Dux Bellorum at Salute 2013

Well, this was a result both unexpected and very gratefully received!! You know that you have achieved your 'wargame show aims' when you find yourself pretty much welded to your game for the day answering myriad questions, demonstrating bits of the rules, chatting to punters, etc, AND you end up winning a prestigious trophy, which, as the pics above demonstrate, was 'Best Painting.' At ANY show that'd be a result... At Salute, it's doubly special as there are SO many great miniatures on display.

So, overall, I think 'the team' (myself, Steve Jones, James Morris, Scrivs, Andy MacT, Tom and John) did ourselves proud and did a darn fine job of promoting Osprey's Dux Bellorum rules on the day.

It was a long day, as I was up at 4.20am to leave the house at 5.30am and got home at 8.15 in the evening, but it was really worth it in every sense. So may people came to see our game and left with positive comments. Lots of them told us that they owned the game, but hadn't played it and I like to think that a good number of them will now be inspired to go and try it having seen us play it through. We tried to ensure that we had one of our two games running at all points throughout the day. This worked well, as there was a little overlap and it enabled lots of the team to be on hand to explain stuff to the punters. We always try very hard to get that aspect right at a wargame show - while some punters don't really want to stand and chat, a good number do, so taking the time to say 'hello' and strike up a conversation is always worth the effort and having a big team certainly made that possible.

On the day, Arthur lost twice to the Saxons. In the first game, Scrivs beat me and in the second, Scrivs started out with the Saxons against Andy MacT who took the Romano-Brits, but Scrivs then toddled off to see the Chain of Command demo on TooFatLardies stand, so I took over and killed every Briton on the table...including Arthur!!! Over on the big game, they played it through once, but I'm not sure what the result was.

Both tables looked spectacular due to the quality of figures and especially the terrain - Steve's scratch-built hill fort and the charming 'church that is now a water mill' providing plenty of eye candy for the punters and prompting several questions.

I didn't get to see much of the rest of the show, as it's so big and I was only away from the game about 90 mins, so, while I had a wander and did a bit of shopping (new Musketeer Arthurian characters and cataphracts, some paint and Foundry's new Fantasy rulebook) there was too much to take in. There was a stunning 40mm Alamo game put on by Gringo minis which just look AMAZING - thousands upon thousands of pounds worth of minis and terrain, apparently - and a HUGE Waterloo game, which caught my eye simply because of the size of it and the mass of figures on the table - too many figures crammed into the space, if I'm honest, but then that always seems to happen when folk attempt a Waterloo refight. Still, that sheer number of models always causes a 'wow' moment.

The show seemed busy and it was GREAT to catch up with some gamers who I hadn't seen in a while, as well as to meet some of the bloggers who follow my ramblings on here...

Anyway, enough chit-chat, you wanna see some pics, right? Here are a few I took of our games. Apologies for poor photography on a few. I was experimenting with camera settings as, for some reason, I had more trouble than usual with settings and getting depth of field, focus and lighting right...

Scrivs' Saxons...

My Romano-British

More  of Scrivs' Saxons

Steve Jones' home-made hill fort...matchsticks by the thousand!!!

The Byzantine church that had become a watermill....

Steve's fabulous Late Romans...

James Morris' barbarian conspiracy Pict/Scot alliance

Action  hots up on the 'Arthur' game...