Salute haul

I was thinking about posting some pictures of Salute but others have done that much better than I ever could. For a real visual feast head over to Big Lee’s blog/YouTube.

Instead I’ll share my small, but valuable catch. First up was not a purchase at all but the thoughtful gift, or gifts of two books by David-in-Suffolk, of the Ragged Soldier blog fame. I’ve read the first already, and look forward to delving into the second.

David knows you can take the boy out of Grimsby….

Bull Sand and Haile Sand forts, originally built in WWI, are still there at the mouth of the Humber. The latter is close to the low water mark on the Lincolnshire side - but the sands are notorious for shifting.

An armed trawler. This happens to be one my maternal grandad, a deep sea fisherman sailed on, though I don’t know if he was on it during the war. I do know he did convoy escort work on the runs to northern Russia and minesweeping duties. Northern Gem was involved in the infamous convoy PQ17. 120 Grimsby trawlers were lost during the War I think the pre-War GY fishing fleet was c.700.

An anti-personnel device known as a ‘Butterfly Bomb’. I was brought up on warnings of these things. Dropped in 1943 the last casualty was a boy some time after the War. The book shows German POWs sweeping for them in 1947.

The second book is this:

I believe there’s one about the First World War too.

So a big thank you to David!

My only purchase of the day (I had picked up a couple of Ospreys at a stall but they only took cash) was a set of rules from the Society of Ancients. Naturally, if you saw that I’d recently acquired armies for the Punic Wars, you’d assume that I’d bought rules that either specifically covered the period or were those all-purpose ancients rules like WRG. Obviously I didn’t. I got these:

They are specifically for armies of competing Greek city states, made up mainly of hoplites. The intro explicitly states they were not designed for the Persian Wars or the Hellenistic period, but include some suggestions for the former.

There’s a phase of the game called ‘let the gods decide’ where players draw cards which can be positive or negative.

These rules intrigued me at the stall, and still do, having read them through. The essential feature of the rules is that there is very little scope for fancy tactics. The leader’s job is to get the men geed-up for combat, give the order to advance and keep order. They remind me of Hoplomachia hoplite battle rules by the Perfect Captain, though much less complicated. Also, they have some similarities to Loose Files and American Scramble (AWI) with variable movement and disorder points. Which gets an immediate thumbs up from me.

Primarily aimed at large scale figures, with figure removal, they do have an option to use casualty markers and base removal so they can be used with 6mm figures (my chosen ancients scale). I could use some of the spearmen from the Punic Wars, and supplement with ‘Italy-based’ Greeks/Italiate hoplites. What’s Classical Greek for mission creep?