Battle Report - Barracks Emperors(Sample)

0:03Speaker 1:Battle Report! With Ben and Steve. Alright, so explain to me then why the Romans are better than the Greeks.

0:12Speaker 2:Oh, we're going to do this?

0:13Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to fucking know.

0:14Speaker 2:I don't think the Romans are better than the Greeks.

0:16Speaker 3:Yeah, you do.

0:17Speaker 1:You said the best empire was the Roman Empire.

0:18Speaker 2:Yeah, and you said the Greek Empire is better.

0:21Speaker 1:The Attic Empire.

0:22Speaker 2:Which Greek Empire?

0:22Speaker 1:The Attic Empire.

0:23Speaker 2:There was no such empire called the Attic Empire.

0:26Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it wasn't very big.

0:27Speaker 2:There was the Athenian League. There was the Second Athenian League.

0:30Speaker 1:Yeah.

0:30Speaker 2:There was... So, I.

0:32Speaker 1:Listened to a fucking podcast, mate.

0:34Speaker 3:Yeah.

0:34Speaker 1:Oh, have you fucking known? Oh, really?

0:36Speaker 2:The Attic Empire.

0:38Speaker 1:No.

0:38Speaker 2:It was called the Attic Empire. Was it in Attica?

0:40Speaker 1:They were talking about... Attica! Attica! Attica!

0:45Speaker 2:Like that?

0:45Speaker 3:Yeah.

0:46Speaker 1:That was for you fucking people who don't know what the fuck Raymond Carver means. That was Dog Day Afternoon.

0:54Speaker 2:Fucking old people who listen to this podcast will know that reference.

0:57Speaker 1:So I was listening to a podcast about the Athenian League. Right. And they were saying, should we actually reframe the Athenian League as the Athenian Empire? Because they had all these vassal states.

1:09Speaker 3:You know, I.

1:09Speaker 1:That was what they were talking about.

1:11Speaker 2:I don't think so. I mean, like, what for?

1:14Speaker 3:Modern.

1:15Speaker 2:Like an empire that consisted of a bunch of islands?

1:18Speaker 1:So modern academics?

1:20Speaker 2:Okay, so.

1:20Speaker 1:So modern academics can say it was bad? Because that's what modern academia is?

1:24Speaker 2:Listen, you inveterately contrary fucking asshole. I will accept the premise that the Greeks are better than the Romans. I think even the Romans would admit that the Greeks were better than the Romans.

1:33Speaker 1:Well, they ate them, didn't they?

1:35Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. Stole their gods.

1:36Speaker 1:Stole their fucking philosophy. Stole their fucking jugs with cocks on them. The Herms? Is that what they're called?

1:45Speaker 2:The cocks, I think.

1:46Speaker 1:Oh. So.

1:47Speaker 2:Um, and I would also accept if someone wanted to argue that the Romans are better than the Greeks and they have their own reasoning for it. But if you say something like the Greek empire, or even if you want to call it the second Athenian league or the ad, whatever the fuck you're calling it.

1:59Speaker 1:I like to call the Athenian league, the Athenian empire.

2:02Speaker 2:I don't think it's plausible to say that the, the second Athenian empire, is that what we're talking about now?

2:08Speaker 1:Athenian league. Yeah.

2:09Speaker 2:That this was better in any way than the Roman empire.

2:11Speaker 1:What's your criteria then?

2:13Speaker 2:What are yours? I'm sorry. Why is the burden of proof on me?

2:15Speaker 1:Philosophy. I don't think they.

2:18Speaker 2:Had a lot of philosophy in the second Athenian empire. Except the strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must.

2:26Speaker 1:Yeah, right.

2:27Speaker 2:That was actually the Peloponnesian War, wasn't it?

2:30Speaker 1:Fucking Thermopylae.

2:32Speaker 2:That's the Persian War.

2:34Speaker 1:Yeah? Oh, Spartans weren't Greek. Oh, no true Spartan. Is that what you're trying to fucking tell me?

2:39Speaker 2:The Spartans certainly weren't part of the second Athenian empire, or whatever you want to call it.

2:43Speaker 1:I don't care, though.

2:45Speaker 2:Okay, so because you recently listened to a podcast about the subject, that's why they're better.

