Salute 51

This weekend was the annual pilgrimage to Salute, to stock up on plenty of miniatures without having to pay for postage, mostly.

There was a wild number of prizes to be won in goody bags in the queue, but alas myself and my companion didn’t win any of them. Here’s a picture of that queue though, in case that is what caught your attention:

As ever, I was very bad at taking pictures, being more concerned with wandering around peering at shiny new miniatures, impressive game boards, and handing over money to traders! To that end, here’s a series of pictures in no particular order:

These dinky little ECW minis were very nicely painted, so me and my compadre spent an amount of time cooing over them even though it’s not a scale or a period I’m into!

This castle was very large. I’ve no idea if there were any minis inside it, or how you’d move them if there were!

I wanted to have a look at Mantic’s new Halo game, mostly to see how the minis scaled up with the old Actionclix minis that I have bucketloads of. If I were a more diehard Halo fan I’d be all over this, but…

Silver Bayonet Egypt! We didn’t get to play this year, as last year we only finished our initial go around of the show at closing time, having played a game at the start…

This was a cool table! I’m sure I’ve got a set of quick start rules for this game in my bag somewhere too…

This picture was mostly to remind me to look up this range, as it’s not one I’d come across before, and they had a variety of Mexican figures on offer…

This was a cool forced perspective display! Not pictured, the working servo skull camera on the table behind this display

Excellent 7tv board that was absolutely surrounded by people, well worth looking up better pictures than mine!

Indeed. Wrong scale for me though, sadly…

Wizard of Oz mass battle game, flying monkeys and all. Must remember to google Wars of Ozz…

Childish fun for all the family!

Just a nice board, I forget what for…

Once we’d finished out initial circuit of the show, we headed over to the Griffcon make and take to spend a pleasant time digging through piles of sprues.

Unfortunately due to the lateness of the day there was a distinct lack of torsos left on any of the sprues, but I did manage to make this skeleton happily tooting away on his spooky horn.

Which brings us to the meat of the day - my Salute haul:

Some Perry Napoleonics and ACW minis, to make into Alamo appropriate minis (although annoyingly I’ve realised that I bought the wrong box of French infantry - I meant to grab the 1807 line box, but bought an elite box instead);

This year’s Mantic Hellboy show exclusive, because at this point in the game I can’t really not buy one;

A set of plastic boardwalks and other cowboy scenery;

TTCombat superglue, because it really is better than the Poundland stuff;

A Mantic sample pack that had some ogres inside;

A bear, because my daughter’s D&D character is a Druid;

A freebie mini from One Page Rules;

A copy of Five Torches Deep;

A Stormcast Eternal mini that came in a mystery bag;

Some Old West types from Foundry, as well as a flesh triad that will hopefully help me paint some Mexicans;

A Doctor with a long scarf and a big boss looking Thing from Crooked Dice;

An Infinity miniature that for some reason came with the base of a Salute 2017 show mini;

A drunk cowboy from Black Scorpion (they’re all lovely, but so much bigger than every other cowboy I own, but I figured the slumped drunk wouldn’t look overly large!);

A tiny Grogu from Diehard minis, because May the Fourth is coming up and my previously painted Mando needed a friend;

A sprue of Ray Guns from Anvil Industry, because I’ve got some minis in pith helmets that are in dire need of increased firepower;

A blister of Japanese Villagers, because Ronin of Shadow Deep needs some civilians;

The Salute show mini;

A copy of Super Tiny Sorcery and some colour in and make foldable minis from Mammoth Minis;

A couple of minis from the Griffcon Make & Take;

A dice tray, since my youngest has a hard time keeping his dice on the table during D&D

And so many flyers, stickers, and quick start rules, as well as a handful of free dice.

Totalling everything up, this brings the Tally to:

7 vs 146 = -139

Unsurprising, as this tends to happen whenever I start a project with a Salute splurge (and will probably take a swing further down if I decide to rebuy the correct Perry Napoleonics box)…

Unusually, I’ve already got about half a dozen minis from this lot cleaned up and stuck to bases, so hopefully that means I can get some things painted up quickly! Part of me wonders if I should write a post where I go back to a previous Salute haul, and work out how much of it I’ve actually painted in the intervening years, and how much just loves in my lead mountain…