Salute 2016 - Photos

Good day at Salute yesterday, well worth the round trip from Birmingham. Despite being there from 11-4 I didn't get to play in any participation games, which was a pity. Would have been nice to try the new Airfix Wargame and the Thunderbirds co-op board game, and the Crawley(?) Wargames Club D-Day using baking trays looked fun. Need to get up earlier next year!

The biggest general point of note was that the event, both in games and traders, appeared to be dominated by SF and Fantasy. At a rough guess I'd say that they accounted for 75% of each. However since the games were typically more gang/boutique it was still the bigger historical games that dominated the hall - although there seemed to be far less of them than previously. Also a lot of Kickstarter activity - will be interesting to see which are still around in a couple of years...

Photo's first, then what I bought in the next post. Not organised enough yet to tell you exactly which club did which, again maybe next year.

Nice looking 1/300th BAOR game, loved all the engineering vehicles parked up in the town - looks like the same vintage Heroics models as I've got.

I was on the look out for some enemy for my 15mm SF force. I like Hard SF so I'm not after weird looking aliens or impractical helmets. So more a Europe vs China type scenario - 2300AD style. If they fit in with Traveller even better. These figures on the GZG stand look like they'll fit the fill - the helmets are not even a parsec away from the Zhodani helmets. Will buy in the Autumn.

Lovely looking 28m ECW game doing a what-if of an attack on Bristol. Whilst my 6mm ECW is highly practical is does tempt me to do some more 20mm ECW.

Agincourt again in 28mm I think. Table looked incredibly crowded between the two woods. Certainly not a game of manoeuvre.

A small game in almost every sense, but which appeared to have a steady audience. Israeli vs Syrians in 3mm, with about a Division a side represented 1:1 in tanks on a wonderful terrain. The little city/town patches were great (Brigade Models I believe). The guy said the ground scale was also 1/600th but that cant be right, as even if it was 2m x 2m that would be only 1.2 km x 1.2km and given the number of towns on the board that doesn't add up. 12km x 12km would be more like it. Great game though.

Some lovely snow effects on this Eastern Front game.

Really nicely presented gameby "Bill Gaskin and Friends" of the Battle of Wilhelmstadt in the Seven Years War using Black Powder, with a superb village off in the distance. Copious notes and background which really ought to be a must for a big public show like this. Alan (old wargame buddy and who met me up at the show) and Nick and I actually put in to do a game at Salute this year but didn't make the cut. Hopefully we'll be more successful this year, and if we do then this is the sort of standard I'd like to aspire to.

Finally another really good looking Peninsular game. The guy said that the figures were 54mm, but they looked bigger than that to me - "Heroic 54" in comparison the to old Airfix 54mm vignettes I've got.