Road Trip aka Salute 2010 in London!

Alright folks,

** Warning**

This blog entry has a shag load of pictures and the usual Anton ramblings - Be warned!

So it was that time of year again the annual Phat Cats trip to salute, now this would be the fifth year in a row that myself and the guys have been going down there to blow our hard earned cash on plastic/resin/metal crack!

As this was the first year that I'd be going as a non-chairman/committe member I could sit back relax and let the boys sort it.....

So the first challange was the mini-bus that we'd hired was stuck in Nottingham the land of Robin Hood to those outside the UK, OK no worries we take the cars and go down to junction 4 of the M1 and get the tube in from Stanmore, simple?

Nope! The Jubliee line was closed for what ever reason, so after chatting to a bloke wearing a high-vis jacket (who turned out to be a gamer!) and much discussion we decided to take the convoy straight to the excel centre, apart from the fact that Dave's Iphone sat-nav thingy went into melt down and I ended up navigating via a google maps thingy? which by the way is cool as fuck you could zoom right in and all that jazz!!

Featuring on crimewatch  soon!

So after a few wrong turns and various points in the drive that must have looked like a scene from dukes of hazzard we managed to get to the excel centre

Over all the show was fairly good and after the amount of times that I've been it should have become stale now, but each year the demo games always impress me, and with cool little games being released there is always some thing to keep you intrested,

I wandered over to the painting entires area and only managed to get a couple snaps off at some stuff that caught my eye, it was quite busy near there so had to be quite polite and elbow my way in..

a lovey landraider with some sweet freehand!

some nice marines, but my camera decided to focus on the guys at the back?

Cool looking doom of thingy me doogey nid conversion

Forgeworld death corps commisar on horseback

A really nice 15mm yes thats right 15mm scene!

A really nice painted Joker from batman, now I don't normally do the bust type models but this was cracking!

So the following pictures are various random tables that caught my eye now for some of these I have no details on who did these or what the system was but this is to give you an idea of the effort that the demo game people goto for the show...

Now this was one that made me smile wargaming with LEGO!

A really cool musketters looking game, fighting in a pub, winner in my eyes!

A WW1 tench warfare game

Now this was something differant, WW2 germans who had captured a flying saucer!

From a distance the grass/fields on this table looked spot on, and it turned out to be sprayed teddy bear fur!

A cool looking jungle table

this is about 1/3 of the hall,

A really nice infinity scifi city table,

Check out the hottub! lovey detailing!

the other side of the hall

some bits and bobs from the forgeworld stand, which I picked up a few bits and bobs but you'll have to wait to see what I do with that stuff...

Talking to the nice chap the raven guard? will be out next month so start saving your pennies it looks nice, and still no news on the Slannesh or Tzeentch stuff.... boohiss...

Some cool looking grot tanks

So it was off to lunch there we were discussing all things wargaming surrounded by some very confused and concerned people!

Dustin giving orders to his second in command aka the misses!

WTF! pizza with an egg on top? you don't get that at 3:30 from the kebab shop when your trollied!

Now in the hall next to salute you could sign up for the marathon, thats no gonna happen so we quickly moved on as the people coming out of there put us all to shame!

me and spencer getting distracted and decided it was time to strike a pose

and then he abandoned me and dived straight into a random trader!

So I decided to carry on wandering around the demo tables,

I heard some strange noises and saw west ham & millwall fans in a scuffle,

and then I spotted a cool looking japanese table this was really nice!

As I was wandering near heresy mini's I spotted what could be my next deamon prince for my nurgle army...

and double bonus red star minis had turned up with the russians!

I really like this table as I've a strange fetish for the russian stuff

Now this was taking the piss! a HUGE tiger 2 and a HUGE tiger these things are remote control with noise units and the like, even the guys sticking out of the top of the tanks they could be controlled to which way they were facing! but where would you keep these bloody hell!

not sure on the size look at the blokes legs in the background...

Dustin on the quest for scenery for his shop, this year there wasn't that many people selling the stuff quite surprising to be honest,

Edan mini's bloody lovey models and the NNM was top class, I don't think the french chap understood what I was banging on about but gave me a quickstart rule book so I'm going to have to see how that pans out

Now this was the surprise of the show for me, Lee had discovered a rubbery type material that you could make buildings and the like out of...

so this stone wall was one peice and was softened with a hair dryer to fit the contour of the hill, very very clever!

Now if you think I'm fast at painting check this out....

10 days! bloody hell and it looked good as well!! but it was some historical stuff so doesn't really count ;)

So over all a good day, I saw a few familar faces from the mongoose days which was nice, and managed to drop an astounding £170 on what appears to be a very small pile of stuff! Mind you the 4 winsor newton brushes didn't help! and neither did the forgewold bits, the malifaux looks like it could be a good crack and went for the graverobbers set well you carn't go wrong when the models are named as "samuria punk zombies" that sold it for me!

And I was also quite chuffed to get my grubby hands on day of the rangers for ambush alley, and Lee told me just as I was about to get force on force that a rule book is coming out next April so that can wait!

A couple of blisters from maxmini for chaos conversions and a couple of cubes of dice dice from chessex well some nice shiney green ones for the death guard and nice shiney purple ones for the emperors children

And to put the icing on the cake my bits arrived from micro art studios for my obliterators conversion that you'll see in a couple of weeks, which really has got spencer very excited but most of it was his idea ;)


So that lot has put me well into the red for my "2010" pledge so I better get my game face on and crank out some bits and bobs!

hope you enjoyed the pictures & words, comments welcome as always