Salute: The Games

I realise I'm a week late on the Blogoshpere, but here are the games that stood out to me as I whisked around the Salute hall. I didn't take down the details and don't have a programme to consult so few credits here I'm afraid. Having seen everyone else's, I clearly missed some corkers!

The hall before the crowds descended...



...and the crowd - quite a queue snaking in a whole unit.



7TV's lovely Ghostbusters game



An awesome AWI fort game, with six gorgeous ships. It won best in show I believe.

Beasts of War's Assault on Hoth game - looked a bit unfair on the Rebels!

Napoleon's Last Gamble(?) - the Assault of the Guard at Waterloo. A very striking table and lots of very well painted 28mm Napoleonics. 

Wargames Illustrated (easy one to credit :-) ) Simon De Montford must Die!

A striking fantasy naval game: I liked the choppy seas that they'd modelled. 

The Wyvern Wargamers/Kallistra game that I helped to run for the day. Is was the First battle of Ypres, 1914, the assault of the Prussian Guard on the British positions.

And from the German perspective. As the game played out, the Germans penetrated the British slit trench in three places, with much lighter casualties than historically.



Simon Miller's To the Strongest!, table, Bloody Cremona. Great terrain and miniatures as always.

A demo table of Osprey's Black Ops

Two Blitzkrieg Miniatures tables for their upcoming ruleset 'Panzer Battles'. Bit heavy on the tanks for me (what is this, FoW?) really nicely painted though. Desert Rats vs Afrika Korps



And Battle of the Bulge

Hawk Wargames display game - a lot of lead on the table



A VBCW game? Nice scenery

Oshiro Modelterrain's gorgeous Japan table - a highlight every year.

And that's your lot! A good show, but as with most, it feels like there's too much to see. That's for a paying punter, manning a table meant a very long day, though we each managed to get away a few times to whisk around the hall. Worth going once again, thanks to the a Wyvern lot for the offer, I don't think I'd have made it otherwise.

On a separate note, Ray of 'Don't Roll a 1' has a rather smashing giveaway going, so head on over there if you don't like any of the dame stuff as me. 

Salute: The Loot

So another year's Salute finished - what was my haul? Quite an odd one, all in all. 

The big buy was Star Wars Armada, which I've had my eye on and already racked up a few fun games using my brother' core set. It's not cheap and the core box isn't really enough for a game, but with two of us collecting, we should be able to split the new waves of releases between us and keep the cost more palatable. The Troll Trader had it at £55, an excellent price considering the rrp is £80. Even at that price, I'm glad I know what I getting myself in for. 

Three 15mm 4Ground buildings - Wyvern chaps split a preorder which made the max 25% discount, so I supplemented the farm I've already got with the beginnings of a town. I also grabbed more Landmark walls as they are heavily discounted and may vanish off the market. 

Renedra terrain - desert accessories and sandbags. Also a TFL/Warbases chicken coop (I couldn't resist)

Stocking up on paint (replacing some dried up old GW paints with suitable vallejo), as well as bases and tufts. Also some black primer that avoided the photo. 

Some markers for status effects and vehicle damage (the latter in the Troll Trader bargain bin for £1). - always come in useful. 

Just a few miniatures: Artizan Designs 'tea time' colonial officer for the Sudan and Hasslefree 'not Last of Us' survivors. I was sorely tempted by Lucid Eye miniatures simians and cro-magnons, but I just don't have a use for them at 

All in all, mostly hobby supplies and terrain. No substantial impulse purchases. No new projects. Barely any miniatures. Oddly that feels like a good thing - I've enough to paint already!). 

Salute: Bravo...

...Mr Perry and Mr Perry. Their new plastic set(s) announced at Salute were:



Colonial British infantry - yay!

I eked out of Alan that there will be two separates boxes covering the conflicts as above. No ETA, these will either be before or after the HYW French infantry, whichever is finished first.

More photos of some great games when I'm less ruined from a very, very long day.

Salute 2014: The Games

 I rarely remember to dig the camera out in the madness of Salute but I did manage a quick whisk around later in the day to snap those that jumped out at me. This year, there seemed to be fewer 'wow' games for me, with the number of skirmish systems evidencing itself in the number of smaller tables. Of course, those  showcase tables were usually very nicely presented, but do miss some of the spectacle of a massed battle games at a major show. There were also quite a few tables I remember from last year making a repeat performance. 

First up, Wyvern Wargamers with Battle of the Marne

Miniatures and terrain by Kallistra. I got to roll dice on this one and really enjoyed the simple rules and grand maneuvers involving hundreds of troops on the table. 

South London Warlords with their lovely  Battle of Barbastro 1837

Mostly Perry miniatures Carlist War

Wargames Soldiers and Strategy and Simon Miller, C-Day: Caesar's invasion of Britain

Lovely table, fairly flat without being featureless. 

Beautiful units all over

Not sure on this one but I liked the unusual groundwork

White Hart Wargames with Allan Quartermaine and the Lost City

The Battle of Keren 1941 by Newark Irregulars - great use of a vertical board but damn hard to capture in a photograph

Eastern Front WWII 

Something Cold War Gone Hot?

