Late report from Salute 2009

Firstly, an apology or two. I imagine that several of you were expecting a fairly immediate report from Salute 2009 over the weekend. That would have happened if it weren’t for the onset of a nasty little throat infection.

Also, the Twitter experiment from Salute didn’t quite go as anticipated. To be honest, in many ways the experiment worked – the technology was fine, the updates appeared in a timely fashion and it was easy enough to set up. The fatal flaw that I failed to foresee was that I’d actually be too interested in what I was seeing and doing to remember to tweet. I think things finally went silent just before lunchtime when we’d made arrangements to meet up with Bill Gaskin. So, in a way, that’s actually a glowing endorsement of this year’s Salute.

There certainly was a mighty amount to see and do this year and it would be easy spend time here describing the many potential distractions like the excellent Two Fat Lardies WW1 game, the H P Lovecraft-inspiried Innsmouth game and the extremely large scale radio-controlled tanks. However, the forums and websites are already packed with that sort of general show report. So, instead, I’ll stick to BfK core topics. Even within that it’s hard to know where to start…

Victrix French defend the ridge on Barry Hilton's demo game

I suppose 28mm plastics is as good a place as any. Both Perry and Victrix had stands and their products were also widely available on other peoples’ stands. I don’t think anybody who wanted to buy a Perry/Victrix British/French box would have gone home disappointed unless they’d resisted temptation until the end of the day. I took time to study the sprues from both manufacturers and they both look pretty good to me. Plenty has already been written about them elsewhere but I think I’ll add my vote to some widely expressed views:

• The Victrix boxes seem to have a wider variety of poses. Good if you want to do a diorama but a pain if you’re constructing wargames units. The latter is where the Perry marching French and firing line British boxes score – you only need one box to do a unit (well, and a couple of blisters of metal figures if you want to add more officers or casualties etc).
• The Victrix faces are more charicatures than the Perry ones. That’ll suit some people but not others. You pay your money, you take your choice!
• Specifically for the French: the Victrix are in pre-Bardin uniforms and the Perrys are in Bardin uniforms.
• Specifically for the British: Victrix do different boxes for the Peninsular and One Hundred Days campaigns while the Perrys have designed one box to cope with both variants.
• Both manufacturers include plenty of spare heads. So if you’re into conversions, there’s hours of fun to be had!

I’ve come away from Salute with a box of the Perry French plastics. Not because I’m about to start painting up French units (too much to do with Prussians and Saxons already) but rather because I intend nefarious butchery using elements of the box. These Perry French are in many ways an improvement on their metal French. I suspect that the time and effort required to create the “three-up” masters has lead Alan and Michael to take their time to get things right. I’ve always felt that many of the metal packs seemed a bit rushed. The proportions of the figures are superb and size-wise and style-wise they’re going to be an excellent fit with the imminent Calpe Saxons. Indeed, we spent a lot of time with Alan Perry at his Quatre Bras demo game playing “spot the plastic unit”. There are some slight differences on the right arms of some figures but the only real give-away is that the plastic bayonets are shorter and finer than on the metal figures.

The heads and shakos on the Perry plastics are almost indentical in size to the ones on the Calpe Saxons. So, with judicious choice and careful cutting, there’s great conversion potential to expand the variety of the Calpe figures to create truly unique battalions. I’ll have to be careful though – French-style pokalems weren’t worn by the Saxons. That still leaves plenty of covered shako, bareheaded and damaged shako options as well as drums and backpacks to strew about on bases. The lone officer in the box (pity there aren’t more) wears a surtout and that gives me an ideal prototype on which to practice decapitation and to trial potential colours for the distinctive light blue surtouts worn by Saxon officers.

It’ll also give me the opportunity to demonstrate a painting technique for von Peter’s young ADC Simon. He’s not keen on painting the piping on his French and got relentlessly teased by his father and I. It even got to the stage where both Peter F. and Alan Perry joined in to insist that if they’d taken the trouble to scupt it on to the figures, the least he could do would be to attempt to paint it! A young gamer can’t get advice from any better sources, don’t you think?

