Salute 2019

Down to London on Friday night, staying in my now usual hotel close to the ExCel centre. The hotel was very good, I was upgraded to an executive suite which was nice, though I didn't feel I could actually make much use of the extensive second room. I had a curry in a local place, that was not so good - no alcohol licence, I was sat my the door in a draft and they took ages to take my order. I declined the offer of a complimentary dessert and had a Cornetto from the Tesco Express.

Things were much better in the morning, and after a good breakfast I headed off to the event. I got there just after ten, perfect timing as the queue had started to move quickly and I was soon in. I had a list of things I wanted to get, and the first took me up to a stall called Clive's Diecasts. Not because I wanted to buy any of the old vehicle he was selling, but because he had samples and was taking orders for some new 1/285 models produced by 2D6 Wargaming Aka Robert Fellowes on YouTube. He has been showing the new models on his channel, and they are very nice indeed, as were the samples in the flesh - I ordered a few of each.

After that I was off to the Pendraken stand. Two years ago they released BlitzKrieg Commander 3, which I bought, but hardly played if at all. It was badly received, with errors and inconsistencies, and they have produced BKC4, offering a free swap to anyone who had bought the previous version. I took my copy, and they exchanged it with no questions.

Next I went to Magister Militum, where I found a copy of the boardgame Pavlov's House. I wanted to get this at Hammerhead, but they had not brought a copy, and I bought Cuba Libre instead. This time they did have it, and at a good price, just £54. After that I started to circulate, looking at various stuff, but before long I found my next target on the Spirit Games stall, the Player's Handbook for D&D 5th Edition. I wasn't quite sure if I wanted to invest the time in going through another new version, but in the end I decided I wanted to see how the game has changed.

M<y final target was Volume 1 of Donald Featherstone's Wargaming Through the Ages - I picked up volumes 2-4 in the auction a couple of weeks ago. I found the book on the same stall where I picked up two of the Tank Battles in Miniature last week. While I was wandering round I spotted a couple of Dark Ages buildings from Renedra, and I picked those up.

By this time my bag was getting pretty heavy, so I went back to the hotel to unload. I had lunch there, and checked out, then returned to the show. I was just mooching around really, looking at various things but not buying much. I got some spray undercoat, but my last purchase of significance was three packs of Empress 28mm moderns - a team of four British soldiers, and two four-packs of insurgents. That was the lot, and I left about four, heading back to the hotel to get my case and set off home.

Salute 2018

Down to London for my annual jamboree in Dockland. A good curry with my daughter the night before set me up nicely, and I stay in a hotel five minutes walk from Excel, so there is no rush in the morning.

Excel seemed quieter than usual, but this may have been because the London Marathon runners were not registering there - for once the Marathon is not running on the day after Salute. Once inside the hall, it seemed about as busy as ever.

My first visit was to the Baccus stand, where I picked up some brand new WW2 artillery for both sides - 88mm Flak, Pak 40 and 10.5 leFH 18 for the Germans, and 6pdr and 25pdr for the British. I also got to hold one of their new tanks, a Sherman, but they are still not quite readywith the moulds.

After that I made a circuit of the hall, round the perimeter first, buying various bits and pieces. Studio Miniatures had a lot of nice pulp figures, and I bought three for use as survivors. Hasslefree provided some nice skyclad witches, and I bought a single 6mm city building in MDF from a company called Blotz. I then called at Great Escape Games and picked up some more Chicago Way stuff - another car, two stills, some barrels and some more casualties. Over at Ainsty I got some more barrels of different sizes - you can usually rely on Ainsty for general "stuff".

I went back to the hotel to dump my booty, and had lunch in a local cafe. Maybe next year I'll eat in the hotel. Back to the hall, and I picked up some figures from Spectre Miniatures. They do several ranges of modern special forces and irregular fighters, and I got some because they look very nice. They may be a little large, minis are increasingly "heroic" 28mm, which is really about 32mm.

