Back from Salute

...and my feet are killing me!

28 mm Waterloo, or a very large chunk thereof. More a
display than a game, but very very very pretty.

Made it to the ExCel by about 0945 (with Grahame, Rob and Jonathan from the club), and in the show (via the long advance queue) by about 1010, bumping into Henry from Miniature Wargames almost as I walked in. The plan, which actually worked quite well, was to hit everywhere for the shopping list first, and then I could slow down and admire various games etc. I managed to pick up everything on my wish list, as well as a couple of spare cans of Army Painter primer, some AP warpaints (plus a freebie warpaint and Insane Detail brush in my Stafford Games goody bag) and some Napoleon at War British Heavy Dragoons and French Cuirassiers. While at Stafford Games I got to say hi to Walt from Commission Figurines, who is, I gather eagerly looking forward to his new laser cutter from the Kickstarter arriving on Thursday!

Also managed to say hi to the Fireforge guys (and run into Neil Shuck, who I've chatted with online, so was glad to finally meet!), pick up some of their lovely Templars and drool a lot over their Mongol horse three-up greens. 

I also discovered Agema Miniatures, at their first show - in fact, in their first month of being 'open', pretty much - with some very nice 28mm Punic Wars era Roman Velites. I'll have some photos and a review up of those tomorrow.

The Dux Bellorum game.

As planned, we then met up at 1100 at the Last Valley stand (literally the Last Valley, too - tucked away in the far corner at stand TA30), and picked up the three large boxes of the club's scenery order. Andy Worsley has had (and I'm sure he'd be the first to admit, sadly deserved) bad press in the past for reasons that I hope are long behind him - either way, the man makes awesome scenery, and we've been very happy with the service we've had.

Having picked that lot up, we went and locked it in the car, and, now much less encumbered, went to enjoy ourselves.

The two games I really wanted to check out were Andy, Scrivs, Tom, James Morris et al playing Dux Bellorum, and the Lardies Chain of Command demo.

The former looked awesome, some lovely reworked TSS terrain tiles and some of Andy's (and others') fantastic painting. I understand they deservedly won Best Painted Game.

Chain of Command

The latter seemed to have a two deep crowd round it most of the day, and appeared to be going very well. To my considerable delight, I also finally got to meet Adam aka Sidney Roundwood, and have a good natter, as well as pick up a hard copy of I Ain't Been Shot Mum (to go with my online iPad edition). Also good to catch up there with Tim (a friend of long-standing from Uni), and Roger B-W, one of my more regular recent commenters and a friend of almost as long standing, with whom I had a very interesting and thought-provoking chat about some meta-concepts in gaming... which may well inspire parts of the next podcast (soon, I promise!

The blogger's meetup was amazingly well attended - I think I counted well over 20 people there, many of whom I know, many I didn't or didn't get chance to catch names of. Next time, we're probably going to have to book a room or something, or at least all wear badges with our name and blog on it!

One downside? I went with a vague intent of picking up a Dreadball team and maybe a Kings of War army from Mantic. Large stand, lots of staff, loads of stuff, two fetching young ladies in Dreadball cheerleader outfits... And not enough budget for a credit card machine?!?!?! Guys! Really? I can understand it of a small limited run figure manufacturer, but... really?!