Salute 2012

I'm rather late in posting pics of Salute last Saturday, and the photos of the games are widely published now on various blogs and fora.  For reasons I can't put my finger on I was rather underwhelmed this year.  The socialising was particularly good, as I met a couple of people for the first time and had good catch-ups with several others (although unfortunately I missed chatting to the Perries, Nic Robson at Eureka and John Fletcher at the Liberators! game).  But whilst there were some excellent games and clearly a lot of work had been put into them, I thought the overall standard was lower than previous years.  It's also clear that each year see more fantasy/sci-fi games and fewer historical ones; that's not a criticism, as the hobby's a broad church, but it's the impression I have.  I had a quick look at the painting competition, but the historical entries appeared to be the usual things (ECW infantry, Napoleonic cavalry) by the usual painters - again, not a criticism, but perhaps it explains why I felt I was shrugging my shoulders quite a bit.

Purchases were rather more extensive than I'd anticipated, once everything was totted up afterwards.  I collected a large pre-order from Eureka of more AWI Continental dragoons - I'll be ploughing into these over the summer - and another pre-order from Empress of the new Maori Wars packs.  I bought a few more Dixon 25mm ACW figures, a battalion's worth of Perry 1861 Rebs for Bull Run, which I think will be fun to paint, and two more boxes of Perry plastic 1815 French infantry.  I also picked up some cheap Don Troiani ACW books, a couple of magazines and that's about it.  Anyway, here are some photos of the games that caught my eye.  Apologies to those I didn't catch and a huge apology to the Warlords for completely missing their Liberators game - I don't know why, but I just didn't see it (the same happened with Dave Imrie's and Andrew Taylor's game), which is a great pity.  Perhaps that's a problem with Salute now - it's so big that you just can't see all of it.

Corunna by the Essex Gamesters.  I'm not sure if this game was actually being played, but it was certainly a stunning set-up and won the "best in show" award.  The toys were from a variety of manufacturers, and it was good to see various figures from the Perry First Carlist War being used as Spanish irregulars and civilians.













Skirmish Wargames had a Mount Tumbledown skirmish game. The good guys seemed to win here:





Chemins de Feu had a 2009 NATO v Russia "what if" set somewhere in the Baltic:





The University of Wolverhampton also had a "what if", the time the Royal Navy attaching the Union fleet outside New York in 1864:



One of my favourites was White Hart Wargamers' Shangani Patrol game using North Star Africa figures.  Beautiful terrain and figures:









Loughton had their usual 15mm GdB Napoleonic slug-fest, this time Aspern-Essling:









You'll see much more of this Crimean Sevastapol game in ther next couple of issues of Wargames Illustrated. Terrain by Dave Bodley:









Pegasus Bridge in 6mm by Maidstone Wargames Club:



Victrix had a beautiful 54mm Peninsular game:







I appreciate the blog has been rather silent over the past couple of weeks.  I'll post some more First Carlist War figures over the next day or so.  I'm then off to Cornwall for 2 weeks much-needed holiday (my last proper holiday was the trip to Australia and New Zealand last February), but we're taking the lap-top so I might catch-up with a few posts I've been meaning to do.  I've spent most of the past 2 months painting ACW figures and now have 4 Reb regiments finished and a couple of other things.  More on those when I return.

Camp Frenchmen

Sorry, couldn't resist the title; no doubt many bloggers before me have thought of it. This is a Foundry pack I bought during their last sale. The figures are typical Perry sculpts of 15-odd years ago - compare the anatomy with the Perry Miniatures interloper, the chap eating some cheese (who is a left over from the Young Guard First Voltiguers that I painted a couple of years ago). These figures didn't take long to paint. By pure coincidence I've realised that I have painted them pretty much the same as some other people (Roly Hermans for example), namely grenadiers of a battalion's second company. However, I did look around at other uniforms, and decided that I could paint one of the figures as a member of the artillery train (i.e. the chap in the slate grey tunic holding a mug). Dinium painted a rather fine version of the standing greatcoated figure here. The set comes with some muskets that I forgot to paint!

7 figures. Painted January 2009 (Young Guard voltigeur) and January 2012.