LET’S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN
Salute 2020/1
Salute for me is tricky. To be honest I carry a lot of baggage regarding the show because of previous involvement so I always have to take a long hard look at my responses to the biggest wargames show in the country. In that respect, Salute 2020 – which, of course, became Salute 2021, perforce – is no different.
It’s worth doing a preamble to the show here, I gure. It’s easy for me to forget that – despite its popularity
– the majority of readers of Miniature Wargames have never been to a Salute show. Bear in mind that fty years ago (or so) the show started above a pub and went from town hall venues to a oor at the Olympia exhibition centre; and then two oors. Then four oors. And then it went to ExCel in London with the thought that it could always expand if it needed to as – effectively – ExCel has almost unlimited space and walls that move. So – after almost ve decades – what you could normally expect was a one day Salute that had around 80 or so games booked (rather more if you include multiple trader games which the show always attracts) and approximately 170 traders (with their staff) plus a little over 5000 paying wargamers and another 1000 or so complementary attendees. Then there’s viruses...
2020 HINDSIGHT
So the show was delayed by a year and a half and – for various reasons (what with deposits and so forth) – had to run in an unusual slot: November of 2021. It became part of, as I referred in my editorial last month, the “compression wave” of wargaming events at the end of the year: the ‘sonic boom’ of shows, all scrunched up at the end of the season. And that was never going to be ideal.
This meant that material and nances that had been committed a couple of years beforehand were not lost or scrapped but ‘repurposed’: the programme was a year and a half old, for example, so it felt, in some respects, almost like one was caught in a time loop: I kept wanting to pilot the Enterprise close to the sun, pull away hard and go back to 2020. Mind you, that was probably a common feeling for most of the people in the hall!
But – let’s deal with some nal thoughts about all of this at the end: what about the show itself!
TRADERS
Under normal circumstances I always say it’s easier to point out traders that weren’t there than ones that were but this year that wasn’t so easy. Pull-outs from some quite big names (including the likes of Victrix and Hasslefree though I’m not picking on them) and many others mean that one’s purchasing options were a little more hit or miss on the day but there was still a huge trade fair and – from the conversations I had with vendors – they mostly seemed to have had a decent day: perhaps not quite a ‘regular Salute’ but then these aren’t regular times.
GAMES
Even with an updated plan included in (most) bags, it was hard to nd your way around the venue with a dif cult to use, largely out of date programme that didn’t list the games in table order number (instead putting them in alphabetical order based on the club’s name) but... I did nevertheless have a good look around. And what did we end up with!
The short answer is some great games. There’s way too many to list in detail but I’ll try and hit some broad highlights. I was very taken with Panzer Lehr Counter Attacks, a 1/144 demo game by the Anschluss Wargames Company. They presented a good looking table with lots of detail and support information that – for the scale – was very eye catching. New WWII rules from traders were also covered by the new PSC system Divisions of Steel. Again looking at professionals, Caseshot Publishing put on Wellington at Bay: Villamuriel which was a 15mm demo using Black Powder. Again very pretty and lots of eye candy. Also from a traders it was hard to ignore they stunning material from Warlord like their aircraft carrier Blood Red Skies board and the great Bolt Action table that I’d been watching Luke from Geek Gaming build on YouTube and was looking forward to seeing in the esh: a ne and very professional piece of wargaming terrain, as I would hope! Still with traders, I thought that the Moonstone table from the Goblin Kings Games folks looked great; as did the dinosaur ridden Drowned Earth table (rules reviewed last month).
From clubs the Essex Warriors ran a smashing 1/20th scale Aliens game with some stunning gures and 3d printed ‘bio’ corridors which looked the part but – in the same vein and a very different scale – the Whitehall Warlords ran Return to LV426 in what looked like true 25mm with lots of the creatures and plenty of power loaders in what seemed a great deal like a warehouse on Hadley’s Hope.
The London Wargames Guild ran a 28mm Very British Civil War game set in Central London with a model of Tower Bridge which was very popular and won best participation game on the day. Pirates went down well with the Leicester Phat Cats running On the Plains of Panama: a 28mm Blood & Thunder party game (with piratical out ts). With a change of pace, the Little Wars Revisited Forum ran a traditional 54mm toy soldier game called The Relief of Fort Pippin as a participation.
