Hobby | Ye Olde Telegraph

Amazingly, somewhere in between Oblivion Remastered sessions and baby care, I've got some painting in. Not for the Battle of Lake Erie though; I've done so many schooners that I was in a mood to do something completely different. Something that's great about naval wargaming is that terrain isn't a necessity, other than an ocean mat. Staring at an empty ocean isn't all that fun either though. While I like what Warlord has on offer in terms of terrain, I've turned to Hagen Miniatures, a German company, for this particular venture. Their catalogue has a plethora of terrain, accessories, and even ships that are all in scale with the Warlord range. What we have here is a Chappe telegraph diorama. 

A telegraph you may ask? And yes, yes you would be right to be confused. I was. I actually first bumped into the concept in a throwaway line in a Patrick O'Brian novel. Turns out telegraphs were in use during the Napoleonic Wars, but not in the way that people know (for obvious reasons concerning electricity). Instead, they used a system of either shutters or vanes that could be shifted into different positions to denote letters or signals. Similar to the beacons in the LotR movies, these were lined up in chains to send messages across vast distances much faster than a horse could take them. 

I have no clue if they were ever combined with fortifications like this, but hey, it makes the model more playable, as now I have something that's an objective that can also shoot. Much more interactive, as you can't sit there waiting for the opportune moment, since this will be pummeling you from twice the distance with much more accurate fire than you can at range. It incentivizes closing in. 

The majority of the model is a single chunk of resin. The tower is a separate bit of resin, while the top of the tower, the pole, the guns, and the pier are all metal. It's a super easy build, which is also very refreshing after all of the rigging and sails that I've been doing. Super glue was enough to do the job, just make sure to sand the metal to give it better adherence.

I primed the whole thing black to give it a nice base to start drybrushing from. I had some issues with it adhering to the metal tower top though, and I'm not really sure why. It took 3 coatings for it to finally stick, which is strange because I didn't have this issue with any of the other metal parts. 

Outside of that little snag, the painting was quite easy. The whole thing took drybrushing very well. I picked out some individual bricks in a lighter grey or white so as to give some variation to the model. 

Static grass would have looked bad at this scale, so I used flock instead. Tufts and clump foliage serve as nice bushes though as this scale, so that's neat. I painted a touch of pure white on some of the outcroppings in the back to denote where birds would be nesting. 

As far as rules go, I'd treat the guns as gun emplacements, perhaps with a bit more health since they are behind some sturdy walls. The tower will have the health of a martello tower with none of the offensive capabilities. 

-The Space Dinosaur