Salute 2026

 

Having missed last year's Salute due to being on tour with the boys' rugby teams, it was good to be back. Both boys tagged along again; Monty is now genuinely interested in gaming and modelling, whilst I think Hugo just wanted a break from his GCSE revision, even if that meant hanging out with his dad and loads of fellow geeks. Salute this year came at the end of two weeks' (much-needed) holiday over Easter. I didn't go anywhere, but did manage a fair amount of painting as well as thinking about this blog and why I'm struggling to update it. Anyway, hopefully things will move along a bit more quickly now.

The Salute experience never really changes. We arrived around 10.45am, by which time the queues had all gone but we were still in time for bags with the free Hannibal plastic figure. It was very busy - the best time to look around is after midday when it thins out for lunch. We had a good lunch at the tapas restaurant outside the Excel Centre, but I realised that going back in after a relatively leisurely (and, in my case, 2 beers) lunch can be a mistake - by 2.30pm we were all starting to flag. With all shopping done by 2.50pm we left shortly thereafter. As noted in previous reports, I would have stayed much longer if I'd been by myself; but it's always worth taking the boys along. Monty shocked me by announcing that he'd seen Pokemon cards for sale - and, sure enough, there were a couple of traders who sold them. These traders were, of course, at the more "fantasy" end of the hobby, and one of them said to me that they wouldn't have bothered with Pokemon cards 5 years ago, but now it seemed a natural fit for the show. Monty was delighted with the "very rare" boxed set he picked up for £50. Salute usually coincides with my birthday, so I pushed the boat out a bit in terms of shopping - lots of Foundry paints, some rules and books from Helion and Caliver, a Wargames Illustrated sub (which I'd let lapse), Crooked Dice's new King Kong figure (see photo below), pretty much everything on my Perry list from Dave Thomas, and a load of Artmaster brushes (I barely use anything else nowadays - these are superb).  I'll talk about the Perry purchase in a couple of days when I do a blog catch-up. Basically, over the past few months I've been working through my lead-pile by period and this has resulted in a number of half-finished units; so I needed a lot of random packs to deal with these.

Overall impressions? Another solid year, I thought. The mix of games seems to have settled down to: a handful of large, 25mm/20mm historical "mega-games", with WW2 being the clear favourite; a larger number of mid-size historical games; a majority of 4x4-ish skirmish games of all periods and genres; and then "advert" games, some of which don't seem to have changed much since pre-Covid. As always, the terrain is what makes games stand out. The Pokemon story illustrates how the show has broadened out to encompass pretty much anything you might consider a "game". Personally, I think that's probably a good thing, and my boys have certainly appreciated it; I know others might disagree. The shopping experience remains excellent - the only people I noticed were missing were Tablescape, who I sadly see have ceased trading, and the Perries (so no 3-up reveals etc). All the traders seemed very busy; you could barely move in the Caliver and Helion stands. The lady at Helion said that the "Gaslands" rulebook was their bestseller (see the amazing futuristic Gaslands game below).

Anyway, here are my photos (which I appreciate are a bit analogue now, given the preponderance of videos of the show), in no particular order. As always, apologies to those who I missed and whose games I can't now identify. Some of the larger games were so busy it was difficult to take many photos, but I did my best!  Many thanks to the Warlords, their president Martin, and everyone who put in so much effort to make this such an enjoyable day.

The Continental Ward Society had a wonderful Franco-Prussian War games in 28mm, "The Combat at Le Bourget":

One of the highlight's and I think a trophy winner, was Milton Hundreds Wargames Club's sensational Sword Beach game:

 

Cornwall Wargames Association's "The Battle of Lizard Point", 1637 - wow!

Kingston Games Group had this "Battle of Hoth" game:

I think this was the Society of Ancients' "Issus" game:

Dave Brown had another ancients game, which I think was Hellenistics:

Hornchurch Wargames Club had an eye-catching Little Bighorn game (one of two at the show - see below for the second one). I was somewhat surprised that neither of my boys had heard of "Custer's Last Stand". We discussed it over lunch and returned to this game a couple of times to see how Custer was getting on - not well, it turned out. I thought this showed an excellent use of hex terrain: 

"A Few Brits and the Hobby" had another trophy-winning (I think) game, simply called "Italy 1944". There's clearly something about WW2 that brings out terrain-modellers' best work:

Ken "Yarkshire Gamer" Reilly's"Relief of Forli 1499" was another spectacular game. Those who follow Ken on social media will have seen the units emerge as they were produced and the end result more than lived up to expectations:

Rubicon Models had two amazing platoon level games, with terrain that was pretty jaw-dropping. You could almost feel the humidity of the Vietnam table, and the foliage actually looked "wet": 

"To the Strongest!" had a fictional, but pretty spectacular, 25mm War of the Spanish Succession game:

I didn't catch who hosted this game, I think it was part of the "Lard Zone". I loved this, as it matches an idea I have for a 7TV game:

  