Dutch-Belgian command in the Perry's Quatre Bras demo game

And that’s an ideal moment to move on to the Napoleonic demo games. One of the two big 28mm draws was the Perrys’ Quatre Bras game which served as meeting point, gossiping area with Alan Perry and general eye-candy oggling opportunity. According the Alan, there were about 20 battalions on each side and the cuiraissiers never even made it on to the table! Seeing games like this and having the memory of them is what keeps me going with the paintbrush during those long evenings. The terrain was also a talking point with several boards sporting the twists and turns of a well-realised river through the middle of the battlefield. Finally, Alan was using a work-in-progress copy of the Black Powder rules due to be published later in the year by Warlord Games. So it looks like 1:20 ratio Napoleonics gamers will be spoilt for choice when it comes to rulesets.

The other seductive 28mm Napoleonic game was Barry Hilton’s Peninsular demo/participation game. Although set in a different theatre, the parallels with the Perrys’ game were startling: more plastics (this time Victrix), more amazing terrrain (plus a nicely painted backdrop) and more rules to look at (this time being the quick-play rules Barry has written to accompany the Victrix boxes). Conversation with Barry revealed that these rules complement his bigger Republic to Empire rules rather than compete with them. Some ideas from the bigger ruleset have been used to create a “lite” quick and easy to play version.

I somehow missed the 28mm retreat from Moscow game that was mentioned on the Salute website – perhaps it was a late withdrawl? If anybody knows it’s fate, I’d be interested to know. That left two 6mm games – each choosing the 1809 campaign as inspiration. One did Aspern-Essling and the other did Wagram. It left me wondering if each group knew of the other’s plans and if they’d swapped notes beforehand or on the day itself. From a distance, the 6mm games to have an appeal but I can’t bring myself to love this scale. I’m sure some people will regard this as heresy, but once you get to a scale this small, I don’t see the point in figure painting. Why not simply have coloured wooden blocks to represent the units and accept the fact that you’re playing a glorifed version of Kriegspiel?

Apart from the games, there we several other items on my hitlist – some of which seemed doomed to failure. For example, I couldn’t find a single trader selling Sliflor grass tufts and I never located the chap who runs Dom’s Decals to quiz him about the art of making white decals. However, Peter F. and I did spend a while at the TA Miniatures stand. These are the people who the Perrys commission to make their artillery equipment for them nowadays. They certainly produce good work and the new Perry French 12-pounder is a fine example of their output.

As ever, I took a couple of tours past the painting competition. Bill Gaskin had entered a lovely unit of Spanish lancers as well as some Polish musicians which he later told me he’d accidentally entered in the wrong category. Apart from that, I don’t think this year’s competition really got my juices going; quite possibly because every time I tried to look, there was a pushy crowd around the display cases. I didn’t care for that, I’m afraid. I also had a successful appointment with Offensive Miniatures to look at their new Napoleonic figures and discuss running a small competition in association with them here on BfK. So look out for details of that in the next week or two.

Overall, then, despite some failed shopping opportunities, I rate this as the most enjoyable Salute since the move to Excel from Earl’s Court. There was more here for Napoleonic enthusiasts than there has been in a long time but the clincher for me is that I’ve been reminded that these big annual wargames shows as as much about the people as the games and traders. Where else could I have chatted and shared a cuppa with the likes of Peter F, Alan Perry, Barry Hilton, Bill Gaskin et al all in one day? Not to mention having the pleasure of seeing a couple of New Zealanders enjoy their first ever big wargames show? And I know plenty of other people I kind-of know were there on the day – it just wasn’t long enough to catch up with everybody!

Tweeting from Salute

At the start of the year I mentioned that I might try out some new interactive things on BfK. One of the ideas I had was to include postings (or “tweets”, as they’re known) from the BfK Twitter account. Now, it’s not something I intend to do regularly because, frankly, there would be long periods where I had nothing to say on Twitter that’s hobby related. However, on a day like Saturday when I’ll be at Salute, it’ll be good fun to tweet a lot and have it show up here.

