Yesterday was our annual pilgrimage into London for Salute! As ever, don’t expect a narrative here, but more me trying to remember what the things I remembered to take pictures of actually were!
This year there were four of us that traveled up together - Clockwise, starting top left: me, man-bun just out of shot; Heroes182, henceforth referred to as chum and companion throughout; Hasvik, a link to the works of which is in the next paragraph; and the fourth member of the team, who I don’t know whether has a pithy internet handle that I should refer to her by and I don’t feel comfortable publishing her name without her permission, so that’s that (I did check everyone was happy me posting their faces though, and give full credit to the handsome man in sunglasses for taking the picture). Edit - she does, it’s magpiecountess!
We pootled in together from Canary Wharf, and made our way to the Excel Centre, although one of us was there as press so disappeared off early rather than hanging out with the rest of us in the massive queue:
We made surprisingly good time this year, but apparently so did everyone else as there was a solid 2000 people ahead of us when we got there. Also fun was realising that I’d taken a screenshot of my 2024 ticket that morning, as the 2025 ticket email just didn’t come up when I searched for it - luckily I was able to find a screenshot that I’d taken when I originally purchased it, panic over!
Priorities in order, we marched straight over to the Osprey stand (although not technically straight, as it turned out I’d initially been looking at the map from the wrong angle and so we initially went to the wrong corner of the hall) to try out the new Joseph McCullough game Hairfoot Jousting:
(Yes, the guy running the game is in an inflatable chicken rider suit). We were the second pair to get there, so rather than halflings, we found ourselves playing as goblins. Looking at the rulebook, it seems that it’s actually two games in one, and turning it over and starting from the back you have a separate goblin jousting game! The basic mechanics are the same, but while the crowds in the halfling game cheer at you achieving things, the goblin crowds jeer and give you tokens whenever you get hurt…
This was also very exciting, as we got to see some miniatures that haven’t even been previewed yet as far as I can see (although do let me know in the comments if you recognise them).
I especially liked the frog:
Porcupine:
They would occasionally careen through my opponents jousters too, so it wasn’t all a lost cause. Chaos continued for a while, and we decided to play until first blood to give other people a chance to have a go. We also decided to keep re-rolling on the random events table until something happened (as we’d rolled ‘nothing happens’ every turn previously), and obviously got a result that reset everyone to their starting positions and healed them slightly, only making the game go longer. A cavalier approach to health and safety and animal welfare ensured that we were soon back into the fray, and I was just able to knock out one of my opponents jousters and claim the win.
Here is my roster sheet, for an exclusive preview of the rules that will make very little sense without additional context:
Then, we began the usual meandering walk up and down the aisles, which basically takes us until the end of the show and I always seem to see things in other peoples posts and videos that I managed to miss! Plus, where we’re walking and chatting (and encouraging each other to buy things) it’s fairly hit or miss what I actually take pictures of.
First is a company that I’d never heard of before, Pandyman, that made a selection of reasonably priced modern 3d prints (that I didn’t take a picture of) and some figures for a game called Trench Offensive (that I did):
My chum bought a couple of odd figures with separate heads from their bargain bin, so we’ll see how they paint up.
This was a board for Twilight, a game that we look at every year and marvel just how unique the minis are, then comment that they’re so unique they wouldn’t really work with anything we have, and you’d have to go all in on a whole new project of them.
This Atari looking game was cool (and put on by vaguely local to me Maidstone gaming club, I seem to recall). There was a QR code with a link to see how the game was created, which is a similar colour to my new shoes, both visible in this next picture:
This was an impressively large airship:
Inside the goodie bag was a sprue of Quar, and there was a nice little trench board featuring them at the show:
I vaguely remember Quar being the brainchild of the guy at Zombiesmith, who I want to say was based in Australia, making them quite hard to get originally, but with the release of these plastics by Wargames Atlantic they seem to be on the rise again!
At this point, we’d made it about half way round the show, and it was time to stop for a bite to eat (playing that demo game right at the start had eaten quite the chunk of time!). Back int’ day, there used to be a nice little grassy area just outside where you could sit and have a little picnic, but it’s all been built over now. They have built a nice benched area above where that used to be, but then fenced it off, so instead we sat on a bridge with this view:
Scenic.
Anyway, I don’t come to Salute for the aesthetic, I come to look at little men, so we headed back inside and peered at the entries to the painting competition. This entry was so far back in the cabinet, and that combined with the crowds meant I had to take a zoomed picture to actually work out what it was, which I include here for comedy value.
I’m on a bit of a Warmachine kick at the moment, having picked back up on my original attempt to work my way through every issue of No Quarter and rulebook for the lore, but the new edition has left me somewhat cold (in the same way that AOS does - what is it with companies taking an IP that I like and blowing it up?). Apparently they’ve launched a subscription service, the first month of which is free and would net you stls for these models, which is pretty neat though:
Shame I don’t have a 3d printer though.
