is the one to talk about it yeah i do get i i think as i've maybe as i've matured a little bit i understand it more from the perspective of maybe a different generation looking at it and going what's the point of this game yeah but like what's the idea of it like gta 4 is like a very grounded more grounded than i liked but like grounded story about like an immigrant coming in and oh yeah

falling into criminality like they're not like if that had been a scorsese movie about a guy from the balkans coming and doing basically the same thing people would be like it's just genius yeah and by the same merit um i think i think that that game's fantastic i think gda san andreas is not a i was gonna say fun take it's a it's a good take an interesting take on sort of gang violence yeah to an extent you know without going to it yeah yeah if you if you scratch the surface you find that if you if you scratch deeper it's it's a it's a game and that's the same with every art form if you scratch too deep it's actually just someone made something yeah and inherently if you're an actor you you've been paid to be part of that and i think if people if you're attending

comic cons if you're going to public events where people are approaching you and saying i love this thing you've got you've got to take the bad with the good and if someone's saying i appreciate this thing you're in you should really give it a go you kind of have to give them that little bit and you have to what you described that you have to walton goggins them a little bit and just kind of let it fall by the wayside a bit and you can't push too hard back because then every time they're looking at this thing they love they're going to be thinking this guy this guy really doesn't like this this guy was actually angry when i asked this and he may well not be angry maybe it's the way he comes across maybe it's like i say maybe it's like a fun way that he navigates it by

it could be a thing of like i get this every day so i've just got my like pre-cooked line yeah but when he's staying in interviews and stuff as well i'm again i'm not shitting on um steven hogg maybe maybe he's the the best guy i'd ever meet i don't know all i've got to go off though is is this and that's the problem if you're in the public eye and you want to you want to do this people are going to talk about it and i personally if somebody came up to me and said i mean we've got emails about it i know we're very different scales this crazy comparison but if someone said to me if we were at the uk games expo earlier this year and someone said you should play this other game and it's a completely different style of game to what i

usually enjoy i don't think my response would be oh well i actually like this thing you should do this thing instead it's like well no i think it's also someone's investing what i've done they like it and they've i guess there's no real comparison for what we do because we're always involved in what we do yeah we can't but if i was slightly divorced from what we're doing like if someone said you should you should try a video podcast i'd be like yeah man i'd love to do that i guess the thing is he's doing a bit of a harrison ford thing but the thing that it has charm because harrison ford isn't like uh go and check this other thing out instead he's just like this is all dumb leave me alone there's not like a it's like a nihilist approach to art yeah there's

not any like pretension to that yeah just be like buttle just leave me alone the rebuttal is i don't care yeah i just want to get on with my day shut up which is so funny to see the way the star wars cast talk about star wars and then the star trek cast who are like 45 years later have to go at every convention and can't be like it was dumb but that's another thing all of those clips you've seen of harrison ford being just so defeatist about the nature of of every piece of art he's been in how many of those are with fans and how many of them are just interviews with celebrities that's a good point i have i know a family friend or like a friend of a friend who ran into him and was apparently he was really nice and i believe that because apparently uh they were at

like uh there's this like cafe bike shop place in town on the river uh they were there and then he was there with his bike because he was filming something here recently a few years ago now um i remember that he got swamped and he was really pissed in one of the videos and rightly so yeah well this friend of the family's parent who was like about the same age as him just walked up to him uh i was turned around go why is why no don't go and bother him but he didn't even realize it was harrison ford he just wanted to ask him about the specific bike he had because he thought about buying it and apparently i had like a great 10 minute conversation and then it finished and she was like you know that was harrison ford right he was like oh but apparently he was very

nice during that conversation because it was probably someone not being like did you shoot first or not or like some bullshit which i get and if you're and i guess this this comes back to my previous common ground and i think there is a common ground between the two which is if you're going up to a person and they're famous and they're on their own time and you're you're bothering them and they're like oh if they approach steven hogg in the in the wild and they went play gda you should really play it's great and then he retorts with that completely fine i absolutely have no qualms with that whatsoever a thing you've been invited to because of this specific thing that you're disparaging yeah and i guess it's not even

disparaging he's because in all of the clips he's always saying it's just not my thing and that's a fine opinion to have that's a that's a normal opinion to have to not particularly enjoy what you want i mean uh a lot of actors in like different genres might go i don't watch these kind of films jamie lee curtis does not like horror films apparently doesn't doesn't watch horror films yeah but she's one of the the scream queens yeah she's you know she's she's just laurie from from halloween yeah you can't really get bigger than that in terms of horror but she doesn't watch it that's fine if you're at a convention and you're saying that to someone why are you there yeah because if it is just for the money i i understand that but at that point

