Mike Adams
27/4/03

www.smallbattles.co.uk

I’ve just returned from a very tiring day in London and now my headache has subsided my head is buzzing with creativity. This document is a brain dump of ideas and observations from the day…

Ancients

Nothing to observe here. I don’t know whether that was because there was little to excite, or whether I am focused on other periods at the moment so didn’t notice.

Vendel Miniatures were there again, and I would recommend their Greek Hoplites if that is your thing.

Dark Ages & Medieval

I bought Shieldwall, the WAB supplement for the Dark Ages, as planned. The internal pencil art is not up to the usual high standard, but the photographs are great and I am not disappointed. It seems to concentrate on the c.1000 AD period, which is my main interest so fine by me.

I’m pleased to see a lot of group bases in Shieldwall, which is similar to my own basing regime, rather than the traditional (and unworkable) individual basing scheme for Warhammer.

The WAB El Cid game from the Newark Irregulars was excellent, as expected. I have a couple of photos from that game.

I note that the Perry Miniatures Crusader/Norman cavalry looked superb on their stand. I like the fact that they look true to scale. It seems that now we’ve finally decided to stop the pretence of calling 25mm’s 25mm when they are in fact 28mm, designers have pushed the scale upwards to 30mm+. I find this incredibly annoying and it is the reason I do not buy any more Gripping Beast. The last models I bought were 32mm high and so ridiculously overscale that they are unusable.

The Crusader Miniatures models are quite nice, but they’re really about 10 years too late. With Perry Miniatures, Foundry, Gripping Beast and Old Glory to contend with, well the competition are just too good.

Samurai

I saw no Samurai games, but noted the following:

• Dixon Minaitures Samurai
• Perry Miniatures Samurai
• Samurai Wars from West Wind Productions
• Naginata rules from Strategem

Dixon Miniatures Samurai are still the best for skirmish wargaming. The older models are crude, but there have been many newer models which retain the same style but with better detail and proportion. The range is very large and the models are full of character.

Perry Miniatures Samurai are of course superb, but the Perry style is ultra-realistic and is more appropriate to armies rather than characters where it is nice to have exaggerated poses and features. Of course a Perry Samurai army would look superb, but for skirmish I still rank Dixon the best.

Samurai Wars looked surprisingly good, despite the mediocre cover and the sales presentation. What impressed me most was the high quality of the internal art, clearly the work of a professional artist (better than the cover) and did a fantastic job of evoking atmosphere. This should not be underestimated. The actual rules are very simple, on only a few pages. They seem to be in the style of RPG combat rules or the old Featherstone skirmish rules style, using dice against characteristics to perform tasks, and relying on the scenarios and character sheet to provide specific skills and attributes. I do not favour this approach at all, but the book is consequently great for scenarios and characters.

Overall, Samurai Wars is nearly but not quite worth the £13 price. I guess you can’t win here. Either it’s not got high enough production quality/artwork, or it’s too expensive! I think the point is that you must start with a very good product. Dressing it up can increase sales, but if you get it wrong it will be counter-productive.

Naginata is based on Spear Song by Steve Winter. Superficially it doesn’t look too bad, but looking deeper it doesn’t excite. These days I expect much more from rules, mainly because the faults of old rules are so well known there is no excuse for reproducing them, and Games Workshop have raised the standard for rules in general.

Horse & Musket

Is it just me, or was Horse & Musket notable for its absence? I only remember seeing one Napoleonic game and I think an ACW game, neither particularly exciting.

Colonial

There was a Maori Wars game that looked fun. The Victorian Military Society was there in force, but I’m afraid there just isn’t time in a show like this to spend any time with stands that are essentially “fringe” to the main activity.

Twentieth Century

There were a number of WWII Eastern Front games and other games set in WWII. This continues to be a very popular period. The scale now varies enormously from 1/300 (rare), to 1/200 (perfect for tank battles), to 15mm (a nice compromise scale for mixed armour and infantry – recommended), to the traditional 20mm (I’m just old fashioned and still love those plastic kits), to 25mm/28mm (really for skirmish games only, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t see a few Tiger tanks in evidence in this scale).

