Once again we got up an ungodly hour (0400) to get the flight for Salute and once again we forgot something important, like last year it was sandwiches, my brother left his in the fridge, but that was pretty much the only thing to go wrong all day. The journey to Belfast City airport was quick and uneventful as was the flight to London, though we did seem to spend a lot of time literally flying in circles waiting for a landing slot. More sandwiches and drinks were purchased at a rather handy M & S in Heathrow airport and we topped up our Oyster cards as I had a ‘note to self’ on mine from last year telling me to do so and boarded the tube train. A few changes later and we arrived at the Excel Centre at around 1005, the other end to one we normally use. London was already warm so we were most amused to see Londoners bundled up in coats as if it was cold.
Inside the Excel Centre we were checked in very efficiently and received our goodie bags and joined the very, very queue to get in. The queue moved along smartly and soon we were in the hall itself. The first several hours were largely spent shopping, none of which was naval related except for a bag of widgets from Hawk Wargaming and some very nice resin small craft from Games of War, a longboat and two jolly boats.
After lunch, the pineapple chunks from M & S were particularly welcome being both sweet and wet, we did more shopping then started to slow down and look at the games on display. It is still amazing how much I missed. Anvil Industry had a cyberpunked up Landrover Defender that we saw as we started round and that I never noticed again and they are no small vehicle. Looking at other peoples pictures from the show also reveals things I did not see.
There were not that many naval games which is normal. In no particular order the things that might be of interest were:
Fort Mosquito 1654. To steal their own description “A staged battle between Swedish and Dutch colonial forces set in mid-17th century Delaware, involving native tribes, attempting to wrestle control of the river and the important fur trade”. 28mm scale with a nice fort and a very nice ship with small craft and canoes as well.
Several X-Wing games, one of which had a very large and crowded table with a lot of the larger ships. A small game showed the Imperial base from the end of Rogue One with a fighter battle going on above on a clear acrylic sheet, very pretty.
Some odd naval game with what looked like scratch built warships and a carrier that while impressive were quite cartoon like. I am not entirely sure what scale this was, maybe 20mm but the ships seemed to have bits from various different scales.
Spartan had a big game of Fleet Command and another of Halo Wars.
White Dragon Miniatures had some of their Shattered Void space fighter miniatures on display. Very nice miniatures extremely well painted. I believe they go on general release later this year.
Dark Ops had a rather nice looking laser cut MDF sailing ship. I had been suspicious of this sort of thing but it looked very nice and was very cheap for something so big. They also had some other smaller sailing craft and a rather decent model of the USS Monitor.
GZG were there as usual but I managed to pull myself away without buying anything, promising myself an order with them later on in the year that would not need carried home.
We left early around 1600 to avoid any difficulties with flights and took the tube to Paddington Station and caught the Heathrow Express which was very crowded, we were lucky to get seats but was comfortable and very quick. We were flagging by the time we got back to Heathrow and I think I slept through much of the flight home then back in the car to Larne, picking up a Chinese for tea, then home, food and the traditional piling all the goodies on the table to be photographed then off to bed.
It was a very good show, we both enjoyed ourselves enormously. I think the lighting was better than before as well which helped everyone. Looking at other peoples’ pictures there were several other naval games that I missed completely but that is normal.
Salute is usually largely a shopping trip for us and this year was no exception though unusually I had placed to pre-orders to collect at the show and deliberately ignored several companies I wanted to buy from in favour of a leisurely mail order later on. As a result of this I spent less than usual and did not have quite as much to carry home as before though both of us had well filled back packs and a shopping bag as well.
The next day we discovered a ticked for a free Kaiser Rushforth backpack, but not to worry, we can still use this and I need to order some figure cases from the anyway.
One thing I am now resolved to buy is a watery gaming mat so I might soon be soliciting advice from the group about them though I was impressed by the ones made by Deep Cut Studio. I can make boards for such a thing easily enough and have done so in the past but a mat is so much more convenient to store and use.
