After a three year hiatus, I finally made it up to London for the latest Salute wargames exhibition. This used to be a regular pilgrimage for me, but with one thing and another, I think I must have missed the last three years. It was an opportunity to spend a day in the large Excel facility in East London and try to catch up on the latest in table top wargames and gaming in general.
I calculate that I must have been visiting Salute since 1990/91 or thereabouts, when it was held in Kensington Town Hall. It is a much bigger beast than it was then. It is very hard to calculate the actual size of the event now, as it is in a hall that can be expanded and is truly massive (you could park a 737 in there). Even with large areas of open space, it still seems to take hours to get round every trader there, and I still ran out of time to see all the games on offer.
I was particularly taken by the following:
A Gothic horror demonstration of A Fistful of Lead, using their horror expansion. This was taking place in a wonderful scratch built Limehouse, which was not far from where Salute was located as a matter of fact. I'm quite intrigued by AFOL, as it ticks many of the boxes that I'm looking for from a skirmish game at the moment. There were quite a few horror and steampunk games going on - it seems to be a period that is...gathering steam.
An epic D Day landings battle (Omaha Beach) using I Ain't Been Shot Mum from Two Fat Lardies, featuring US troops storming ashore at Omaha Beach. As far as I could tell, the umpires were running the Germans with each player taking on a company of US soldiers. A photo is featured below.
A wonderful Back To The Future game from South London Warlords, including the set from all three films and separate games being played on each.
A demo of the Cruel Seas WW2 naval wargame from Warlord Games, which focuses on small boat actions, mainly motor torpedo boats, in 1/300 scale. The game in question was a night action between British and German boats somewhere in the English Channel. I already have two British MTBs for this and am mulling the acquisition of some Italians for the Mediterranean theatre...
A 15mm Sudan battle which has got me thinking about gaming the Sudan campaign of 1884-5 using smaller sized figures than the 28mm castings I use for the Zulu War. This would allow for brigade level battles on a much bigger scale than the Zulu skirmishes we traditionally fight. The smaller figures have the advantage of being cheaper, quicker to paint, and easier to transport.
Two very good Pacific War infantry battles, including a 1937 engagement from the Sino Japanese War. This is not a topic that gets much air time from wargamers but was something I studied at university, so it was good to see a large, company-sized battle from a period I actually had to sit an exam on.
The other WW2 game was from the Burma front, circa 1944, involving the Japanese vs British/Indians at Kohima. This took place not a million miles away from where I grew up as a kid, now on the other side of Bangladesh. I once spent a spring holiday in the tea gardens of Assam, which are not far - as the crow flies - from Kohima. The game was using 28mm figures and the Chain of Command rules from Two Fat Lardies which again I'm keen to try.
An excellent 15mm battle from the Arab Israeli War of 1967 in the streets of Jerusalem itself. What really caught the eye was the scale model of the Dome of the Rock. I've been rumminating about 15mm desert gaming for some time (although this scenario was really street fighting in the more traditional sense) - see my remark about the Sudan above - and both North Africa WW2 and the Arab Israeli conflicts have suggested themselves as potential options here. This game used Fate of a Nation which is a spin off from the ever popular Flames of War.
A mammoth hunting game from the Wargames Association of Reading, with rival tribes of neanderthals fighting for the rights to attack a herd of mammoths, all in 28mm! The mammoths were truly magnificent.
A beautiful colonial battle with the French taking on rebels during the Black Flag Rebellion in Vietnam in the 1880s, another topic I studied at university (although luckily was not examined on). This is a period that doesn't get covered much by gamers, largely I think due to a lack of figures and scenery, but which would also make a great change of pace from usual Zulu Wars fare, as it features jungle and musket and cannon armed Vietnamese. Gringo 40s have decided it is time to change all that. Awesome.
I missed all kinds of other games simply because there was not enough time to cover all the ground this year, along with the amount of socialising I also ended up doing, both at Salute and in the bar afterwards.
Salute seems worth it to me as a social and networking exercise as well as the opportunity to catch up on the latest in gaming. It was good to see that Dystopian Wars seems to have been rescued from oblivion, however, and that Warcradle Studios seem to be about to release v3 (?) of the rules, and spinning the naval battles component out into a separate fleet based game. This will give me more impetus to finish my languishing Russian fleet.
I also scratched my 6mm sci fi itch by picking up Horizon Wars (Osprey Games) at 25% off. I've had the crazed idea of unpacking my old Mechwarrior Dark Age miniatures and using these as the basis for a couple of armies for Horizon Wars. More on this as progress is made.
Overall it seems to me as if the demographics of wargaming are changing. Historical gaming is still plentiful, but now we are seeing more fantasy, horror and science fiction than ever before, plus more girls and kids playing. This is bringing much needed diversity and new blood into the hobby. It was also great to see the majority of games at Salute are now participation games, following in the footsteps of Historicon where the vast bulk of games are designed for convention goers to actually take part in. This is a far cry from the bad old days of the 1990s where you came to watch other players play extremely slow mass battles from the English Civil War!
