Salute 2011

I decided to go to Salute this year, which is the big wargames shindig at ExCel in the docklands area of London. What actually happens is that it ends up being a trade fair for wargamers and associated types, such as myself. As you may know, I'm an avid collector of Role Playing Games, especially sci-fi, as well as interested in the modelling hobby in general.

ExCel is a somewhat charmless concrete and steel structure next to the old Royal Victoria dock. It holds about a dozen exhibition spaces, which are just large aircraft hangers, and a long concourse joining them all together, which has seating and the usual franchised eateries.

I spent about an hour browsing the stalls and looking at the various displays. There was a particularly good diorama of one of the Gallipoli beaches and a wargame in progress of a battle of the second British Civil War, 1938 (imagine that what happened in Spain had happened here instead). I came away with a load of flyers for a steampunk wargame, called Dystopian Wars; a wargame based on 70's cult TV; a steampunk horror game and an MDF base specialist.

I also managed to pick up a few RPG's which I hadn't seen before. These are:

• Fiasco, what might be termed a party RPG, very informal and loose, based on the Coen brother movies such as Fargo and Blood Simple. Something bad happens and you have to somehow try to get out of the fix you're in.
• Diasporia styles itself as a hard sf game set in the far future.
• Spione, a spy RPG, of which there are surprisingly few. Spycraft is the only one I can think of, and there must be an espionage extension for GURPS and other games, but you'd expect more.