Salute again!

So my first Salute as a member of the Warlords is done and it was strangely better as going there last year as a lonely punter – even with the ridiculous early start and working for some of the day.

I got there about 6:45 and the first thing that struck me when entering the main hall was just how big it is – so much easier to tell when there’s hardly anyone around and not all the traders are in yet. I was helping out on the door and it was actually good fun, even schlepping the boxes of goody bags had its good point – when you dropped them on the floor it made a magnificent sound with the amazing echo that the empty queuing hall produced, just like gunfire! As for getting everyone into the event and into the queue I felt that it went very well and it is nice that a lot of posts online have mentioned that this was a big improvement on previous years – hats off to Bernie and Philip who were in charge of that bit of the show.

So after my shift and a quick bite I met up with Des to have a mooch about and to get some bits from the traders plus to have a good butchers at the games. I thought in general the show was good, a bit too much sci-fi and fantasy for my tastes and I could really do without the people doing fancy dress. It seems as if steampunk means wearing goggles on your top hat, if so does that mean Porta from the Sven Hassel books invented it? I did like the two French Napoleonic re-enactors though but a note to the couple walking about in WW2 uniform: if you are going to go through that much trouble, maybe get a proper period pram to but the baby in, it did look even more silly pushing around a brand new Maclaren baby chair!

Anyway, slight rantette over, so what swag did I get?

How much! GHQ ‘Third World’ infantry and support weapons. Great figures but £8-odd each pack!

Nice little bundle that Des persuaded me to buy.

Can’t have a WW2 British platoon without one of these.

The price of the GHQ kit came as a bit of a shock and to be honest I didn’t take that much persuading by Des to go for the halftracks, it is good for the hobby to spread the business around the different manufacturers aint it!

Well onto the games next. On the whole I thought that the standard of  most of the games was really good, especially those at the back of the hall. There were some crackers about though my favourites was the 7YW one put on by Bill Gaskin, a guy taking photos next to me said that he didn’t know what to take a shot of next and he was right. It was perhaps the most stunning game I’ve ever seen, from the animation of the figures to the buildings everything was just beautiful – honestly I wouldn’t go out ever if that’s what I had at home to play with! The following photo’s won’t do it justice at all.

Next in preference was the Winter War game put on by the nice chaps from the Loughton Strike Force, not only was the game a beauty but the info stand was really cool too (pilchard me forgot to snap it though).

Another corking looking game was the Siege of Bristol ECW one put on by the Crewe and Nantwich club – again stunning figures and absolutely marvellous terrain.

I did also really like this – the game it was by wasn’t that impressive to be honest but I thought this was a nice touch and made me laugh – game was Garibaldi’s men taking Palermo from the Bourbons.

And lastly a collection of photo’s of the other games that caught my eye: Dave Brown having a bash 25mm ACW style, a cracking looking Viking game played by real Scandinavian types and a lovely looking Napoleonic Peninsula one.