Another quiet month on the hobby front. At least I got a game in. Meanwhile, somewhat better weather meant that I needed to rectify months of neglect in the garden, which ate into hobby time.
Salute 2026
The highlight has been making it to Salute. I nearly didn’t make it, as we were scheduled to have a house guest that weekend. But she postponed for a week, so I took the opportunity. I used to be a member of the South London Warlords, and was a volunteer helper one year at the show. It’s amazing that such a big and professional show is put on by these volunteers, and manages to keep fresh. The show drew in large crowds, featuring an excellent range of ages, and even a (relatively) high proportion of women. Of course that means that the show’s content continues to drift away from my interests. Younger gamers (and most of those women) prefer fantasy and science fiction, rather than historical games. I thought there were fewer historical games with outstanding terrain boards than last year – but there were plenty of well-presented miniatures. The best terrain was the Lardies’ What a Tanker game – featuring De Gaulle’s counterattack in France 1940. I’m not really a fan of games based mainly on tanks, but the board was excellent, and the engagement from the public excellent too.
On high quality terrain there was also this table set in late war Italy:
This was allegedly a game based on Battlegroup rules. Allegedly because there didn’t actually seem to be a game going on – it was more of a diorama. A lovely one, though. Worth mentioning is Yarkshire Gamer’s massive Italian Wars presentation, which needs a video to do it justice:
This is a classic traditional big game, with a rectangular board loaded with miniatures setting to with very little hope for manoeuvre. The figures were breathtaking though, and it was good to say hello to Ken Reilly, and to thank him for his highly enjoyable podcast. I also saw an 18th century big game (though not nearly as big as this) based on the same idea – a table filled with two armies facing off and little empty space. For Napoleonics there was this presentation of Liebertwolkwitz 1813, though not the famous cavalry battle by the look of it:
This was put on by the Central London Wargames Club, using a set of rules that I haven’t encountered before – but I didn’t make a note of the name! This looked more my sort of game, played with 15/18mm figures – even if the presentation was a bit basic. The basing convention was quite interesting: it looked like 8 infantry (two ranks of four) on a 40mm base, with 2 bases to a unit. With 16 figures to a unit this just about worked, with the units not taking up too much space, allowing bigger battles to be fought. Still I’m committed to my current basing system and I’m not changing!
I didn’t buy very much. I bought a set of dry-brushing brushes from Pro Arte, and some dice. I thought I had found some average dice (2,3,3,4,4,5), which are hard to find these days, but when I got home I realised that the were D3s (1,1,2,2,3,3). Dopey or what!
Other news
I finished my secret aero-modelling project by the end of March, but then decided I needed to do work on a display base.
Meanwhile I finished the first draft of my Napoleonic hex-based rules – Command and Discipline. These still need a play test though.
I managed one game – with my Beckenham friends. We played a 6mm AWC game using our host’s hex based rules. I forgot to take picture.
Coming up, I should get a game at the club, and another in Beckenham. There’s still a lot to do on the garden…
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