Salute 2016

Yes, yes, I know: another post-Salute post to join the thousands already floating around the ether!

Well this one is just a quickie, focusing not so  much on the event itself* but on some of the games on show: specifically their terrain.

Terrain isn't really my thing: I'm getting better, but still feel my efforts are weighted towards my figures rather than the earth on which they stand. 

There were three tabletops that I would really, really like to have had the opportunity to get my figures onto:

First up was a terrific Vietnam set-up. Wrong scale, being 28mm, but absolutely lovely:

Then there was the sci-fi Hammers Slammers 15mm sci-fi set up. I was definitely working out whether this one would fit onto my tables at home. It would, by the way, so if the owner ever gets bored of it and needs more space, I will quite happily give it a very good home! 

And finally the sci-fi set-up from Critical Mass Games was great as well: 

Three amazing tables that really inspire.

*Actually I thought Salute was quite good this year.

I had a great journey in: I drove and didn't encounter any of the roadworks that have blighted previous years' journeys...it's almost as if they have finally got that area sorted out road-wise. The £15 for all day parking was a bit steep, but at least the machines were accepting credit cards instead of demanding two fistfuls of coins to satisfy them.

I arrived about 10.15 without a ticket. Walked straight up to the ticket booth and bought one, no queue. Got myself a sandwich and a coffee, ate them, then walked straight in to the show with no delay at all. Another amazing improvement on years gone by.

I thought the show was busier than last year. Still the same horrid floor and dull lighting, but I can put up with them: the eyes soon adjust and there's plenty of places to sit down.

I noticed that there seemed to be a lot of new, teeny-weeny traders as well as the expected big ones. That bodes well for the hobby: lots of new trader blood coming in. I understand that a couple of the massive stands (GW, or a derivative thereof) were collection-only...and that they seemed to be the ones with the queues. In all, however, a good mix, and I was able to find some decal-softener.

Good lunchtime drinks at the Fox with some of the Lardies: some of whom seemed to have led very sheltered lives, but I digress...

I ended up spending far too much money, as per usual, and on a real mix of things. Some Battlefront pre-painted terrain from Team Yankee; some trees; a hill; some of Battlefront's new Pacific-theatre Japanese tanks; some more Israelis; decal-softener; and a few sci-fi bits and pieces. A good haul that will doubtless be on show here at some stage in the future.

One thing I did notice that was different to the last few years: more BO! Maybe because it seemed busier visitors-wise this year, but there were a couple of occasions when I caught a full blast of sweaty wargamer: not very nice and, as I said, unusual compared to previous years. 

In all, a good Salute this year. 

 

Sarissa's 15mm Factory

Sorry for the lack of updates over the last few days:  been horribly distracted with real world affairs.

Anyhoo, to get back into the swing of things, here's a quick post showing my latest 15mm building for anything from WW2 right up to sci-fi: Sarissa Precision's factory.

The factory is mainly a single building with a nice roomy inside. There is a walkway halfway up one wall, and the windows and doors are made from heavy card stuck to the inner walls: nicely robust. There a small powerhouse plus chimney on one side, and the kit comes with a steps-and-gantry walkway that leads to one of the doors portrayed on the upper floor.

Now this is quite a challenging kit to build, but the instructions are excellent and easy to follow. It's just a bit fiddly in places, and I don't really do fiddly! The result, however, is definitely worth the time and effort. The outside looks brilliant, even with my rather crude paint job, the gantry is a very nice touch, and the inside is amazing. That walkway is surprisingly easy to build, and will provide a nice little fire step.

On the whole, highly recommended.

Battlefront's Desert Fort

Those of you who read my post about Battlefront's Dust Cloud terrain markers will know that I have had some stuff on backorder from them for some time. One of the other things that was on backorder was their Desert Fort and expansion pack.

Now I can't remember exactly how this worked, but I think that they said they would only produce another batch of these if enough people agreed to buy them: a bit like a mini-kickstarter. Well I agreed to do so, and then promptly forgot all about it until the e-mails saying they were on the way started to arrive in my inbox, followed shortly afterwards by two quite big boxes.

Here's the fort itself:

It's a lovely piece of battlefield terrain. The walls and turrets are really chunky...and I've just realised I've set it up in the picture above with all but one of the walls the wrong way round...but you can see from the left hand wall what it should look like! Plenty of room for figures on those parapets, and for at least light guns on the tower-tops.

Here are a couple of views with a figure in them for comparison:

fort02.jpg

The expansion pack contains two ruined walls and two mid-wall towers that would allow you to double the length of two of the wall sides, provided you were happy to have the ruined walls included to make up two of the sides. Or you could just have the ruined walls as part of the original square fort.

