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.

Gambassi's Warehouse

My biggest birthday present was a 4Ground building in their Chicago Way series - the Gambassi Warehouse. This is the biggest building in the range, and the most expensive - £90-00. It is a very complicated kit, with many layers of different kinds to make up the walls. In the most extreme case there were five layers - a central core layer, then red brick layers either side, and then on top of the bricks very thin layers representing crumbling plaster. You have the option to remove some of the plaster areas, to reveal the bricks underneath - you can remove more or less, depending on how dilapidated you want the building to be.

All the windows are glazed, with clear acetate sheets and mdf grids to which you stick the acetate and then trim it before gluing it into the window spaces in the walls. There are many doors and trapdoors which all open and close, with careful construction. The upper storey and the roof can both be removed for access to the interior, and it is also possible to construct it as a single storey building by leaving the upper layer out. The stairs can be removed in this case, and replaced with a trapdoor to a dummy basement level. So there is a lot of detail and a lot of thought has gone into the design of this building. Fully recommended.

Cruising the mean streets

One of my birthday presents was a vehicle from Great Escape Games in The Chicago Way series - a Cadillac V-8 Town Sedan. This is a soft resin or hardish plastic model, with a metal driver. It went together well - the body/chassis is the majority of the model, and the rest are mostly accessories like the wheels, lights and so on. The exception is the roof/windows, which go together as a four part box and then need to be put on top of the body. In fact it sits quite well inside the top of the body, and I didn't glue it in so that the car can be shown open topped. The other thing I did was cut the windows out - I think it looks better with open spaces there than any attempt to paint it as glass. The driver is perfectly fine, not hugely characterful but does the job with or without the top on. I left him free from glue as well, so the car can be shown as empty if needed.

In the pictures the car is sitting on the Cigar Box Roaring Twenties Battle Mat, with various figures and bits of terrain - I am planning a game on there soon, but I have a bit of building to do first.

More Survivors

I painted up another six survivor miniatures, this time from Hasslefree. They are from the Modern Adventurers range, and they're not very obviously aimed at the post-apocalypse market, though they will fit in pretty well. As models they are well animated, and fairly slight in general, though I didn't feel they had quite as much detail or "personality" as the Lead Adventurers I painted up previously. Still, they are good models, and Hasslefree has a very large range.

Wanna be in my Gang?

Continuing the Chicago Gangster theme in my purchases from Fiasco, here is the Pulp Figure set Bugs Malarkey's Gang. Five figures as is normal from Pulp, for £10. Three nattily dressed gunmen and one looking a little rougher in a scarf and beanie hat, plus the classic man with a violin case. They painted up very nicely, and as is standard now for me I cut away the metal bases and glued them to clear plastic bases.

More Chicago

I built the two 4Ground Chicago Way models I picked up at FIASCO last weekend - the Shotgun House and the Garage. As always with this supplier the models are really nice and solid, double thickness on all the main walls so you get a sound structure and surface detail on both sides. The house is pretty simple, a straightforward rectangular building with one interior dividing wall with door, and a porch/veranda at each end. The garage was more substantial and complicated, with an internal office with its own flat roof, and then a large space accessed by double doors which would be the workshop, presumably. There's nice glazing for the windows, including signs for the front ones, and a long covered walkway going out to one side. All pre-painted, plus signs and posters to stick on when you're finished. I have five buildings in this series now, as well as other suitable city buildings; I am looking for appropriate mats or the like.

Fiasco 2017

Over to Leeds today for Fiasco at the Royal Armouries. This is my third or fourth year - it is not too far to drive, a bit over the hour, and it's also well timed as there's not a lot of other shows going on right now. I parked up and had a quick look around, then went looking for lunch. The docks area around the Armouries is very smart, all big new buildings or modern conversions of original warehouses - but it's a bit soulless. I walked over the Ayre and up into the older part of Leeds. I found a bar/club called Revolution - no doubt very trendy at night, but for a rack of ribs and apint on Sunday lunchtime, just perfect.

Back to the show along the Ayre - someday we might come over on the narrowboat and moor close by. But that is well in the future. For this year's show I had a few specific items on the list, and I got them all. The first target was some Old West buildings from Leven - I have an idea to create a western town as a sort of diorama. I'd like to try playing a gunfighter game at 6mm, but so far I am struggling to find suitable figures, and I had no more luck today. While I was at Leven's stand I als picked up an extra building, as I often do, just because I liked the look of it. In this case it was a big British pub, called The Push, apparently based on a real building in Beverley.

After that I wanted some more Chicago buildings in 28mm, having built a couple last week. I found some 4Ground kits at Colonel Bill's stall, and I got a garage and a shotgun shack. I was tempted by a large warehouse, but at £80 it was just a little too much.

My other targets were smaller. I got a pack of gangsters from Pulp Figures - Bugs Malarchy's Mob - who will obviously be fighting around the new buildings. And I went to Baccus and picked up the Fallschirmjager Nebelwerfers - they had sold out at Salute, and I didn't get to Joy of Six, so I wanted to get hold of it, though I am not currently painting WW2.

