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.

Spectre Miniatures

One of my purchases at Salute was three modern figures from a company called Spectre Miniatures. One pack had two figures with automatic rifles, called Deniable Operators Alfa. Then there was a single figure called MENA (Middle East/North Africa) Commander Alfa - this guy has a big beard and is waving a rifle over his head.

I bought these because they are very nice looking figures with good animation and detail, and so it proved on painting them up. By the nature of the figures they aren't meant to have uniforms, so I painted them with a variety of colours, mostly greens browns and tans with a few other tones for contrast. As with all my 28mm figures now, I cut off their metal bases and put them on clear plastic ones.

Labyrinth

When we were down in London last month I visited the Orcs Nest (just off Cambridge Circus) and bought Labyrinth, War On Terror 2001 - ? from GMT games. (In practice ? is around 2010). I also got the expansion, Awakening, which covers the Arab Spring and beyond, so taking you from 2011 onwards.

So far I have only played the base game, and I am impressed. It is very asymmetric, between the US and the Jihadist forces, but it seems well balanced. There is a bot to play the Jihadist side, so I have been playing the US, and it works very well. It is a proper challenge, with none of the "trying to fool yourself" that happens when you are playing a normal game solo. The expansion has a US bot, so a solo player can take the Jihadist side, and it also improves the Jihadist bot at the same time. I am looking forward to trying that out, from both sides.

As a solo game I like this because you have a reasonably constrained set of choices, and the challenge is to choose the best way to use your limited resources. Many games leave you facing a vast expanse of possibilities, and you struggle to know where to start. A good example is The US Civil War, a boardgame I bought a few months ago. It is very impressive, and has been very well reviewed, and I set it up and read through the rules. But I simply couldn't get started - the sheer scale and breadth of choice was too daunting. Maybe if I had had a live opponent, especially one who had played before, I would have had the incentive to press on regardless, but playing solo I just couldn't start to climb the cliff. Labyrinth gives you a much narrower path to follow, though you do have to make key choices - just from a much smaller palette.

Salute 2017

Off down to t'Smoke for my annual trip to Salute. I stayed in a hotel close to the venue - it costs a little more but it avoids a long trail across London in the morning. The hotel also allows a checkout at 14:00 which means you can go back at lunchtime and dump the morning's booty, and leave your luggage with the concierge. Saves a lot of lugging during the afternoon. My daughter is working there at the moment so I went down by train, and had dinner with her, all very relaxed and a good way to prepare for a hard day spending.

Up betimes, and a bacon butty in the cafe opposite (much cheaper and better than eating inside the venue). I walked up to the show, the length of ExCel which makes quite a trek. Salute is always held on the same weekend as the London Marathon, and ExCel is where they have the checkin process for all the runners. So down at the west end the place is full of lean lithe runners in tracksuits and Lycra. As you walk down the length of the halls the average weight of the attendees roughly doubles, as does the average blood pressure, and you have arrived at Salute.

Plenty has been written about this show so I won't say too much. I spent the morning walking round and doing a bit of reconnaissance. My main theme for the day was my plan to get into Black Powder (the period and the rule set) using 6mm of course. I bought a couple of supplements from Warlords - the ACW and AWI books - and returned to the hotel to pack. Lunch was fish and chips at the "Airline Cafe" - again far nicer, far cheaper and far quicker than eating in ExCel.

Back to the show, and some serious figure purchasing. Baccus had their new Fallschirmjager on display, which led to the following conversation. Me: "Is that what i think it is, a Nebelwerfer?" Baccus: "Yes". "It's not in the catalogue". "No". "It's not on the list here on the stand". "No". "But it is available?" "Yes". "So I can buy some?" "We've sold out". (Collapse of stout party).

After recovering, I bought one each of the rest of the Fallschirmjager packs - Advancing and Firing troops, plus LMGs and Panzerschrecks. I also bought two ACW armies, Confederate and Eastern Union, as well as flags for both. I headed over to H&R to see what they had on offer. There were some nice looking new ranges - East German 1980s, and LRDG and Paras for WW2. However I struggled to get served so I decided to leave those and buy on the web, having seen how nice they looked. I bought a bunch of steel bases in various sizes, ready for the ACW troops, and some paints, and that was it. I left at about four, and with a good trip across London I caught an earlier train and was back home soon after seven.