2:51Speaker 1:I don't remember much about it, really, to be honest.

2:53Speaker 2:Okay, well, do you know anything about the premise of the game that we have laid out before us?

2:56Speaker 1:So what game are we playing, Stephen?

2:58Speaker 2:We are playing the game The Barracks Emperors. I'm going to try that again. I'm going to try that again. We are playing The Barracks Emperors.

3:07Speaker 1:So the point is... The point is, I don't need to ask you that question.

3:12Speaker 3:Why?

3:12Speaker 1:Because when the episode comes out, I mean, with various punctuation errors and spacing.

3:17Speaker 2:Right. How many apostrophes are you going to put unnecessarily into.

3:20Speaker 1:The title of this game? All of them.

3:21Speaker 2:Right. Apostrophe S, apostrophe.

3:27Speaker 1:Hyphen, emperors, period. S, apostrophe S.

3:31Speaker 2:How about duh instead of the?

3:33Speaker 1:Like the emperor's new clothes. Right. S apostrophe S. Right. New clothes. Right.

3:39Speaker 2:Yep.

3:40Speaker 1:Exactly. I assume, what with you being an insufferable nerd.

3:45Speaker 2:Right.

3:47Speaker 1:I don't just mean a nerd. I don't mean here that nerds are insufferable.

3:50Speaker 2:I mean, it's pretty like.

3:51Speaker 1:But there is a type of nerd that is insufferable.

3:53Speaker 2:It's pretty insufferably nerdy to actually want to argue about which of the ancient empires was best.

3:59Speaker 1:Yeah, because it was obviously Greece. Why would you argue?

4:01Speaker 2:I mean, I just don't really consider this an empire.

4:03Speaker 1:Gladiators versus Aristophanes.

4:05Speaker 2:It was a bunch of fucking islands attached to Athens for a brief period of time.

4:09Speaker 1:Aristophanes.

4:10Speaker 2:Before the Romans fucking destroyed them. Actually, before the Macedonians destroyed them, and then the Romans destroyed them.

4:15Speaker 1:Which Romans fucking wrote the Frogs?

4:19Speaker 2:So your basis for calling the Greeks better than the Romans are the cultural achievements of the Greeks during the classical period.

4:27Speaker 1:Have you read the Frogs?

4:29Speaker 2:Probably a long time ago.

4:30Speaker 1:Oh, yeah? What's it about?

4:31Speaker 2:Caxa, caxa, cax. Caxa, caxa, cax.

4:34Speaker 1:That's the birds, is it?

4:35Speaker 2:No, I think that's the frogs.

4:37Speaker 1:Who's the main character in the frogs?

4:39Speaker 2:I don't remember. Who's the main character? I didn't just listen to the podcast.

4:42Speaker 1:Fucking Diana. I didn't. I studied at fucking university, you cheeky fuck.

4:45Speaker 2:Who's the main character in The Clouds?

4:47Speaker 1:Bob Johnson.

4:48Speaker 2:Good, good, very good. What else did you study in university?

4:52Speaker 1:Prancing around. A lot of drinking. A lot of drinking. Yeah. In my last year of university.

4:57Speaker 2:Did you cut your wine the way the Greeks did?

4:59Speaker 1:No. I don't know the Romans.

5:02Speaker 2:The Romans cut, they probably did as well.

5:03Speaker 1:I'm like Polyphemus, man.

5:05Speaker 2:I think the Romans probably cut their wine as well, but they would have, I think the Greeks and the Romans probably drank wine a little bit like Glühwein.

5:12Speaker 1:Yeah.

5:13Speaker 2:But I don't think they heated it up. Like they put herbs and shit in it.

5:16Speaker 1:Well, in a short story.

5:17Speaker 2:Spices in that.

5:18Speaker 1:In a short story I wrote. Where the lead character is Pythagoras.

5:22Speaker 3:Right.

5:23Speaker 1:As a young man.

5:24Speaker 2:I remember this one.

5:25Speaker 1:He drinks a lot of undiluted wine because he's so desperate to get pissed.

5:30Speaker 2:Pythagoras. Was he from Sicily?

5:32Speaker 1:He was from Samos, yeah.

