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-1 point to anyone who says "absolutely nothing! Huuh!"

While their armor is 12/11/10 5 S10 attacks on the charge... A Deff Dread seems to be the perfect bully unit at 100 points (getting grot riggers and armor plates)

I personally like the Deff Dread because only things with S6 or a powerfist can harm it. Unfortunately the Dread also competes with Kans...

I personally do not have the funds for kans and have foolishly bought a single Deff Dread and I am determined to use it! I just do not know for what just yet.

Just march it up with the boyz and start smashing

Each time the enemy is shooting at the Deff Dread is a turn they aren't shooting at the approaching green tide. Also, each turn they shoot at the green tide is a turn they aren't shooting the Deff Dread that will smash them into the ground.

On its own, nothing. It exists as nothing more than a big, slow target that the enemy will kill long before it does anything useful.

However if you already have 9 kanz you can add 2 more through use of big meks to make a dreadbash army. They are now a competing target with killa kanz fulfilling much the same role but bigger and tougher.

You can use them as just 2 extra kanz, shielding troops from fire and working as a counter-assault or you can send them running forwards (3 arms a skorcha config) every turn to scare the gak out of your opponents and draw fire from the kanz.

I've found that they work if they stick to cover and advance with a green tide. Target saturation is the speciality of Orks and IG

I've been running mine next to my trukks quite a bit. They tend to fall behind on the assault a bit (read: they don't usually hit the opponent on turn 2 with the alarming regularity of the rest of the boyz), but they have an excellent ability to compound force where necessary.

Fists, while capable of putting down a dread, in practice don't have a very high chance. That's particularly true with when you are facing opponents with lower attack count than orcs, which is most of the fists you'll encounter. Taking a single str 8 power fist in an average space marine squad, he's going to crack at you twice, miss one of those, and only have a 1/6 chance of doing anything meaningful to you that you can't shrug off and keep moving with. Who cares? Granted, you can't attack him with complete impunity, but odds are that space marine squad just ate it, and they cost double the amount of a deff dread.

Pile him in where you already have a klaw and some boyz bashing heads, and he will quickly claim some extra lives.

The only place I find him to be completely useless is against monstrous creatures. They tend to have too many wounds, eternal warrior, and entirely too many attacks that penetrate easily, making it a longshot that he'll do anything effective against them.

He'll also fair poorly anytime he is the only hard target in your army. He'll tend to eat a few lascannon shots which didn't have anything else to shoot at but him and explode. Meanwhile, the rest of the opponent's army was doing anti-personnel duty on the boyz.

What would you count as a hard target?

Well, let him run up with the Boyz.
If he encounters Marines without a power fist, they will have a hard time.

If you stick a single deff-dread into a foot-slogging army and it is your only vehicle, you deserve what happens when you put that army on the table. Every opponent brings both anti-tank and anti-troop weaponry, and if you're going to present only a single target for all those lascannons to fire at, that Deffdread is going to absorb all antitank weaponry in the enemy army until it is dead.

Putting it into your foot-slogging army would be a mistake.

If you absolutely insist on using it, the best possible use for it would be to run an Ork gunline (Loota-centric) and to hide that deffdread behind something to block line of sight and use it for a counter-charge unit.

How about a dread with a mobile gunline?

the_ferrett wrote:What would you count as a hard target?

Hard target = vehicle armor, or high toughness high save. Orcs have a lot of the former, and very little of the latter. If your only vehicle is a dread, it dies in most spectacular ways. If every target you have on the board has a vehicle armor rating or are safely hidden within something that has a vehicle armor rating, the Dread can usually walk wherever it wants and do whatever it wants, as your opponent will likely focus on the "klaw delivery mechanisms", which are faster and frequently softer than the dread.

the_ferrett wrote:How about a dread with a mobile gunline?

Again...putting a single dread into an army devoid of other targets with an AV rating - you deserve what happens to you.

Okay, noted.

To extrapolate a bit on what Dashofpepper is saying, you need to have some target saturation. Give those AT guns multiple targets that make present your opponent with some tough choices about target priority. Your best bet is to save up some more cash and get some Kans and a Big Mek with Kustom Force Field; the Big Mek will also let you field the Deffdread as a (non-objective holding) Troops choice.

As you are in Australia, there are ways to improve your bang-for-the-buck when purchasing GW models.

Deff dreads are good for converting and modelling. You can have tremendous fun with kitbashing together some really cool deff dread models. On the tabletop, kans are better in pretty much every way. When you fill a dreadbash list with kans, then throwing in a deff dread or two works. Personally I can't wait to get back home and finally do something with the dark angels dreadnought that I've had sitting around for the better part of a decade.

They do make quite good flank protectors, march one up a flank (but make sure there is some assistance available) to deter would-be flank assaults. I did this with a unit of low-cost kanz, tied up a broodlord+genestealers for about 3 turns so they couldn't roll up the flank and wipe me out, so I suppose it would work just as well with a deffdread.

Yeah, they could protect your Lootaz from outflankers.

As most have said a single deff dread on its own is going to be a open target and attract the pain. Sure you can cover it behind boyz, but you'll probably only get a 5+ cover save because not the entire 50% of the AV will be covered. Slog it through terrain and your just taking terrain tests for nothing or blocking LOS.

