The guns of December

So, I took a break from the warhammer 40k modeling this December to make a Christmas Present for a friend.  I've had this cannon kit for some time and decided it would make a great gift if I could make a diorama out of it.

This is a James Cannon from the pre-civil war era.  These were the guns that were originally smooth bore, but were then rifled to extend their range (and useful life).  I decided to make the diorama from the Shiloh battlefield.  The kit was relatively easy to make, but needed a lot of cleanup.  There was a lot of metal nubs to clip and general cleanup to do.

Desks and Buildings and Battlescapes... oh my

Delphia, all broke... a sad panda

A while back, there was a night.  A very hellish night.  Lots of things happened, but the end result was this.  My computer desk's glass top exploded into a gozillion pieces and Delphia took a nose dive.  (Delphia is my 27" iMac
with the i7 processor, 16GB RAM and all the bells and whistles).  This was a bad night.  Not only did I spend bowling league night cleaning up broken glass, but I had to sweat out whether or not the Apple guys could fix her again.  Long story short, I got wayyyy lucky.  It was only the glass, and they had one left (yes, 1, uno, singular... the last one) in stock. The great guys at the Apple store in ABQ uptown got it replaced lickety-split and I was off back home in short order.

The Templars Mordain - My own Space Marine chapter

Well, it's been a while since my last post, and I do apologize.  In the next few days I will explain why.  Work has been crazy, the holidays have come and gone and travels have abounded.

I have had a couple of major projects  come up that took all my hobby time, but they were worth it.  There was also a small disaster that had to be recovered from, but more on that later, in another post.

I did however, solidify the new Chapter Banner and decided on the back-story for my made-up chapter of Space Marines.  I wonder if anyone can tell that they are an off-shoot of the Black Templars?  Am I that obvious?  LOL.  Designing that chapter banner took WAY longer than I would have ever imagined.  It is not very artistic, but rather highly stylized.  All the imagery on the banner has a meaning.  (I will make a post later to explain all the elements of the banner.)  My Templars Mordain are a rather plain jane chapter, but I did not want to create a chapter that stretched reality or bent/broke rules.  They have no special abilities and are in fact, Codex Marines.  The one thing this allows me, is Librarians, unlike the Black Templars.

The backstory is kind of simple, add 1 part angry Helbrecht, 1 part rebellious crusade Marshall and two parts very angry Adeptus Terra and you have the idea.