Salute 2012- the aftermath

Well the spendfest of Salute is now over. I really enjoyed meeting up with fellow bloggers,  Fran - 'The Angry Lurker',  Ray - 'Don't throw a one'  Lee - 'Big Lee's Miniature Adventures' Michael - 28mm Victorian Warfare and Tamsin - Wargaming Girl , plus over from Canada Curt -Analogue Hobbies & Dallas - Fawcett Avenue Conscripts. We were able to chew the fat and talk over purchases and plans and just generally enjoy genial company.
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I met up with a group of old friends -Rick , Geoff, Gordon - with Mark who runs the Wargames Holiday Centre.  Chris from Itinerant Wargamer  along with John L who is planning a massive Operation Goodwood game later this year at the WHC using his 1/35th collection - a table 28 feet x 18 filled with John's excellently crafted collection will be a sight to behold - can't wait. (you can see some of his collection used at Salute in 2011 here). He truly is mad!

I also took the opportunity to meet up with talented people from the Steve Dean Forum, and meeting up to paint the town red - well what else do a bunch of miniature painters do! Well after having of course decided which shade of red and who made it.

I picked up all the target purchases and of course once that had been done went of mooching about for shiny things - so here is the stash

 In a moment of mad conversation with the bloggers it was mentioned about weighing the stash - so here is mine - 3.9kg

For the planned purchases  I have enough cowboys now in stock to form a serious posse. The second British brigade that fought at El Teb is now sourced as is the Mahdist Cavalry. The personalty sets for Tannenburg 1410 (Testudo from PD Miniatures)are now completed too. The new releases from Empress for the Zulu range . Gurkha's and Naval Brigade from Mutineer Miniatures.

The unplanned purchases mainly from Steve Barber , were some fantastic 40mm Samurai  - , some sample French Hussars and check out the Al Capone mini on the bootleggers rules set.. I was also really pleased with the small paintbrush rack i picked up from Oshiro Model Terrain. An Old West Doc Holliday set of minis plus a western style barn and few palm trees.

The Internet is all well and good for browsing , but it was really good to be able to cast a painters eye over figures in the flesh before buying. The show seemed very busy and there was plenty of hustle and bustle - seems there may life in the old hobby yet.

Anyway time to get stuff on the painting table now - first up the Empress new releases.