BattlegroundHD
at Salute

The first thing we noticed was how many of the people stopping by the stand were, frankly, young. People in their twenties and early thirties, pulling friends over to look at the table, asking questions about the rules, asking about the scale. A few told us they'd only recently gotten into Cold War era gaming and had heard about BattlegroundHD through a friend or through YouTube.

Conventions can feel like they're trending older every year. Salute didn't. There was a real appetite for something different from the crowd we met, and Cold War era wargaming clearly has pull with players.

Mixed in with all the new faces were a lot of ones we've known for years. Salute is one of the few shows where you can reliably bump into the people you've been emailing about a rules question, or the customer who bought the first printing of Fulda Firestorm and wants to tell you how his Friday night group is getting on with it.

Some of those conversations stretched on for twenty or thirty minutes. That's the part of a show that doesn't really fit in a photo. People catching up, swapping stories about what their group is playing. A couple of them pitched us scenario ideas we're already thinking about. It's a big part of why we do this.

We ran demo games from the moment the doors opened. A quick walkthrough of the core rules, a couple of minutes on how the activation system works, a brief on the scenario, and then we handed over the dice. A lot of the people who sat down had never touched a BattlegroundHD figure before. By the end of their first turn most of them were leaning in and thinking two rounds ahead.

Getting to show the game that way, on a real table with painted figures and proper terrain, is very different from trying to explain it online. You can see the moment it clicks for someone. That happened a lot on Saturday.

The demo scenario we ran all day was Operation Adlerfall: the East German assault on Berlin-Tempelhof airport in the opening hours of World War III. It's a fast, pressure-filled fight. The NVA hits hard at first light to seize the airfield before Western reinforcements can move up, and the defenders have to hold long enough for that to matter.

It's one of our favourite scenarios for introducing new players. The objectives are obvious, the clock is loud, and both sides have good toys to work with. Running it with Tempelhof on the table gave every demo game a bit of history baked in, and it set up the other big thing we had on display — the new East German figures doing the attacking.

Salute was the first time we put the new East German figures on a show table, and the response was honestly better than we'd hoped. Watching them roll across Tempelhof in Adlerfall gave people a proper look at the whole range in action. They picked them up between turns, turned them under the light, asked about poses, asked when they'd be available to order. A couple of painters gave us detailed thoughts on the webbing and helmets, which is exactly the kind of feedback we were looking for.

If you've been waiting for a proper East German force to line up against the Americans, they're nearly here. What we heard at the stand is going straight back into the final prep before they go on sale.

The other thing we'd been quietly excited to show off was the new cast figure platoon box sets. Seeing them all lined up on the display, in their final packaging, after months of back and forth on the sculpts and the casts, was its own little moment. They look great. Really great.

A lot of people came back to the stand two or three times just to look at them again. If you've been on the fence about diving into the game, a platoon box is a very easy way in.

Honestly, the thing we kept coming back to on the drive home was how much is happening this year. Between the East Germans landing, the new platoon boxes going live, more scenario material on the way, and a handful of shows we haven't announced yet, 2026 is going to be a big one for BattlegroundHD.

Salute felt like the starting gun. The response from the floor told us that the audience for this game is bigger and younger than we'd assumed, and they're hungry for more. We'll do our best to keep up.