5:34Speaker 2:Samos is different from Sicily.

5:37Speaker 1:Well, it's... Who's the guy.

5:38Speaker 2:It's in Italy, isn't it? Who's the guy with the... Samos?

5:41Speaker 1:Samos, yeah.

5:41Speaker 2:It's like an island in the Aegean, isn't it? Ancient Samos was Italy. I think Samos is an island.

5:47Speaker 1:Fucking vamp. Vamp.

5:48Speaker 2:I'm pretty sure Samos is an island in the Aegean.

5:49Speaker 1:I haven't got my phone with me.

5:51Speaker 2:You want to look up where Samos was?

5:52Speaker 1:Yeah. So Steve's getting his phone out there. Oh, his wallpaper is a fucking picture of a man in a speedo.

6:01Speaker 2:Yeah, let's see. Samos, Greece, as I said, is an island in the Aegean.

6:08Speaker 1:Samos, ancient Greece. Yeah, yeah. It's not Samos, Greece. Samos, ancient Greece.

6:12Speaker 2:It's the same thing.

6:13Speaker 1:It's not. It is. Where was Pythagoras from? Type that into fucking, don't look at Google Maps.

6:18Speaker 2:Hang on a second here.

6:19Speaker 1:Fucking Lake America.

6:21Speaker 2:You're going to love this. So where was Pythagoras from?

6:28Speaker 3:Pythagoras, he was born on the island of Samos off the coast of what's now Turkey around 570 BC. He later emigrated to CROH Tun in southern Italy.

6:39Speaker 2:Where he founded his famous school. So C-R-O-H, ton.

6:43Speaker 1:So I got mixed up. He went there, though. We were both right. He did his work in Italy.

6:48Speaker 2:We were both right.

6:49Speaker 1:Yeah.

6:49Speaker 2:Because I remember Pythagoras being from Italy or Sicily. You said Samos. So he's from Samos, which is actually in Greece, but he did spend time in Italy. But I was also thinking of the guy who discovered buoyancy and did the Archimedes and the lever and the screw.

7:04Speaker 1:He was from Athens, wasn't he?

7:06Speaker 2:No, he was from Sicily.

7:07Speaker 1:All right. Okay. Anyway, so what are we playing, Stephen?

7:09Speaker 2:He lived in Syracuse under the Emperor Dionysus.

7:13Speaker 1:Really?

7:14Speaker 2:He used to put people into a bronze cow and then light a fire under the cow. I like that one.

7:20Speaker 1:I like the ancient torches.

7:21Speaker 3:Anyway.

7:22Speaker 2:Just so he could hear them screaming. Wait a second. The music's gone out. They probably can't hear it, but we need to hear it.

7:27Speaker 1:We need to hear it. It's ween.

7:28Speaker 2:For inspiration.

7:30Speaker 3:All right.

7:30Speaker 2:There we go.

7:31Speaker 3:Oh, I don't want.

7:31Speaker 2:Sam doesn't like this song.

7:33Speaker 3:Why?

7:33Speaker 2:I don't know. She thinks it's childish.

7:35Speaker 1:It is childish, deliberately so. It's sung by a child.

7:38Speaker 2:I'm dancing in the show tonight. Yeah, it's sung by a child. Anyway, so we're playing the barracks emperors.

7:46Speaker 1:All right. Can you give us a brief, and I mean fucking brief, treatise on the state of the Roman Empire when this game is set?

7:55Speaker 2:The Roman Empire was beginning to fall apart and fragment.

7:59Speaker 1:What century are we talking?

8:00Speaker 2:This is the second to... Fourth century, I guess.

8:04Speaker 1:It's like Diocletian time.

8:05Speaker 2:There's Diocletian on the board right there. He lasted particularly long. He gave up his own emperorship. I think he built the largest of the famous Roman baths in the city of Rome.

8:16Speaker 1:Who built the ones in Bath?

8:17Speaker 2:And I suppose he.

8:19Speaker 1:Pardon? Who built the ones in Bath?

8:21Speaker 2:I don't know.

8:22Speaker 1:Hadrian, probably.

8:23Speaker 2:I don't know. You think Hadrian?

