Salute 2008

Salute never disappoints. Well, it does if there's no trader selling GMB flags; but that minor annoyance aside I thought this was a splendid show. My own feeling was that the standard of demo/participation games was better than last year (I know others disagree) and the space seemed better managed and layed out. There were more children and families, which is always encouraging, and the trade stands were busy. ACW was very much flavour of the day, with (I think) 4 games in varying scales, including the Perries' own 25mm demo, and some re-enactors from both sides of the war. Other re-enactors included imperial Romans, Vietnam GIs, Napoleonic Polish lancers and some Necromongers from "The Chronicles of Riddick" (actually, on reflection I think the last group may have just been wearing their everyday clothes...). The number of traders and games, many of which I never managed to look at, reinforced my view that this should be a 2-day event, or at least one with longer opening hours. There simply was not enough time to see everything and the photos below are a reflection of those games that I managed to find; there were plenty of others which I have heard great things about which I never came across.


I was more restrained with my shopping that I had thought, at least where impulse buys were concerned. I binged on Perry AWI from Dave Thomas, who also supplied some useful half-price Foundry blisters. Foundry themselves had various "bargain" packs for sale, but they were very hard to identify (Crimean War and orcs mostly, I think). Irritatingly their paints were only available in sets and not singly - I thought they might at least have managed to allow painters to pick up the odd colours they needed; Foundry's loss was quickly Coat D'Arms' gain. Perry plastic ACW was flying off the shelves at Dave Thomas and from the Perries' own stand. Alan told me that the ACW infantry had pretty much already recouped its tooling costs, which suggests that I'm the only wargamer who hasn't bought a set yet; given the clear success of the ACW figures I expect their next plastic plans are already underway. I bought the latest issues of "Wargames Soldiers and Strategy" from Caliver, some ACW from Dixon and one or two other things. I resisted the urge to increase my collection of TSS terrain tiles, mainly because I haven't yet worked out where to store the ones I already have. I meant to buy lots more farmyard animals from Amazon Miniatures but ran out of time.


Socially the show was good and I caught up with a few mates. Those excellent chaps at Tablescape had brought along my model of the Benjamin Ring house (Washington's headquarters at Brandywine) - not quite finished yet but I got the gist of it and it's a pretty impressive model. I showed Chris some of the photos from my Boston/Charleston holiday and tweaked his interest in a couple of things. I took away his plans of the next commission, a farm complex, which I need to consider and finalise. A church and meeting house after that I think.



Below are various photos. Loughton Strike Force presented their second 25mm Waterloo game. After last year's "Ney's Cavalry Charges" this game centered on La Haye Sainte. The Warlords put on a General de Brigade game set in the South American wars of liberation, "Maipo 1818". This game featured 20mm plastics, largely converted from Napoleonic figures. It looked stunnign and seems an interesting period. At the top of the post are: The Lance and Longbow Society's "Battle of Varna 1444" and Touching History's Peninsular game. Below are: Loughton's Waterloo; Maipo 1818; perry ACW; the Shogun Group's "Domjogi" and finally the AWI game, using "British Grenadier" rules, of a hypothetical "Battle of the Clouds" battle, by GLC Games Club. As always, many thanks to the South London Warlords for presenting such an excellent show.