This week in wargaming at WSS, April 27
Salute’s over. It was, as always, overwhelming, awesome, gratifying for the nice comments and generally exhausting. Despite that, there have been wargaming-related activities aplenty, so our sleep-walking team reports…
Guy: The run up to Salute has really taken up my time this last week. We had an editors’ team meeting in Holland, so the amount of wargaming and painting has been limited given the amount of traveling. However that does not mean that I simply did nothing. For one, I needed an objective for the Black-Ops Salute game, so I took a SMER 1/48 scale MI-2 helicopter with me. Jasper kindly allowed me to borrow his paints - I bought some paint brushes out there as both Jasper and Christy were rightly nervous of me borrowing theirs - you don’t pay out a pile on decent paintbrushes just to have some editor ruin them! The finished model looks ok, I simply used a dark green and middlestone base and added successive highlights before adding a dark line. I wanted it to be generic and it was rushed (I’ll report separately on Salute and on how my game worked out). Plans for this week include finalizing our Ligny game and to revitalize our local gaming with some campaign games, hopefully involving a few local clubs. I think we’re overdue for an In Her Majesty’s Name campaign and I’d like to see more Crescent & Cross and/or Lion Rampant being played.
Mark: This week in gaming has been all about getting ready for Salute. I played a little bit of Black-Ops using a draft set of the rules. I probably needed a few more games before running the participation games at Salute, but time was short! People seemed to enjoy themselves in the game on the day though and the game ran smoothly. I didn’t see much of the rest of the show and managed to miss lots of the stalls and games but still had a great time!
Christy: What can I say? This weekend, I was at Salute, just like everyone else on the team! As usual, it was very hectic, stressful and busy, but at the same time quite satisfying. A huge thank you to everyone who stopped by and chatted with me about the YouTube channel. It was great hearing from you (and also a bit amazing to realize how many people have seen the videos). Since getting back, I’ve been working on a show recap video and also squeezing a little bit of painting in on my upcoming surprise diorama. I promise that I WILL have some sort of pictures to show you next week! Now for a nap…
Jasper: What a week… You’d almost forget we have other publications here too (Ancient Warfare IX.2 went to print last week - only two more before the FIFTIETH issue…whew!) As soon as Guy arrived last Tuesday, it seems like all we did was discuss plans, improvements and ideas for WSS, all the while modelling and painting furiously to get the terrain for Guy’s game up to scratch. Inspiring and great fun, but I was sure happy that our friend René had offered to drive so I could spend Friday lolling in the back of the car. Salute was great! It’s always nice to have a chance to talk to readers, manufacturers, ‘frenemies’ (as we professionally call those also in the publishing trade) and even do some shopping. Next project is Piré’s division of light cavalry for Quatre Bras. We’ve got a big Quatre-Bras and Waterloo day coming up in August…