www.epic40k.co.uk - Salute 2003

Salute 2003

Details

Date: Saturday 26^th April 2002
Location: London, England
Description: Another year, another Salute. I actually made it along myself this year. It was a large event, and I must admit to being impressed. Loads of trade stands, and not enough money. Special thanks for the guys at Irregular for letting me buy their entire supply of blast markers within one hour of opening! I also got to meet up with Tuff and Darkone, and saw some of the Epic pieces from www.epic40k.com first hand. A good day out.

Discuss these pictures, and anything Epic and Gothic, in the EpiComms Forum.

Rumours and Whispers

Also present at the event was James. He recently posted some information to the Gothic Group, and I asked him if I could duplicate it all here.

Hi all,

A bunch of us went to Salute in London on Saturday and, after fighting it out in the riot that was the Bring & Buy sale, understandably rushed up to the Fanatic stand to see what preview goodies were on show.

BFG:
AFAIK this is stuff that's already been talked about on the list a lot so I'll be brief.

They had a model of the daemon-possessed Chaos Cruiser, basically a distorted basic Chaos Cruiser shape with daemonic protrusions and the odd big tentacle. Looked good.

Tau: three Tau ships were on display, the Orca and Defender-class Escorts - the Orca was the smallest and IIRC these are the two ships that had preview photos in the last BFG Catalogue - and a cruiser- sized vessel. The latter - and i'm sorry but I can't remember the name! - had the distinctive Tau flared prow and blocky engines with a comparatively thin long superstructure linking the two. Along the each side of the superstructure were 3? large turrets, pretty much dome shaped affairs with a single barrel protruding from each. The turrets were slightly larger than the Lance turrets on an Imperial cruiser.

The escorts were painted - as in the Catalogue - while the cruiser wasn't. Shown on the laptop that one of the Fanatic crew had with him was the model of the Tau Colony Ship - their BB equivalent. I didn't get that good a look at it but it seemed to be a larger version of the cruiser.

They also had the new Marine escorts on show, looking just as good as the Forgeworld versions IMO.

Epic Amageddon: preview Terminator marines (metal ones), new Rhinos, Land Speeders and Chaos Dreadnoughts were on display. Apparently the Land Raider had been taken to Poland for the weekend.

The most important thing about Epic A is that it is no longer intended to replace all the plastic Epic infantry with metal ones. Metal figures will be produced for the specialists of each army - Assault Marines and Ternminators were the examples mentioned. The metal Termies looked just as good as the plastic ones. The new-style Epic Land Speeders and Rhinos looked gorgeous, quite frankly.

(This has been presented to Jervis, who has stated that it is a possibility for the future. However, he said that it is extremely unlikely to be available with the release of EpicA, meaning that at least initially all Epic minis will be metal - ed)

Big shooty things: well, they're re-doing the Capitol Imperialis (described as like a gothic Jawa Sand Crawler with a big gun and an Imperial guy shouting at troops on the top of it and capable of fighting a Titan) but the important releases are a huge Ork orbital lander - described as an Orky Thunderbird 2 - and a huge Ork submersible war engine, as described in the Armageddon 3 fluff.

The planned release schedule is to have the game and basic stuff for Marines, Guard and Orks out in December this year. There'll be several releases over the following months to bring out the rest of those armies by summer 2004. Then they'll deal with the Eldar, Chaos & Bug ranges, and Tau or Necrons after that.

Necromunda: new Orlocks & Goliaths on display and, the best of the bunch, the utterly amazing new Adeptus Arbites, weighed down with shotguns, power mauls and supression shields, heavy stubbers and even a cyber-mastiff. Bring on Arbitrator Dredd!

Inquisitor: the usual standard of great looking figures that I'd be unable to ever paint well: an Imperial Navy Bosun - one of the meanest figures I've ever seen - a Battle Sister (seemed not to be in power armour - and Kal Jericho's mum.

Warmaster: the Dark Elf army was on display and looked great, especially the huge War Hydra.

That's about all I can remember, except to say thanks to the Fanatic guys for patiently answering questions they must have been asked dozens of times already and being really helpful and informative.

Forgeworld didn't have any new BFG stuff.

The GZG was at Salute also and it was the first time I'd seen much of the newer stuff - the Japanese, UN amd Islamic stuff - assembled. It looked great. And I still think a Neu Swabian League fleet would make great Space Marine ships.

Cheers,

James.

Pictures - darkone26