A game that I’d seen at Partizan made a reappearance and seemed to draw lots of attention and had some features I hadn’t seen previously: the Grimsby Wargames Society’s Retreat to the Dnieper game (in what I now realise was 12mm not 15mm as previously reported) not only had aming aircraft burning buildings but a working, ruined cinema showing
Triumph of the Will on a carefully hidden phone screen!
The Maidstone Wargames Society ran a snow bound Biggles and The Island at the Top of the World which was a 28mm party based in the Arctic with a large base to explore (and it was good enough to win an award at the show) and the Naval Wargames Society ran a SAGA at sea game with ghting on long ships that looked fun. There was an excellent 6mm Poltave by the Wyre Wargamers with some splendid scenery; Free Mexico by Chris Swan and the folks from the Skirmish Wargames team; and three games from the organisers: Wellington in India which was a Salute Hall of Fame game featuring some excellent 28mm gures, some from the collection of the late Stuart Asquith; UFO (the latter of which – I will confess – I helped out on by pretending to be an Alien Commander...) and Battle of Britain. While we are on suitable games for the theme
of the show, Scimitar Wargames Group had a clever map game for the air defence of Coventry which was certainly unusual.
There were really too many good games to mention them all but a superb show winner needs a shout out and that’s the Loughton Strike Force with a Stalingrad game. The rules for the on-table game used the new O Group rules but the component where they had to get troops from the wonderfully represented Volga river to the battle utilised a boardgame called Pavlov’s House by
Dan Verssen Games. The game – in 15mm – had scenery that was mounted high up and was pretty stunning: frankly museum quality and well presented. The gamers were chatty and informative and were attempting, I understand, to run it as a party so hats off!
TRIALS & TRIBULATIONS
There is, of course, an elephant in the room: well there was certainly room for one! Salute
2020/1 was a show that was, technically, bigger – and yet emptier
– than in previous years. It was held in a much larger room that the organisers were forced to hire for ‘circulation reasons’ (Covid-19). Then there were fteen clubs and games that didn’t show up, often – it has to be said – with little (or no) warning. That was, I guess, because of fears of either Covid-19 itself or an understandable dislike of having your ‘papers checked’. And any club’s transport to the venue falling foul of low emission zones that encircle London like a tourniquet wouldn’t have helped. On top of that were twenty traders who didn’t make it for all of the same reasons, plus more: Brexit (for the Europeans, at least) and just plain nding that – post lockdown – they can sell their wares online and without the need for shows... So none of that was very good. Add to that the show was probably hampered by having no advertising whatsoever to remind gamers of the date for tickets they had already booked and that
meant that – for the rst time in decades – the show attendance numbers went down by around a thousand and, intriguingly, they were mostly from people who had actually bought their ticket but – after a year and a half of waiting – just didn’t show up on the day...
CONCLUSIONS
I really enjoyed Partizan 2021.A lot. It was smaller and more compact than Salute and – as gamers – we were all forced to socialise just a little bit more: no hassle, no paperwork, no congestion zone and great games. But Salute was a still a fabulous day out and every one of the games that turned up was good. The full sized Spit re and Hurricane replicas – tied in with the show’s overall Battle of Britain theme – were the sort of centre piece that no other wargames show can come close to and this message was reinforced with some great give away canvas bags and a nice free miniature. The trade fair was still vast with vendors that you’ll see nowhere else and the numbers of gamers in the venue were still greater than any other wargames show by thousands. Plus the painting competition is – frankly – still the best in the business. However – because of the empty space that the organisers were forced to hire (and believe me when I say I know how expensive that was...) along with the empty tables that were still up and aching for games that didn’t show up – the place felt a bit empty: it seemed as lacking in atmosphere as only a aircraft hanger sized shed which is half full of people can do. It was more than appropriate to have a couple of aircraft parked in it, I guess!
But: time moves on. The organisers are planning the next show – actually the ftieth – for their usual April slot in 2022. I really hope gamers and traders can get past the panic and return to the event. I’ll be there come hell or high water. Spread the word. ■