Welcome to the Colonel's very first Colour Supplement! Colour printing technology is still quite new here, so please bear with any production problems!

This episode has been commissioned to celebrate the Colonel's successful scouting mission to extract information from the famous "Olympia" facility in London, undertaken by Special Frother Operatives this very April!

Using only a set of ginger beards as a disguise and wearing specially commissioned Colonel Marbles T-shirts in case of capture, these brave frothers searched the Salute Convention high and low for information critical to the Colonel's future plans.

They may have recieved some quizzical looks, but their cunning disguises appeared to fool the locals long enough for them to return with this photographic document of the events therin.

Learning the lesson of 2002 the frothers brought with them Qbusters badges, and despite Connex-based kerfuffles were all in the building before a number of stalls were set out.

In particular we quickly discovered one Artemis Black and lovely assistant were still hard at work setting out their stall, having survived an exploding engine on the way in to the building! Our report will suggest that carting several tons of lead from the South of Wales is as likely an explanation as enemy mortar fire.

"I'll take all you have of these..." - frotherBaz

Despite his confused state and bing repeatedly addressed as "Armetis"by frotherBaz, Artemis recovered in time to greet the forward party. He also managed to sell frotherBaz a large proportion of his wares! It was certainly nice to meet up with a friendly face from the frothforums.

Also in attendance was longtime frotherfriend Andy Foster of Heresy Miniatures. That Netherlord really is as mad as it looks- HUGE fecker!

As one of at least three companies to bring a "young female ponytailed archaologist" figure with them Amazon Miniatures brought along a Lara Croft to alarm and delight the punters.

Lara had been working out since the publicity shots for "Angel of Darkness". "Now there's a woman who could crush coal with her thighs and leave you with a diamond." - Brother Maynard

	Without a thought to the dangers, these frother agents entered the Olympia building. Many were filled with lead (well their bags were anyway) but their memories of a great day at Salute 2003 will live on. Frother Spies, the Colonel Salutes you.

So on to the miniatures! We are of course spoiled absolutely rotten at Frother Central by having access to the Colonel's regular miniature reports, but even so Salute is a fantastic chance to get a good butchers at the figures "in the flesh" as it were, as well as chatting with manufacturers and other gamers. Brother Maynard and frotherBaz were both impressed by the Warmachine figures, although narked by the fact that many of the best ones were not available singly but in big boxes. Handy to know when unnamed retailers are planning to split the packs then!

Battle Group South setting up their "Berlin 1944" game.

Dark-Age minis also impressed up close, and it certainly helped to see how the figures compared to each other in size! They were supposed to be giants? Jeez!

The clubs and societys put on a good show as per usual, and there seemed a big WWII theme amongs the historicals. The GW fans cranked up the production values as usual with a very cool El Cid set up for Warhammer Historical's latest set.

Although the scifi/fantasy presence was still poor relation to the historicals, there was a good showing from more GW goings on with two tables of Warmaster games. The frothers had good chats with several of the clubs, but were discovering as the day went on more and more tables unattended, which is a shame.

Salute veterans perform unarmed combat training in the "Bring and Buy" arena. "...like fighting a pack of rabid hyenas" - Dead Deputy

One thing was for sure, that there is a rapid growth in decent 10mm fantasy figures. Warmaster and Demonworld impress as ever, but it was the discovery of the new Kallistra range, "Hordes & Heroes" which gave the impression that 10mm is here to stay. Detailed enough to be collectible, small enough to have a convincing battle with..? Well we'll see eh?

Oddly enough the frothers opted for 6mm instead, choosing from Irregular Armies' incredibly wide range (although Bacchus's new 6mm Samurai were tempting- for those who liked the idea in general). Could be a mistake, but then with an army for less than a tenner at least it won't be a particularly expensive one...

6mm Carthagians and Elephant from Irregular Armies. "A very wide range of figures, cheap as chips and it will let us try out more epic battles than 28mm will ever allow."- Doc "...amorphous blobs with little or no appeal, even just as gaming pieces... You may as well use card counters or summat and just concentrate wholly on the game."- UnclEvl

One of West Wind's Orcs, due for a June release. "Highly impressed with West Wind who seem to be going from strength to strength and supporting a whole plethora of different lines with pretty cracking figures for all of them. Of course I am biased since for me their new Orcs were 'the' figures of the expo. Just a mega shame I couldn't splurge and buy the lot there and then - that was a right tease."- UnclEvl

All were impressed with the upcoming figures for West Wind's "Dwarf Wars" game. Very, very cool miniatures that should get you started with proper units at release time, so none of the usual worries about "will the range stop after 3 figures" or indeed attempting to match figures from manufacturers of various ranges who don't cater for the wargamer out there.

The other greatest discovery was probably that of Newbold Enterprises' new and upcoming figs. Newbold isn't an entirely new name to those in the higher echelons of the Colonel's army (those who are truly in the know). Yet as they have no web presence and only seem capable of marketing themselves in print with photographs so dreadful that make the figs look like playmobil they have yet to grace the pages of the Masterworks.

Whether the figures are better than previous efforts or Newbold have always been producing this stuff and never telling anyone about it, we thought the figs worthy of a special note.

The biggest dissappointment must be the absence of European manufacturers such as Crocodile and Alionas- even those who had attended last year like Excalibur Miniaturen. Did they do badly last year, or were they protesting over the Iraq war?

Right: Newbold's new figs were the surprise find of the show, especially for frotherBaz's new mutant army! Far Right: Hordes and Heroes from Kallistra shows that 10mm could be the new fantasy standard... (click for on pics for larger versions)	"I will be buying up to three foot units of those dudes over the next six months along with the weird beastie cavalry they had. This was definitely a highlight."- frotherBaz	Hordes and Heroes Orcs      Hordes & Heroes Dark Elf Spears and Undead "I must say, if I was starting again I might be tempted to create a 'serious' army from 10mm"- UnclEvl "...pretty cool, but quite an investment to get into from scratch."- Dead Deputy "As an aside, it is also the same as a modern 'N' railway scale, so shouldn't be hard to get a load of scenery for it either..."- Doc
	A bearded frother checks out Braintree Wargames' "War of the Worlds" display (click for larger pics)

Just before close of play those inveterate frothers UnclEvl and Colonel M got a late froth on and annoyed all the stall-holders as they were packing up... while UnclE was unable to find any biplanes suitable to start his collection (?!) the Colonel was very pleased to find some 100 Kingdoms figures hidden in a small bucket. The Colonel's personal find of the day was their 'Giant Gor' fig.. King Kong it shall be in his Nubian army!

Chris and Andy don frotherBeards behind the Heresy stand!