8:25Speaker 1:Well, he was the guy in Britain, wasn't he? No.

8:27Speaker 2:Oh, because of the wall.

8:29Speaker 1:Yeah.

8:29Speaker 2:Did he go to Britain, though?

8:30Speaker 1:Yeah.

8:30Speaker 2:I don't know if he went there personally.

8:31Speaker 1:He built the wall personally. Okay.

8:34Speaker 2:Anyway, Diocletian, also famous for building Diocletian's Palace. I don't think they called it Diocletian's Palace.

8:39Speaker 1:I bet they did. They were arrogant cunts, those Romans.

8:43Speaker 2:In what is now Croatia, and has become the center of the city of Split, which is what I wish you would do sometimes when you're annoying.

8:51Speaker 1:You don't want to take your fucking milk there when you're making fucking whipped cream, do you?

8:55Speaker 2:Definitely not. Very good, very good. Cooking jokes. Or baking jokes? Baking jokes?

9:00Speaker 1:Well, it depends where the whipped cream's going. On my nip plates.

9:03Speaker 2:Anyway, I wouldn't say that I know this period particularly well. It just, it so happens that there were like a series of emperors, some of whom lasted a few years, some of them only a few months. And it was just like one after another. And most of them were generals and they would win battles. And either like their soldiers would declare them emperor, then they would murder them or the Praetorian Guard would murder them.

9:24Speaker 1:And they were getting invaded by Robert Smith and that a lot, right? Yeah.

9:27Speaker 3:What?

9:28Speaker 1:They were getting invaded by Robert Smith a lot.

9:30Speaker 2:Robert Smith?

9:30Speaker 1:Yeah.

9:31Speaker 2:Who's Robert Smith?

9:32Speaker 1:The lead singer of The Cure.

9:33Speaker 2:I don't get the joke.

9:34Speaker 1:Like the Goths were coming in and... Allah, Steve. Like Sisters of Mercy were fucking knocking on the gates of Rome and that.

9:43Speaker 2:I knew I was walking into something.

9:45Speaker 1:It's good, though. That's good.

9:46Speaker 2:That's good.

9:47Speaker 1:Yes.

9:47Speaker 2:Yes, indeed. The barbarians were at the proverbial gates.

9:52Speaker 1:So when you.

9:54Speaker 2:Until Constantine, I think, stabilized things a bit for a while.

9:58Speaker 1:So barbarians are named after the way they speak.

10:00Speaker 2:By the greeks your favorite empire.

10:03Speaker 1:When you listen to like regional british accents is that what you think yeah yeah yeah basically yes yeah like that one time yeah When I called up the farm that we were.

10:12Speaker 3:Going to sell.

10:12Speaker 1:Right, and you couldn't understand a fucking word he was saying.

10:14Speaker 2:That was Northumbrian.

10:15Speaker 3:Yeah.

10:15Speaker 2:It's like, all right, we're going to come around.

10:17Speaker 1:Well, how much is that going to cost?

10:18Speaker 3:Oh, I don't care.

10:19Speaker 1:Go down to the pub and get your shit to say.

10:26Speaker 2:Then I had to hand you the phone.

10:27Speaker 1:You had to hand me the phone. Indeed. You couldn't understand the British.

10:30Speaker 2:What a fucking word.

10:32Speaker 1:So, why have you bought this game? Because you bought this game over this weekend. I did.

10:37Speaker 2:Okay, so I'm going to tell you a little bit of a story.

10:39Speaker 1:Okay.

10:39Speaker 2:Because this is sort of like my odyssey. You know that shit movie that came out recently?

10:43Speaker 1:Yeah.

10:44Speaker 2:Based on... Reading the.

10:45Speaker 1:Odyssey at the moment, the more I read, the more I realize that Nolan's film is a bag of shitey white.

10:49Speaker 3:Really not.

10:50Speaker 2:This is going to be controversial, I think, on the Patreon. Not the Patreon, the Discord.

10:55Speaker 3:Yeah.

10:55Speaker 2:Or maybe not. I mean, I think actually... We're an educated bunch. Yeah, the Discord dickheads have taste.

11:01Speaker 1:Don't know who Raymond Carver is.