One of my favourite games had the British fighting in Iraq in 1941, using 20mm scale models. This generally used plastic figures, artillery pieces and vehicles, supplemented by some metal/resin models where necessary. I have to say that 20mm plastics do seem to work very well in this kind of game, and actually look a lot more realistic than the chunky metals. I thought the guy had done a superb job of the wide river, with Airfix pontoon bridge and converted barge for carrying an artillery piece across. I also loved the aircraft. Unfortunately this was one game where I would actually have liked to get a handout, but where they had run out.

Vietnam & Ultra-Modern

I had a look in the Britannia Miniatures cabinet and could not help being drawn away from the Vietnam 20mm figures towards the Mogadishu 28mm range, especially those desirable teams of US rangers and Delta Force.

The truth is, if you were starting from scratch today, 28mm is a much better scale for modern skirmish than 20mm. 20mm was fine for WWII because of the plastic vehicle kits you could buy, but if you just want to fight with infantry only then 20mms get lost in the terrain of the modern battlefield, whether it’s forest or urban jungle.

I’m already committed to 20mm for Vietnam, but couldn’t get the 28mm figures out of my head. It didn’t help when I saw the superb range of 28mm so-called ultra-moderns from The Assault Group (who from their marketing I assumed were fantasy). These are superb, although I do have a problem refighting factual wars which are contemporary (Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.). To me, a much better use for these is an imaginary/fantasy scenario, of which the movies provide plenty of inspiration.

The final straw came at the Chiltern Miniatures stand. Although I don’t much like their Vietnam offerings, I didn’t realise but they have SAS troopers in their range. Now these models are clearly larger than 28mm, but I already had a project in mind for British soldiers (aha, wait and see!) which wanted fairly large models for skirmish purposes, so I succumbed and bought 2 packs.

Having measured them up when I got home, they are c. 32mm. This is generally a nightmare for us wargamers, because it’s impossible to say whether Chiltern Miniatures are compatible with The Assault Group are compatible with Britannia Miniatures. My guess is that BMs are the smallest at “true” 28mm, TAG are something like 30mm and CM are 32mm.

Naval & Air War

There were a few games around in this category.

First off, a modern air combat game, using I think 1/300 scale aircraft on GW-like flying stands, over a standard blue cloth. How they made that work God only knows. I wasn’t much impressed with their clouds (cotton wool on flying stands) or their counters which littered the “battlefield”.

There was a WWI air game, using beautiful aircraft models (1/144?) on elevated flying stands over a printed battlefield representing the trench lines and no-mans-land, overlaid with a faint hex grid.

There was a WWII naval game with a couple of nicely made islands and I think a cruiser and aircraft carrier in I guess 1/1200. There were stands of multiple aircraft waiting to come on table. I would presume that the islands were just for appearance and the ships were largely static, as this was predominently an air attack game. But it looked good and is food for thought about representing this sort of engagement in model form.

I asked at the Navwar stand about Russo-Japanese War vessels, but they had no samples. I’m uncertain whether 1/3000 ships are too small for this war, although I don’t think so if I want to keep the table size down.

Games Workshop

GW had a fairly standard offering, with mail order/retail, small demonstrations of their game systems (except W40K?) and some painted stuff in cabinets. I though they could have done more. I think they should have created something new and special for the show, rather than the standard stuff, which indicated a certain complacency. I think that’s a mistake, given the GW competition that was very much in evidence at the show, especially I-Kore (see below).

They had some pre-release Lizardmen stuff, and I was sorely tempted to buy the Saurus Oldblood on Carnosaur. I didn’t, on the basis that this was not the reason for going to Salute. I can buy GW some anytime and I can certainly wait for the release of this model in a few months time.