Here's a pic of the fort set up as a square with on side bashed in:

In all, this is a lovely set of kit, ideal for portraying the desert forts of the western desert in the early 1940's. It would also do, of course, for sci-fi wargaming, and for Beau Geste-style games as well. Recommended.

PS  Sorry about the pictures: I seem to have got most of the walls round the wrong way. That's what comes of drinking a bottle of wine whilst gaming, and then deciding to do a bit of photography afterwards!

The Stalingrad Mill

The last building I had to put together from Commission Figurines was the gigantic Stalingrad Flour Mill.

Retailing at £45, this is a cracking piece:  two joined buildings, one large, one small; five floors and a roof, with each floor having its own little ledge on which to place figures. You actually have to build it twice: once for the internal frame on which all the shelves sit, and once for the outside walls.

Here's a modern-day picture of the mill itself:

And here's a picture of my completed model:

Not the sharpest of photos, but you can see what I mean about the sheer size of the thing, and how well it compares to the actual building.

I painted this in orange, and then washed with GW Agrax Earthshade. It didn't need any sort of highlights dry-brushed on, so I didn't do any. The inside I left in raw mdf, as it looked okay and painting it would have been a real pain now that I had put it together. The outside pavement I did in the usual dark grey, black wash, light grey highlight, but I left the highlighter brush a little dirty from when I painted the orange on, so some of the pavement has a little bit of a brick hew, as if covered in brick dust or rubble.

The only thing I'm not 100% satisfied with the way I've painted it is the roof. You get two bits of flat roof, and then a sort of tunnel-walkway-attic as well. These I painted in dark brown, again with a hint of dirty orange in it. It looks okay, but I'm not sure quite how else to do it. Suggestions on a postcard please...

To finish, here are two close-up shots of the inside so that you can see how good it will be for actual wargaming. As I said above, cracking piece: highly recommended.

Another Ruined Building from Commission Figurines

Here's the second of the three buildings I purchased from Commission Figurines at Warfare.

This one is Potsdammer Platz, and very nice it is too. Goes together very easily - literally the work of minutes - and then simple to paint as well. This one I undercoated in dark grey, then added a heavy wash with black ink, then dry-brushed with dark grey, then light grey, then bleached bone to bring out the relief. Again I painted the inside dark grey.

Looks good to me and I can't wait to get them onto the tabletop.

You can find Commission Figurines by clicking here.

Dustclouds

I must have been feeling very flush one day, as apparently I've had the 'Dustclouds' terrain pieces on back-order from Battlefront for some time.

Now just why anyone would need a marker for dust in the desert I don't know...but then again, they do look good and I obviously felt the need at some point! Whatever the reason, and whether I really need them or not, they were a nice surprise. Some people, eh: more money than sense!

One of my as yet unused T-55s with dustcloud!

Ruined Buildings from Commission Figurines

One of my purchases at Warfare were some of Commission Figurines 15mm ruined buildings in laser-cut wood.

I was quite excited by these, so let one of them jump to the head of the painting queue, and knocked it up in a few hours late on Sunday.

This particular building, Konig Strasse, is easy to put together: four walls slot together and then mount onto the four pavement pieces if pavement is required.

Painting was pretty simple too: I painted the whole thing orange, then put a very heavy black ink wash over the top. Once that was dry, I dry-brushed very lightly in orange again, and then in a bone colour to bring up the relief. The doors I did in brown, the pavement in three shades of grey. The interior I just painted all grey, with no washing or dry-brushing.

I'm very pleased with the result, and can't wait to build the others. I think they'll do for any big city: Berlin, Stalingrad and even sci-fi...and at £13 for the one below, quite good value too.

Another Sarissa Precision Building

Took advantage of Salute to buy myself one more Sarissa Precision lasercut building from their Far East range: what they call an 'outpost' which I will use as a lean-to or similar as a smaller building in a village set-up.

Lovely model to build, and surprisingly durable in that although I did manage to be clumsy enough to snap two of the little struts that connect one top bit to a bottom bit, it's still robust enough that I could leave the roof unglued so that I can get figures in and out of it easily.

The whole range is highly recommended.

