So everytime i try to join my friends game or he tries to join mine, the game stalls for both of us and crashes/freezes. We're using hamachi and have tried lan and multiplayer games, with versions 1.03, 1.03.24 and 1.03.25 and all have had the same issue.

Anyone know a work-around for this?

You must restart the game after every connection, successful or not. Basically, after you played a match, both of you need to restart and then rehost/join. This is a vanilla bug that hasn't been addressed in neither of those versions.