Sword Beach on D-Day, I believe

Not sure who put it on, but this was a stunning game using Paul Hicks Dien Bien Phu sculpts

Salute 2014: The Loot

Well I'm back from the annual wander around the cavernous Excel centre. While I no longer live in London I was fortunate enough to have somewhere to stay the weekend and someone to entertain the wife for the day, to avoid the godawful-o'clock start that the rest of the Wyvern Wargamers group endured. So, fresh faced, I turned up at 1020 to avoid the worst of the monstrous queue. 

So, what tempted my wallet? All in all, no 'big ticket' purchases, just some stock ups, a few minis that I've had my eye on and some odds and ends.



-From the Perry stand, a restrained visit with just three packs from the Sudan range to top up the painting queue and box of Afrikakorps. The latter all BobC's fault after he mentioned that had enough ANZACs for Chain of Command. Dual use for Indiana Jones pulpy nonsense too.
-My annual Flag Dude stockup, mostly Mahdist and colonial British.
-A supply package from Warbases - bases for Mahdists and some oddments from their new animals range
-Some custom Perspex rings from Oshiro Modelterrain make sabot trays for my Mahdists
-some Renedra bell tents and rustic fences
-a few 4Ground furniture packs, to fill buildings in pulpy games
-Various resin scenic bits, including reasonably priced ruined columns and gate posts, a couple of bits of wall and some timber stacks
-Impulse purchase of just one 10mm WWI German jaeger pack from Kallistra. The Wyvern Wargamers table by Kallistra looked ace with whole hordes of infantry on a big push for he battle of the Marne in 10mm. I thought l'd grab a little platoon to paint up and perhaps join in future games of TFL's Through the Mud and the Blood. Really liked the heft of the Kallistra minis too - just that nudge bigger than pendraken's 10mm.
-Stockup of tufts from Antenociti

All in all, a par haul by my standards.

I did make the blogger meetup, albeit delayed from too long lingering at 4Ground. So I missed many people and the photo but did get chance to congratulate Michael Awdry on his victory over me in the AHPC side challenge. I also to chance to catch up with Samulus during the day, which was nice.

Salute 2013: The Haul

Well, that was fun. A long day at Salute yesterday, followed by a tasty dinner with the family. Salute seemed pretty busy and while I barely took any photos, there were some impressive display and participation games.

This was my haul, from left to right then top to bottom:


-a dockside and trade goods from Ainsty (for Pulp/Sudan); another box of Mahdist Ansar from Perry miniatures, a free sprue of Romans from Warlord, two more well-priced small hills from S&A Scenics)

-a restock and new colour of Silfor tufts, a whole stack of Warbases movement trays (some for Saga and the rest for Sudan), shell craters from Warlord and the Salute miniature, a stack of Perry Sudan blisters, resin odds and sods: domes and generators (supplier forgotten), can of Dullcote and some palm trees that I got off Gharak (who bought them from Minibits last year but never did anything with them).

-a little more laser-cut wood: one more Sarissa building and one 4Ground tree base, two single miniatures from gringo40s, two 10mm jeeps from Pendraken (worlds smallest preorder to finish BKC command stands), Wesfalia 'Cantiniere' (good to have some ladies in stock for nex year's challenge...), Empress rocket team (meant for Zulu wars, but mine will used in the Sudan), 1st Corps motorcycle for Pulp, Warlord stowage pack, Flag Dude banners for Sudan two d12s and the Salute dice and, finally, a spare card deck from Gharak for Pulp Alley.

So quite a bit spent, but I came in under my absolute max budget and managed to pick up something for almost my projects! It is heavily weighted towards Sudan, my current enthusiasm (MichaelA and Greg, I blame you...). It started as a Pulp-esque narrative skirmish campaign, but it didn't quite work. The plan is now to bulk out to what I'm calling 'mini Black Powder': using Black powder rules with drastically smaller units (standard size of 8men) and reducing ranges by 1/3rd. this being both for a smaller board size and for cost reasons! I don't think the rules will need many fudges to work. With the purchases above, I should have enough to do that with a couple of units spare. I've already started assembling, so I can get them based and get Samulus round as guinea pig (ahem, play tester).

Some lessons this year:
-preordering, particularly for 'odds and sods' works: it saves time and decisions in the day and missing out on things that I just wouldn't order over the year.
-1030 is the 'sweet spot' to arrive, the enormous queue has vanished and advance ticket holders can walk straight in.
-I am pleased Gharak and I managed to resist any new projects, while we lingered at Pendraken army packs for 10 minutes (I do quite fancy another 'mass battle' game in 10mm), I think we both felt it would have been buying blind for the sake of buying. I had a long enough shopping list as it was!
-even 5 hours doesn't feel like doing Salute justice: we got no demos in again and other bloggers are posting photos of display games I don't think I saw.

Gharak and I did make the bloggers meet up this year, albeit late and briefly. But it was good to meet a few chaps as a break from the browsing and shopping.

That's that for another year, phew!

Oooh!

These popped through the letterbox yesterday, which reminded me the Salute is barely more than a week away. This will save Gharak and I losing valuable time queuing on the day.

I've already made a few preorders to collect various bits and pieces and will make sure I've some more pennies for impulse buys. I envisage much wallet damage!

Oh, and a number of bloggers are planning on meeting up at 1pm at the breakout area - hopefully see some of you there!