Speaking of 3d printers, Alchemist models do some very nice [recognisable but legally distinct from] chocobo riders that would probably work fairly well with new riders if someone were to be in the market for some sort of jousting based game:
This discount only ran until 23:59 the day of the show, so I have no idea why I took a picture of it:
Another thing that we look at every year is Bushido:
They’re lovely models, and I could definitely find a use for the majority of them in my Ronin of Shadow Deep project, but at £14 a mini for basic mooks, it’s a little rich for my blood.
Anyway, at the moment the Ronin project is in its very formative stages, so there’s really no rush. Plus, we suspect the studio paint jobs might be doing some heavy lifting, as some of the blisters I had a look at had some suspiciously soft detail…
Once we’d finished our initial walkabout, we then swung back to revisit some stalls (Black Scorpion, because the crowd was about four people deep when we first got there, and Tangent, because Wayne wasn’t there on my first pass - spoiler warning: he remains one of the nicest people in the hobby).
On the way round, I spotted some more cool games, including this Mario Kart racing game:
And this whacking great Japanese castle, which I’m assuming was for Bushido or at the very least something Bushido adjacent:
There was also a fantasy reskin of Space Hulk called Crypt Hulk, put on by Ashford Wargames club, although I have no idea whether it was the one in Kent (where I’m working this week) or the one in Middlesex (where I am not working).
Here’s a closer shot of the info sheet explaining the inspiration behind the game:
We rounded out the show by trying out some paint pens:
They’re kind of cool, basically being a contrast paint in a pen with a brush tip, but I’m probably not going to change the way I paint now thirty years in…
Which brings us to the crux of this post, the loot! Quite the haul this year:
I actually had a list with a breakdown of what I’d bought (for comparison in the Salute group chat after the show) but can I find it now?
General breakdown:
- A bunch of Perry plastics this year, including both the new Spanish Napoleonic sets, both for the Alamo project and the inevitable Napoleonics as I’m evidently wading into middle age. I was tempted to get a third box of the Spanish to get the free mounted Commander, but it’s probably for the best (both for the Tally and my wallet!) that I didn’t. I also grabbed a box of ACW artillery, again for Alamo purposes, and a box of Dragoons that I can combine with heads from last year’s cavalry purchase to hopefully make some serviceable Mexican cavalry (remember kids, do your research before you go to the show, and look at more than just the fancy hat matching!)
- A box of Frostgrave cultists, because I’ve been meaning to grab a box for a while and Caliver books do a deal where you get an e tea discount if you buy three boxes of figures from them.
- A bevy of bits from Crooked Dice, because even though we’re not caught up with Doctor Who, one day we will be, and on that day I’ll have all the minis I need to strongarm my kids into playing games with me. I also bought a nice abombination that used to be released by Harwood Hobbies (fun fact - I was once googling to try and find this mini that I vaguely remembered, and the top result was a forum post by myself that I didn’t remember making many years before recommending the same model). And a little mechanical owl, which I have no real need for, but couldn’t resist going aback for when he caught my eye as I was waiting for my companion to finish paying.
- A burly Mandalorian type from Diehard miniatures, because May the Fourth is coming up soon, and while I could paint a mini that I already own,
- A Dragonborn fighter type from one of the endless 3d printing stands, as zi need something similar further down the line in the family D&D game
- A handful of board game minis for my kids to paint, and a monster from Mammoth’s gumball machine (after remembering at 11 the night before that I’d forgotten to get any pound coins, I was able to scrounge together a handful thanks to my wife and daughter, only for there to be only a single ball left in the machine by the time I got there!)
- Some Perry Spanish guerrillas - in case you haven’t guessed, I’ve been reading Sharpe’s adventures in Spain in Portugal, as well as the book Rifles, so have a hankering to put together a British and Spanish force a la Sharpe’s Havoc (with additional guerrillas, so I guess part havoc, part Rifles?)
- A mini from Bad Squiddo that looks suspiciously like a Spanish Guerrilla leader (and also a free bunny wearing a saddle, which was a nice surprise!)
- Sharpe and Harper from Tangent, although I also came away with some additional Chosen Men
- Some Foundry Wild West townsfolk, because several Legends of the Old West scenarios need about a dozen non-combatants
- The usual freebies in the goodie bag - the aforementioned sprue of Quar, a resin dwarf, and the show figure, a rather lovely Napoleonic chap that will definitely see use in the Silver Bayonet and potentially in actual (gasp) historical Napoleonics.
- Other than that, it was some resin barricades, some grass tufts, and the usual haul of flyers, stickers and tiny rifle sets. Also some d20s from gumball machines for my family.
Which all in comes to 180 miniatures added to the Tally (counting mounted figures as one, and artillery pieces as one too), leaving the year so far looking like this:
7 vs 204 = -197
I should probably get some painting done…
Although this morning my youngest wanted to paint a miniature, so we did:
