getting git send-email patches from someone who is behind

[Sandra Snan <sandra.snan@idiomdrottning.org>]

I have a li'l git send-email question. Someone sent me a patch set 
of six patches today but they were not on most current main. I had 
to guess what version they were sending to so I could git am when 
I was on that particular version. I managed to sort it all out so 
this question is more for future reference.

Isn't there a way inside of the emails that it can show what 
version to apply the patches to?

Because now I was like "OK, I remember talking to them the other 
day and that means they probably are on what for me is HEAD^^" and 
that turned out to be correct, and sorting out the conflicts was 
also easy enough,
but if I hadn't talked to them beforehand I would've been 
completely lost.

I asked another friend about it and he said:

> it's possible to record the base commit: 
> https://git-scm.com/docs/git-format-patch#_base_tree_information
> however, it's a bit finicky to do with git-send-email

I dunno.

I get that one of the fun parts about using patches instead of PRs 
is
that you can be a li'l more loosey goosey about exactly what 
commit
something is supposed to belong to but here I would've been 
completely
lost because the patchset just borked horribly right from the 
first patch.

If others have run into this, what's the solution?