Salute 2016

Another year another Salute and first off I enjoyed this year considerably more than last year, although I did have some issues. First issue was yet again the queue! How hard is it for the South London Warlords staff to not know what is going on with how it's organized. Also what's the bloody point of squashing everyone up at the front for nearly a hour and a half so people are basically shoulder to shoulder with each other when the back end has a huge gaps!! To point out, I was about 3rd front the front being there since 7:50am (I like being early) and it was the most uncomfortable I have been in years whilst queuing. 

Finally let in at 10:05am and even then staff were shouting at each other about who said we could be let in. Ah well finally into Salute and on to a fun filled day of games and geekery. 

Having predominantly pre-ordered nearly everything I wanted to buy I was set up to just enjoy a lot of gaming. First up was a game of Infinity run at Simple Miniatures were I was considerably dice raped by a trio of jammy urchins! I did manage to snaffle a couple of Infinity Ariadna blisters for my French Sectorial force from them for £2.50 each so major bargain. 

Onto Hawk Wargames to pick up the show exclusive PHR Dropship and catch up Louis and Simon. Dave had also finished his massive UCM spaceship model which looked immense. 

After lunch I attended the yearly Bloggers meet up which saw approximately 30 people turn up for the annual rogues gallery portrait. It was great to catch up with the likes of Tamsin, Ray, Postie, Lee, Mike and Fran as well as many others. 

Next on he agenda was a demo of the new Tanks game by Gale Force 9. This is vaguely in the same vein as X-Wing but a WW2 Tank game. Using 15mm Tanks it's a brilliant fun simple quick skirmish game and the starter set was only £18. One quick purchase later and I had the starter and a nice bunch of Tank expansion blisters. I will do an unboxing post soon for this. 

Two other games finished off he afternoon and these were a Team Yankee  game run by the Leicester Phat Cats where my Soviet Tank hordes destroyed the Capitalist Yankee forces and the Battle for Troll Bridge which is the new fantastic scenario set by Warploque Miniatures for their wonderful fantasy skirmish game Arcworlde. I got to chat to Alex Huntley who runs Warploque, sculpts all the miniatures (by hand) and designed the game and got to collect my copy of the set. It's a cracking addition to an already lovely game. 

Overall Salute this year was great. I got to catch up with some wonderful people and meet and have fun with many others. 

I did feel that there was a strange aura around the hall though with a lot of games being run by traders instead of clubs and skirmish games certainly overtook large scale battle games (except for the MASSIVE Kings of War game) a lot of hard work had obviously gone into quite a few of the games 

Photobombing Lloyd from Beast of War at Spartans Halo Ground War game

GCT Studios - Rise of the Kage/Bushido

Mad Max 

All Quiet on the Martian front

Star Trek

Afterlife

Warthogs from Halo Ground Wars

BIG Tank from Halo Ground Wars

Marvel Miniatures Game

Batman Miniatures Game

501st Cosplay

Crooked Dice 7TV2 Star Wars

Crooked Dice 7TV2 Scooby Doo

Wolsung

Frostgrave

Infernal

Massive Kings of War game

Freebooters Fate

Team Yankee

Formula Minions

Spectre Miniatures

Link to my Salute Loot