it's it's a bit like the analogy that um it was matty healy from the 1975 the band made in a clip once which and i know he's got all sorts of controversies as well but i really agreed with this point when he said that if you're a celebrity and you want to do like a paid meet and greet you should take the money from the fan directly like they should have to hand you the cash in you shouldn't get to like abstract it yeah don't like put it onto someone else yeah you have to take it you have to feel groovy yeah and i think that's the same thing about the comic-con situation if you're in that situation you have to put on the face yes it's another performance it's another job yeah just see it as a performance of like this is the it's kind of like when you do a

get booked for a film um part of it is you're also gonna go and do a massive press tour which i'm sure if the actors had the choice i imagine none of them would do that yeah but while you're doing it even if the film's shit you can't say it's shit even if you like hated your co uh star you don't say that on the like press tour you have to sit with them for the most part yeah you do the event and if you have to act you act because it's part of it is part of the job of like dealing with what you've done yeah like there's no way all of the like the cast of the avengers for example you know doomsday's coming out they all sit down and they all have like the the chin wag on all the big talk shows and there's like a crew of like you know there's like 10 15 cast

members and they're all sat there and they're all joking around there's no way in hell every single one of those people get on as well as they seem to or like marvel stuff yeah that's another thing as well a lot of them it's a it's a really good job yeah and not everyone will be passionate about it maybe it's a great workplace i don't know i just struggle to picture that being like the perfect environment to work in it's going to be so high pressure and there's going to be so many different people with different opinions that need to be kept happy yeah from different parts of the industry you got so many big names not everyone's going to get on but in those like clips you see them and they get on or at least appear to you because that's part of the mystique

of the film it's like this is like a family and they're all enjoying it and behind closed doors they might hate each other maybe some of them just really just despise each other or maybe they just slightly disagree yeah you can't tell they all seem to get on and i think that's that's the job oh yeah i think what cover ground here is you can be shitty because your thing is maybe the creators do owe you something i'd say that if you're out in public or like day-to-day don't owe you anything if they're at something built around that thing you've got a certain role to play like yeah i guess what it is i guess if we can disseminate into a point it's someone only owes you something if you've paid for it that's kind of where this is because my previous one was

if someone's written a book series they don't owe you the next book which i i agree with that one yeah they owe you the book you've paid for you've bought the physical book you now have the book you don't then have the right to demand the next one from them you can want it you can desire it and you can you can talk about how much you'd love to read it you don't you don't deserve it you won't owe it it's also a different relationship between a author to an actor i'd say yeah i'd say expecting an author to write a book is like expecting a director to do a film exactly it is it's not expecting an actor to keep it up isn't because they're not the creative force behind it the money like their talent but they're not the creative source yeah they're a big part of it

they don't they don't put it together but they're like a representation of the thing yeah and when it comes to the like the author side of things if you love the series you hope they'll write a new one that's good yeah they don't owe you it though that writer can can go off and never write another word in their life and that's the end of it they don't they don't need to if you're an actor and you're part of work and you attend an event where people are appreciating the thing you're part of and just play along and they're getting paid to be there and then you talk to them and they're like i don't fucking care about this and then you know again that's exaggerating how he put it across but that general attitude of no no i'm going to be dismissive i don't actually want to

be invested in this tough that's why you're not be at this panel at comic-con about gta5 yeah if don't care about it get paid about something else yeah that that's the be all and end all start a podcast where you read war and peace for the first time yeah trust me it's easy to start a podcast you need a microphone and an rss feed he's a voice actor so he probably has a microphone he's got to he's got to or at least he knows someone who does yeah he has at least once he's got a friend who can borrow borrow the microphone so that's it that's my common ground andy do you agree that if someone is is you're paying for a service basically yeah someone should fulfill that service and beyond that in their own time they owe you nothing you don't know them they're

a stranger but in context they should yeah it's like if you showed up for work and didn't do your job and got fired and then you were like how dare you expect me to do the thing i was here to do yes in a paid context where you're at your job you should probably do that job yeah and if you don't then you are bad at your job that is it yeah there we go that's i think we can agree on that you when you disseminate it down it's really easy and that's interesting because we are a campaign for north africa podcast we've done very little campaign for north africa this week very little but you know we are hypocrites we're hypocrites we're passionate about it though we are and we're going to keep on doing it so thank you for listening stay subtle humble and

brave and we will catch you next time in those always happening but never deserved or warranted deserts of your minds we'll see you next time good night We'll see you next time. on a mattress that doesn't get you experience the most comfortable mattress in the world the sleep number smart bed at the touch of a button you can 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