I empathise with your trepidation Warren. I miss the atmosphere of Salute, but with a year of social distancing and mask wearing and being diabetic and with lots of infirm and high risk people amongst my family, I can’t imagine attending an event with that many people crammed together all in one place again so soon. Even the queue seems like madness, let alone being elbow to elbow with people looking through bargain bins of clearance stock or brushing past people in tight formation negotiating the various stalls. I don’t recall getting con-flu, but can well imagine it being a concern. I can imagine that I will wear a mask long after the convention and requirement to use it has passed if I attended a large gathering or go on public transport in future, just because the common sense of protecting yourself that way has been so ingrained over the last year. That all said… I would still go to any events if I got a chance to meet any of the CoG members or BoW / OTT team. I think my desire to see some of you awesome people in person again would outweigh my other concerns and with some basic precautions and a new normal outlook, I would still attend.
I watch every weekender / XLBS and lots of content, streams and discord type interactions, but there’s nothing quite like the feeling of seeing the tasty boys in person out in the wild. Discussing the ancient Hobby Lab video on the garden wire/brush bristle trees approach and the flock shedding propensity of said trees with Brother Lloyd. I doubt we’ll be trying to kiss, lick or otherwise molest poor Justin, as had been the sport during previous Salutes as an odd challenge set many moons ago, but it would be great to reminisce about boot camps gone by with Captain Alpha Strike himself once again.
I could embarrass myself again in front of my son, getting star-struck with Christy Beall and stammering and thanking her for her painting videos as though she were a Hollywood starlet. Being humble (and not as world famous as I seemed to react towards her) she kindly thanked me for the heaped praise and smiled at my enthusiasm and allowed my overreaction to settle in, dawn on me naturally and for me to realise that I had come at this meeting at way too high of an energy. I un-holstered my natural English reservedness, (not so much a quick draw, more like the slow laboured draw of a man that has no intention of drawing the trigger) and shaked the nice ladies hand and asked that she keep up the good work, then toodle-pip I wandered off, with my son sporting a fun WTF type expression as we moved away from the Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy stall ASAP.
Obviously I miss Warren too and would love to meet Free and I would never have met some of the old regular guests on the show like Templar Brian, Big Ben, Cad, Mel, and people like Ronny, Alessio and John Stallard without the conventions and the bootcamps I’ve attended. Then there’s obviously the handful of Cog members that have given such a richness to my hobby and feeling of community here over time. The people that I have turned to for hobby advice and to revel in the shared love for all things OnTableTop that only we happy few can attest to and understand.
When I get to play games again at my local club I think there’s potential to play Bolt Action, Saga, Walking Dead, Frostgrave and Shadespire, maybe 40K even, but I think I look forward to a game of Walking Dead and Saga most. The Walking Dead was my first boot camp at BoW HQ and has always been so easy to find opponents for and have fun playing with. I want to see how bad my Irish army painted in lockdown will fair against those vicious Normans. Also my Japanese Bolt Action army painted this last year would be fun to play against some of my clubmates’ British Burma lists.
Almost got that codebuster, but not yet. Bear with me.
Big Luv from Dug.