Chain of Command Terrain: A Lard/Warbases Joint Venture

Exciting news for all 28mm 20thC/modern gamers: the TooFatLardies and Warbases have got together to produce a new range of laser cut terrain pieces. Here's the news item from Lard Island News:


Part of the joy of wargaming is the opportunity to, albeit briefly, suspend our disbelief and see ourselves as Napoleon or Wellington, commanding vast armies, or Sidney Jary at the head of 18 platoon. For me, a big part in creating the environment which encourages that immersion in the narrative of our games is getting a table that not only is pretty, but also looks right. In so many cases it is the small detail which makes a big difference. In all of the games we have run around the shows, it has been stuff like telegraph poles and (believe it or not!) cabbages growing in the garden which have received the most comments. Interestingly, it is small detail like this which I have so often found myself having to scratch build, with varying degress of success if I am honest, as most terrain companies tend to focus on the big stuff, like buildings, bridges and walls, rather than the minutiae. Well, that’s all about to change.

Before Christmas I had a long discussion with my old chum Martin up at Warbases and floated the idea of starting a range of terrain for Chain of Command. To my mind it is the skirmish or platoon level game which really comes to life when you add some extra detail, and I wanted us to work together to start producing the type of items which I really wanted to see in my games. As always, Martin came up trumps, as my dodgy sketches and vague ideas were turned into something practical and VERY pretty. The great news is that we will have the first two packs available at Salute. These are as follows:

Pack One includes the following:

  • Lean to Greenhouse
  • Potting shed, including work bench
  • Chicken coop with two cast metal chickens
  • Cold frame
  • Compost bin

Pack One

As you can see below, the lean to greenhouse will fit neatly onto any flat walled building

Pack Two contains the following:

  • Free standing Greenhouse
  • Dog kennel with cast metal doggy (optional “woofs” to be provided by customer)
  • Garden bench
  • Wheelbarrow
  • Wood store

PACK TWO

​All of the models are in laser cut MDF and, where shown they have suitably embossed paper to cover the roofs and serve as tar paper or roof felt as used in the early 20th century. Even better is the news that each of the packs will be retailing at just £16 each, great value for models which will really transform your wargames table. We hope to have these available on the web site immediately after Salute, although I reckon these will be a sell-out at the show!


These look great! Now all I need is for them to be produced in 15mm as well!

Sarissa Precision Ltd: Buildings for the Far East

I've never been big into terrain.

I am never going to make any (far too much like hard, and messy, work) and in the past it's always seemed like a waste of money that could be spent on more soldiers. 

That, however, was before I got my wargaming room back after its sabbatical as a kids playroom, and before I moved this website to Squarespace. I'm having more games now, and the photos are easier to process and upload, and my existing terrain...well, it just isn't up to scratch any more.

Wooden huts for the Eastern Front from 4ground

I have had very good experiences with 4Ground's range of wooden huts for the Eastern Front, so I thought I'd see if I could get some more of that sort of thing, but this time for the Far East. 

A quick search of the web, and I found Sarissa Precision Ltd: a UK company that do a nice little range of laser-cut wood buildings just like 4Ground's.

They have six different village huts in their Far East range, so I bought one of each, and have spent the last few days putting them together: I love the smell of laser-cut wood in the mornings!

Once built, however, I felt they were slightly lacking something. Not in the models themselves, I hasten to add, they were lovely, just that the setting demanded something more.

So I have been very brave, and I have pimped them up!

First I've added a toupee of wool roving (whatever that is!) bought from the local Hobbeycraft to their roofs. This was quite difficult: it involved smearing white glue over the roofs, then carefully snipping off and sticking down layers of wool cording so they look a bit like some kind of vegetation. Don't ask me what sort of vegetation: just enjoy the look!

It didn't turn out just how I wanted it too.

Building One: Planked Style Village House - Low

Apparently you're supposed to be able to comb this stuff, and I had envisioned a sort of green thatch effect...whereas what I have achieved is more Boris Johnson! But I like it, and I think it will look good on the tabletop amongst the plastic palm trees and lichen.

Next, I thought that the empty holes for every door and window (on some of the huts: others have a wooden lattice effect) looked a bit odd.

Building Two: Small Village House

So back to Hobbeycraft and the purchase of a roll of hemp trimming. From this I have made crude blinds/curtains which actually round things off nicely. Flocked bases and the odd shutter finish things off: at least until I can buy some little pots and other household detritus with which to decorate the bases.

So a little bit of work to make them look super, but highly, highly recommended. Oh, and they cost £52.50 for the six, with only £2.50 p&p.

Here are the other four:

Building Three: Woven Palm Style Village House - Low

Building Five: Planked Style Village House

Building Four: Woven Palm Style Village House

Building Six: Small Village House - Low

A Small Village Somewhere In The Far East