Salute 2014 has come and gone and with it mostly unfulfilled resolutions from the previous hobby year were replaced by new ones. My main interest at the moment is in sci-fi so I’m starting with a selection of my highlights from the genre at this year’s show.
My favourite sci-fi display was The Spice Must Flow from Frothers Unite in which forces loyal to House Atreides defend the Citadel from Imperial Sardakaur and Harkonnen troops.
The biggest sci-fi stand was courtesy of Hawk Wargames’ Dropzone Commander, a game whose success story was evident in its ever increasing presence at the show since its first preview two years ago.
The massive carrier is still under construction and I’m looking forward to hopefully seeing it finished next year.
The board was nearly entirely built with the cardboard terrain available for the game and gave a great sense of scale in urban warfare.
White Dragon Miniatures brought a nice looking space combat board for their new Shattered Void dog fighting game.
Once again there was a great gaming table for Gruntz on show. I bought the PDF of their rules after last year’s event but didn’t manage to try it out yet. I think I should start on my shopping list for 2015.
On a number of smaller tables participation games for Dust Tactics were also run.
The Lost and the Damned 
Next year I’ll try to go there, too! Just seeing the picture gets me in the mood for sic-fi.
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I’ll aim to be back for it next year if my schedule allows, hope I’ll be back in these parts again by then. You have first dips on the guest mattress.
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Both times that I made it Salute it was a visual feast and Dropzone Commander does look beautiful.
I’m very interested to hear that you are leaning towards sci-fi at the moment. Is it an RT sort of sci-fi or something else? Either way I am very interested to see some Subedai sci-fi minis.
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I have a couple of RT figures to paint, but also considering some Advanced Space Crusade plastics, building various factions for Kill Team rules, oh, and starting Judge Dredd. So it’s anybody’s guess whether I will actually get anything done.
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Well from my perspective, everything that you mention there interests me fully :D What Dredd range(s) are you planning to use, Citadel, Foundry, Mongoose, a mix?
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I’m planning on going with Mongoose for Judge Dredd – I don’t have any sentimental attachment to old Judge Dredd sculpts and I like what I have seen of their range. It should keep me painting for a while to come…
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I’d recommend checking out the Foundry Dredd figures as well. They look good, are reasonably priced and work well with the Mongoose ones (the old Citadel ones are quite small by comparison).
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Here is a not great image of some of my Foundry and Mongoose Dredd figures alongside each other from a few years back.
There are minor proportion issue between ranges and sculptors but I wouldnt hesitate to use those ranges together in games.
Im looking forward to seeing what you come up with: Dredd is a very broad and rich vein and the miniaturues happily fold into RT games with out issue ( I dare say that at least half of the playtest RT games played in GW back in the day featured Dredd related miniatures).
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They look great to me, and very cohesive. People IRL are of all different proportions, so they work for my eye. One day when I paint mine, I’ll do my few Original Arbite figures at the same time, and in MC1-friendly colours.
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Thank you for the advice, I’m definitely sold on the Judge Dredd idea now as a new project. Didn’t realise Foundry still had an active range. I’ll start with Mongoose as I just want to pick up a few boxes in the local shops and take with me on an imminent excursion to the Southern Chaos Wastes via Averland.
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