I had a close look at the new Lizardmen (and army book) and a chat to one of the staff. The new plastic skinks do look better than I previously thought, and do look better than the old ones, as do the plastic Saurus. I think the range is let down by the metals. The Kroxigor are as bad in the flesh as they looked in White Dwarf, as is the Skink shaman. The Oldblood, however, is a nice model.

Other Sci-fi/Fantasy

This is always a strong part of Salute, and I have more and more been drawn towards this side of the hobby. The quality and range is increasing, but I still think there is much untapped potential.

The following were notable:

• Large scale Star Trek space battle
• Victorian fantasy
• West Wind gothic horror
• War Machine
• Crimson Empire
• I-Kore

I was keen to look at the I-Kore offering in more detail than previous years, having seen some of the excellent stuff advertised in WI recently and having visited their website and downloaded their rules. BUT of course I have a massive commitment to GW and it really would be daft to get drawn into another fantasy setting that’s more of the same.

I-Kore need to offer something different to GW, or do it at a cheaper price. What I hoped to see is more fantasy females. It may be a bit clichéd and tacky, but I really would like to paint up and see some sexy women on the table. GW have (quite sensibly) avoided this, but I-Kore do have a few female android types in their range. Overall, price is not much cheaper than GW and GW still offer the richest and best quality fantasy gaming and modelling.

War Machine is a new name from the USA. They were selling battle-groups of steam-powered robots (have I got that right?) and a very posh rulebook. The models in their cabinet were painted to the highest standard I have ever seen. I told him so and was told these were painted by Mike on the stand. Was that ex-GW Mike McVey? That would certainly explain the extraordinary painting quality.

They had done a lot of things right so I expect to see more of War Machine:

• Basic rules included in battlegroup miniatures boxed set
• Original concept
• Scalable game upwards from 2 battle group sets played over a 2’ square table
• Top quality artwork, production qualities and presentation
• Distributed through different channels

Crimson Empire looked interesting and I was drawn to their stand. It would have been impossible to walk past their stand. Again, gorgeous artwork (limited edition prints were being sold from commercial fantasy artist Rob Larson) and gorgeous lady on the stand! She did her Sales thing explaining what Crimson Empire was all about and I tried not to swoon.

First impressions were slightly misleading. My impression was some sort of Vampire-based game system, with a possible leaning towards sensual female characters (with a hint of eroticism?). This is not so far from the truth, except that it has nothing to do with vampirism. CE is a new RPG.

The CE rulebook was slightly disappointing inside because I expected to see more of the cover art, but in fact the artwork was of a lower quality of the sort that I have seen too much of and I tend to mentally switch off. It was a lower standard than I can produce, but for some reason I do seem to have a gift in that direction even though I did not pursue it as a career (probably the biggest mistake of my life).

I have to say that although I am not a role-player, CE does look good and I wish Chris and the rest of the crew lots of luck.

Kryomek seem to be a spent force. Reaper miniatures were not as good as West Wind gothic horror. There I found my perfect werewolf. Again looking for fantasy females I was disappointed. Reaper had the best semi-naked girls, but too small scale and too much set in medieval fantasy rather than something contemporary which is what I’m looking for. There is a gap in the market here, I am sure.

The Victorian fantasy game looked good and fun, pitting Victorian British soldiers against War of the Worlds tripods. The soldiers were in parade dress red uniforms and accompanied by artillery pieces, steam tanks and aircraft. The steam tanks were small and actually quite realistic, similar to the early tanks from the 1920’s and 1930’s.

The Star Trek space battle game was of interest because it looked like a larger version of what I’m doing with Micro Machines toys. These things were large scale kits on stands c. 4’ high, circling a central, home-made Borg cube. I made the following notes about the game mechanisms:

• Gridded battlefield
• Individual ship consoles showing the following:
• Movement
• Scanners
• Warp Drive
• System Repairs
• Transporters
• 8 Troopers
• Armour
• Tractor Beam
• Shields – Fwd, Aft (actually “rear”), Left, Right, Reserve shield power
• Hull Points
• Power Generation Chart
• Batteries
• Targeting Phaser, with arcs
• Targeting Torpedoes, with arcs

Creative

In this category goes Lasertag and the like. Lasertag were there, although I didn’t stop. Looked like more of the same, still a great system let down by lack of commercial equipment, especially sensors.

