Max Power's new project is Jawesome!

Hey all,

At the end of Cardin's post, I had hinted that I have a new project that is going to be my focus. As most of you know, I have a space marine army that's about 5,000 points. It's split pretty evenly down the middle, with one half being Deathwing, the other being my Codex Marines. It was professionally painted by Robin himself, in a scheme that was my own. Since I've had the army, I've been running it under the idea that it's a Relictors army - purely because the paint scheme was close. I'm really not in love with the Relictors, so I've been wracking my brain trying to think of something I can do in order to spark my interest in the fluff of my army.

Enter Imperial Armor 9 and 10, the Badab War books. If you guys haven't read these, and you're a fan of power armor, you are missing out. The story is amazing. They also go out of their way to flesh out some chapters that should be popular, but aren't. I read both of them in pdf form, and immediately fell in love with a chapter I hadn't known anything about before: Carcharodon Astra, or the Carcharodons as they're more commonly known.

I'll give you the basic overview of their fluff. The chapter was created from Raven Guard geneseed. Their primary purpose is to operate outside known space to the imperium, in the galactic void, to essentially wipe out threats to mankind before they enter imperial space. They occasionally come back in order to lend their strength to the imperium, the badab war being the one shining example of this. Very little is known about the chapter as a result. They have a fleet of ancient warships, old patterns of armor and weapons, and one known commander: Tyberos, the Red Wake. If you haven't seen Tyberos' model, go to the forgeworld site and check it out, it's mean looking. I'll be getting one at christmas time, courtesy of my awesome girlfriend.

While they follow the tenants of the codex astartes loosely, the chapter prefers the whirlwind of close combat over ranged combat. This is made abundantly clear in Tyberos' special rules. He grants tactical squads the ability to swap their bolters for close combat weapons, as well as making a single lightning claw terminator squad a troop choice. In addition to this, Tyberos' chapter tactics gives every unit in your army furious charge, with the caveat that once a unit wipes out another unit in close combat, they gain the rage universal special rule. With all of this in mind, I had to choose a codex to use for my Carcharodons. Most official events don't allow for Imperial Armor characters or rules, so when I'm forced to, I'll be using the Blood Angels codex. To me, it's the codex that matches the special rules Tyberos grants to the army. So, here is the list I'm going to be running at 2,000 points:

HQ:

Captain in Terminator Armor with Lightning Claws
Librarian in Terminator Armor with Unleash Rage and the Sanguine Sword

Elites:

Sanguinary Priest in Terminator Armor
Sanguinary Priest in Power Armor
5 Terminators with Lightning Claws

Troops:
3 10 man Assault squads with 2 Melta Guns, Power Fist, Rhino
5 Scouts with Sniper Rifles and Camo Cloaks

Heavy Support:

2 5 man Devastator squads with 4 Missile Launchers
Land Raider Crusader with Extra Armor and Multi-Melta

The nice part about this list is that I'm only going to have to paint the 30 assault marines and the terminators. With the forge world transfers my girlfriend is buying me, they army will be space sharking in no time. I also built this list with tactics in mind, and I think it will work well. The captain, librarian, and priest will be going with the terminators in the land raider crusader most of the time. I never make my land raiders dedicated transports if I have the heavy support slot, just in case I want another unit to start in the raider, or if I want my terminators to deepstrike. The assault squads will be sticking with the land raider in order to take advantage of the priest's bubble of awesome. The second priest will be staying back with the scouts and devastators. I'm expecting the life expectancy of both units to go up dramatically with the priest around.

That's it! This will be what will be consuming the next month or two of my life. I'm going to need help making sure I'm on task with getting all of this done. I'll be posting weekly updates on my progress, any comments or encouragement is appreciated!

Max