Salute 2018

So Salute has been done and dusted again for another year and I’ve finally recovered. This year I have been on the committee of the South London Warlords and can tell you that the work done by people in their spare time to put this show on is quite fantastic, the planning taking all year and a hell of a lot of effort. If you add to this the efforts of all the members of the club, and the chaps from the Reading club who help too, that pitch in on the day and the day before (most taking time off work to do so) to get the traders and games in and set up on time, running the doors and info stand etc. I think we as a club can be very proud of our efforts.

So this year I was helping Phil judge the games and making sure that all the gamers had everything they needed before we started. This was great to do, as someone who has put games on at other shows I enjoyed going round speaking to the gamers and checking out the games (well 95% of them anyway, there’s always one or two) but it did mean that I was constantly walking round the show – I had done 26,748 steps by the end of the day! – and didn’t take too many photos.

Judging the games was a great thing to do, especially when we went round to hand out the prizes as it was fantastic seeing peoples reactions to receiving them. I won’t put a list up yet of who won what as I don’t think the club has posted it yet but will add a link once it has happened, there will be a shedload of pictures too so will make up for my paltry efforts. I can absolutely scotch one of the common misconceptions of the show as well after judging the games – 95% of all games put on by clubs or individuals are NOT sci-fi/fantasy, indeed we found it hard to come up with more than 4 for that category. Most of those types of games are the small demo games from the larger traders, it might just seem like there are more of them but, sorry, not true.

As for the standard of games this year, we thought (and it is a sentiment seemingly shared by a lot of people going by the blogosphere) that it was very good with a couple of real stand out, show-stoppers – Bill Gaskin’s AWI game and Ian Smith’s ACW fort game in particular – and some nice innovative ones – the RAF lads Toy Box fight, and the Salute Zombie ones for example – and on the whole you could tell that a lot of time and effort had been invested in putting the games on and we thank all involved for their work as frankly it wouldn’t be a wargames show without you! The spread of periods was nice too with everything from Ancients to Cold War on display, although strangely the WWI games were outnumbered by the Pirate themed games which was weird given the theme of this years show.

Before the pics a quick couple of things to answer comments on other posts.

Lighting: Yes it is murky, we all agree but it is beyond the control of the club and to try and put a stop to a growing internet rumour there is definitely no different lighting brightness depending on what you pay, if there was we’d pay for it to be brighter.

Why can’t it be 2 days?: I’ll refer you to the first paragraph for one. Also I think people forget that we are just a Wargames Club. The show is a mammoth task for a bunch of blokes that play with toy soldiers, none of us are professional events organisers and it is absolutely knackering and time consuming putting it on for one day let alone two. Add to that the costs to hire the venue for another day, and probably more importantly the costs for the traders and those putting on the games for a 2 day show and it is just not viable.

Anyway some pics of my favourite games at the show – sorry that I didn’t take pics of all of the I was completely done in and was finding it hard to concentrate on taking photos and some of the ones I took of the others were rubbish, as indeed were some of these ones!

First of all the venue on Friday afternoon, if you think it is big with everyone in it you should be there when it’s empty!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Next up, ‘Twisting the Dragon’s Tail’ by Maidstone Wargames Society. Raid on Zeebrugge, 1918. Just cracking and a participation game to boot.

cof

cof

mde

cof

cof

The Battle of Kawanakajima 1561 – Loughton Strike Force. For that miniature Kurosawa fix.

cof

cof

cof

cof

cof

Berks and Bucks Occasionals – ‘Blood and Bridges’, brilliantly executed transference of the Cold War gone Hot boardgame ‘Eisenbach Gap’ board game to the tabletop in 1/200th-o-rama.

cof

cof

cof

cof

cof

cof

And last, but definitely not least, Ian Smith & Friends truly fantastic ‘Glory! from the Halls of Montezuma’. The details in the fort was remarkable and the rest of the table wasn’t shoddy either. Oh, and in 40mm too. There were people taking pics of this all day.

cof

cof

cof

cof

cof

Salute 2017

I was picked up by Daren at 7 a.m. yesterday and I wasn’t feeling too great to be honest as my blood condition had chosen the past few days to be a complete bastard and make me feel shite so I was hoping that I would be able to last the day. A quick and easy drive across the water into Docklands saw us parked up right near an entrance to the Excel centre in about 20 minutes and so we were at our assigned table before 8 which was good. Dan arrived shortly after us and between the three of us we pretty soon had the game set up and we were munching on much needed Bacon baps and wondering where on earth the 4th member of the team, Tommo, was!

Tommo arrived at about 9 and after some much deserved ribbing he took over command of the NATO forces ready to cover the evacuation of the supplies at the Neustadt rail depot and to defend the river crossings from the Soviet breakthrough force collectively led by myself and Dan. I won’t go into the details of the game itself as it is still too painful! Suffice to say that the addition of 2 FV438 Swingfires, Warren’s brutal use of concentrated artillery and aggressive use of the Jagdpanzer Kannone’s ensured that what was seriously looking like a NATO defeat at one point ended in a defeat for the glorious Red Army.

