A very short visit to Salute

So (I have to start my post with 'so' beacuse John Treadhead hates it), it was something of a lightning visit to Salute this year and I was there for just under two hours, although my feet feel like I have been there all day. I arrived at about 11.20 and there was no queue, unlike tat he craft show opposite. I nearly had a nasty moment when the Old Bat discovered that this was on, as she was seriously contemplating coming along. It is important to keep different parts of your life separate I think; particularly mine at present. 

Anyway, thankfully Batless, the show did seem as busy and the light as bad when I got inside. I haven't even looked at the free figure (actually I think there were two this year) because it is some post apocalypse thing. This, along with zombies (are they subsets of each other?) are just two genres I am not interested in but there were plenty of such games on display today, it seemed.  Not so much World War 2 and very little Napoleonic or ACW too, I think.

Right inside the main entrance was Big Red Bat's splendid Romans versus Celts game and I had a look at the new plastic Celts on the Victrix stand but was good and didn't buy any. Unlike Eric the Shed, who bought a year's worth of Romans and Celts for this year's project.  I am looking forward to seeing these but I will be interested to see how he gets on speed painting Celts! Stripes! Plaid! Check!  Chariots!  Argh!

The next game I liked the look of was of the Wiliamite Wars in Ireland from a period I am just starting to get interested in.  This recreation of the Battle of Aughrim (1691) had a very nice look to it.

Next up was a striking recreation of Moonbase from Gerry Anderson's UFO, although I didn't see any ladies with purple wigs, sadly.  I have no idea about the actual game but then I am more interested in the look of the thing. Not far away was a game of Warlord's new Cruel Seas but it is one of those games where the table is covered in counters and worse (printed cards by the look of it, under each model) which completely detracts from the effort you might have put into painting ships.

Another of my 'one day if I ever retire' periods is the Thirty Years War and there was a good looking game of the battle of Lutzen, I always like a game which had windmills in it!, This had a very natural coloured base and some properly in-scale trees, as most wargames table trees seem to be about twenty feet high.

These, however, were pretty much the only games I appreciated. I didn't think there was a showstopper this year and I think stunning scenery was less in evidence too.  The far end of the hall seemed emptier this year with a whole bank of former trade stands not there with just the stalls around the far wall in the concrete wasteland.

I certainly bought the least ever at Salute, with no metal figures at all and just the box of the plastic US WW2 infantry from the Perries. I also bought an M10 tank destroyer from Rubicon one of my favourite WW2 AFVs.  The other impulse buy was these four hills as I looked at them and immediately thought 'Barsoom'!

I had intended to get some more Iron Duke Indian Mutiny figures from Empress but it was one of those stands that you just couldn't get near tom so I didn't bother.  I don't do waiting or queuing!

The three up preview plastics on the Perry miniatures stand were for Napoleonic French Infantry 1807-1814.  These I will get when I get back to my Peninsula War British.

I turned up at the Bloggers meet but there were less people this year, I think, but did chat to Alastair and Eric the Shed for some time and Big Lee, Tamsin, Postie and Ray briefly. Also it was nice to see Miles again, across from America at his first Salute, and hopefully we can meet up on his next trip in May (if I am not in St Petersburg, which I might be).. He had bought US WW2 infantry as well!

So I didn't think it was a classic Salute this year and two hours was about right for me. I didn't actually buy enough to make the postage saving worthwhile, unlike some years. It has got me enthused again about painting, though, and having finished my Byzantine archers this morning (I had told myself I wasn't allowed to buy anything if they weren't painted) I have to decide on the next unit to work on.