My NOT-Salute Saturday

As you probably know, last Saturday was THE great day of the wargaming community as it was the Salute gathering. I went two years ago with a group of friends of my club and,...yes,  you have to do the pilgrimage at least once in your life if you want to access the wargames heaven after passing.

Anyway, it's easier said than done when you live abroad and specially if you've been affected by the financial crisis as it's been my case. This week, while I was reading (with envy, muuuuch envy) the posting a of different bloggers and the messages crossed in the Too Fat Lardies Yahoo Group anticipating their trip to heaven, I decided at some point to stop commiserating myself and do something practical... like dedicating my Saturday to the hobby!


First option was a full day game, but that was difficult without sufficient warning and planning with my gaming mates. So I decided to go for Plan B, which was sending the family out and sitting in painting table for most the day.

And here I show you now the results of such a productive day:

First, I managed to finish my remaining Warlord Italian Bersaglieri for the Afika CoC campaign, completing the second LMG team and getting another six fuciliere for the rifle squad

Then I moved to do some terrain and supporting materials: a couple of bases for first LMG section (proned) or the HMG section…

… a piece of irregular terrain with rocks and camel thorn bushes…

… and an idea for shock markers un-shamelessly stolen to Santi, one of my club mates: using as a base a 1c€ coin, I glue one, two or three small stones to indicate the corresponding number of shocks to my units. Visually it is less intrusive that my current markers based on counters used for ludo (parchesi? Not sure which is the right name in English).

The only innovation I’ve introduced are these markers with a small piece of bush on top, that I will use to mark units with 5 shocks; this way I will need less markers on the table.

I also completed the M13/40 model received by post a couple of weeks ago and put the base colour before undertaking the paintbrush work. After a long day of hard work, I pulled from my library an old book of photos of the Afrika Korps and went skipping through it when I saw a pic of an early Stug III model operating in 1941…. and suddenly I remember that I had a model bought 3 years ago for our Stalingrad campaign that was never finished. So here it is now ready to be transferred to the North African Front.

And that’s all folks! Clearly not as exciting as attending the Big Party at Excel, but I had my own personal celebration while I spared some thoughts (and a tear of nostalgia) remembering this same day in 2012