11:03Speaker 2:I assume many of them have heard of Homer. He's one of the most famous of your favorite group of people's epic poets. Although I don't know if it's really appropriate to call him Greek. But nevertheless, I went on my own odyssey.

11:17Speaker 1:You wouldn't call him Greek?

11:21Speaker 2:I don't think. I don't know.

11:22Speaker 1:He wrote in Greek, though, didn't he?

11:24Speaker 2:Well, did he exist? Homeric Greek itself is a kind of poetic, synthetic language.

11:31Speaker 1:So you think it's an amalgam of different writers?

11:33Speaker 2:I mean, we call it Greek. I don't think they called it Greek.

11:36Speaker 1:They called it Helene.

11:37Speaker 2:Yeah, probably. Or Achaean.

11:40Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe. Maybe.

11:41Speaker 2:I'm not even sure. I'm not even sure. I don't remember exactly. what they would have called it. I mean, at some point they would have called it Greek, but the Romans are the ones who started calling the Greeks the Greeks based on a sub-tribe of Greeks called Greeks.

11:51Speaker 1:Yeah, but... You could say the Croats exist, and they don't call themselves the Croats, do they?

11:56Speaker 2:What do they call themselves?

11:57Speaker 1:I don't know. Crovatska is the name of their country. Yeah, yeah.

12:01Speaker 2:Also the Germans don't call themselves Germans.

12:04Speaker 1:No, they call themselves Deutsch.

12:05Speaker 2:It's basically you come in contact with the people, and whoever you come in contact with first, that's what you start calling them.

12:10Speaker 1:Why are they called Germans in English, you know? Originally? Yeah.

12:13Speaker 2:I don't know. The Romans called this area Germania. Yeah, so it's probably from Latin, isn't it? Well, I think that they first encountered a group of people called the Germani. It doesn't make any sense. I know I heard this at some point that there was a tribe called the Alimani.

12:30Speaker 3:Yeah.

12:31Speaker 2:And for some reason, Germany got associated by the French and the Spanish with the Alimani. Interesting.

12:37Speaker 1:Interesting. I need to do some research on that. Especially as we speak a Germanic language.

12:42Speaker 2:You squeeze all these facts into your brain and they just spill out. But, you know, CD Hunter will set us straight.

12:46Speaker 1:Yeah, he knows the shit.

12:47Speaker 2:For sure, he's got all of this down cold.

12:49Speaker 1:You know it. Anyway, so.

12:51Speaker 2:Anyway, my odyssey. Why did I buy this game? So I've been hearing about it for years. I've wanted to buy it for years. It got mentioned on the Discord a couple of times in the last couple of weeks. And I thought, I need to finally get this game. So I asked.

13:04Speaker 1:Papa Doppelukas?

13:06Speaker 2:Papa Doppelukas.

13:07Speaker 1:Is that his name? Papa Lukas?

13:08Speaker 2:Something like that.

13:10Speaker 3:Greek.

13:11Speaker 2:On the Discord, clearly Greek, which is somehow not relevant and yet completely relevant to the story. If his store, rival to your store, Gamers HQ in Berlin.

13:22Speaker 1:They're not rivals.

13:23Speaker 2:A much better store, Gamers HQ.

13:25Speaker 1:That I'm not commenting on, but they're not rivals.

13:27Speaker 2:In Steglitz, Berlin.

13:28Speaker 1:Funtainment is a different thing. It's more like a sort of fun emporium rather than.

13:32Speaker 2:It's too bad you don't still work at Brettspielgeschäft, because then we would have an interesting debate about this. Gamers HQ is a very nice board game shop. It's in Steglitz, which is really far from where I live, so I hardly ever go there. But if I want to actually go to a game store and buy a game, that would be the place. So I asked Alex Papadopouloukas if they still had a copy of The Barracks Emperors. And he said he thought they still had one copy, and if not, he has his own copy.

13:56Speaker 3:Yeah.

13:57Speaker 2:So it turns out that some weeks ago, I got a message from the Doyen of British Gaming.

14:04Speaker 1:That's right.

14:05Speaker 2:Sir?

14:06Speaker 1:Sir.

14:06Speaker 2:Is he Sir?

14:08Speaker 1:Yes.

14:08Speaker 2:Did we give him a higher title?

14:09Speaker 1:Oh, yes. He should get a higher title. We need to do that. What are we doing?

14:12Speaker 2:What goes above Sir, though?

14:14Speaker 1:Like, it starts with Earl or something, doesn't it? Okay.

14:16Speaker 2:Sir Tony Boydell sent me a package saying, Now, because the UK wisely decided to leave the EU a couple of years ago, it turns out you can't just send packages pell-mell to Germany from the UK. So, you know, I didn't get the package. He's like, did you get the package? Nope, didn't get anything. I didn't get a delivery slip. Berlin is famous for being a difficult place to receive packages.

14:41Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true.

14:41Speaker 2:But, you know, you typically.

14:43Speaker 1:Certainly not in the nightclubs, though, Steve.

14:47Speaker 2:You at least get a slip, Ben.

14:49Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah, it's great.

14:51Speaker 2:You at least get a slip.

14:52Speaker 1:Yeah.

14:53Speaker 2:Especially in the, I was trying to follow up on your guy.

14:55Speaker 1:Yeah, slip it in. Yeah, exactly.

14:57Speaker 2:I didn't get a slip.

14:57Speaker 1:At the bottom.

14:58Speaker 2:I didn't get the slip.

14:59Speaker 1:Carry on.

14:59Speaker 2:No slip. There was no slip in my box.

15:01Speaker 1:Yeah, because you got my fucking game anyway.

15:03Speaker 2:And I thought, okay, maybe it got held up by the customs office, as we call it in German, the Zollamt. There's a P in it.

15:13Speaker 1:Zollamt. Not ampt. Zollamt. Yeah, you say Zollamt. There's no P in it. Zollamt. Zol amt.

15:22Speaker 2:Yeah, it said zol amt.

15:23Speaker 1:You put a P before the T every time.

15:25Speaker 2:Does it sound like I'm saying P?

15:27Speaker 1:Zol amt. Amt.

15:28Speaker 2:Amt. It's actually hard to say A-M-T without kind of inserting a P.

15:32Speaker 1:No, amt. Amt. No, you put a P in it every time.

15:35Speaker 2:Amt.

15:36Speaker 1:Yeah, you put a P in it every time. There's a P in it.

15:38Speaker 2:How do you say it?

15:39Speaker 1:Zol amt. Zol amt. No P.

15:42Speaker 2:I'm not putting a P in.

15:43Speaker 1:Okay, now.

15:44Speaker 2:I know how zol amt is spelled.

15:45Speaker 1:Fuck me, you'd cost... Zol amt. That was it. There was no P there.

15:50Speaker 2:Zollamt.

15:51Speaker 1:There was P in that one.

15:51Speaker 2:It's really hard to say. All right, carry on. It's really hard to say. Anyway, finally, the other day, I got a letter from the Zollamt.

15:59Speaker 1:The government, the other day, I opened and read it. It said they were suckers. They wanted me for the army or whatever. Picture me giving a damn. I said never.

16:10Speaker 2:And Ben, I went on a journey.

16:11Speaker 1:What was that? I.

16:13Speaker 2:I went on an Odysseus-like journey to the underworld of Berlin bureaucracy.

16:18Speaker 1:Not the one in Schöneberg.

16:20Speaker 2:Yeah, on the far side of Schöneberg.

16:22Speaker 1:Oh, I've been to that one a lot. Why? I used to order shit from America and not realize that I'd have to pay toll on it.

16:28Speaker 2:So I traveled. It took me like an hour and a half to get there. It's like an hour on the U-Bahn, or I think S-Bahn to U-Bahn, and then I had to walk for 15 minutes. This is exactly like Odysseus going to the underworld. I had to get my golden bow. Does he have to get a golden bow? No, that's Jason in it or something. Or is it only in the Aeneid?

16:46Speaker 1:No idea.

16:46Speaker 2:Think of the Aeneid, he has to take a golden bow. That's how you get into the underworld.

16:49Speaker 1:Okay.

16:50Speaker 2:And so I go into the Zollamt. Yeah.

16:53Speaker 1:Right?

16:54Speaker 2:Right. And it's like, you know, typical Berlin bureaucratic office.

