It was a few weeks ago now, but the RapidFire Wargaming team were down at Salute in April.
“Salute Twenty Eighteen, run by The South London Warlords, is the biggest independent one-day wargaming and gaming event in the UK. Our aim is to promote the very best in the hobby. Held at ExCel London, there will be traders from all across the hobby along with plenty of demonstration and participation games to see and take part in.”
This was the second year we’d been and largely knew what to expect. Unlike in 2017 we decided not to take the train and instead drove to the O2 and then took the cable car accross the Thames.
Champs set us all up with some lovely bacon sarnies, the sun was shining, traffic was light and Parking a doddle – so off to a great start.
The first impression when you walk into the arena at the Excel centre is the sheer scale of the thing! The area dedicated to Salute is massive and is only a fraction of the whole exhibition space. There are literally hundreds of wargaming and hobby traders and stalls. The majority of the games are being demo’d live and they all encourage you to take part and get involved which is all good fun.
When we went in 2017 we were all ‘hard for heresy’, so were super excited about the FW stall, whereas this year it was more about stocking up on “hobby bits” and looking into some of the smaller independent games in more detail. One game that stood out for us was Blood Red Skies . A small formation based WW2 fighter game. We will be posting a full breakdown of the game along with a review on here in the coming weeks so keep your eyes peeled for that.
I decided not to enter anything into the painting comp this year as although it’s great experience and you get useful feedback from the judges, we all needed to be away from the Excel by mid-afternoon and i didn’t want to hold everyone up by waiting to collect the model.
Although seeing all the games was decent, the highlight for me was to meet the super talented Angel Giraldez who has been a painting idol of mine for years. Getting to see him paint was a pleasure. The gent even signed my copy of his Master Class V1 book.
We all filled our bags with hobby swag (I bought lots of basing stuff, a couple of boxes of Scale75 paint sets, a new needle for my Badger patriot and a Contemptor Achillus for my Custodes – quite a mix!), burned the receipts, stuffed our faces and took the cable car back to Champs chariot.