To celebrate the imminent latest incarnation of the Salute wargames show and not at all because I just realised I still hadn’t published these before, here some impression from a variety of sci-fi and fantasy themed tables at Salute 2023.
Sci-Fi and Fantasy themes made up at least half of the gaming tables at Tactica 2024. The big franchises Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones were represented with impressive displays while many classic and new game settings shone on beautiful tables of all sizes.
Below just a small selection of what was on show, more impressions can be found for example in this slideshow by Some Dude On YouTube.
This February I attended the Tactica wargames convention in Hamburg for the first time, after having been tempted with pictures of beautifully presented gaming tables for many years.
Situated in a community centre that suitably looked like a fort with moat from the outside, the atmosphere was quite different from typical shows held in sports or convention halls. Spread over two days, I opted for the Sunday which should have been the less busy. The location shots below are from early in the day – it did reach what I would call a capacity crowd later, spread out between the main trade and gaming halls plus a multitude of smaller gaming rooms containing about half a dozen tables each.
Since there was no program to easily reference the gaming tables as to who built them and what they depicted, I’ll leave my snapshots of some of them here without further comment.
More information and pictures can be found on the Tactica website, and the Tabletop Deutschland blog is promising a closer look at the displays in the near future, as they provide every year.
The Maidstone Wargames Society presented Fallujah 2004 at this year’s Salute. Using the Force on Force ruleset in 20mm scale, this participation game saw US Marines in (fully scratch built) house to house fighting against insurgents.
Going back further in time, The Friends of General Haig staged Operation Desert Shield 1991, depicting an attack of Iraqi forces on US Airborne and Marines in 15mm scale.
The Korean War was the setting for two of the games I captured. The first made use of the ruleset All Hell Let Loose to bring a defence by the Gloucestershire Regiment against the Chinese army across the Imjin River to the table.
The Inchon Landing 1950 depicted the daring amphibious invasion by UN forces that was a major turning point in the war. Unfortunately I couldn’t find information on who presented this game in the list of exhibitors.
The Vietnam War was the topic of Gringo40s, who staged the Assault on the American Embassy 1968 with a fully realised model of the embassy building and surrounds. There was a break in the action when I passed by, but a full overview of the table can be found here, courtesy of Wargames Illustrated’s YouTube channel.
Rubicon Models meanwhile had built a range of platoon level skirmish boards in the more typically associated rural jungle setting of this conflict.
Kicking off the World War I and II coverage is a pseudo-historical game in Mark Copplestone’s ‘Little Soldiers’ inter-war setting, staged by the Cornwall Wargames Association. If I understood/remembered correctly, the rules used were an adaptation of the Memoir ’44 boardgame.
Moving on to the ‘real’ war, 1/72 Wargames recreated a section of the Kaiserschlacht 1918 with the 36th Ulster division under German attack.
Hugo’s Heroes created scenarios during World War II inspired by classic Airfix model sets from the 1960s, and brought some of the original plastics along as well.
The Retired Wargamers Reloaded had constructed a massive and beautiful board for a 15mm scale battle around Carentan 1944 using Rapid Fire rules.
The Lard Zone had its debut at Salute this year, and WWII was well represented by games of Chain of Command.
The Lost and the Damned 