Salute pics

Finally had the time to go through all the pictures I'd taken during our trip to London and Nottingham. Two 8Gb memory cards full was quite a task, but at least it's finally done :) Major cause for the amount of pictures was Warhammer World, but I did shoot a few at Salute as well ;) To be honest there would have been far more pictures if I hadn't forgotten to reload the battery of my DSLR before Salute, which lead to me having to be a bit more careful when to take pics and to remember shutting the camera down immediately after pictures were taken.

All in all it was a great show, with plenty of cool things on offer. Some tables I'd seen in wargames magazines over the years and some I'd followed through various blogs during the build phase before Salute. However it was sometimes a bit business like compared to the other wargames shows that I'd visited. Plus the amount of games that were just purely played through without any real interraction with the crowd was bit of a surprise. Still great fun through the day and I'm quite sure that I will visit Salute in the future as well!

I had a quick meet up with some other bloggers at the Annual bloggers meetup. Nice to see the people behind the blogs that I've been following in the last few years. Too bad I had to leave quite soon as the missus arrived earlier than expected and I had to keep her company for the rest of the show.

Blogger meet-up. I'm hiding behind Ray. Pic stolen shamelessly from Tamsin's blog

Lots of great looking games on show and trying to go through them all really was quite a task. Funnily enough my top three tables were next to each other and easy to view. First up a Peninsular War table which I think won the Best Demonstration game award.

My personal favorite from the whole show was a 7 Years War game with masses of beautifully painted miniatures and an amazing looking city at one end of the table.

The last of the three was a Winter War game with Finnish troops defending against a Russian assault coming over an icy lake. The terrain was amazing and there were some nice additions with tanks sinking through ice as well. Historically maybe a bit fantasical, but still a great looking game.

A great looking scratch built village on a table run by a few very charming older gentlemen. All the terrain was scratch built from various items. Plenty of model railway and doll house items, but there were some pretty ingenious material solutions like decorative roses meant for a dress being painted up as cabbages.

Dalauppor was running a Viking themed game with some great looking minis and ships. All of the ships were scratch built and the town with a half finished ship was a really nice addition.

Hawk had a great stand with plenty of eye candy including a true scale troop carrier ship and a 5-up version of a Dropfleet Commander Battleship. Having backed their recent Dropfleet Commander Kickstarter it was really great to see some painted examples of the models. I didn't get any Shaltari miniatures from the KS, but now seeing them live I'm really starting to regret that a bit. They look far better than from the pics that they had on show during the challenge.

 

A great looking Mad Max game with vehicles converted from toy cars. They had suitable clothing for participants as well!

4Ground had an amazing stand with plenty of great looking tables demonstrating their different product lines.

The painting competition had plenty of amazing entries on show. Some very nice conversions and quite a few great looking larger scale minis and busts as well.

Perry showing new and future projects

Probably the cutest game on show and my better halves favorite was Minion Racing with the table surrounded by enthuastic kids vying for victory!

And finally a bunch of general pics from around the show of some cool tables and miniatures.

Salute loot!

Back from our holiday in the UK. 6 days went past extremely fast with plenty of museums and sights seen and quite a bit of shopping done on the way as well! As we were travelling quite light with only a small suitcase and backpacks I was to keep away from plastic and limit myself to smaller items and stuff that couldn't easily be ordered to Finland.

To be honest not all is from Salute as I did visit Warhammer World on Friday and popped in at Orc's Nest. And while walking to the Imperial War Museum from the London Eye we happened to pass Dark Sphere which was having a Flames of War clearout with a 50% discount... Knowing me things went a bit south from there and now I have quite a bit of 15mm to paint... Still having sold some of the last old unloved projects off my miniatures amount has actually gone down this month even after these items have been acquired :)

Some miniatures from Crooked Dice. Mostly Danger 5 related with the starter box, some Nazi soldiers in both their human and reptile form and some dogs. And a freebie cameraman that they were giving out at Salute. The show is absolutely brilliant, and completely bizarre at the same time. Now I just need to start creating some suitable scenarios to play!

My trip to Warhammer World resulted in some Alpha Legion items being bought as well as the Bugman miniature sold only at the bar. At Salute I picked up an oldish Marco Colombo mini from one fellow to use in Frostgrave and bought the 30 years of Space Marines special miniature.

My main items on the shopping list were some extra heroes and monsters for Frostgrave. I ended up buying the spell deck and Lich Lord campaign books as well as the official treasure tokens. There's wildlife and some funky skeletons from Wargames Foundry, Demons and other monsters from Heresy Miniatures, Some Landsknecht style characters from Lead Adventure and a couple of Reaper Bones figures that I bought at Orc's Nest. Packing them proved rather annoying with most minis being packed singly or in pairs with the blisters half empty. Still we managed ;)

And then the Flames of War stuff is where things got out of hand. I'd preordered some Soviets to be picked up at Salute that I'd tried to get into Finland for months now. I got most of them, but still missing decals and 160mm mortars, but at least now I have the infantry so I can start slowly building the force. 

On the last day in London we walked past Dark Sphere and I had to take a look inside. And the first thing I notice is they are having a Flames of War clearout with 50% off... And what was supposed to be a quick look around ended up with my carrying away a lot of German troops. It's all clear savings in the long run! Or at least that's what I'm trying to convince myself.

And naturally the better half had her own hobby shopping as well with a reaper unicorn and Hamster Rambo from Magpie miniatures. And of course some more nail polish.

I'm off to Salute!

With the challenge over I've ran into somewhat of a hobby slump. Little painting has been achieved, though I've been building quite a few minis lately and at the moment my desk is flooded with stuff in dire need of paint!

Still I think I've found the perfect cure for my lack of painting mojo with a trip to London and Nottingham for a week or so to see the sights and most importantly visit Warhammer World and Salute! With the event seeing so much hype every year in the wargaming press and all the blogs around the world I figured it was finally the time to see it for myself!

And while I'm at it I figured I should finally fulfill a childhood dream of visiting Warhammer World as well. Can't remember when I heard about the place the first time, but I do remember drooling over some pics in White Dwarf in my youth. I don't play much GW games anymore, but I do love the backstories of both the Old World and 40k and have been reading the novels even after I stopped playing. I've been around Nottingham before, but for some reason never stopped by Warhammer World. So I guess it's finally time to to go check the place out as well!

With that said I'm going into radio silence for roughly a week. After that I really need to start catching up on my blog posts. There's a few battle reports from our Russia 1812 campaign that I somehow haven't gotten around to putting up. Plus I guess there will be quite a few pics from Salute as well :) 24Gb of camera memory will hopefully be enough...