Spring is here! April excitement, Salute, plans and plots

April in the UK is great. Spring is here, beautiful crisp sunny mornings (between about 9.02 and 9:30 am), flowers appear, lots of daffodils, and for the wargaming community, we all come out of hibernation to sniff the fresh air, soak up the sunshine, and for Salute, this year held on April 14th at the ExCel.

Salute remains wargamings big UK event. VERY big. I've a love\hate relationship with Salute. In the past I've had a mixed day at Salute - sometimes it can be overwhelming and for me it is a long haul - 260 miles each way and no change out of 4 and a half hours drive, plus another hour in the queue. I've been a couple of times by train and last year the luxury of a car share where I got to be the passenger all the way both ways. This year I'm "designated driver" but we've wangled some accommodation so the cunning plan is to cruise down Friday then Tube \ DLR to the ExCel. It can be a pain getting in but once you get in however, well, you get to feel the love :-).

This year I'm helping demo Dropfleet Commander at the TT Combat DZC pitch, alongside Emily K who is demoing Dropzone Commander. I'm looking forward to this as it will be the first chance to meet the new TT Combat DZC\DFC team and chat about "the future" after they took over Hawk Wargames. Additionally there will be the "show specials" available, plus hopefully the new Dropfleet Destroyers on sale for the first time. That could be expensive :-(

But there's more! Rather a lot of companies use Salute as a showcase and launch games to coincide. This year there are two games I am really looking forward to playing -  "What a Tanker" from Two Fat Lardies, and (no surprise) Blood Red Skies from Warlord Games. WAT has a release date of 9th April but Rich (the Lard Meister) is running a "rolling" demo game where you can just turn up, drive a tank around to get a feel for the game mechanics, have fun, then probably blow up!

Blood Red Skies isn't due for release until mid May but customers who pre ordered (err me !) will get theirs a month before or can arrange to pick up at Salute - there's a link here if you want to do that - and if you have not pre ordered if you are quick you may still get one. Warlord are planning to have a limited supply available at Salute, and they're running a stunning demo with a 1:200 scale attack on the USS Hornet which should be spectacular.

And then there's the other stuff that you just run across when you are wandering (assuming I can escape the stand for a while).

So it is looking like a rather busy April, and I'm really looking forward to these new games landing.

On the subject of Sporing and Spring Cleaning I've done a bit of tidying up here on the Blog, a couple of layout changes, and importantly a nice, shiny new "follow" button which for some reason (probably my incomprehension) should have been there all along but wasn't. It's over here somewhere near the top ================================>>>>>>>>>
Please click it - not only will you get notifications on any updates here but you will also (probably) get a nice warm feeling from knowing you are making a curmudgeonly old gamer a bit happier. Thanks :-)