The first time I read up on the Carcharodons, it was a breath of fresh air. A Space Marine chapter with an interesting background. That is to say, almost no background at all. But something about the idea of unfettered yet cold violence is very interesting to me. I loved the livery as well. So I figured I'd stop working on my Imperial Guard army and start a new project. I've put alot of planning and ideas into it, but have just started painting. I figured I was early enough in the process that documenting it would be interesting. At least for me. It's worth noting I'm under no delusions of being a great painter or modeler. But considering most of the people I play with at the local game shop have their armies in either Bare Bitz Grey or Spray Primer Black, I'm pretty proud of my work and the level of effort I put into it.
A few notes: the list I'm running for this army is from the Space Wolves codex, as I figured it better suited the close combat capabilities of the Carcharodons. Additionally, there are more units I'd like to do than would fit into a 2000 pt list. I figured I'd focus on the list items first and then go nuts from there. Additionally, rather than spend a staggering amount of money on the Forge World ancient armor sets to just ruin them with my subpar painting, I'd use Chaos bits. Chaos bits have alot of hall marks of older or stranger armor, which I find interesting, and sort of reflect the violent nature of the Carcharodons. So I appologize to other Loyalists for using tainted armor and weapons, but I think they look great.
First off, the list I'm currently running looks sort of like this.
Wolf Lord
Terminator Armor, Chain Fist, Wolf Claw
4 Wolf Guard
Terminators, Power Fists, Wolf Claws
In Drop Pod
3 Squads of:
9 Grey Hunters
Flamer, Wolf Standard, Mark of the Wulfen
Wolf Guard
Frost Sword, Meltabomb
In Drop Pods
2 Dreadnoughts
Heavy Flamer, Twin Linked Heavy Flamer, Dreadnought
CCW
In Drop Pods
Wolf Guard Battle Leader
Thunderwolf Mount, Frost Sword, Saga of the Hunter
5 Thunderwolf Cavalry
Frost Sword
2 Land Speeders
2 Multimeltas
Additionally, I'd like to make a detachment of Scouts from Codex: Space Marine with Sergeant Telion lead by Lias Issodon from Imperial Armor 9 as well as a Bjorn the Fell Handed from the Death Guard Legion Contemptor Dreadnought.
Let's move on to the actual photos. I think it's worth noting, I was proud of these models until I saw what a flash bulb and a high resolution camera does to them. Jeez. So I appologize for how poor these look. In real life, they are at least table top, though it looks like an eight year old slapped paint on them here.
These bases were made using plastic canvas, bread ties, paper clips, toothpicks, and extra sprue.
These are unprimed Carcharodons. Pardon the silver and red on them, my buddy primes his stuff in red and silver and I raided his bitz box to help make these. The axes and chain glaives are from Anvil Industries. I've ordered a number of parts from them and have never been disappointed.
http://anvilindustry.co.uk/ The chain glaives will represent my Wolf Standards, as it didn't seem right to have a bunch of Carcharodons carrying flags around.
These are unprimed Carcharodons to represent my Mark of the Wulfen troopers. The claws are the Sci Fi Claws from Zealot Miniatures.
http://www.zealotminiatures.co.uk/ They are fantastic looking, and if they look a bit wonky it's because I didn't take the time to do them justice. Pardon me if I go into a bit of detail about these, but I couldn't find any links about them before I bought them. They come on a sprue with two sets of extended claws and one set of retracted claws. They are left and right sided and you can tell by an indent on the side of the claw that would be touching the elbow. The first set I mounted I didn't notice this and put them on upside down. They still fit well, but it leaves a small gap at the bottom rather than fitting snuglly against the top of the arm. You'll have to take amy arm you have, cut the arm at the elbow pad and the wrist and discard the middle section. Attach the claw onto the arm and then the hand onto the wrist of the claw. Now, my buddy was keen on the idea of keeping bolt pistols in the hands, but I thought it looked better bare handed. Unfortunately, I was super excited, impatient and my back was killing me at the time. A dangerous trifecta, indeed. I just sloppily cut the hands out and attached them to the wrist. I'll have to go back in and clean up where I cut off the pistols and the chainswords and carve knuckles into where chainsword handles were, but I'm very pleased with how they came out with minimal effort. If you're a green stuff wizard, you can probably do much more from here, but the limit of where I'm going with this will just to be to clean it up a bit. And just because I've been unable to find photos of these mounted on Marines, here's a few more shots of how they fit from a slob. Again, if you take a bit more time, it'll look much better.
Also with these and a few of my other guys, I used Chaos backpacks slightly chopped to be a bit more Loyalist. If you just cut the "wings" for lack of a better term, and mount the vents onto the sides, you can create pretty great looking backpacks.
Here are a couple of primed but otherwise unpainted models.
Now, it bears repeating that I was very proud with myself and my painjob until seeing them blown up ten thousand times their actual size and hit with perfect flash lighting. Either way, first off is the test model for the scheme.
First off, I understand the actual painting is a bit sloppy, but I was really going for the colors and the weathering effects. All in all, I wasn't pleased with this one. It came out too dark, the skin was too purple (it's even purple looking in real life), and I felt like I went way too heavy with the weathering.
The next one I painted was the one in the middle. I was much more pleased.
These are the remainder I have finished right now. Well, I say finished, but I noticed shortly after taking them that I missed the fuel cannisters on the flamers, and the end of one of the swords. Additionally, I still need to purchase and apply the Forge World transfers. Something I was also really happy about was the helmets on the bare headed members of the team being attached to their hips. I thought it was a cool touch. Anyway, I'll update this as I continue. I have a number of plans for how to create the squads that I'll be sharing in the future, paint schemes and techniques and all that. Thanks for reading, if you made it to the end. Sorry for being boring if you didn't make it this far.
about the speeder issue: that puppets of war one does look amazing and i see where you are coming from where people might think it's a flyer. Next Month