Tuesday 28 April 2015

Salute 2015 - A nice day out!

Salute this year was a very pleasant day out, with the Monday night gamers and the boss and Lisa. We had one interloper, Edward, all the way from Norfolk. We all met up in the St James Road cafe to fortify ourselves with black pudding and other greasy sundries, together with copious mugs of tea!

Then off to the station, well sort of, as everybody decided they had to find a toilet or the cash machine ... and then we were off.










An uneventful trip to Waterloo, apart from the "tugging of the beard" incident, on Larry's luxurious growth, it turns out by a complete stranger who just wanted to see if it was real or not. Nowt as strange as folk!

Anyway we got there, usual crowds of runners milling about and then straight in - no fuss, no bother, no queues.

Larry looking for a queue
And then we were off










A very talented chap - Mr Miller - I might be giving his rules a bit of a go.












  
A Battle Group Display Game - excellent painting by Mr P Brand.

The boss spent quite a bit of the afternoon touching bits of terrain. Very "hands on".

A very impressive display; an awful lot of work had gone into it and the ships were fabulous.

Salute seemed very busy this year, as we had a leisurely stroll round. On the buying front, popped into Last Valley, as I do at every show. Picked up a few more trees and a hedge or too; my collection is slowly growing. Nipped over to Plastic Soldier Company and picked up a couple of kits off them, bought an mdf farmhouse and that was about it. My companions, on the other hand, had a bit of a splurge, as I discovered when we had a quick sit down and a munch.


The team showing off their loot.






Then off to meet up with Ray (thanks a lot mate) and a few other bloggers.













Too Fat Lardies game. Fighting season. Looked good and seemed to be well attended.

On a personal level, not sure about gaming an operation that is still ongoing in real life, even though UK involvement has ceased/is ceasing.





The above, who I have no idea who it was by, was a cracking display. Again, an awful lot of work put in. Where do these people find the time? All I can say is "I applaud the effort".

Eventually, we called time, and headed off home. We decided to use the cable car across the river and at £3.40 a pop we thought it was good value and we saw London from a different perspective.






Then, home via the pub and a few well earned beers.











A good day was had by all.

Just a quick thank you to all the people who have commented.  I'm beginning to get my head round this blogging lark. Cheers!


Sunday 19 April 2015

Things not going to plan

As all gamers will know, as you sit across the table from your oponent, you will have a plan. More often that not, in my case, the dice gods are against you and your oponent is being particularly obtuse,  not doing what he is supposed to, and it all goes a bit pear shaped.

This month, I was hoping to get on with doing some more bits of incidental terrain such as this:



sunflowers; fiddly and time consuming more worth it. I would like to do some more at some point.

Instead, the boss had other ideas in mind and I ended up doing some terrain building on a slightly different scale!


In the background can be seen the shed of war, aka the summer house

 Some raised vegetable beds. Next thing you know, she will have me planting vegetables and my middle name will be "farmer".






Salute will be upon us in less than 6 days which I am looking forward to and will spend most of next week compiling a shopping list. The boss is coming with me to keep me in check. I have warned her of fat blokes, ruck sacks, body odour and social ineptitude that can come with large groups of gamers. Whilst she has experienced Crisis in Antwerp, it did help that she had been thoroughly lubricated the night before.

On the painting front, I have managed to finish off some Panzer 35Ts




6 of them - Esci kits - right little sods to put together! Still got one left over in the stash. When I am feeling particularly masochistic I will put it together. Also managed to get hold of 3 lovely Russian buildings, on Ebay, of car and photo paper. I think they look great.










Will try to remember to take my camera to salute and take as many pictures as I can in order to provide a post-salute pictorial. Plus, with a bit of luck we will actually get some games in this year, as the Monday nighters have been a bit slack of late. Too cold apparently in my shed!