Salute in Steve's Words

After what must be 18 months of work, it was good to get the actual game on the road. Although we had the two warm up games last year, Blore Heath at Triples and Northampton at Derby, the full game is on a totally different scale to either of these. So on Friday afternoon I set off towards the capital with the car packed to the gunwales. Even then I had to leave one of the terrain boards behind, so the game was only 16 feet long rather than 18.

After a restful night on the outskirts of London, I arrived at Excel in the morning and, after meeting up with Graham and Leigh at the stand, soon had the game set up. Although for a short while, we did have Fauconberg appearing on both sides of the battle, but with this being The War of the Roses, nobles did like to hedge their bets.

As with anything you’ve worked on there is always the worry of will anyone else like this. We needn’t have worried, the game definitely had the wow factor. The table seemed to permanently have people round it and comments being universally positive. There was the occasional questioning of our sanity, but there have been moments where we have as well. I was amazed at how many people have been following the blog and then came to see the game itself. I can’t think of any negative comments, even the ‘I couldn’t paint anything that small’ brigade seemed to be tongue in cheek. After seeing the game many people were seen heading towards the Baccus stand to check out the figures.

Overall Salute was a very enjoyable event. The game was very well received and, despite Peter’s doom-mongering, we won an award, The Most Impressive Troops.



With our enthusiasm rekindled we shall return at Triples bigger and better, just a few more stands to paint.

Finally! Towton at Salute.

Here are a few shots of our Towton game at Salute. Thanks to Steve, who took the photos and took most of the stuff down in his car because I could not attend. He, Graham and Leigh displayed the game most excellently by all accounts, and we are all thrilled to little fluffy bits to have won the trophy for Most Impressive Troops.

Because we were short-staffed, we chose to run a scripted demo rather than try to play the game. I sent Steve off with a script for the game and it looks like it worked well, ensuring that the action continued all day and that the situation changed as people returned to see what had happened next.

There were a couple of incidents of note though. One eagle-eyed observer spotted that Lord Fauconberg had troops on both sides of the battle. Classic Wars of the Roses strategy that. After all, he wanted to make sure he was on the winning side! We also got a couple of people asking where the other army was once the troops were all engaged in melee. Clearly we need more casualty markers to show the progress of the Lancastrian army. Alternatively, some arrows marking their route might be a good idea.

Thank you to everyone for their positive comments about the game. If you did not get to Salute, our next planned outing is Triples in Sheffield. Hopefully we shall see you there. Please click the photos for larger images.

Better photos of the set-up

I took some more photos today and these are the least worst of them. There are gaps in both lines because Steve took his figures home, but hopefully they begin to show the impression we hope to create.

550 Today

There's no way that we could actually play out the battle in the time available to us on this day, so, as a commemmoration of the bloodiest battle on English soil, I set up part of the terrain and put some figures on it. This shot shows a single iteration of the order of battle deployed at the start of the battle (There should be twice as many figures on the table at Salute). The ambush in the far distance has been sprung far too early, while Norfolk has arrived at the beginning rather than lazing in bed until mid morning and then wandering up to help clean up the mess. The Yorkists are on the left of the shot and the Lancastrians on the right. Anyway, this is what 8500 figures on 288 stands looks like.



When we designed the terrain, we took into account the fact that we might not get the full order of battle put together for our earliest games, and that we might want to play a smaller version of the game. Therefore, we constructed the terrain boards so that we could remove some of them and they would still fit together properly. This meant taking some liberties with the contours, but needs must where the devil drives and all that.

Let it snow ...

Steve and I had a productive day yesterday (Saturday) working on the terrain. We covered the frames for the final two boards in plaster-soaked t-shirts, added green scatter material to the three boards that had only been painted and added snow to the first four boards that we had worked on. It looks like we might actually have a game to put on at Salute after all!

Towton before the snow

Big day tomorrow. We are planning to get the majority of the terrain finished or at least into an acceptable state for Salute. Here's part of the terrain looking towards the Cock Beck and where Castle Woods will be.

Countdown to Salute

No pictures today. Sorry. We are also too busy to blog regularly at the moment, because we are desperately trying to finish off the last of the figures and terrain so that the game will be displayed in full form at Salute. Eek! Why am I blogging when I should be painting?

Anyway, we hope to meet you all there or at Triples in May and we hope you enjoy our game.