Back from Salute

Back from Salute, where an excellent time was had. Carl from the club drove - very odd to be being picked up by a club member without loading up a box of figures still smelling of varnish.

First port of call on arrival (after a cashpoint and a long queue) was Gripping Beast, for some Saga dice (finally), a box of Wargames Factory 15mm Germans (at last, the start of a force for IABSM), and a copy of "Muskets and Tomahawks" for Andy Hawes (about 5 minutes before they apparently ran out). It did seem as though half the entrants from this year's WABGT were working the stall, though.

Thence to a coffee and a read through the programme and scan of the goodie bag, to find I was one of the 250 lucky winners of a backpack from KR. Useful for keeping the purchases hidden from the wife!

On to Warlord, where I limited my purchases to what I came for, which I was rather proud of: five pots of the new Army Painter Warpaints and three of their brushes. I'll post about these in another post, as I've been learning stuff about painting lately (above and beyond the fact that I'm nowhere near good enough!)

I next paid a visit to Conquest Games, for a chat with the owner, Mike, and to pick up some of their new Norman Crossbowmen for my upcoming El Cid army and a sprue of horses for nefarious purposes, with the last of my cash. A few stalls down, Magnetic Displays, probably fortunately for me, only took cash, so I'm deferring magnetic bases for all my armies till Partizan!

Strolled around for a bit - admired, among other things, a massive naval display with utterly gorgeous ships, and Victrix's big 54mm Penninsular battle. Ran into Henry Hyde from BattleGames (and got a question answered, of which hopefully more in yet another post, but not for a while). Final purchase was some Plastic Solider Company 15mm Panzer IVs, and a long drool over the Fireforge Templars, which I was very close to succumbing to  - their painted example figures were beyond gorgeous.

By then it was 1 pm, so I ambled over to the seating area, to find a small, but growing, gathering of bloggers. I apologise in advance for not catching everyone's name and/or blog, but present included me, Ray, Lee, Tamsin, Curt, Dave, Postie, Fran, and several others - we think around 16 or 17 bloggers at some point or other. Great fun chat, too. If I missed mentioning you, please comment!

I met back up with Carl and Rob at 2, and we headed home - made it back before 4, which was pretty decent.