More Lardies WW2 action was this "Battle of Montcornet, 1940" game:

Footsore Miniatures were demonstrating their "Mortal Gods" skirmish rules. I loved the terrain here:

I keep trying to get on the Crooked Dice 7TV demo games at Salute shows, but it's always packed. Here Scooby Doo and friends take on King Kong. I liked this so much I bought the 3D-prints of Kong himself and the kids' Mystery Machine (which is going to be a total b&stard to paint...):

Brecon Wargames Club's "Simply Sudan"; there were quite a few desert games this year:

More desert action, this time WW2; I think Essex Warriors "What a Hussar" game: 

Hugo's Heroes "Siege of Straslund, 1628" was another highlight:

Here are various other games which caught my eye and give a flavour of the rest of the show:

Finally, 1/32 Wargames had a nostalgic-looking WW2 Pacific War game using plastic Airfix figures:

        

Nizam-i-Cedid (1)

 

This is the first unit of Ottoman infantry I painted - a unit of "boustangee" musketeers from the Nizam-i-Cedid army.  This was a corps of infantry trained in more modern, European methods that was developed in the wake of the Ottoman Empire's defeat in the Russo-Turkish War of 1787-92: the name means "new order".  The aim of Sultan Selim III was to develop a modern army that could hold it's own against its enemies, given that the Janissaries were beginning to show their age as a fighting force.  By 1806 the Nizam-i-Cedid numbered about 25,000 men.  However, Janissaries saw the corps as a rival rather than an ally.  When Selim III was deposed in 1807, the ensuing political strife saw the disbanding of the Nizam-i-Cedid, many units of which were attacked by the "old" army and their soldiers killed by vengeful Janissaries.

All that said, I'm not entirely sure whether what I've painted here is an proper Nizam-i-Cedid unit.  This rather fetching pink and grey uniform is that of the "imperial gardeners" regiment, which was part of the Sultan's household guard.  Accordingly to Flaherty, "they were responsible for the maintenance, policing and defence of some 70 imperial estates as well as the coasts around Constantinople."  This description also seems to include guarding the imperial seraglio.  Flaherty suggests that troops from this regiment, or at least some of them, were recruited into the Nizan-i-Cedid, but it may well be the case that the regiment itself never took the field.  But the uniform is so good I just couldn't resist painting it up!

A note on the paints used, for those who are interested.  The tunics were painted with the Foundry palette 16 "Nipple Pink" and the trousers with palette 31 "Granite". For the soldiers' flesh, I wanted a middle-eastern, rather than European, look and used the Foundry palette 123 "Near Eastern Flesh".  It took me a while to finish this unit.  I ran out of figures a couple of times and then couldn't decide on the flag.  There isn't that much information on flags for regiments other than the Janissaries, but plain green and red ones seemed to be used, so I painted up one of the former.    

36 figures. Painted May 2023 to June 2024.    

Ottoman Artillery (1)

I mentioned that I've been working on Ottomans for my Napoleon in Egypt project.  I finally managed to get my camera out at the weekend, so I'll have a series of posts this week to get up to date.  I thought I'd work backwards and start off with my Ottoman "grand battery". This consists of three of the Perry Miniatures "heavy artillery" packs with large field pieces (catalogue number OT36 - so not the super-massive piece just released. As seems standard now with Perry ranges, the crews come in boxes of 6 figures and the guns are purchased separately.  I extracted a few of the figures and added a standard bearer from the irregular infantry command pack (OT13) to make up a couple of battery command stands.  The guns and crews are based on Renedra plastic 65mm x 90mm bases.  Even with these larger bases, I find the guy with the ramrod in loading crews invariably needs to be based separately, as there just isn't enough space.

The colour schemes for the gunners is taken from Chris Flaherty's "The Napoleonic Ottoman Army".  Published by Caliver, this book is essential if you want to build an Ottoman Army. In broad terms, there was the standard distinction between "heavy" and "light" guns. The type of heavy field gun shown in this unit was called a "kolunburna" and appears to have changed very little over the past century or two. It probably equated to a 19.5 pounder in European money. The crew themselves are a mix of figures in standard Ottoman irregular dress and then a rather fancy yellow uniform which seems to have been used for heavy guns crews and another unit called the "humbaraci", which operated mortars and howitzers.   The flag is taken from an illustration in the Flaherty book.  It may or may not be correct for this type of unit, but who cares - with a brass gun barrel on a red field it does at least look the part.    

I wanted to create a bit of an emplacement, as Ottoman heavy artillery seems to have to have been entrenched during battle, and so used Renedra's plastic gabions. These are relatively easy to put together, but the top is simply a plastic disc so you need to add your own "earth".  I painted the gabions themselves with GW Citadel paints - a base of "Rhinox Hide" then drybrushed highlights of "Gorthor Brown" and "Baneblade Brown".

I have two further guns and crews already painted, and will post those up when I've finished a third.

19 figures and 3 guns. Painted December 2024 to February 2025.