I calculate that I must have been visiting Salute since 1990/91 or thereabouts, when it was held in Kensington Town Hall. It is a much bigger beast than it was then. It is very hard to calculate the actual size of the event now, as it is in a hall that can be expanded and is truly massive (you could park a 737 in there). Even with large areas of open space, it still seems to take hours to get round every trader there, and I still ran out of time to see all the games on offer.
I was particularly taken by the following:
A Gothic horror demonstration of A Fistful of Lead, using their horror expansion. This was taking place in a wonderful scratch built Limehouse, which was not far from where Salute was located as a matter of fact. I'm quite intrigued by AFOL, as it ticks many of the boxes that I'm looking for from a skirmish game at the moment. There were quite a few horror and steampunk games going on - it seems to be a period that is...gathering steam.
An epic D Day landings battle (Omaha Beach) using I Ain't Been Shot Mum from Two Fat Lardies, featuring US troops storming ashore at Omaha Beach. As far as I could tell, the umpires were running the Germans with each player taking on a company of US soldiers. A photo is featured below.
 |
| Omaha Beach from the German perspective...Americans swarm ashore. |
A wonderful Back To The Future game from South London Warlords, including the set from all three films and separate games being played on each.
A demo of the Cruel Seas WW2 naval wargame from Warlord Games, which focuses on small boat actions, mainly motor torpedo boats, in 1/300 scale. The game in question was a night action between British and German boats somewhere in the English Channel. I already have two British MTBs for this and am mulling the acquisition of some Italians for the Mediterranean theatre...
A 15mm Sudan battle which has got me thinking about gaming the Sudan campaign of 1884-5 using smaller sized figures than the 28mm castings I use for the Zulu War. This would allow for brigade level battles on a much bigger scale than the Zulu skirmishes we traditionally fight. The smaller figures have the advantage of being cheaper, quicker to paint, and easier to transport.
Two very good Pacific War infantry battles, including a 1937 engagement from the Sino Japanese War. This is not a topic that gets much air time from wargamers but was something I studied at university, so it was good to see a large, company-sized battle from a period I actually had to sit an exam on.
The other WW2 game was from the Burma front, circa 1944, involving the Japanese vs British/Indians at Kohima. This took place not a million miles away from where I grew up as a kid, now on the other side of Bangladesh. I once spent a spring holiday in the tea gardens of Assam, which are not far - as the crow flies - from Kohima. The game was using 28mm figures and the Chain of Command rules from Two Fat Lardies which again I'm keen to try.
 |
| Vampire hunting in Limehouse in the 1890s |
An excellent 15mm battle from the Arab Israeli War of 1967 in the streets of Jerusalem itself. What really caught the eye was the scale model of the Dome of the Rock. I've been rumminating about 15mm desert gaming for some time (although this scenario was really street fighting in the more traditional sense) - see my remark about the Sudan above - and both North Africa WW2 and the Arab Israeli conflicts have suggested themselves as potential options here. This game used Fate of a Nation which is a spin off from the ever popular Flames of War.
 |
| Back to the Future! |
A beautiful colonial battle with the French taking on rebels during the Black Flag Rebellion in Vietnam in the 1880s, another topic I studied at university (although luckily was not examined on). This is a period that doesn't get covered much by gamers, largely I think due to a lack of figures and scenery, but which would also make a great change of pace from usual Zulu Wars fare, as it features jungle and musket and cannon armed Vietnamese. Gringo 40s have decided it is time to change all that. Awesome.
I missed all kinds of other games simply because there was not enough time to cover all the ground this year, along with the amount of socialising I also ended up doing, both at Salute and in the bar afterwards.
Salute seems worth it to me as a social and networking exercise as well as the opportunity to catch up on the latest in gaming. It was good to see that Dystopian Wars seems to have been rescued from oblivion, however, and that Warcradle Studios seem to be about to release v3 (?) of the rules, and spinning the naval battles component out into a separate fleet based game. This will give me more impetus to finish my languishing Russian fleet.
I also scratched my 6mm sci fi itch by picking up Horizon Wars (Osprey Games) at 25% off. I've had the crazed idea of unpacking my old Mechwarrior Dark Age miniatures and using these as the basis for a couple of armies for Horizon Wars. More on this as progress is made.
Overall it seems to me as if the demographics of wargaming are changing. Historical gaming is still plentiful, but now we are seeing more fantasy, horror and science fiction than ever before, plus more girls and kids playing. This is bringing much needed diversity and new blood into the hobby. It was also great to see the majority of games at Salute are now participation games, following in the footsteps of Historicon where the vast bulk of games are designed for convention goers to actually take part in. This is a far cry from the bad old days of the 1990s where you came to watch other players play extremely slow mass battles from the English Civil War!
Comments
Post a Comment