Terrain

I was interested in how terrain was constructed.

In particular I was interested in how to depict roads. There was no universal way to do this. Some used permanent roads carved into polystyrene based terrain boards, some used road pieces laid on top (not so good), made from a variety of materials.

The terrain base also varied, from felt cloths (sometimes painted, sometimes not), to commercial foam-based terrain blocks, to home-made terrain blocks, and other variations. The size of the blocks and the way they were based also varied. There was no universal method, and no method which looked superior to the others. In some cases terrain based on a felt cloth looked better than specially sculpted terrain. It all comes down to the quality of implementation, and the way all of the terrain integrates. Consistency is probably the most important factor, i.e. don’t mix different sorts of terrain.

I bought a white 6’x4’ felt sheet from S&A Scenic. I already have a blue cloth and desert sand cloth which I’m happy with. The white cloth is for snow-based terrain (instead of using two thin baby’s blankets, as previously). My concerns are firstly that 6’x4’ is my standard table size and so there is no overlap, secondly that at £15 they are very expensive for what they are (especially just plain white).

Snapdragon Studios have at last produced some decent terrain. In fact they have got it so right that people were virtually queuing up to get it. I bought 3 pieces of c. 28mm scale general purpose urban/fencing terrain pieces, suitable for W40K/Necromunda and other purposes. They are well modelled and detailed, made of absolutely solid construction, and are quite a bit cheaper than other alternatives I have seen. BTW, don’t try and mail order them because they’re pretty heavy.

My overall observation about terrain is this – the best terrain is home made and purpose built. Build enough for the whole board, don’t mix pieces. Add some key commercial pieces for detail, but generally DIY is the best way to go. And have fun.

Purchases

So, this is how it panned out for me:

Costs:

Personal Best of Show

1. Snapdragon Studios urban terrain pieces
2. 28mm ultra-moderns, from Britannia Miniatures, The Assault Group, & Chiltern Miniatures
3. Best games – really there were too many to pick out individual games. The overall standard was very high.

What About The Show In General?

Well, this show is the premier wargames show in the South of England (and also attracts a lot of visitors from oversees). Attendance is mandatory.

The only problem with the show, is that it is just too good! I have a very large range of interests, covering the full range of historical periods and also fantasy/sci-fi. There is simply far too much to see and do in one day. I tried to pace myself this year and not spend too long at any one stand or game, but I still did not manage to see some games and many traders. I didn’t go near the Bring & Buy, didn’t have time to look at the VMS displays, and certainly there is no way I could have taken part in any of the many participation games (although I would have loved to). I didn’t have time for lunch and as usual got kicked out at 5pm. At the end of the day I was exhausted to the point of feeling ill. Am I unusual in this – how do other people manage?

Of course this isn’t a criticism at all. Congratulations to the Salute team for putting on such a good show and for building it up to be such an event through a programme of continuous improvement.

Silly as it is, I love my free die and the free miniature was a nice touch. Of course, the problem is what to do with it? It is too early for my Hundred Years War medievals and is out-of-scale anyway from my true 25mms. I could possibly include it as a character in a GW Bretonnian army, but using non-GW miniatures prevents me from playing it in GW tournaments. A single miniature is not enough to tempt me into a full Crusader army, it is more likely I would buy Perry Miniatures knights for a Norman Army to fight my existing Anglo-Danish and Norsemen (of course inspired by the Shieldwall supplement). Do I just paint it up for pleasure? I have more than enough models already for that.

Hmm, although it pains me to do it, I think the miniature probably will be relegated to the role of statue to go atop a plinth in the square of some village plunged into conflict in a later era. Actually, thinking about it that gives us a lot of scope. It wouldn’t be out of place for anything from late Medieval onwards.

Winchester has a statue of Alfred the Great in the middle of the road, and I think that will be the basis for the model.

References