16:58Speaker 1:It was quite polite to me, to be honest.

17:00Speaker 2:Nobody was mean to me. I mean, I think this building was constructed in the 60s. There's like nobody there.

17:04Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not pleasant.

17:05Speaker 2:There's literally nobody there. There's like no one in the waiting room. And there are a bunch of signs that sort of explain in German like what you're supposed to do. It's very unclear.

17:12Speaker 1:It's arcane, yeah.

17:13Speaker 2:It's like you need to go through the white door, but you don't go through the white door.

17:16Speaker 1:Until you're called.

17:17Speaker 2:Yeah, but you have to go through the white door in order to get a number.

17:20Speaker 1:Yes, you do. Yeah, so it goes to the little booth.

17:22Speaker 2:So I went through... the white door. And, uh, actually I went, I had to go to a desk and then some guy told me, and I'm like, what do I, I have a package. I need to pick up my package. I had the letter, right? There's nobody there. Mind you, nobody.

17:35Speaker 1:Right.

17:36Speaker 2:I'm like, I have this letter. I'd like to pick up my package. And this guy's like, well, you have to get a number. I'm like, okay, my colleague is going to come out to the waiting area, to the desk in the waiting area and give you a number. So I go back out of the door. And this woman actually follows me through the door and goes behind the desk and then she gives me a number.

17:55Speaker 1:Of course she does.

17:56Speaker 3:Right?

17:57Speaker 2:And I give her the paper and then she goes away. And at some point I think I probably... And you've.

18:04Speaker 1:Got like a flashing screen where your number comes up.

18:06Speaker 2:Yes, there's a flashing screen where the number comes up and they call my number. And I have to explain to her. I think before she goes away again, I had to explain to her what's in the package... And this is a way to ruin a surprise, right? And how much it's worth.

18:21Speaker 1:Right.

18:22Speaker 2:I'm like, well, it's a board game, and I don't know how much it's worth. It's worth nothing. It's a board game published in the 1980s. It's used. It's a gift from a friend. So she had to write all this down, like used, gift, blah, blah. She's like, I have to put a number down here. I need to know what it's worth. I'm like, well, I don't know. She's like, check eBay. I'm like sitting there on my phone checking eBay. Do you think there's a copy of History of the World first edition on eBay?

18:43Speaker 3:No.

18:43Speaker 2:There isn't. I call Tony up, and he answers.

18:48Speaker 3:Yeah.

18:49Speaker 2:I'm just like, you know, Tony, thanks for the gift. I had to travel a fucking hour and a half to South Berlin to pick up. And by the way, Tony, I really do appreciate the gift. And I really do appreciate that you answered the phone to tell me that you thought, well, he got the game for free.

19:04Speaker 3:Right.

19:04Speaker 2:In like an estate.

19:06Speaker 1:Job lot, yeah.

19:07Speaker 2:No, no, no, an estate. I think a friend of his passed away and he got the game as part of a large lot. And he gave me a copy because he already had one. So, I don't know, does it mean technically the game has no value, or do you have to assign some kind of value to it? So he said that he thought that if he were selling it, it would be worth £ 30. I thought it would have been great if he had said £ 5. Yes, of course it would. But he said £ 30, you know, and I have no idea if I'm being eavesdropped on or whatever. And I didn't really care. I figured that they would let me have it for free in the end.

19:37Speaker 2:And I told her, he says £ 30. So she writes all this down. She goes back behind... whatever, wherever they go, wherever they go. And then they call my number and then I went through the door again. And I went to the desk. Did you have to unpack it? She was there again at a different desk.

19:55Speaker 3:Sure.

19:55Speaker 2:Same woman. Sure. She handed me a box cutter.

19:58Speaker 3:Yeah.

19:58Speaker 2:And she told me, you need to open this package.

20:00Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.

20:01Speaker 2:She handed me a box cutter in a government office. So I opened the box. And I take out the game. And there's also an Ian Banks book that Tony got me. And she's like, you know, we're looking through the game components. And she's looking at them. And then she's like, okay, put everything back together. And I did. And then she took it and she went back to wherever they go. I'm like, what is she doing? She's out the back having a fag. Is she swabbing it? So then I have to go back to the waiting area and wait for her to buzz me in again. And eventually she does.