I spent quite a bit of time looking for board game vendors, because I was hoping to find the Kursk supplement for Conflict of Heroes, called Storms of Steel. I thought this would be out (in a second edition) in time for Salute), but when I eventually found a likely place, Magister Militium, there was no sign. Checking on the Academy Games website the planned date now seems to be June.

I got a book, one of the Tank Battle in Miniature series, volume 2. This was the last one I needed to complete the set of five, two of which I have had since I got them from the author (Bruce Quarrie) in the seventies. I got two more, by Donald Featherstone, at the auction at the weekend event last month, and I was pleased to spot the final missing link (by Bruce, on the Russian front) on a stand here. A few more bits and pieces - some flexible 6mm fields from Timecast, and a couple of back numbers of WSS - and I was ready to go. A pretty good day all round, the train home was quite crowded but on time and I had my loot home before 8:30.

Blenheim or Blindheim?

Off south to sunny Basingstoke for the fourth annual Donald Featherstone memorial weekend - my third, as I missed number 2 thanks to an inconvenient wedding. Ten of us assembled for the hostilities - many familiar faces, and a couple of newcomers. Mark Freeth has moved the location down the row to a slightly smaller unit, but to be honest it makes no difference to the game at all. There is still a huge amount of space, with more behind you if you need to retreat, and we were able to set out a vast number of troops.

This year's battle was Blenheim, or Blindheim as Paul insisted it was called. Given that it's named after an English stately home, you would think the Germans could have got this right. We were using the Black Powder rules, a very popular set, though one that I don't own, as I play very little in this period. It describes itself as a fun set for social gaming among gentlemen, and I think that describes it very well. It has mechanisms which limit the control a player has over their troops, and which sometimes lead to interesting blunders - great fun in a social games, but these are not rules for the hard-eyed tournament player. I enjoyed them a lot, and in fact I have now ordered a copy.

We split into two teams, and I joined the French, under our brave leader Paul Wisken. I took the right flank, including Blenheim village itself, and we got three moves in on the Friday evening - enough time for my opponent Tony to find that two of his brigades had blundered backwards almost out of sight. We then repaired to the hotel, and thence to a local Indian, very good, though we appeared to be going in and out through the kitchen entrance.

Hostilities resumed on the Saturday morning, and we moved briskly - another feature of these rules. Troops in buildings are very hard to dislodge, and I held onto the village, while my artillery on my left played havoc with Henry Hyde's cavalry sweeping forward. However in mid-afternoon Mark announced that the French had clearly lost, and I realised that our centre had been swept away in disarray. I have noticed before in these big battles that you focus on your own fight, and you are unaware of what is going on across the field - really quite realistic.

We decided the thing to do was swap sides, so that we would play the Allies this time, and shuffle around so that we didn't face the same opponent. I wound up at the other end of the table, on the right wing again, with a mixed bag of brigades, Austrian, Prussian and Swabian. I was facing some massive brigades of Bavarian troops led by Phil. We both pushed forward and we had a ding-dong fight throughout. I was hampered by my Swabian brigade which blundered no fewer than three times, first back, then right, then left, and then refused to move at all for several turns. In the end they never made contact with the enemy. That wasn't the case with the other brigades, and both they and the Bavarians took increasing casualties.

Again we played three turns before leaving for the evening, and returned to the hotel for the main event, the dinner. This was excellent - my impression was that the food was much improved on previous years, and there was plenty of wine. We were entertained by Chris and his reminiscences of past times, and Paul's accounts of re-enactments he has known - including one of Blenheim itself. We also had several jokes from Mel, but you can't have everything.