Take some units of killa kanz and more than one deff dread so you've got unit redundancy and more targets from the killa kanz.

It sounds pretty good but remember the rule that if there is a unit in front of you and the enemy shoots at you, you get a 5+ cover save to represent having someone shoot through a unit to someone behind.

I am primarily running a Green tide list...

I am thinking about running a Single Deff Dread instead of a Warboss. I still have my Big Bech with a KFF...

I could keep the Mech close to the Dread to give it a 4+ cover save...

I am also running 2 trukks and 9 Rokkit Buggies over a kan wall... I just need mobility in my local meta to survive...

If it runs into a powerfist SM, the deff dread will have long wiped it out before it gets to use it.

I'd advance it with your Mek and lots of boyz. All of them get a cover save and your opponent wil have a hard to time taking them all out.

2 deff dreads are very effective, I've seen them in action before they can crump a lot of stuff but your opponent often thinks, "Oh crap, 2 deff dreads, shoot them quick!" and fails to target the bulk of your force. I've been disuaded from this at the moment, because the models are expensive and unassemblable or i'd have to convert them, which will take a lot more time.

Best use for Deff Dread is to take a 2 KFF-Mek Shoota Boyz list and run 2 troop Dreads with 9 Kans.

I know you said this isn't viable for you, but that really is about the best you will do with the setup you described.

Why not five Deff Dreds?

1) Because 11 vehicles at vehicle armor rating 11 and 12 is a lot harder to stop than 5 before and after it hits the enemy line.

2) 9 Kans + 2 Dreads have more damage potential than 5 Dreads.

3) The cost isn't that substantially higher for all the Kans as opposed to just the 5 Dreads.

I am frankly surprised that no one has mentioned the dread sock yet.

In all seriousness, the Deff Dread simply doesn't stack up well with kanz. The extra point of armor and the extra 'ard points simply aren't worth paying twice the points for.

It's fun, don't get me wrong, but as a competitive choice, Kanz are simply better.

Droofus wrote:I am frankly surprised that no one has mentioned the dread sock yet.

In all seriousness, the Deff Dread simply doesn't stack up well with kanz. The extra point of armor and the extra 'ard points simply aren't worth paying twice the points for.

It's fun, don't get me wrong, but as a competitive choice, Kanz are simply better.

Depends on the role you use them for. Kans don't fit well into my lists under any circumstances. I run 3 battlewagons, because my FLGS allows deff rollas to effect vehicles when ramming. Without a doubt, that makes the deff rolla the premier anti-vehicle choice in my army lists. Yes, I could grab kans, and they can deliver strength 10s as well... But 1.5 times per turn, and the move more slowly across the battlefield, particularly when they aren't in assault range to boost the extra 6 inch movement. They just can't catch a vehicle that doesn't want to be caught.

Deff Dreads, in my case, are ideal. Not because point for point they are better than a kan, but because they can fill the roll of a troop choice. That is something that a kan just can't do, making the kan limited in one aspect that the dread isn't.

I would also add that a deff dread is comparable or superior to a warboss with attack squig, heavy armor, and power klaw, and is cheaper. Few would label a warboss in any configuration as a bad point for point expense.

Admittedly, a warboss with just the above items is sub-optimal, but anything else you put on him (bike, transport, mega armor) makes him much more expensive, and doesn't make him that much tougher. So while he can be made to be more mobile than a dread, he can't dish out the damage at the same bargain basement price that a dread can with the same level of resilience.

They work well in the Kan wall. It gives you 2 additional units and more big scary things for your opponent to worry about.
Its up to you if you want to fork out the points for extra CC weapons or just skorchas.

11 obscured walkers crossing the board sounds pretty scary to me.

* Edited : Vehicles taken as troops cannot score

Deff Dreads are vehicles, so they can't score, right?

Pika_power wrote:Deff Dreads are vehicles, so they can't score, right?

Correct. Vehicles, regardless of whether they are organized as troops or not, can not hold objectives. They can, however, krump with str 10 hits, which is what is important. Dead opponents can't score either.

Deff Dreads work better in small games (500 pts). Yes, your opponent is gonna shoot it to beans immediately. Why wouldn't he? It is big and scary and it can hurt him. Plus it is faster taking this guy out than a unit of 20 Orks.

Still, it is a cool model. If it were me, I'd keep him in cover and hide him until you have a chance to get into H2H with him. Then you will TEAR THE ENEMY A NEW ONE!

Some missions allow the Orks to act as defenders, and this is perfect for the Dread who can stay hidden and let the enemy come to him.

Alternatively, send your Battlewagon up the field with the Dread trailing behind (free cover) then let him get out there to smash and gnosh at the first opportunity!

YEAH!
Solorg

Saltoric wrote:It sounds pretty good but remember the rule that if there is a unit in front of you and the enemy shoots at you, you get a 5+ cover save to represent having someone shoot through a unit to someone behind.

Ah, the gun barrels of the deff dread stand higher than a ork boy. So your not shooting through a unit, but over it so no cover saves to the enemy