20:34Speaker 2:I mean, it doesn't take that long. But I'm like, what is this for? And I go back through the door and back to the same desk. She's there again. She's like, okay, you can go. And she gives me the package, and then that was it. I asked to use the toilet, and that was down a very long, dark hallway with no lights. And I don't know. The whole thing felt like just going to the underworld and confronting the ineffable and then coming back out again.

20:57Speaker 1:How do we then get to the Barracks Empress from there?

21:00Speaker 2:So I realized that the Tzol Amt is... close enough to Gamers HQ that I could pay a visit.

21:10Speaker 1:Nice.

21:11Speaker 2:And I realized if I took the U9... You.

21:14Speaker 1:Know, people love public transport chat. This is like that Saturday Night Live skit.

21:22Speaker 2:So from here, you have to get the S40... Which one goes counterclockwise? S42? I think S42. I got the S42... from Schenhauser Allee to Westhofen, then the U9 from Westhofen to Bundesplatz. And then I got back on the U9, which I took from Bundesplatz, I think three more stops south to Schlossstrasse, I believe it is. Yeah, it is. And then it's like a 10-minute walk or so to Gamers HQ. And I got there with like 10 minutes to spare. Alex wasn't there, but his colleague very helpfully directed me to their one remaining copy that they did in fact have of the barracks emperors. And then I decided to take like a very long circuitous route home because I was listening to an audio book.

22:09Speaker 1:Yeah.

22:09Speaker 2:So instead of taking the, the U nine back to Vesthaven and then the S 41 in this case, I took the, I took the M 86 bus all the way to Potsdam or plots.

22:20Speaker 1:I prefer taking the bus.

22:21Speaker 2:I had a, I had a, yeah, I wanted to take, I wanted to be like out and see things, you know what I mean?

22:25Speaker 1:Exactly.

22:25Speaker 2:And I wasn't in a rush. I got out of Potsdamer Platz and I had a beer at the Curb Food Court. Have you been there before?

22:30Speaker 1:No.

22:31Speaker 2:They've got like a Berliner Berg thing there.

22:33Speaker 1:It's nice to just stop and have a random beer.

22:35Speaker 2:I had a beer and I had a snack because they have the food court. And then I actually walked all the way to, I think, Rosenthaler Platz. And then I took the U-Aucht to Bernauer Straße and then I walked the rest of the way home from there.

22:50Speaker 1:So, who's going to win this game then?

22:52Speaker 2:This was my odyssey, Ben.

22:54Speaker 1:Yeah, incredible. It's an incredible story of the minutiae of modern life.

22:58Speaker 2:Now, according to the Discord dickheads, this game is best played at either 2, 3, or 4.

23:04Speaker 3:Okay.

23:04Speaker 2:And it's also a terrible game at 2 and 3.

23:07Speaker 1:Right.

23:08Speaker 2:So we're going to play it at 4. And maybe some other time, if we ever play it again, we'll try out two or three.

23:14Speaker 1:Excellent. So who's going to win?

23:15Speaker 2:Who's going to win? Well, it's a trick-taking game. Yeah.

23:19Speaker 1:And we all know I'm best at trick-taking games because I'm common as muck. Exactly.

23:22Speaker 2:You're always claiming that your working class background gives you some kind of edge in trick-taking games.

23:28Speaker 1:Yeah, it does, yeah.

23:29Speaker 2:However, this being a Roman-themed game, I believe that I have an edge for thematic reasons.

23:34Speaker 1:So.

23:35Speaker 2:I think probably one of the other two players is going to win.

23:38Speaker 3:All right.

23:39Speaker 1:Well, after that incredibly exciting story. I'm sorry.

23:42Speaker 3:I'm sorry.

23:43Speaker 2:Would you rather hear me retell that story again, but let's say twice as long, or would you rather re-watch Christopher Nolan's Odyssey?

23:51Speaker 1:Oh. So, listeners, we're going to go away and listen to Steve's story. You can listen to the rest of this show and hundreds of hours of bonus content, including convention reports, in-game bickering and loads more at patreon.com forward slash 5G4D.