Long Live the King!

What a day!  Back home safely after an epic day at the South London Warlord's Salute 2019 show at ExCel in London Docklands.

Eight of the Friends of General Haig 'club' finally made it Salute and we all had a brilliant day demo'ing the Lützen 1632 game.  We had lots of positive feedback on the game and we met lots, and lots of fab people.

The game in full swing.  'Colloredo' in the foreground, and 'Knyphausen' on the other side of the table, both deep in thought as they ponder their next moves. 

I will do a proper battle report of the game in a few days; spoiler alert Gustav Adolf survived!  So this blog post will be more of a 'show report'.  I also gave myself a personal project of joining the 'Selfie Generation' and tried to grab a quick selfie with the various Wargaming glitterati that I could track down.

First of all the venue and organisation.  This was only my second Salute, but I think the organisation for Salute is great.  The South London Warlords (SLW) provided lots of info for Salute newbies like ourselves.  The ExCel centre's traffic system seems a bit Byzantine, but it is such a luxury to drive to your table location to unload!  Once inside, the SLW team were very helpful, and encouraging.

Selfie #1 - Me with Phil, The South London Warlords Games Organiser.   Thanks, Phil!

The venue lighting seemed very dim early in the day, and once the big loading bay doors were closed, as start-time approached, even dimmer.  It did seem that the lights were turned up before the public entered, which was a great improvement.

The whole day seemed very busy people wise.  I've no idea what the official numbers were, but numbers seemed to reach a crescendo around 1230.  Despite this it was never difficult to move around the show.  There was a certain amount of polite English jostle/queuing required to get to the merchandise at the popular traders.  I picked up a few bits in the break I had from the game.  (Loot covered later).  All of the big names seemed to be there, plus a fabulous myriad of small traders.

There always seems to be a big debate about the Fantasy/Sci-Fi v. Historical games at Salute.  To me it seemed pretty 50/50, and I think this is what SLW aim for.  There was a huge array of games and I probably didn't see a quarter of them.   Here are just a few of my highlights:

Gringos 40s were putting on a lovely 28mm game using their Tonkin 1885 range, The Black River Debacle.  The figures were lovely and the terrain amazing - truly inspirational.   No picture from me, but you see this and many other games on Big Lee's Miniatures Adventures (BLMA) here.

This Lego Built Flash Gordon game looked amazing and seemed mobbed all day.

All built with standard Lego, apparently.

Michael Leck of Dalauppror put on the fabulous Dänholm 1807 game.  I didn't get a picture of the game, but Michael's blog is here, and I did grab a selfie with him!   I've been a fan of Michael's output for some years and so it was really nice to meet him, and his colleagues, who were of course also very knowledgeable about the history surrounding our Lützen game.  It was interesting to get some Swedish perspectives on Gustav and the Thirty Years War.  One of the team (Andreas Olsson) works in the Royal Armoury Museum in Stockholm and so I was very interested to talk to him about their artefacts concerning Gustav and that period.  Dänholm was another lovely game with water as a centre piece of the game.  A great star fort too.  (See the BLMA blog again for pictures.)

Selfie #2 - Me with Michael Leck from the Dalauppror Blog.  (I have only just started this Selfie thing so you'll have to forgive the odd pictures!)

Simon Miller put on an epic Romans vs. Boudicca game, "Mancetter 61 CE".  I have also followed Simon on his blog (here) for sometime, as well as being a fan of his 28mm armies, and so it was great to catch a quick chat with him.   Simon's game looked great.  I really liked the dense woods on either flank as well as the innovative slopping board to represent the slope.  Immediately eye catching, and very effective.  Of course the vast array of figures was brilliant!

Mancetter 61 CE in full swing.  Go on you noble Britons!  

Selfie #3 - Me with Simon Miller from the Big Red Bat Blog / Shop.  

So, what did I pick up as my Salute loot?   Quite a tidy haul, and still focused on Europe in the mid 17th century.

First of all, more Warbases mdf bases.  Rectangular bases for horse (60 x 50 mm) and foot (40 x 40 mm), round command bases, artillery bases , and some small round bases that I can't remember why I bought them.  (Perhaps scatter terrain?)  Also from Warbases a water wagon, some 28mm foxes, and a sheet of roof tiles.

Then there is a heap of Foundry SYW Cossacks.  These are planned to be converted in to Croat types for the TYW.   Very nice sculpts, and nice small ponies for the mounted figures.

More Perry Miniature ECW figures.  Armoured pike, musketeers with rests, and cuirassiers.

Finally, a new book from Helion.  Only had a flick through, but looks very interesting.

Finally, finally, a small hint of where the Via Regia may be leading me in the future :-D .

More show info to come shortly - including more selfie madness.

Until next time.