Salute 2010

Well I think I've recovered from Salute yesterday! I enjoyed the show immensely and the drive wasn't too bad (the three miles from the A4 to Hangar Lane which took an hour last year took just minutes this).

The game went very well, largely down to Matthew, and proved very popular. The CD on the clear beakers for the ships worked well and many people commented on it (and the WI photographer took some snaps of them as well!). I am considering using plastic pint glasses next time to raise them slightly higher but as a concept I think it provides a playable yet aesthetically pleasing result.

There were lots of other really good games that caught my eye, so many I filled the memory card by lunchtime and in the end used my work Blackberry to take a load more - so this year I've made Salute The Movie Parts One & Two, with the obligatory traditional prog rock soundtrack!

There were many highlights but Tewkesbury was a personal favourite as I haved walked the battlefield a number of times with SWMBO (when we were younger and falling in ditches was fun). There were two amazing fantasy games, a epic Zama bash, Dr Who versus the Sea Devils (yeah!), a massive Malburian battle which I really liked, a winter 15mm SF battle from Critical Mass, a cracking Seminole Indian Wars games etc, etc, etc. Some people are moaning about the cost of the show on TMP but for the inspiration alone it's a bargain.

Purchase wise I avoided buying WAB 2 which looks very pretty, I did however go all ancient and bought three boxes of Immortal's new plastic hoplites and one of Griping Beasts' Vikings. Both are excellent.

The Vikings are a multi-purpose buy, they'll do as Chaos Marauders for WHFB and as Vikings for some other historical games. The Greeks were bought with Saul in mind; he loves 300 and is hoping to take Classics and Civilisation in his options so anything that encourages him to read his Herodotus and Thucydides... I really didn't fancy painting Persians but the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta seems the way to go. I also plan to use them in some fantasy games at some stage.

Apart from that I picked up some of the alien plant/hives GZG were selling on behalf of the late Jim Langer. Proceeds were going to charity and Jim had given me one a number of years back so now that I have a few more I can paint them up and show off what a talented, and now much missed, bloke he was. Paul from GZG told me they had shifted most of the stock which was good news. GZG had sold out of the 15mm Spider drones which I decided would make good 6mm Japanese tanks for Iron Cow.

Final purchase was the Perry's Sudan War Correspondents (with Melton Prior figure) and a unit of Naval Brigade to go with the British Infantry I bought last year from Empress. The Perry's had a 3up of their forthcoming plastic Mahdists which I must do my best to resist...