Salute 2007..

..and in a flash of light it was gone.... that's the trouble with looking forward to something for so long - when the day comes it's gone as soon as it starts!

What a fantastic show is all I can say - imagine if you will a huge indoor hangar about the size of four football pitches - covered, absolutely covered, with stalls selling everything you could possibly think of (and not a few things you couldn't!) to do with wargaming - books, terrain, paints, brushes, figures, rules, more figures, more terrain.... absolutely fantastic. Lots of demo games, and participation games for the spuds (and their parents!) including full size Daleks in a Laser Tag area, two blokes dressed up as Star Wars Imperial troopers who stopped again and again to have their pictures taken with the little one's (thumbs up for a nice effort to these guys from me...)

So what about that shopping list, and how did I do...?! 😏

• Picked up the figures from the Eureka stand - and very nice they were as well - unfortunately, and as I suspected, they were huge compared to the other 15's I have - I shouldn't have been surprised (and to be honest, I wasn't) as they were being marketed as 18mm's... never mind - the search continues for an alternate source (to Dixon Miniatures) for cavalry for the War of the Spanish Succession armies!
• On the same subject however, I did have a brainwave on Friday (it's the bicycle ride home from work - it does it every time, I think it must be the unaccustomed rush of oxygen to the brain...) and that was to check the Peter Pig English Civil War range for whatever they had... now I know that the cavalry was pre-tricorn, but a number of regiments in the War of the Spanish succession continued to wear the lobster tail helmet made famous by Cromwell's Ironsides - loh and behold, Peter Pig had some lovely figures so I picked up enough to make two regiments of heavy horse - one of these is destined to become Bavarian, I suspect the other will be Danish. I need to find the references but I'm sure I saw some lovely figures that the Grimsby Mariner (see "Blogs of Note" to the left) had posted - Danish cavalry in lobster pot helmet...
• I also spent a significant amount with Mr. Pig on a second trip later in the afternoon - I picked up British Camel Corps (mounted and dismounted), two Krups guns, a packet of the light British screw guns (the one's they carried in separate components by mule or camel), and also some Dervish mounted troops, on camel and horse..

...and that was the sum of my purchases to be quite honest - I could have spent seven times the amount if I'd wanted to!

I did take some pictures while I was there though - and offer the following for your delectation - these were my favourite demo games:

First off, quite low key, but the following was a Samurai era siege (c. 1650), I think what caught my eye was the colours - the red looks fantastic - and the first of many apologies for the quality of my photo's!


Next up is a game that for me ties for first place in what I thought were the best looking games - I loved it... straight out of Gilder, big battalions, and also Napoleonic - very clever as it covered off just one part of the Battle of Waterloo, Ney's doomed charge of the French cavalry... absolutely mouth watering game to look at...

...told you didn't I?!

Absolutely amazing - one of the guys I came up did make the point however, that there were so many figures, it was difficult to see where the tactics came in!

I got a couple of pictures of this game, because once again I was taken with the simple elegance of it - one of the pictures didn't come out very well - but look at the river in the following - looks deep enough to dive into! The game itself is Crusader era Europe depicting Templars/Hospitallers ( I forget which) against Mongols - the ship was a master piece...

The next game qualifies purely because of it's size.... a 25mm Aztec temple takes up a fair amount of space, and was what caught my eye, but then your eye moves down the table and you see all the other activity - absolutely amazing game.. Spanish Conquistador era South America - gruesome... look at the blood on the steps at the top of the temple stairs...

Next up is my other joint favourite - I first saw this set up at Warfare last November - but it still causes me to draw breath when I see it - this is the Sudan layout of the "Touching History" guys:

So - bottom line - brilliant show and well done to the Warlords for another top notch effort... any downsides?? Just two... despite going back several times I never got to say hello and "thanks" to Don Featherstone - I was very disappointed... and the other was the fact that the dress up Nazi's were there... some WWII re-enactment society who seem to think it valid to dress up as SS... Why do these guys always pick the SS?? If they're that keen there were plenty of Wehrmacht formations to re-enact .. to me, as a military formation, they were indivisible from the political credo they supported. Shame really, or maybe I'm just being over-sensitive..