We resumed on the Sunday, and our back and forth tussle on the western side of the battle. Things were pretty even, but again about mid afternoon we were interrupted by the news that the French had defeated our centre, and the battle was lost for John Marlborough. So one win for each side, which is clearly an even match - though pedants will point out that our team lost twice. This made not a hap'orth of difference to my enjoyment of the weekend, which was all down to good company and excellent organisation. As usual Mark and Karen made sure that everything ran smoothly, and the auction on the Saturday raised several hundred for Help for Heroes, a very worthy cause. We're not sure yet what battle we will refight next year, but I do not care, I will be there.

About Me

For my first post I thought I’d give you a quick resume of my wargaming life, which will also explain the title of the blog. I started as a modeller – for my seventh birthday I got an Airfix Spitfire, and that was my course set. Duck Egg Blue for the undersides, in a little glass jar as I remember. So my childhood was all Airfix kits and soldiers – I remember when my pocket money went up to four shillings a week, and Airfix put up the price of their Series 1 kits to 2s 3d, so I still couldn’t afford two. My friend and I would play games, each lining up a box of the figures on a green cloth and knocking them down alternately. Then we realised that just meant the one with an extra man would win, so we started rolling a dice to get a kill. Then one day in a bookshop I found a book by Donald Featherstone, and I realised with a huge shock that what we were doing had a name, there was actually a hobby called wargaming, that grown men wrote rules and played games with them.

The rest of my teens were Featherstone’s rules and Airfix kits. I wrote some rules for myself, highly derivative, but as far as I was concerned, if Airfix didn’t make it, then it wasn’t important. The only Russian tank was the T34, the only German tanks were the Tiger and the Panther (the PzIV was a late addition to Airfix’s range). At university I began to branch out a bit, naval rules and tiny ships from Leicester Micro Models, WW2 rules from WRG (I was amazed that you had to have specific base sizes) and 6mm models from the likes of Scotia and H&R. But then I bought three small books in a box with the odd title of Dungeons and Dragons, and the next ten years were lost to role playing.....

In 1987 I really got back into wargames – I am not sure what the trigger was, but I picked up with Ancients, designing my own continent with nations based on Rome, the Viking, Burmese etc, the whole Hyperborea thing. I got quite serious, I even entered a competition (Armageddon, now Colours, in Reading) but I did not enjoy the experience. My main motive for wargaming is to create a narrative, hence the personal continent, the nations with dynasties and generals rising and falling. “Working” the rules outside any connection with reality in order to win a match doesn’t fit my idea of the hobby – you might as well play chess.

The next diversion came when my son brought home a Space Marine and asked me to paint it (then complained when it was the wrong colour blue). So began years of 40K, Warhammer, Necromunda, Warmaster and the rest. And to be fair the Games Workshop style, the Brettonians and Tyranids, the Elf dragon riders and the Ork Dreadnaughts, they all allowed me a lot of painting and modelling fun. Through all of this I always still thought of myself as a wargamer, still bought WI and MW and went to the occasional show, but there was little time to do anything practical, especially when I got into an online space game called Eve which ate up all my time.

It was Flames of War that pulled me back in. I got a pair of Pak 43s as a free subscription gift for MW, and had great fun making them. I spent a lot of time (and money) building up a collection, and playing the rules, but I became dissatisfied with the look of the games, the FoW parking lot, with opposing tanks touching gun barrels. For a while I tried playing the FoW rules using 6mm models, which looked better, but about the time of 3^rd Edition I could see the old GW “Codex Creep” starting up – new rule books, new army books, new super units and heroes with special abilities. So I began to buy and play various different rules Bolt Action, IABSM, Chain of Command. I also revived my interest in the smaller scale, 6mm, buying the GHQ models which are head and shoulders above their competition and replacing my armies with improved versions. I have played a lot with the GHQ sets (Micro Armour and Micro Armour 1:1) with their models, and also with a set called Panzer Grenadier Deluxe, which is nice. Most recently I have been playing a set called Panzer Korps, a Division level game which has really caught my imagination.

So that's me up to date. There's a huge amount I've skipped, Sci-fi and the Falklands, DBA and the Wild West, Colonials and Age of Sail. And who knows what next?