Venerables

[Cyberscape7]

Recently just bought a venerable dread (:D) and am now at a lost. I have no idea how to use it effectivley in-game. I'm a little torn between buying a drop pod to stick him right on top of the enemy or to have him held back as long range fire support. The CC wep has a heavy flamer. Anyone got any ideas on how I can use him to bring some serious pain?

['Ard Boy]

Buy a Lucius pattern drop pod, so you can drop it where he is needed and can assault in the same turn he landed.

cheers

[Lemt]

Buy a Lucius pattern drop pod, so you can drop it where he is needed and can assault in the same turn he landed.

cheers

Just for the record, many Tournaments DO NOT allow FW units in normal 40k games. And to play it in a friendly match, you have to ask your opponent out first.

[SotonShades]

I find it best to use them aggressively. Forcing your opponant to reroll damage makes them pretty survivable. Throw extra armour on it and you can at least keep moving towards the enemy (or in to cover!)

As for putting it in a drop pod or not, depends on what else you have in the army. If it is the only pod in the army, it garauntees a first turn assault with the dred. With the ability to reroll damage, you can ignore stuff that cant hurt it and assault something properly nasty, leaving the stuff that cant for regular dreadnoughts (if you have any). If you have plenty of stuff that can hurt at range (dev squads, predators, LR, etc) than give the ven dred an assault cannon and run him into you opponant all guns blazing. I find they are fantastic fire-magnets, but will usually survive to get in to combat. Of course, if you geet unlucky and do get immobilised, the dred still has a 180 degree firearc, and I don't know many people who will walk anything but the biggest or best armoured infantry into the bubble... so use the dread to spearhead your advance and force people to confront it it give it a wide berth, which can then bottleneck them right in front of other elements of your force.

[Rapture]

I run a Venerable Dread in a drop pod with DCCW and an assault cannon. Rear armor shots on the first turn are nice, but rarely do the job. The goal is to stun the crew so that the the 3 DCCW hits cause some damage next turn. However, the dread is accompanied by a Tac Squad with a multi melta, melta gun, and power fist to split the enemy's fire. They have to choose to shut down either the dread or the two combat squads. This works so well because players usually deploy their vehicles in little clusters.

[DAPHEEL]

I usually field mine with a multi-melta and heavy flamer with extra armour, drop pod as transport. The high b.s. means you have good odds of damaging a vehicle when combined with being dropped in close. The extra armour means you can assault when your stunned. Lucius pattern drop pods are ace, but it's only polite to ask if your cool to use them.

[Tynskel]

Dreadnoughts, of any type, are some of the 'best buys' of the space marine codexes! play around with him, see what he feels like destroying! Ultimately, he knows more about killing things than you do!

[Lemt]

I find Dreads to be good counter-assault units in gunline armies, or good in drop pods if your army is assault-oriented. However, you have to ask yourself: Is the extra cost worth the Venerable rule? If you have points left over it will increase the survivability of your Dreadnought, but it IS quite a lot more expensive.

[eagleboy7259]

I usually field mine with a multi-melta and heavy flamer with extra armour, drop pod as transport. The high b.s. means you have good odds of damaging a vehicle when combined with being dropped in close. The extra armour means you can assault when your stunned. Lucius pattern drop pods are ace, but it's only polite to ask if your cool to use them.

Exactly! Multi-Melta, Heavy Flamer and Drop Pod. Even better if you're running Vulkan. Throw him right into your enemies lines and watch as he tries to blow the dang thing up. Being venerable allows them to soak up a silly amount of fire power, its like an Eldar tank that can assault you. Usually you can either pop or delay a tank on the turn you come in, and if you get it into assault the next turn all the better. If you lose it, oh wells it was cheap enough anyway.

[blackarmchair]

I usually find Dreadnoughts to be pretty bad, but they do have a few uses.

The ubiquitous "Drop Dread" (DCCW, MM & Drop Pod) can actually do some damage but you are paying 150pts for something that is going to die right away (and isn't guaranteed to take anything with him). Your opponent is foolish if he lets an unharmed dread hit his lines. Making him Venerable helps with the "to hit" roll but it doesn't do much for keeping him working, Dreadnoughts can't take any result on the damage chart. 1&2 are ok if you have extra armour, 3+ makes him worthless so venerable isn't really worth the 60pts.
I would rather just take a MM land speeder for half the cost and rush it up to melta whatever the dread was going for.

Gunlines are where Dreads can get interesting. I think the best way to run dreads is 2x Twin-Linked Autocannons and keep him back with the rest of your army. He excels at popping rhinos/rzorbacks etc. This guy can also double as a counter-charge unit for infantry when you're about to get charged (boyz, gaunts etc).

Overall, dreadnoughts are not great. They're slow (when I do run them they NEVER get to assault), they break easily (AV12 and anything on the chart makes them worthless) and they are actually not that efficient. If you want a MM get a cheap speeder, if you want to fight just buy some terminators (he really doesn't fight any better than a TH/SS terminator who's 1/3 his points). The dreadnought IS a jack of all trades, but he truly is the master of none.

[Cyberscape7]

Cheers for the advice guys. I'll play a few a games and try and see what works for me :)

[Demonus]

I ran an ironclad with melta/hf in a drop pod yesterday in my vulkan army. dropped the pod right behind opponents Land Raider, that had moved up. Drove my land raider and disgorged vulkan and 5 TH/SS termies so his LR couldnt move anywhere (terrain on sides).

Dreadnought blew up the LR (after rolling 2+1 for my melta shot...) in CC, then moved on to faceroll some Obliterators. Had a LC terminator and Lillith run from me cause they couldnt hurt me. Was a great mosh pit in the center of the board with my terms + vulkan against 5 chaos term champions, lillith and 10 blood brides.

I think either can work well, the rifleman dreadnought shooting a lascannon and missile launcher halfway across the board can be great support. The close combat dreadnought owns low str armies like eldar and IG.