The van is unloaded and everything is sitting in a big heap in the staff room. It is gratifying to see the number of empty boxes we brought back this year. Even now, a full day after the event, I’m still buzzing about this year’s Salute.
For Osprey it was a record-breaking year at Salute, driven by the release of Force on Force and the first companion book Road to Baghdad. My poor little pocket knife got a real workout as we continuously opened new boxes of books. It wasn't just Force on Force though, other big sellers included Field of Glory: Renaissance, The Peninsular War Atlas, Boudicca’s Rebellion, Armies of the Balkan Wars 1912-13, and Zombies.
When we weren’t busy selling, we were almost always chatting with people. It was impossible not to get caught up in the general enthusiasm both for Osprey Publishing and for the whole wargames hobby. We weren’t the only one’s having a good day.
I only had a brief opportunity to look around the show this year, and there was so much activity it was hard to take it all in. If you want to get a taste of what it was like, check out Joe Dever’s photograph walk-through. It’s pretty amazing.
Also, I want to do something a little different this year. Every year, when Osprey goes to Historicon, we run a competition for the best game based on an Osprey Campaign book. Well, this year, I want to give a special Osprey prize to the guys who ran the Sierra Leone game! This amazing set-up featured a huge number of helicopters and tons of amazing terrain. Also, I saw several of the players checking their copies of RAID 10: Certain Death in Sierra Leone – The SAS and Operation Barras 2000.
I’m not sure who ran this game, but if someone would could put me in touch with the organizers at blog@ospreypublishing.com I would appreciate it!