Show Report: Austrian Salute 2026

 

Heyhey, it's been a while since the last update. The reason being that I was busy finishing stuff! I'm back now, and here's my annual show report of Austrian Salute.

The 10th I attended, as I just realized. My first one was in 2014, but of course there's been a 3 year hiatus due to the pandemic that swept the globe and being a springtime event, Austrian Salute was hit hard by it.

So as always, there's been a multitude of lovely gaming tables, and here's the traditional list of'em.

Torpedoes and Tides!

Yup, Cpt.Shandy and K.paid their first visit to Austrian Salute to promote the recently released Topedoes and Tides rules set. Intro videos are available here, PDF rules (as well as additional scenarios and material) can be bought on WargamesVault or Ganesha Games' website, printed versions available through Lulu and Amazon. 

Really good rules. If you're into motor torpedo boat warfare in WorldWar II (and who isn't!), these are solid, solid rules. Highly recommended. Just in case you got a bunch of say Cruel Seas models lying around.

RUMBLESLAM!

I was delighted to see Rumbleslam in action. 

Didn't get a chance to pick anything up about the rules, but it just looks fun, doesn't it. 

Shroudfall

Shroudfall attended AS for the first time as well! Austria's very own fantasy skirmish game with their own figures range. 

The presentation is top notch; never seen so well thought out demo setups. The basic game is explained in 7 minutes. I should know, because I actually took the demo.

The large figures are very high quality (digitally designed, 3d printed). I actually got one to paint! Did some painting as time permitted on the day; lovely.

Greathelm!

Roll-the-Dice, apart from lovely merchandise as usual, brought a demo game as well, this time something minimalist, which got a LOT of attention though over the past months - Greathelm.

Didn't get to watch a game, but the rules certainly have a few friends of mine interested. 

Battlegroup!

One of those fixtures at Austrian Salute by now really. 15mm Battlegroup games, always large, impressive tables with lots of terrain. Cool stuff.

Pillage!

Bit of a breath of fresh air for the early medieval period, those rules. I have to admit that I haven't heard much of how they actually play, but the table sure looked lovely. And Victrix released a bunch of lovely plastic kits for 'scatter terrain'. Not entirely cheap, I have to say, but extremely useful. 

Carnevale!

Most interesting about this one is how stylistically different it looks to last year's Late Fall Carnevale table.

Another extremely interesting table - Nikfu and friends put on a beautiful lookig Naval wargame using the Gods of War: Togo rules.

Chariot Race! 

Another remarkably lovely looking game - the Chariot Race from WD#518, put on the table by Comitatus club:

Lovely table, great theme for a game of course. Reminded me of our own Gaslands conversion from a few years ago.

Freebooter's Fate!

Teager40k's tables are always a highlight for me. This time it's a smaller one, for Freebooter's Fate. The indestructible German fantasy-pirate themed skirmish game. 

For this game, the presenter painted quite a lot of new FBF figures which he was so good as to show me. Among them an Amazons warband. I really dog  that figures range in particular. Of course I painted a ton of FBF figures since 2008, but it was mostly Brotherhood and Empire figures. The Amazons are some great sculpts with lots of feathers, skin, masks and so on. Cool figures, do have a look .

Classic Battletech!

Virago's quest of preaching the gospel of Battletech seems to go from strength to strength. For Austrian Salute, he put on several games, all of which were very popular.

Not the least due to lovely accompanying materials:

Surely this table wasn't entirely unrelated to the  Battletech boxes brought along by Spielbrett.at selling really well. If you're lookig for BT stuff in Austria, they to my knowledge are the place to go to.

Valor & Fortitude!

The part of Comitatus who were more into Napoleonics than into fantasy charioteering were very, very busy playing a big game of Valor&Fortitude, which took the Napoleonic world - especially in German speaking areas by the looks of it - by storm.

A big Penninsular game featuring French, Spanish, Portuguese and British troops. LOTS of all of them, given the table size, but it made for a spectacle. Especially nice since for me it was one of those occasions where I get to see figures again which I painted over the years.

The chaps who played were engrossed in their game all day long and beyond, so we didn't get to chat much. But it was a great looking, hard-fought game.

In the other room, the foyer if you will, DicetillDawn set up shop (literally) as well as boardgames and roles playing games tables as usual. Great to see Austrian Salute also covering these topics this way, and some of those role playing books are mighty tempting.

Of course I brought figures to look at as well. Only took horrible cellphone pictures of them though, so here's just a tiny overview.

Congratulations, you made it. 

I think that this was the 15th time I made the drive to Salzburg for Austrian Salute/Late Fall. Always worth a visit. Lovely people, a great variety of games to witness. A highlight of the year, each and every single time, and I'm very much looking forward to next year! Thanks to everybody who paid a visit, to everybody who ran games and to the organizers.