I got away after three, and home by about half four - it was a lovely day for the first day of winter, so the drive was no problem - a good day out all told.

These Guns For Hire

I went to Britcon last weekend, it's mostly a three-day tournament but there are a good number of traders there on the Sunday and it's a local show for me. It's also an excuse for a pint and a meal at Turtle Bay near St Peter's Square. Goat curry and Red Stripe - very nice. There wasn't a whole lot for me on the stalls, nothing in 6mm, but I did buy a pack of Pulp Gangsters, "These Guns For Hire". I bought the Osprey rules for Prohibition gangs, Mad Dogs with Guns, and these figures were fun to paint, as the Pulp Figures usually are.

Hammerhead 2016

Down the M6 and across the A50 to Newark for Hammerhead 2016. A new show to me, but it has a bit of history and one of the bigger ones on the circuit, I think. The venue is a large exhibition hall on the Newark Showground, so vast amounts of parking all around. The building is suited to the event, not surprisingly as a purpose-built exhibition hall, so plenty of space and light, though you wouldn't say it has a lot of character. The food was supplied by the "Bistro" in the building, but "Caff" would have been a better name - chips with pasties, burgers and sausage rolls, and bacon baps. Fine by me, as it happens, but not a lot of choice if that's not to your taste.
As for the show itself, all the games were designated as participation-based, and as far as I could see they were mostly busy, though a few at the far ends seemed quiet. There was a good variety, from witch racing through WW1 to sci-fi with 3D printed models. There seemed to be quite a few aerial games - Wings of Glory, at least one jet combat game, and a nice looking one with Japanese planes attacking a US AA destroyer in 1943. The ship model in that one was quite large, but not as big as the one in another game using the third dimension. This featured an underwater frogman attack on a ship which only appeared in the form of the bottom of the hull, which formed the "roof" of the playing area. The divers moved up and down below this, presumably trying to attach limpet mines.
There was also a good selection of traders, all around the outside of the space. Personally I was slightly disappointed because there was no 6mm WW2 - Wargames Emporium and Magister Militum weren't there, and Baccus did not have any of their new WW2 infantry (I have a couple of these on order and due to arrive soon). I was also hoping to find one of the printed battle mats - Cigar Box or something like that, but there were none on show - just some plain coloured blankets. Still I managed to collect a fair amount of booty, on show in the picture below.

Centre rear is some stuff for the airbrush - a stand and some primers in various shades. To the right is some other paints - Basetex for the bases on my 6mm infantry, and a couple of metals for the bigger models. In front of those are two items from Ainsty for my Pulp games, and a Renedra Arab/Adobe house ditto. Then three terrain items in 6mm, fields and town bases, from The Baggagetrain. To their left are two packs of Pulp Figures, sailors for the ship I painted last month.
On the extreme left are the new rulesets which I always wind up buying at a show. I have finally cracked and bought General Quarters 3 (WW2 naval). For decades GQ1/2 has been pretty much the default ruleset for 20th century naval wargames, certainly for me. The new rules, which were a long time coming, are supposed to be much more detailed, which is not necessarily a good thing, in my view. Anyway, now I will get a chance to judge for myself.
The other rules are Lion Rampant from Osprey - Medieval skirmish/small battles. I've been thinking about these for some time, and I was persuaded by my other purchase, a box of Teutonic infantry from Deus Vult. - plastic and lots of mix and match heads and arms. I am looking forward to making and painting those, and they gave me an excuse to buy the rules, and vice versa. So there's 2-3 different genres there, plus the WW2 6mm, and I'm not sure which one will run away with me in the near future.

A Life on the Ocean Wave

Browsing the web I chanced upon the TTCombat site, and their City Scenics range. Ironically, despite the name, the item that caught my eye was the Cargo Ship. This is a good-sized model, 50cm long (so a scale 25 metres, roughly), though in real terms this would be a very small vessel, a small trawler rather than an ocean-going cargo ship. Nevertheless it looks the part, with most of the length taken up with an open cargo deck, and an open fo'csl at the bow. At the stern is a two-level superstructure, with a plain cabin on the lower level, and a bridge complete with wheel and control above. I have built it so the roof and first level can be removed for access during a game. My idea is to use this for a fight between two leagues out at sea - I will probably need to adjust movement and ranges for the confined space. It will also come in handy as part of a dockside scene; a good location for a plot point in a larger table layout.

The sound of jazz, the smell of the newsprint

I have just finished painting up two of my Christmas presents, Pulp Figure packs from their Gangland Justice range. The first one is a set of five News Hounds, though they're not all reporters. It looks like we have two actual reporters, one male and one female, plus a photographer, someone who is probably the editor shouting instructions in the office, and a newsboy selling the resulting papers. All nice figures, as I have come to expect from this line, and they'll be useful as bystanders and colour in big city scenarios. They might even make a Pulp league of some sort.

The second pack was Jinx Johnson's Harlem Jazz Quartet. As the title suggests you only get four figures, though the fifth is represented, in weight of metal anyway, by the double bass. Again, more likely to be background for a scenario in a nightclub, though I can see possibilities for them as a gang for some Mr Big.