Sharks!

Right, so i've gone and signed up for the TCG Tale of 6 Gamers, and somehow i've figured out how to operate this blog thing to record it all :) Hopefully i'll be updating this fairly frequently with progress as the project continues on

My chosen force are Space Marines of the Space Sharks chapter, one of the less fortunately named official chapters out there (I think only the Rainbow Warriors are worse off!)
For the uninitiated, the Space Sharks are a chapter that took part in the Babab War on the loyalist side. There was a brief section about them in one of the original Rogue Trader books that documented the conflict, but other than that there's very little official fluff regarding them. What is known is that they have access to large amounts of Terminator armour and Dreadnoughts, and prefer drop pod assaults.
I first thought about doing a force of the Sharks when the current marine codex came out - I wanted to have a play with some of the funky new rules and new toys, but i was loath to run my Blood Angels using it as it wouldn't sit right with me using the wrong codex :P
That meant it was time for a new chapter, but i wasn't about to do something totally serious. After thinking through a couple of ideas i settled on Space Sharks as they had great potential for silliness (i remembered seeing First edition marines with sharks teeth painted on the beaky helmets), but after a quick flick through the net that all changed: I came across this blog on Bolter & Chainsword with a lot of fan-made new fluff and these illustrations and i got really inspired. Maori space marines! Wasn't too impressed with a lot of the ideas the blog dude was throwing around, as he seems to have taken the aquatic idea way too far, but some of the small ideas (use of some of the space marine organs and abilities) were very cool, and i loved the use of Maori tattoos and hawaiian mythology for the populations they recruit from (Hawaiian mythology has a buttload of sharks in, great to read) Also liked the idea of Boarding actions being a speciality, and this lead to thinking about urban combat with the heavy use of Dreads and Terminators
I'd been wanting to try weathering on marines for a long time too, and i figured dark grey marines outfitted for urban combat and with more practical/realistic posing and equipment would look excellent with weathered armour

I'm hoping this project will give me the motivation to get a sizeable, and more importantly, workable force. I've not done too many so far, but i'm impressed with the ones i have. They're still not finished either, i still haven't had the nerve to try out any degree of weathering for fear of wrecking them, but there's already bulletholes and scrapes moddeled on and waiting
Pictures of these will have to come later, haven't got a working camera right now :(

I'm intending to use a lot of equipment and webbing on my marines, and to try and put rebreather tubes and helmet fins on as many as possible. I also want to emphasize the heavy-equipment aspect of dreads and especially terminators, treating them more as small vehicles than large infantry. With that in mind i'm gonna try to model them with loads of baggage and rolled up camo sheets hanging off them, and also put comms gear and antennas on pretty much everything

In preparation for kick-off at the start of june i've made a rough inventory of what marine bitz i have kicking around, and so far it stands as follows;
-Complete black reach set, including 5 termies, 10 marines, commander, dread
-2x rhinos
-2x land raiders(!)
-enough random marine legs and torsos for around 15 marines-
one extra black reach terminator sergeant
-5 unbuilt assault marines (and around 10 extra jump packs, for some reason)
-around 15-20 old blood angels i could tear to pieces

On top of this, i've got at least 15 marines built and undercoated that were allocated to my Blood Angel force. I'm tempted to change these over to Sharks, especially some of the better conversions (otherwise they're not likely to see the light of day!)
I'm probably not going to use all the things i have available (very unlikely i'll use the landraiders especially) but they're there if i need them

Plans for the first month? The target is to make a 4-500pt force with the basic requirements of 1 HQ and 2 Troops choices minimum, so i'm probably going to use up the marines i already have to make a tactical squad. I may get some scouts as they could be useful in smaller games, and i'm tempted to invest in some devastators as i really don't have any heavy weapon marines, and seeing how cheap they are to tactical squads now it'd be best to exploit that

Watch this space!