Salute 2019

 Salute has come round yet again and I got there early as usual to beat the massed crowds. I really like to be at the front of the queue or in at least the first 30 odd people as I could not cope being crushed and shoved up for an hour or so with the clamouring masses. Having an hour and half wait at the front is nothing really. I had plenty of space around me and loads of time to peruse the magazine and free goodies that came in the bag that everyone who attends gets on entering (the first 5000 people anyway) the free miniature is lovely and this time Salute's theme was Post Apocalyptic with the free miniature being a female wasteland character walking her mutant lizard dog pet. More freebies included the Gates of Antares dice game and a nice promo miniature for a new Sci Fi game Starcide from Prodos Games. Nice mini but its more than likely going on Ebay! a Salute dice included as always finished of the goodies (no golden ticket in my back again this year boooo!!)

The queuing hall filled up rapidly and attendance seem pretty similar to last year with tons of happy geeks, nerds, gamers and poor significant others ready to stream into the annual UK church of mass gaming hysteria!! the doors actually opened bang on time this year and we charged in, with maps of the traders and games in hand - our route picked out to maximise our enjoyment and cram in all that we could, timings and plans that would inevitably go all to pot!

Poor Ray, Lee and others from the Posties Rejects, who always seem to manage to sneak in early were standing on the other side of the entrance and nearly got trampled in the rush.

My first port of call was Goblin King Games home of the new whimsical fantasy skirmish game Moonstone. I had seen this previously and loved the Labyrinth, Dark Crystal esq look of the miniatures and the Brian Froud influenced artwork is fabulous. I picked up a cracking starter deal (suggested by yours truly on their facebook page) of a full starter set and rulebook (beautifully illustrated) and had a really nice chat with the lads on the stand. Then it was off for a nice demo. Ash Barker of Guerrilla Miniature Games has done a really good let's play video of the game but having a hands on demo really helped my enthusiasm for the game. I will be posting a more in depth review about the game soon.

Next was Crooked Dice Miniatures a firm favourite of mine and I have been friends with Karl, Helena and Morgan for a good few years. Morgan was running the new 7TV Apocalypse demo game and I sat down ready for some Post Apoc buggy racing mayhem. The game was awesome, not so much for the fact I won but for the cinematic moment that I raced my buggy towards the first gate, launching it of a ramp of scrap and hurtled through the gate, T-Boning an opponents buggy that was in front of me and crashing it out of the race. Such fun!

Warlord games next and they were showing off Black Sails, which is an Age of Sails version of their recent hit naval game Cruel Seas. Using near identical mechanics, it plays pretty similar with different touches like using wind etc.. nice looking game, they are going to be producing their own miniatures for it but I bought into Cruel Seas and am now considering moving it on for various reasons, so this one wont be for me.

It was soon midday and I wandered over to the central point of the hall to meet up again as we do every year with my fellow bloggers. A small attendance this year with most of the usual faces (Tamsin, Ray, Lee, Postie, Sydney etc) and a couple of new faces.

A good catch up and discussion about the show so far, games played and purchases done and intended. The annual photo and then off again for games and shopping.

After a bit more shopping I caught up with Andy Hobday and chatted all things Test of Honour and Mortal Gods. Mortal Gods is Warbanner (old company name) Footsore Miniature & Games (new name for the company and I wont go into the saga of this but most of you might know the story of it) Ancient Greek skirmish game, adapted and updated from the Samurai game Test of Honour.

I picked up the Starter set which is smashing and includes everything you need, Dice, Cards and lots of lovely Victrix Plastic Greek miniatures although Footsore are doing their own and I will be getting myself some very nice Athenian Marines shortly. A good demo game saw my very decent opponent, graciously allowing my to hack down his Spartan Lochos with my rampaging Anthenians!

With only a few hours left of the show, I picked up the last of my shopping list and wandered over to Warploque Miniatures to catch up with Alex Huntley - owner, sculptor, painter and now designer (version 2) of the cracking skirmish game Arcworlde.

Im a huge fan of Alex's work as all his miniatures are hand sculpted and have such an old school style. His ability to turn out such fantastic large pieces such as his Dragons and Giants are amazing.

I have been playing Arcworlde since it first hit the wargames scene and was interested to see how his vision and changes for the 2nd edition would apply to the game. I had a great demo, taking the Wild Elf faction against the Halflings (and a lone Forest Troll that randomly decided to crush Elf and Halfling alike with rocks and falling trees) The Elves were not really a popular faction in first edition (IMHO) but I was really impressed with the direction they are going now. I have a few quibbles over minor changes in the rules but overall it looks like it going to go from strength to strength.

With half hour left before the show ended I managed to get a good deal on a 4 x 4 aerial battle mat from Deep-Cut as it was the last on and took a few last photos of tables and games I had missed during the day. Looking at some other peoples pictures I still missed quite a bit (as per usual)

Some people have complained about the lighting but I found it a lot better this year. The show seem well attended with customers, maybe a bit lighter than previous years and plenty of traders were their although I have heard a few disgruntled comments from traders who couldn't get in due to lack of space (there seemed plenty of space to me) the avenues for people to walk around seemed wider - or is that die to less people?? also there were a lot of empty tables from demo/participation games that didnt show I believe.

On the games from I am disappointed I couldn't get anywhere near the TwoFatLardies Chain of Command game as it was swamped all day and really sad I didn't get to play on the amazing Lego Flash Gordon Game! overall a very high degree of games shown and put on with some fabulous work go into the majority. Again some were quite mediocre which is a shame. One game I should mention but didn't get any decent pics of was the Back to the Future game. They had 3 tables set out with terrain from the 3 films, very cleverly done and even had light tracks that lit up for the Delorean to go 88 miles per hour - Great Scott!!

Overall a very enjoyable show. Great to see and chat and meet up with all the wonderful friends and acquaintances in the hobby and I came away with some nice new shineys and had some wonderful games.

Spectre Operations

Warlords Black Sails

Wings of War

Mammoth Stanpede

Burrows & Badgers

This is not a Test

Street Wars

Batman

Two Fat Lardies Chain of Command

Space 1999 Game

Flash Gordon in Lego!!

Your happy Blogger

Light on cosplayers this year