For that idea to work, a couple of technological things had to fall into place. And I’m delighted to say that, in the nick of time, they have. So now I should be able to text tweets from my mobile phone to to the Bfk Twitter account and they’ll show up in the Twitter Updates panel in the left hand column here on BfK central.

If you want to follow the Bfk Twitter account using your own favourite Twitter client, then all you need to know is that the username is befreiungskrieg.

The countdown continues

By this time next week, I should be tired but happy after returning from the annual pilgrimage to our nation’s capital for our nation’s premier wargames show: Salute 2009. As ever, I try to make a list of things to check out (though I know that other stuff will always distract me on the day itself). Let me mark your cards with a few items that I’m looking forward to:

• Perry Miniatures: I’ll be attempting to get my paws at the contents of a box of the French plastics – mainly to assess the conversion potential of the spare heads and extra drums. I’ll also be pointing the camera at their Quatre Bras demo game.
• League of Augsburg: one demo game and one participation game. Not, alas, using David Hilton’s new Republic to Empire rules but rather the quick rules he’s devised to go with the Victrix plastics. Nevertheless, you can expect me to be loitering with intent.
• The painting competition: now don’t get excited – I’m not entering! No, this’ll be the usual admiration of the work of those who’ve summoned up the time and gumption to get something ready in time.
• Two 1809 6mm scale demo games: both from the Austrian campaign. Not my scale but I’m hoping to find something to appreciate.
• TA Miniatures: they do the artillery and equipment pieces for the Perrys. I’m interested to see their work up close and I expect Peter F. will be too.
• Victrix: what will their French plastics be like?
• Dom’s Decals: at last an “in person” chance to pick the brains of somebody who knows all the ins and outs of making white decals.

Plus I’ll doubtless wander round all the book sellers, figure manufacturers and paint providers too.

Let the countdown begin

Salute 2009 is on Saturday 28th March and my advance booked train tickets for the journey up to London arrived in the post yesterday. As I think I said around this time last year, you can get some genuine VFM by booking train tickets in advance as long as you’re prepared to commit to travelling on specific trains. The other tip is that two singles are often cheaper than one return for these sorts of advance bookings.

This year, I won’t be travelling up to town alone. Kiwi “Von Peter” and his family have come to stay in the UK for about six months as a sort of family adventure and so I’ll be sharing my day trip with him and his son Simon. This’ll be a fascinating observational experience for me. Von Peter tells me they only have small wargames shows in New Zealand and this will be his first time at one of the UK’s biggest days. I’ll be watching closely to see if it lives up to Von Peter’s expectations.

I’m much more optimistic about this year’s Salute than I have been for several years – especially since the change of venue to ExCel. I’ve previously found the atmosphere at ExCel to be lacking and the need for good company to compensate for that. This year, good company aside, other factors promise to restore Salute’s excitement of yore. In particular, a run down of the display games for once offers plenty for Napoleonics fans to sink their teeth into.

The Perry Twins will have a stand again this year where I hope to inspect their Napoleonic plastics in detail for the first time. Moreover, they’ll also be putting on a Quatre Bras demo game. I think I’ll also take some time to look at the Victrix plastics for the first time too. Obviously, their range is of little direct interest to me at present, being mainly focussed on the Peninsular War but I do want to scope out the quality of their work for potential future reference.

By some sort of strange coincidence there are two 6mm scale 1809 display games – Aspern-Essling and Wagram. I’m not a fan of this scale but I will look to see if the claims for it as a way to capture the spectacle of large battles is justified. There’s a 28mm retreat from Moscow game that has the potential to be spectacular if done the right way. But, best of all, Barry Hilton will be leading the League of Augsburg on a raid South of the border to put on two (!) games: one demonstration and one participation (oi! I was in the queue first!). I’m hoping that at least one of these games will feature Barry’s new Republic to Empire ruleset so that I can get a good assessment of them in action.

Throw in all the usual opportunities to catch up on gossip, bump into people I haven’t seen for ages and oggle the entries in the painting competition and I think there’s the makings of a grand day out.