More H&R 1980s British

After my trial with H&R moderns (well, 1980s) British before Christmas, I bought a more substantial number of infantry, and proceeded to paint them up. I bought the basic infantry pack, the heavy weapons pack and a few singles that I had not got in the first batch. When they arrived I discovered that the heavy weapons pack was made up of various numbers of the single items I had already bought - Milans, GPMG-L7 etc - no new stuff at all. In retrospect this is perhaps not surprising, but I had expected new items. This is a consequence of the fact that there are no pictures on the website, so you are buying blind.

I painted them up, rather slowly, then based them. Like my WW2 troops the plain infantry are on 1" square steel bases, 6-7 to a base. Depending on the rule set used, these may be fire teams, squads, platoons or even companies.However I put the other stuff - Command, LAWs, MAWs, SAMs, snipers and so on - on coins of various sizes. This allows me to be more flexible when playing games at a low level, with individual weapons teams, Big Men and suchlike.

Overall these have come out well, as I mentioned in the previous post the figures are as good as GHQ, well articulated and with good detail. However at present they have no opposition, and after the Featherstone weekend my thoughts are turning to Black Powder, horse and musket and Imaginations.

Command

Infantry Squads

Infantry Squads

Milans

SAMs - Rapier on the left, Blowpipe on the right

The whole force in a Really Useful Box

H&R British 1980s Infantry

As with the Centurions, I bought a few of the Heroics and Ross British infantry from the 1980s because I had heard they were new and nice castings. I bought small samples of different figures, plus some support weapons. I painted them all up, but only based a few - I have ordered more, including generic infantry, so I will want to mix them up into squads. Overall I like these figures - unlike the tanks, I think these are the equals of GHQ if not better sometimes in animation, and here the ability to order them in small numbers really beats the GHQ model.

Left to Right; Carl Gustav, Nightsight, M72 LAW, Observer, Bren

 

Rapier Anti Aircraft Missile mount

Command Group

Milan team

81mm Mortar

L7 GMPG

 

Infantry with night sight

72 LAW

Carl Gustav

Chieftain vs Chieftain

 Getting into Moderns for the first time, and I decided to try some H&R, specifically the 1980's UK stuff, as I had heard it was new and some of their best work. I ordered a variety of infantry in small amounts - you can order a single strip of 3, 4 or 5 figures for about 60p, so you can get exactly what you need, without having to buy a pack of 60 or more and put up with the mixture you get. I also bought four Chieftain Stillbrews - again you order these individually, so you can get just the number you need.
I painted the Chieftains up, and fitted them with magnets for flexible basing (more of that in another post). They seem nice enough models, certainly with better definition than previous H&R I have bought - though that does go back to about 2000. I thought I should do a proper comparison, so I sent off for a pack of five GHQ Chieftains - these are the Mark 5. I painted these up as well, and the photos below show both types together. It is easy enough to spot the H&R models, they have distinctly fatter gun barrels.
Overall, I still prefer the GHQ. Apart from the finer barrels, they generally have sharper detailing. They are also slightly larger - about 2mm longer and maybe 0.5mm wider - though the GHQ ones actually seem slightly lower in profile. There is more definition in the various racks, grilles and other attachments to the hull and turret. Not a huge difference - the H&R one is not a bad model, but GHQ wins for me.
Of course there is one major downside - the GHQ tanks cost £9-25 for the pack of five, or £1-85 each. The H&R ones cost 65p each, only a whisker over a third the price - and as I mentioned you can buy exactly what you need, which may effectively lower the price quite a bit - if you wanted six, say.
So if price or purchasing flexibility are important, H&R are well ahead here. But if you want the best quality models, it's still GHQ. I would also say that H&R still has no photos on the site, which makes purchasing a bit of a shot in the dark. I got my GHQ from Wargames Emporium - Magister Militum are the other UK stockist - and on both their sites you can see a picture of every model before you buy. That matters to me, especially with infantry where  you would like to see the poses and animation.