So, another Salute has been and gone, leaving us with tired feet and empty wallets.
As per usual, the amount of photos it felt like I took turns out be be less than it seems I actually took, leaving me with these:
A snazzy VSF game, put on in conjunction with Oshiro Model Terrain iirc
3-ups at the Perry stand of their upcoming foot knights - I'd hoped that they might have been ready for Salute (and would have been an automatic purchase), but alas it was not meant to be this year...
A rather smart VBCW game - one day, I'll get around to painting my VBCW minis that are currently sat under coated, as every year I see a game at Salute and it makes me want to game the period!
Batman miniatures game demo - another one that made me think 'hmm, I really should paint mine up, that looks pretty cool!'
An epic Dune inspired board, put on by Frothers!
A somewhat tempting offer of a detailed Blood Bowl board (I forget who it was that does these though!)
Either I'm getting older or the re-enactors are getting younger each year...
I especially enjoyed this little bit of detail on an 'In Her Majesty's Name' board that I thought I'd taken a picture of the while of, but apparently not.
And so ends the pictures from Salute, but fret not, as there were plenty of other photographers and videographers there! I'm looking forward to seeing the group shot from the bloggers meetup, as I actually made it to the right place at the right time this year!
And now, to count the costs; as the tally takes the hit from the loot:
First of all, let's compare what I brought home to my original list:
Salute list
Pick up Hasslefree pre-order
Done, not- Ellie and Joel, and a free zombie and sweets!
Vallejo smoke
Done! The first thing I picked up, and then inevitably saw cheaper everywhere else at the show for the rest of the day...
Westwind heads (bare)
Done! Annoyingly, they didn't have the welsh heads I was originally after, but I managed to pick up a couple of blisters of likely looking heads to hopefully inspire some conversions for the ASOIAF project:
Other bare heads
Done, thanks to Anvil Industries (although their heads are scaled to Space Marines, but we'll see) and Crooked Dice (who told me they have a photo of me at the stand from last year, which was nice!)
A Juan Diaz Daemonette
No dice.
Lelith hesperax?
Also no.
Wracks?
Nope. Admittedly, I'm not particularly fussed about these last 3, as they're for conversions for a second Path to Glory warband, and I've not even finished the first!
Quidditch teams (haha)
As usual, I enquired, but it seems less and less likely that these will ever get released. Eh, I live in hope still though...
Miniature Mojo running zombies?
Miniature Mojo alas weren't at Salute, and as far as I saw no one was carrying their minis, so I think I might have to place a sneaky order once I've painted a few more miniatures!
Any other fungus zombie standins?
Nope, although at the Heresy stand I realised that I already own a zombie sculpt that would be a good base model for a bloated conversion. I also had a soft through some boxes of heroclix looking for generic looking humanoid figures that could get hacked up, but didn't turn up anything interesting...
War doctor - heresy or cd?
Heresy, in the end, as I like to try and buy at least something from my favourite sellers every Salute!
Bushido gorilla?
Done, and he's as chunky as I'd hoped! I'm sure I'll find some use for the little girl that comes with him too eventually...
Pretty much anything that's a bargain...
A GW ghost, an oldhammer era wardancer and a copy of Ravening Hordes (in case I ever need to start a Chaos Dwarf project) for the princely sum of a pound each.
Having stripped out everything that was on the list, my remaining deviations don't look as bad as I thought they might:
The Salute freebie miniature (I've no idea what to use it for, but all else failing the dog might see some play) and a badge;
Army painter inks (soft, strong and dark) because I'd heard good things and fancied giving them a go;
Dice because well always dice;
A Nezumi from Four-A that I'd never seen before (although when I asked apparently it's been out for around a year);
A free building sprue from mantic;
Some munchkin cards;
A Terry Pratchett puzzle (Josh Kirby art, y'know?)
And a Dark Sword Gregor Clegane. Expensive, but very nice. Although every other miniature in the range is too large to mix with the rest of the project, the Mountain is huge anyway, so shouldn't look too out of place.
As well as all these goodies, I also have enough cards fliers and catalogues to wallpaper a moderately sized room.
The final count for toys this year brings the tally to:
22 vs 30 = -8
Turns out this year I mostly bought heads rather than whole miniatures!
