Austrian Salute 2024

 

Heyhey, here's my show report of Austrian Salute 2024!

It's an early one, 6th of April, but the weather was insanely summery. 27°C (that's probably 2000°F or 250 or -5, I have no idea). Travel was perfectly OK, as with previous years I first paid a visit to Silent Night Games, El Cid's fine wargaming store, and centre piece of Comitatus wargames club. They also happen to run Austrian Salute. Then I proceeded to the event location across the border, set up the stuff (had a little help, thanks muchly), on to the hotel for dinner and beverages.

The next day at 9:00 Austrian Salute started proper. Great tables as usual, which I will present now.

Front right: Roll the Dice's lovely products. Centre stage: Talking Wargaming with El Cid and Tom. Left: The Black Banner of Battle Brush Studios

A lovely What a Cowboy! table presented by Delia and MadCadian:

Note the hand-painted lettering on the store fronts. 

They won Best Demo Game on the day.

Here's the remarkable Warcry / Guilds (the game by 3d-printy people Artisan. Not to be confused with non-3d-printy people Artizan).

LOADS of the Ghur terrain pieces releaed by GW for Warcry. I really like the theme of that terrain, because it's different, but will still work in different climates. When this terrain first came out I thought it was one of these "one and done" things which GW often pulled with terrain (*coughcough*Orks 40k terrain*coughcough*), which shoots any sort of interesting terrain right in the foot. 

But no, this time GW kept putting out pieces for this theme, which is cool. Because it means you can actually theme a table around that. As presented here.

Same shot, but with a very amusingly un-amused Lexxman added. :D

Muswetyl and Moiti presented small-scale Warhammer 40k, but not Legions Imperialis. Nope, it was glorious Epic:Armageddon! A highly demo-driven set-up, mostly made to show people the light that is E:A.

Lovely armies in 8mm and 6mm, good times. Strong rules, very pretty figures.

Sticking with GW games which are good, Annatar and Virago presented a game which lived off of minimalism combined with megalomania - Lord of The Rings charge and countercharge:

Just a few small rolling hills, otherwise it's perfect cavalry/mumakil country. Great figures on there with great detailling.

Kings of War from Styria. They gave me a free rulebook, yay!

Mantic are really active in having moved their Kings of War game away from being "Warhammer for disgruntled Warhammer fans" (possibly because GW dropped Warhammer altogether). 

Hoping to work with some of those newer Mantic figures some day.

Just like last year at Late Fall, the Elder Scrolls table was a looker. This time it wasn't a dungeon, but a forest with some buildings/walls and such. Great, atmospheric table.

People bringing different tables each time (with only half a year in between) is really a commendable feat.

Speaking of which...

Here's Diceillas' lovely Baron's War table.

Lots and lots of lovely, 3d printed things, along with stuff strewn onto the mat. Strewing stuff (sand, foliage, vegetation, pebbles, whatever) onto a gaming table MAKES IT LOOK BETTER. Great presentation.

They won Best Table on the day.

As usual, Roll-The-Dice was present as a vendor, this time he had support with him who helped throughout the day.

Also with him: Loads of boxes from Wargames Atlantic's range. So much tempting stuff.

Most of them I had in hand for the first time. So only then I realized the look on the German shepherd's face. There certaily is a "are we the baddies?" vibe to it.

El Cid came up with a new idea - Talking Wargaming. Him and Tom put up a table on stage to present their forces for their Eylau and thereby introduce interested newcomers to the period. 

Very neat idea, and such a talk added an Adepticon vibe to our humble show. :-D

Some snapshots of my own glass cabinet thing:

...mostly because I had to hand over the English Civil War back to their owner figures later in the day.

Around noon I took a little walk. Met a chicken, ...

... took another look at the sausage vending machine next to the butcher's across the road ( saw two couples make use of the vending machine too over the day!)...

...and for the first time noticed the butcher's lovely postbox!

This is the sort of quality content you clicked this link for for sure. I totally should become a youtuber.

Anywy, not as to leave you on this meaty note, here's the un-meaty things I brought back from the show:

Lots of plastic for sure. I also got a blister containing a lovely armoured vampire guy, but I must have thrown into some box and I haven't fully unloaded the car yet. I had hoped to get my hands on the new Perrys Duchy of Warsaw plastics, but sadly they weren't present. Oh well. Like most spineless creatures, I've been gagging for skeletons and when I saw Roll-the-Dice put them on the table I swooped in and asked if he could put the box on the side for me. Really looking forward to doing something with those skeletons. Strictly for scientific reasons. For reviewing. To inform you about wether they're any good or not.

Anyway, Austrian Salute was lovely once more. Without a doubt one of my favourite shows throughout the year. The people, the scenery (on and off gaming-tables), the quality of the games presented in general... excellent.

Thanks again to Comitatus club for organizing the event, thanks to the Lexxman crew for helping me haul things back and forth, thanks for everyone who dropped by. I'm hoping for a Late Fall event this November.