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One thing that irks me about 7e Space Marines is they can take squadrons of Dreadnoughts, and squadrons of Venerable Dreadnoughts. Something about that feels wrong.

Proposal: Remove the Venerable Dreadnought entry from all Marine codexes altogether. Allow one Dreadnought from any Dreadnought squadron (of any Dreadnought type, be it basic, Ironclad, Furioso, etc) to be upgraded to a Venerable Dreadnought for +25 points, gaining the Character sub-type.

Thoughts?

 MagicJuggler wrote:
One thing that irks me about 7e Space Marines is they can take squadrons of Dreadnoughts, and squadrons of Venerable Dreadnoughts. Something about that feels wrong.

Proposal: Remove the Venerable Dreadnought entry from all Marine codexes altogether. Allow one Dreadnought from any Dreadnought squadron (of any Dreadnought type, be it basic, Ironclad, Furioso, etc) to be upgraded to a Venerable Dreadnought for +25 points, gaining the Character sub-type.

Thoughts?

Mostly like it, but Ironclad dreadnoughts and other specialty variants shouldn't get the upgrade. Venerable increases durability, adding that to an Ironclad or other bonuses as well makes them extremely difficult to cause any significant damage to with a penetrating hit. Now, that's not as big a balance issue as it would have been a couple editions ago, but it does make the 'Optimized' choice for a dread a lot more clear, which I generally try and avoid.

I’m torn.

Part of me would like to have the venerable be an upgrade for a normal dread. It would make formations that require a ven dread to be a little more verbose, as they will have to require an upgrade, which they do in the fine print.

Not sure how I feel about the 1 in a squad thing. If you are doing some sort of 1st company list, it makes sense to have multiple vens working together.

Venerable Ironclads should be a thing. But they might need to pay a little extra for the privlage. Adding more durability to a sturdier chassis could make them a tough nut to crack. But then, vehicles are in a bad spot, so I don’t mind seeing them getting a boost.

Overall I think as a rule it would be OK.

I like the idea, but I see a couple possible hangups. Ven dreads still allow you to force rerolls on to vehicle damage results, right? Having to pause to do "damage allocation" one result at a time might be a little time consuming unless a lone ven dread's presence conferred the benefit to his allies? Also, I feel ven dread units should still be an option in their own right.

It's a cool idea in general though.