It was really cool engaging with the people in the show who stopped by for a butchers or a chat about what we were doing. I didn’t hear a negative comment all day and there were some really nice things being said about the game with a lot of justifiable praise going to the excellent terrain made by Daren. Thanks to everyone that stopped by, we hope that you enjoyed it. One person said it was ‘elegant’ which I thought was really nice and completely understood where he was coming from and some lads from Germany took one look and said ‘is this game set in Germany’ which has got to be good! I did end up drawing people’s attention to the river though, I don’t think people realised that it was set between two tables which was a shame as I think it really is quite ingenious.

There was one interesting theme I noticed whilst talking to people, the younger punters were the ones that asked ‘is this Team Yankee’ whilst the older ones were happy that it wasn’t. There were a few people that mentioned that they might get their old collections out again which was nice and we also converted at least one chap to 6mm Cold War gaming, he re-appeared at the table with a great big smile on his face blaming us for the fact that he’d just spent £40 at H and R!

I got to meet a couple of people who said that they’d stop by which was cool too, really good to put faces to names and I got a chance to pop over to Baccus to talk about the Joy of 6 and grab some fliers but we didn’t get a chance to have a good look around the show ,which was a bit of a shame, as we were too busy running the game and chatting to people but from what I saw it looked like it was a good one. I did get to stop Richard from Too Fat Lardies as he walked past before the doors opened to say thanks for ‘Chain of Command’ and to have a quick chat about what is planned for it in the future, which was nice. Loot wise I just picked up some kit from a very busy Andy at Heroics and Ros and got a chance to have a look at their new Cold War infantry figures – I’ll definitely be putting in an order for some Brits and East Germans very soon. The day went very, very quickly and it was a great blast, apart from feeling knackered I even managed to head out for a beer and a curry with some of the other Warlords so my worries about staying the course earlier on were unfounded.

One last thing: I have to say many, many thanks to the three other chaps involved. Warren played a blinder and was a pleasure to play against as usual although he did pick on my lads quite unfairly! Dan was great to have as a teammate, apart from the many laughs our collectivism was unflinching even in defeat. Last but not least, Daren, who not only worked really hard making the game possible by his great terrain building skills but umpired the game too, we even forgave him for saying ‘we’ when referring to the Brits!

Gents it was a pleasure and a privilege, bags of fun was had and I am already looking forward to June and the Joy of 6.

Here’s some pics…

The team: L-R: Me, Dan, Warren and Daren

All set up and ready to go

Apparently Daleks must appear in Warlords games!

It was a good job I made some more K.O. markers!

Loot from H&R

 

Salute Game run through.

Yesterday saw myself, Dan and Daren meet up bright and early at the home of the South London Warlords to have a run through of the game that we are putting on at Salute this weekend. The game is set during the Cold War and sees an outnumbered British force holding a collection of river crossings in the face of a Soviet tank heavy force.

The rules we will be using are GHQ’s Micro Armour ones so the scale is 1:1, all the vehicles are GHQ and, bar most of the buildings, the terrain is hand made by Daren and it is quite something!

I won’t go into detail about the game as it was just a practice to see if everything was working ok and if the force balance was right but Comrade Noakesavitch and myself succeeded in breaking through to bring peace, prosperity and freedom to the poor oppressed workers of some more of Germany by the use of overwhelming numbers and firepower!

We have decided to add a randomly arriving force of FDR Leopard 1’s that have escaped fighting to the flank to bolster the NATO defences (there are already a platoon of JagdPanzerKannone available to the Brits) as well as a couple of FV438’s that I found in my leadpile as the 5 Chieftain’s currently assigned just weren’t enough! We have also decided that the point of the scenario should be the evacuation of the supplies from the rail depot by a convoy, hence why the crossings haven’t been blown yet.

It should be a cracking game so please stop by at table GG05 and have a look and a chat.

Any way here’s a lot of pics to give you an idea of what is in store, I might not get to take many on the day so there’s quite a few. First up some of the action then a slideshow of the terrain (you can click on the pics to see them bigger).

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Getting ready for Salute

It is a week until Salute and I won’t be working there this time or visiting as a punter because I am helping put a game on. It will be a 6mm Cold War affair with a Soviet force trying to bounce a crossing over a river line that is defended by a joint British and West German Territorial force. To say I am excited about it is a bit of an understatement, I can’t wait!

We are due to have a full run through of the game on Monday down at the Warlords and I will post some ‘taster’ snaps afterwards as it does promise to be a belter! This is due to the fantastic efforts of the good Bombardier, Daren, who has turned his considerable talents to making some truly fantastic terrain (some of which can be seen elsewhere on this blog) and it will include his terribly ingenious ‘sunken’ river.

For my part I’ve only had to paint 25 T-62’s and 5 JagdpanzerKanones plus knock up a few log bunkers and dug-in bases and write up the background which doesn’t feel like much compared to what Daren has turned out! We will be using the MicroArmour rules by GHQ, to which Daren and Dan have added some great touches (for example the Soviets have to write a Fire Plan that will be hard to adjust once battle is joined) and all the vehicles will be GHQ. You can find us on table GG05 so stop by and have a chat if you are passing.