Short Report from Salute 2014

A much belated report from that most spectacular gathering of wargamers and vendors a few weeks back, known as Salute. This was my first time attending and it was a great experience.

I arrived at the Excel Center at around nine o'clock and after some initial confusion I found my place in the already impressive queue in a separate hangar. The queue started to fill up even faster after I've arrived, and soon it stretched a good long way behind me.

After queing for little over an hour – the time made shorter by reading the show programme and studying the freebie minature – the doors opened and the crowd started to fill into the hall of the show.

Now, I had made some preparations and compiled a list of which vendors to see and what to pick up at their stalls – otherwise I feared I would just wander around in amazement and miss all the good bits, or go absolutely bonkers and just buy every cool new thing I saw. So with the list in hand I started to tick off the places to visit. First off was Foundry, due to the simple fact that they were pretty much the first thing that I saw when entering the show. After a quick browse through their racks of miniatures I picked up a fair number of blisters and some paints for my Italian Wars project.

After this first stop I just wandered along the aisles, trying to take it all in, checking my list then and now and making the occasional stop when something caught my eye.

After a while I remembered to take a look at the games being played, and also to take some pictures of them.

A couple of more shopping stops – picking up some Pro Gloria landsknechts from Empress, and some newly released crusaders and accompanying transfer sheets from Gripping Beast, as well as my pre-order of Dux Britanniarum The Raiders from Too Fat Lardies and a pre-show order for a resin log fort I had made from Scheltrum miniatures – and it was already time for a quick lunch before meeting up with fellow club member Søren of the excellent blog Black Powder Wargames. We compared loot, chatted about the show and made another round through the hall together. We also made a brief stop at the bloggers meet up, were I said a quick hello to a couple of nice people from the blogger community. Then we rushed on for a quick chat with Barry from Warfare Miniatures and a look at the newly released Swedes for the Great Northern War. This was just one of the many projects I was tempted to jump into during the show – with so much excellent stuff on display I really had to restrain myself from buying into any new periods.

Instead I made another stop at Foundry, picking up even more stuff for the Italian Wars. And after a while I was back at their stall once again – "got to have some more artillery".

The show was drawing to a close, the crowds had thinned and my feet hurt so after a quick cup of coffee and another round, were I picked up some bits and pieces to complete the haul, I left the Excel Center and my first Salute with my wallet a little lighter and my backback a whole lot heavier.

Now for the rest of the photos. As most bloggers have already posted their reports, I think you've seen most of the great tables before, so instead this is just a random mix of stuff that caught my eye. Unfortunately the lightning wasn't very good in the hall, so some of the pictures came out a bit dark and blurred. I've tried to rectify this in Photoshop and hopefully it isn't too bad.

Wargames Illustrated had a very impressive display table of The Battle of Arklow during the Irish Rebellion in 1798.

Nice water effect. I'm a sucker for those.

Demo game of Chain of Command just about to start. A very nice table indeed.

A selection of models for World of Twilight. I've been interested in this game and it's pretty unique take on fantasy since it was released a couple of years back. I have a couple of starter forces for it (sadly still unpainted), but I've never gotten around to actually playing it. In a moment of weakness I also chipped in on the Kickstarter that ran last month ...

Lovely demo table for World of Twilight. There's something about the look of both the miniatures and the terrain that's very intriguing and original.

4Ground renaissance/fantasy town. The look reminds me of the old Warhammer look from the 80s, particulary the roleplaying version. A nice bit of nostalgia!

Gripping Beast's impressive display table for the upcoming crusaders version of the Saga rules.

Lots of nice details.

Even more details behind the walls.

A very cool game of the battle of Pelennor Fields (from Lord of Rings) in 75 mm scale. Huge table, huge miniatures.

A big troll and an even bigger siege tower.

The stunning Sword Beach D-day landing table. The picture can not in any way convey how big this table was. Simply amazing.

Lots to look at.

Some very nice water effects here too.

Demo table for the game Vahalla. I'm really fond of these small tables – this one was simple but very nice nonetheless. Nice to see some dark age stuff as well, there were a bit of lack of this in my opinion.

Another impressive table: Caesar's invasion of Britain. Some very nice ships.

A closer look at one of the ships (and some hands).

Finally some more small tables. This time for the excellent WW2 game Crossfire.

It's been a few years since I've played Crossfire but these demo games really made me want to pick it up again.

Looking at photos published on other blogs, there are still a lot of things I somehow managed to miss – even after having made numerous rounds of the show – and I just realized I completely forgot to check out the painting competition. Well, I guess that just goes to show how big Salute is ...

Thanks for looking!