Hasslefree Miniatures Newsletter

They just wanted to say thanks to every-one...which is nice...

TABLE OF CONTENTS • Thank You Everyone! Thank You Everyone! (Early in our setup) Thanks to everyone who came to see us at Salute, and of course to everyone bought some of our lovely wares! We always appreciate seeing our happy customer's faces and even if I (or anyone else) had to rush off during a quick chat, we still appreciated the effort :D Right, I promised on facebook that there were anectdotes, and 'oh boy' are there anectdotes :) Everythign was going reasonably smoothly until Thursday midday when we arrived to pick up our hire van. We had helped waiting to help us load the van (and particularly play jenga with the newly increased stock we have this year). The van shows up, looks fine. I notice some black stains below the back door, open it and the inside of the van is covered in motor oil. And I don't man someone spilled some, I mean it was all over the walls, pouring around the floor and had mixed in broken glass. Unsurprisingly I informed them politely that it as unsuitabl for use. Thsi meant it had to go be cleaned, as there were no other vans fo the size needed available. This cost us all of our packing day 'and' our packing help. At 8pm, after a long day, three of us instead of five started packing the van. At 11pm I made an execuive decision that the 'jenga' part wasn't possible without us all getting hernias and being up past midnight so we left some stands in the unit. We figured our customers would be understanding (They were, thank you everyone). This also meant we missed out hotel stop Thursday night and had to leave from Wales very early Friday morning. Again, all goes well, for about 30 minutes, then the van breaks down. There followed a very nailbiting hour, and an even more nailbiting 15 minutes while the AA guy told us we'd need to swap the van and shouldn't drive it. We explained the situation, and opened theback door to poitn at the ton of metal in there, and he decided to help us out and work some magic on the side of the road. (If you are out there AA guy then we thank you). However, all of this now meant we also missed half of the unpacking time on Friday at the Excel! I shall be having an interesting conversation with the manager of said van hire company tomorrow. He may not find it that interesting. Despite all of this, our cabal of HF helpers gave a sterling effort, pulled it all together and we were able to run a successful show day! Thank you very much to Wyn, Neil, Dave, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt (sorry I lost count of the Matts), Richard, Kieran and Meg. Me, Jenn, Sal and Kevv all appreciate your effort on the day :) Ok, I'm going to bed, see you in May ;) 'til next time, Arty

Salute 2015

So me, my far better half and two of my friends namely Mike and Martin (of Titan Games) made the journey to Salute 2015 at the ExCel venue in London organised by the South London Warlords war-gaming club.

This annual event attracts companies from all over the world and has grown from strength to strength. Here's some pictures from the event...

Editors Note - This feature is by it's nature VERY picture heavy...you have been warned, lol.

Demo Tables

Lots of games been shown off from a wide variety of systems both new and established. One of these games was especially of interest to me (Infernal from Wartorn Games) so it gets it's own mention in a bit more detail later on in the article...

Hawk Wargames

This amazing display piece was in front of the Hawk Wargames stand...

Forge World Stand

You might think this is a picture of a random chunk of crowd...it's actually the queue for the Forge World stand...

Infamy Miniatures

This incredible model range was created as part of a Kickstarter to expand their existing model range. I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of mine...

Knight Models

This gorgeous and characterful building looks amazing and hopefully is available to purchase from somewhere...if not now then soon...

Painting Competition

There were many beautifully painted models entered into the painting events at Salute. Unfortunately it's a bit tricky to take pictures through glass cabinets with lights reflecting off them so some of my pictures weren't usable and that's a shame as it means I've missed out on pictures of some really nice models. Here are the usable ones...

Prodos Games - Aliens Vs. Predator

Prodos were doing demo's of their long awaited AvP Kickstarter game. Hopefully we'll all get our sticky hands on the actual game sometime soon. The game did play amazingly well though and every-one shown it seemed to be enjoying it greatly...

Wartorn Games - Infernal

I'd had no knowledge of this game before the show which is one of the reasons I love events such as this. The models were very characterful and the skirmish game itself had several interesting mechanics such as the model becoming slower and having less actions as it becomes closer to death and the demonic creatures evolving into a bigger form when they destroy an enemy. The Kickstarter will be launched on the 29th May and I for one will be backing it straight away. More information will undoubtedly appear on their Facebook page...

Wolsung Steampunk Skirmish Game

Another game I got involved in as a Kickstarter. The core game has been around for a while but the Kickstarters intention was to expand the range considerably with two new factions...the original ones are quite cool as well...

Obviously I've barely scratched the surface of what was going on at the event today but hopefully these few examples have given you an insight into what a great day it was.

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome