Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Does anyone still think these are too unreliable?

I recently used one in an IG match as, after reading posts on here, i realised that the Fire Frnezy and Crazed rule applies but only uses their 45 degree arc in front rather than turning and whacking my own army.

I cannot express enoguh how amazingly well it performed. I thre it at a squadron of 3 leman russ, assumign it woudl at least draw soem fire. It then had 2 Crazed results, got the Fleet USR and proceeded to kill all 3 battle tanks in CC!!!!!

I'm never leaving my Dreads at home again.

Dreads are perfectly functional, even if you were to play it super-crazy-turn-around-hello-back-armor...

They offer Armor Saturation and a close infantry support platform.

Now, your example isn't too helpful in regards to it being a one-off situation coupled with 6 exclamation marks .
But they can do well.

You just need to manage what they see and deploy them appropriately.

The only terrible occurance is if you are so close to charge and roll up fire frenzy...

I've used two for some time and they usually make themselves very useful as distractions. I stick them together on a flank to draw enemy units away from my main force.

I run them with Multi-meltas and I won't argue if my opponent wants to play the more generous interpretation of Fire Frenzy. Occasionally one kills or maims the other but it's pretty rare.

Sorry for my enthusiasm. I have had a coupe of dreada for just over a year and only used thema coupe of times as i thoguht they coud not be trusted not to kill my own army.

I took one on the off chance and was just really impreseed and wanted alert anyeon else whos fears their own dreads that it is unfounded.

Praxiss wrote:Sorry for my enthusiasm. I have had a coupe of dreada for just over a year and only used thema coupe of times as i thoguht they coud not be trusted not to kill my own army.

I took one on the off chance and was just really impreseed and wanted alert anyeon else whos fears their own dreads that it is unfounded.

Play with them some more. There will come times when they will lose you games because they dont do what you want them too. They will charge the nearest enemy when you want them to shoot and will shoot when you want them to charge. Even the chance to kill your own dudes is justb icing on a horrific cake. Dont take them. They arent worth the points.

I personally love the chaos walker spam lists. 3 dreads and 3 defilers makes for an interesting game. And its really not a horrible tactic.

They are too unreliable. That doesn't mean I won't take one, but for me, they fail at the wrong time, time and again. As Regwon says, it's not so much about them killing your own dudes, it's about the times when you need them to charge and tie something up and they'll just sit there, or when you need them to hang-back and provide fire support and they rush off into an enemy that will kill them easily (a bloodthirster, for example).

Compared to dreads in other marine armies, they're no where near as good. The fact that it fulfills a role in the army doesn't mean that it couldn't fulfill that role better...

If I'm getting 1/3rd less reliability out my tool, it should cost 1/3rd less the points, not 1/10th less.

Redbeard wrote:If I'm getting 1/3rd less reliability out my tool, it should cost 1/3rd less the points, not 1/10th less.

This is the most sound reasoning I've ever seen on the internet, let alone on Dakka.

Well, that is a logical fallacy: just because it isn't reliable, doesn't mean it isn't effective and effectiveness is what the price is based on. When it goes crazy, it does more than just ignore do the other end of the combat spectrum, it gets better. Shooty crazy Dreads get double the shots; melee crazy Dreads get Fleet. That's where that 20% price comes back.

Reliability isn't the only measure of worth, particularly since the Dreadnought also has more attacks.

If you're having problems with reliability, it's usually because of two things: bad tactics or bad strategy.

Bad strategy involves equipping them to minimize friendly fire with two close combat arms, or to maximize fire support with two gun arms. You have to be ready for either Crazed result, and that means using them as shock troops rather than support. Always take Extra Armour: you can't afford to have them Stunned.

Bad tactics involve not closing with the enemy, having friendly units in between them and the enemy, and putting them beside units that they can harm with friendly fire. Having them advance beside Land Raiders when armed with Plasma Cannons, for example, and in front when armed with Multi-Meltas.

Unlike other Dreadnoughts you need to support them with other units rather than the other way around. It's unfortunate that the picture of the Terminators supporting the Dreadnought shows exactly the wrong way to do that.

They're not 1/3rd less reliable unless you're unprepared to take advantage of either Crazed result, they're 1/9th less reliable because sometimes they do Fire Frenzy when you want them to charge and Blood Rage when some shooting would have been better, but they can also charge further when they need to, and put twice the firepower downrange when they need to. 1/9 less reliable for 1/10 less is pretty good.

Nurglitch wrote:Reliability isn't the only measure of worth, particularly since the Dreadnought also has more attacks.

It has one more attack. That might be worth 10 points...

If you're having problems with reliability, it's usually because of two things: bad tactics or bad strategy.

This is just outright wrong.

One of the main uses for walkers is to tie up CC units that aren't equipped to handle vehicles. This is one of the things that they excel at. So, my opponent drops a unit of bloodcrushers somewhere near my lines. And I've got this here dreadnought that I can throw at them. If I charge them, they're denied their furious charge, and are left with one model with rending as their only chance to kill me. I've seen dreads tie up crushers for entire games this way. If I do not charge them, they can either not charge my dreadnought, going after targets that they're better suited for, or, in the worst case, charge the dreadnought with 20 attacks that can hurt it, before it swings.

And you say reliability doesn't matter... Is it bad strategy that my opponent had bloodcrushers in his list? Is it bad tactics that any ranged weapon I fire at them, even twice, won't even kill a single model - and that's assuming they fail their inv. saves - because of wound allocation?

Or lets say my opponent is running nob bikers. And, lets say I've got a list that can potentially lash their powerklaws out of striking range on the turn I charge them with my dreadnought. Good strategy - I instant-kill bikes with the dread's high strength, they lose combat and take Ld tests at -res. Oh, yeah, but my dread decided he'd rather sit still and take potshots at them instead. No, reliability is irrelevant.

Perhaps I played with what you call good tactics and good strategy. I brought my dread a plasma cannon, in spite of the marginal risk of hurting my own guys. I advanced him up the field properly, so that if something went wrong, he'd still have some use. And then my opponent deep struck some Sanguinary guard onto the table. I can see them. They're sitting there, a perfect circle of high-point models with a 2+ save that my cannon ignores, but OOOOH Shiny, there's a rhino that moved 12" last turn that I have to charge instead. That whole extra attack brings me up to four swings, hitting on sixes, against a 35 point target.

My opponent is playing horde orks. I have a heavy flamer and a plasma cannon. I'd love to move up 6", flame them and hit them with the cannon too. I can probably take out ten boyz before I charge that way. Oh, oops, no, I just gotta fleet instead.

It's not the risk of bad things happening that makes reliability an issue. It's a matter of not being able to take advantage of the ideal situations that you bought a walker for when they happen. The sanguinary guard thing, I made up. All the other examples above, they have happened to me in games, two of them at a GT. Maybe I'm unlucky... Maybe I'm not. I took the dreadnought cause he looks awesome, and I took home a painting prize. But the point is, unreliability isn't about bad strategy or bad tactics. It's about removing your ability to control your models, costing you opportunities. And, realistically, that's worth more than ten points and an extra attack.

Redbeard:

You know, if you read what I wrote, we might actually communicate. For example, you say:

Redbeard wrote:And you say reliability doesn't matter...

No, actually I don't. I say:

Nurglitch wrote:Reliability isn't the only measure of worth...

Surely you're able to tell the difference between saying that reliability doesn't matter, and that it isn't the only thing that matters?

Seriously, mis-stating someone's opinion is pretty low. Usually you're better than that. What's the matter?

Back on topic though:

Using a Chaos Dreadnought as a counter-charge unit is bad strategy when Chaos Space Marines have the Defiler, which is an excellent counter-charge unit. Indeed, you could say that the role of walkers like Space Marine and Ork Dreadnoughts has been split where Chaos Dreadnoughts and Defilers are concerned. Defilers support: they aren't just as reliable as ordinary walkers: they're more reliable thanks to Daemonic Possession, Fleet, and a Battlecannon.

Like I said, Chaos Dreadnoughts aren't there to counter-charge or support other units, they're there to smash headlong into them: they're shock units - they head straight for the enemy and either draw fire and die, or break stuff.

So why might I say that reliability isn't the only measure of worth. Actually, given you difficulty understanding it the first couple of times around, let me repeat: Reliability isn't the only measure of worth, particularly since the Chaos Dreadnought has more attacks.

You see, if reliability isn't the only measure of worth, and the Chaos Dreadnought has more attacks (and occasionally a longer charge range or more shots) then the other component of worth is potential.

It's like having twenty Ork boys with 40 BS2 shots vs ten Space Marines with 20 BS4 shots. The Orks have the same reliability concerning the number of hits, but twice as much potential.

Now, concerning your example, let's talk about what constitutes good tactics and good strategy. Good strategy is having the right equipment. A Chaos Dreadnought armed with a Heavy Flamer, Plasma Cannon, and Dreadnought Close Combat Weapon is good strategy because it optimizes the effect of its weapons given all possible situations. So such a Dreadnought is one part of a good strategy.

However...

Some Sanguinary Guard land, and instead of blasting them the Dreadnought runs off to beat on a Rhino. Clearly not because your opponent was able to position a Rhino so that it could distract your Dreadnought on the contingency that it rolled a Blood Rage. Moreover you didn't do anything to remove that Rhino from play before the Chaos Dreadnought chased after it, which is possible thanks to the Ramming rules in the 5th edition.

Basically you claim good tactics, but you were caught out of position and paid the price, meaning that in fact your tactics were bad.

Likewise, I fail to see the problem with the Orks. Sure, you could have taken out ten Orks had you shot. You could have also shot yourself out of a charge. You could have killed far more had you Fire Frenzied. So you have to charge into the Orks and ensure that the charge works using Fleet. Why exactly is that bad? You're Chaos, you want to get the charge, and a Chaos Dreadnought hitting a unit of Ork Boyz gets four attacks on the charge, which would be bad except the only thing in the unit that can hurt you is a Power Klaw at S8 with A3. Let's consider:

4 attacks, 4+ to hit, 2+ to wound, no saves = 1.66 expected unsaved wounds or two casualties.

3 attacks, 4+ to hit, 4 to glance, 5-6 to penetrate = 0.75 expected counts-as wounds, or 0.33 expected Shaken results, meaning absolutely nothing to a Dreadnought in close combat, no Stunned results because good strategy has been chosen and the Dreadnought has Extra Armour, 0.13 the Dreadnought Close Combat Weapon is Damaged (Weapon Destroyed), 0.13 the Dreadnought is Immobilized, 0.08 the Dreadnought is Destroyed (Wrecked), and 0.08 the Dreadnought is Destroyed (Explodes).

In other words the Dreadnought is likely to kill two Orks at the cost of nothing except not killing ten extra Orks, which makes no positive difference to the combat unless the unit was eleven strong, and a negative difference if it was only ten strong because it leaves your Dreadnought exposed for the following turn of Ork shooting.

I like to run a dread phalanx at times, 3 dreads with TL HB marching shoulder to shoulder up the field. Can't hurt each other with HB rounds in the side armour (if thats tghhe way you play FF)

That sounds more like the three Stooges than a phalanx.

Nurglitch wrote:
<snip>

Considering that the OP open with the question on their reliability i think that it is an important issue.

You then go on to suggest that CSM dreads are a shock unit with a plasma cannon when a defiler (which you propose as simply a counter charge unit!?) has more attacks, a better gun and does what you tell it too. Much better shock units.

Since you are so fond of examples let me suggest a few for you to consider with your immense tactical genius.

You have the first turn you roll fire fenzy on your dread. Unfortunately you opponent (being not the tactical dim-witt) has deployed his landraider opposite your dread. Not only is your first turn movement restricted by not wanting to move your units into that 45-degree LOS (since dreads are shock units there is no reason why you wouldnt deploy them close to your enemy) but your model sits there doing nothing for a turn.

But wait you say...there is only a 1/6 chance of that happening.

So the same situation occurs, but this time you roll blood frenzy and your dread goes charging up the field towards what looks like a nice juicy landraider for it to much on. Your opponent is unperturbed however, and casually moves his landraider forward, deploys some TH/SS terminators and proceeds to turn your angry dread into something resembling a bag of smashed crabs.

In all honesty the label you have given to a CSM dread of shock unit is inaccurate. This may be because it has a mighty 3 attacks (4 on the charge!). Unfortunately this issue of reliability comes back to haunt us. A shock unit is best when it is charging enemies, not sitting still and shooting them and not blindly running into a position where it can be counter-charged. In these situation a shock unit loses its value, and these situations will occur 1/3rd of the time with CSM dreads.

Regwon:

Reliability is important. I agree. That's why I'm pointing out that the loss of reliability can be mitigated with tactics, and offset by the increase in offensive potential, rather than simply disregarding it like an idiot would.

Indeed, reliability is the foremost quality of counter-charge units because counter-charge units depend on precise timing, the ability to do something when they're not counter-charging, and need to be able to produce when they do charge. As you know the extra attacks that a Defiler has are necessary to offset its WS3, the Battlecannon gives it a way of affecting the game while it's not in close combat, and reliable Fleet gives it the ability

Shock units, on the other hand, are simply thrown at the enemy to gum things up and to kill stuff. Reliability is handy when it comes to killing stuff, but unreliability is the real key to shock units because an unreliable unit makes target priority difficult, and gums up the opposing player's resources by either wasting fire, or getting killed instead of something more valuable. The fact that Chaos Dreadnoughts are relatively cheap simply emphasizes this, while their vehicle status adds redundancy to a mechanized force.

Let's consider the scenario you've picked. It definitely favours the Chaos Dreadnought.

If the Dreadnought goes into a Fire Frenzy, then that's easy: Use its Smoke Launchers to prevent it from firing if you don't want to get shot as you advance, or otherwise don't worry. You didn't get to fire, but it's not like you're relying on that Dreadnought to take out Land Raiders; after all you didn't arm it with guns that could kill a Land Raider. The Land Raider gets popped by your own Land Raiders/Havocs/Obliterators/etc. The contents will be exposed to the Dreadnought next turn.

If the Dreadnought goes into a Blood Rage, then that's great! You get to advance 7" to 12" closer to the enemy. If the enemy wishes to throw Assault Terminators at your Chaos Dreadnought, then this is what will happen:

Chaos Dreadnought gets three attacks, hitting on 4+, wounding on 2+, and failing saves on 2-. 0.41 Assault Terminators buy it, and that's zero casualties, rounding down.

The Assault Terminators themselves have 15 attacks, hitting on 4+, glancing on 4s, and penetrating on 5-6. That's 1.28 glancing hits, and 2.48 penetrating hits. Rounding down the Dreadnought will lose the combat by 3, but Dreadnoughts don't suffer from No Retreat, so that's fantastic. 1.68 of that will do absolutely nothing, because it'll likely be Shaken/Stunned. 0.64 will Immobilize the Dreadnought, 0.64 will destroy the Dreadnought Close Combat Weapon. 0.42 will Destroy (Wreck) the Dreadnought, and 0.42 will Destroy (Explode) the Dreadnought.

So there's a hefty 0.84 likelihood that the Assault Terminators will destroy the Dreadnought, with 0.42 likelihood of risking damage in the process. That's compared with the 2.96 chance of the Dreadnought surviving, and 1.68 of that being completely fine.

If the Dreadnought is destroyed, and wrecked so that no-one gets hurt, then the Terminators get to consolidate 1D6 and get picked off by Plasma. Thank you for taking the bait.

If the Dreadnought is not destroyed, then they are locked in combat and out of your hair for another turn, and you can either hit them with a unit like Berzerkers, or that Defiler counter-assault unit, or ignore them while 200pts is held up by 125pts, and get on with murdering the rest of your opponent's army.

Of course, that's if you let the enemy Land Raider deposit Assault Terminators into combat with your Chaos Dreadnought. You could have just shot it up like you would regardless of what the Dreadnought was going to do, so that the Assault Terminators had to walk, with those pleasant odds of subjecting them to Plasma Cannon fire and a Heavy Flamer before charging them first.

Notice the combination of attributes that makes the Chaos Dreadnought a great shock unit: great potential, unreliable, cheap and disposable. What makes it necessarily a shock unit is its capacity for friendly fire when anywhere but out in front.

Something I'll add is that there's a reason by the Chaos Space Marine "Monster Mash" army is fun and reasonbly effective: three Dreadnoughts backed up by three Defiler exploits the rule of three with a complementary pairing of units.

Nurglitch wrote:Redbeard:

You know, if you read what I wrote, we might actually communicate. For example, you say:

Redbeard wrote:And you say reliability doesn't matter...

No, actually I don't. I say:

Nurglitch wrote:Reliability isn't the only measure of worth...

Surely you're able to tell the difference between saying that reliability doesn't matter, and that it isn't the only thing that matters?

Seriously, mis-stating someone's opinion is pretty low. Usually you're better than that. What's the matter?

The initial question posed was "Does anyone still think these are too unreliable."

I believe they are. That's an opinion that is relevant to the question posed.

Your response is that reliability isn't the only measure of worth. In the context of this thread, where the question is do you think they are too unreliable, that can reasonably be construed as your opinion being that you do not think they are too unreliable - you believe they are reliable enough, given their other strengths and cost. Is that a more reasonable statement of your position on this? I didn't mean to misquote you, so don't get too offended, it's just a discussion. If I unfairly extrapolated your position based on the context of the question, I apologize.

I think that, in tournament games, reliability is more important than an extra attack. To that extent, I think that it is the measure of worth of units like this, and that's why it is "too unreliable" for competitive play. As you state, for most purposes, the defiler is a far better choice for a Chaos Marine army to take when they want a walker. (I'm of the opinion that walkers really are support options in today's metagame. But even as a shock unit, the defiler is better because it can have more attacks and fleet, and ignores many damage results altogether.)

Now, concerning your example, let's talk about what constitutes good tactics and good strategy. Good strategy is having the right equipment. A Chaos Dreadnought armed with a Heavy Flamer, Plasma Cannon, and Dreadnought Close Combat Weapon is good strategy because it optimizes the effect of its weapons given all possible situations. So such a Dreadnought is one part of a good strategy.

I disagree that list choices constitute strategy. Good strategy is realizing that your opponent has a unit that can be tarpitted by a walker. Tactics are what are involved in getting the walker to engage said unit. List choices are logistics. Without good logistics, you don't get the opportunity to make the right strategic decisions because you don't have the necessary tools. But logistics aren't the same as strategy, and this is going off on a tangent, I'll move on...

Some Sanguinary Guard land, and instead of blasting them the Dreadnought runs off to beat on a Rhino. Clearly not because your opponent was able to position a Rhino so that it could distract your Dreadnought on the contingency that it rolled a Blood Rage. Moreover you didn't do anything to remove that Rhino from play before the Chaos Dreadnought chased after it, which is possible thanks to the Ramming rules in the 5th edition.

That's a ridiculous assertion. First, the enemy rhino might as well be 20" away as long as it was the closest enemy, and the result would be the same - the dread would run off after it instead of shooting. Second, what is to say that attempts to remove the rhino had not been attempted, but failed. The damage tables in 5th edition are fairly forgiving, and a ram attack isn't a meltagun. For whatever, the rhino exists. It could have made its smoke saves the prior turn. It could have not died in the ram attack. It could be out of assault range altogether. It doesn't matter - the dread is preoccupied with it. That doesn't mean the tactics that led to that position were bad, it means that the dreadnought is unreliable.

Basically you claim good tactics, but you were caught out of position and paid the price, meaning that in fact your tactics were bad.

If we take the argument that having anything on the table that might distract the dreadnought, leading to it being out of position, constitutes bad tactics then the logical conclusion to that stance is that if I haven't already destroyed every other unit my opponent has, my tactics are bad. That's kind of extreme, don't you think? Because if my opponent has any other unit on the table when I roll Blood Rage, I'm out of position...

Likewise, I fail to see the problem with the Orks. Sure, you could have taken out ten Orks had you shot. You could have also shot yourself out of a charge.

In that game, there was no risk of being out of a charge. And, while I'll trust your math, you certainly don't know what else was going on. If I charge one ork unit, I average killing about two boyz, and may, or may not take damage. Combat res gets involved. But, if there are 30 of them, they're eventually going to grind me down. That's okay. But when that second mob hops into the fight, doubling the number of powerklaw attacks, the survival of the dreadnought drops considerably. You also neglect the impact of other units in the army. If the dread can shoot/flame away 10 boyz, and combined fire from other units can finish off that unit of boyz, then the second unit of boyz is no longer supported by the first, and they also become manageable. They're left with just the dread to charge, who can hold off one klaw twice as long as he can hold off two. But, when the dread charges in alone and gets stuck fighting two powerklaws, even though he does some damage in combat, and through combat res (until he dies), when the fight is over, there are still two mutually-supporting mobs of ork boyz that need to be dealt with.

Would a defiler have been better? Of course it would. But the defiler model is ugly, and my FW dread is beautiful, and got me an army feature on GWs site. It's a tradeoff I made going into the GT. I made logistical decisions with the aim of winning best painted, rather than bringing the biggest beat-stick I could.

I'd really like the dread to be a competitive choice, but it's not. And the reason it isn't is because it fails you when you need it not to - it's not reliable. And if you're really playing competitively, the more control you have over your forces, the better you will do. It doesn't matter how cheap they make it, if it fails when you need it to do something, it's too expensive.

Redbeard:

Apology accepted.

Now, to restate my answer to the question posed in the original post: No, I do not think that Chaos Dreadnoughts are too unreliable.

They are not too unreliable because that unreliability can be offset by the combination of what you could call "good logistics", good strategy, and good tactics.

Incidentally, I lump logistics in with strategy in 40k because in standard lay, aside from the limits of points and the Force Organization Chart, there's no real logistical limit on the strategies available to players; you get to pick and choose the tools you want for any particular strategy you choose to employ.

Logistically speaking, then, the Chaos Dreadnought is cheap for what it does. There's units that can do its role better, but never at the same cost. Strategically speaking, shock assault is what they do best because of the capabilities I've mentioned in the context of their cost. In that sense they are, I agree, unlike most walkers in the 5th edition game. Like the rest of Codex: Chaos Space Marines I like the way that this makes them radically different from Space Marine Dreadnoughts, which are very much support units.

You could say that the Defiler makes a better shock unit, but it's a better support unit than it is a shock unit, thanks to its points cost and placement in Heavy Support.

Regarding the comment about the Rhino ramming the enemy Rhino that would lead the Chaos Dreadnought out of position, you did stipulate that the Chaos Dreadnought would be able to charge into combat with that Rhino, did you not? It's not unreasonable to assume that a Rhino within charge range of a Chaos Dreadnought may be within ramming range of an enemy Rhino. And while a Rhino moving at cruising speed is not a Melta Gun, it's all you have going in the Movement phase.

But that distracts from the salient point that any position that leads it closer to the enemy is a good position for the Chaos Dreadnought. Not all Blood Rages will take it out of position, but you seem to be claiming that having the Dreadnought chase the Rhino rather than shoot the Sanguinary Guard puts the Dreadnought out of position, which is false because being closer to the enemy is good for a shock unit, and which is true because you apparently didn't have a back-up in position just in case the Dreadnought did exactly that.

In other words, since you regarded the Chaos Dreadnought charging the Rhino as a bad thing because it wouldn't be able to shoot the Sanguinary Guard, you had already assumed in stating the scenario that it would be out of position.

So yeah, if you replace my argument with something stupid, I guess we shouldn't be surprised when you paraphrase it as something stupid. Why you keep doing this I'm not sure, but since it is clearly just miscommunication, I'll just try to restate my point more clearly:

That the Chaos Dreadnought, in the scenario you describe, chases after the Rhino should not be a problem because you know it might do that, and you have positioned your units accordingly. If it is a problem, it is because you have no anticipated it and no positioned your units accordingly, and that can only be considered bad tactics.

However, the question is about reliability, is it not? You know when you put the Dreadnought on the table that he has three options, and two of them are unlikely but predictable, with the third being more likely and also predictable. You can rely on the Chaos Dreadnought engaging in Blood Rages and Fire Frenzies. Knowing that either of these things may happen, you can deploy and move your Dreadnought to maximize the likelihood of having a Blood Rage when getting into combat is better, and a Fire Frenzy when double firepower is better.

But you will face the fact that sometimes your Dreadnought will Blood Rage when situation calls for Sanity or Fire Frenzy, Fire Frenzy when the situation calls for a Blood Rage or Sanity, or remain maddeningly Sane when the situation calls for either Blood Rage or Fire Frenzy.

Now is that degree of unreliability untenable? No, because as a 40k player your opponent does not co-operate with you. In fact their task, like yours, is to put your units in non-optimal situations. Chaos Dreadnoughts require slightly more contingency planning, but not that much more because as shock unit running screaming at the enemy is what they should be doing.

Indeed, Chaos Dreadnoughts are perfectly reliable at being Chaos Dreadnoughts and sweet feth awful at being Space Marine Dreadnoughts. I think it's the uniqueness of Chaos Dreadnoughts that throws people.

About the situation of Orks in combat with the Chaos Dreadnought, if the Chaos Dreadnought charges a unit of 30 Orks, then there isn't going to be space for the second unit of Orks to charge in. Maybe if it's a small enough unit of Orks that the Dreadnought won't be completely surrounded after counter-charges and pile-in moves, but otherwise the Dreadnought is going to be locking the Orks down. And I do believe I did mention the role of other units: the Chaos Dreadnought locks the Orks in combat, allowing the Chaos Space Marines to reinforce the combat with the sort of assault unit that tears Orks apart but has a hard time getting the charge, like Berzerkers, or freeing up those Berzerkers to charge the second unit so that they don't bite off more than they can hack into messy green chunks, and so on. That was my point about the scenario where the Dreadnought charges into the unit of Orks and locks it down: that it's an opportunity.

Concerning your Chaos Dreadnought: I suggest that since you took it as an aesthetic choice rather than the choice that fitted your strategy best, then dismissing it because of poor performance because it didn't fit into the strategy is poisoning the well. You didn't configure your army to maximize the Chaos Dreadnought's effect in the game, or minimize its unreliability.

It's good that you made that aesthetic choice. Making aesthetic choices like that is how I learned to play Warhammer 40k when I got back into it at the end of 4th edition. I wasn't into competitive play and was really just there to show up and push the plastic I'd been collecting for generic sci-fi games. But, and I think I got lucky, I got to play with people that were willing to switch armies, and seeing how they handled my army differently got me thinking about how people play 40k, and how it can be played, rather than just about what you call logistics ("take good units, hurrr!").

I mean, you took a Chaos Dreadnought as an aesthetic choice rather than integrating it into your list? You might as well complain that your World Eaters Berzerkers got their butts shot off by the Imperial Guard: what were you expecting?

OP: I personally find I can spend my points on better things than dreadnoughts both because of annoying frenzy rules and simply being a poor unit(yay one multi-melta for a base of 100pts?-_-). If I want to run an army with lots of walkers I'd prefer a blood angels counts-as.

As always, if they work for you keep using them, but personally I find I'm better off spending those points on hq/troops/heavy support. If I'm spending points on elites I'm usually taking squads of 3x termies with combi-melta.

Nurglitch wrote:

If the Dreadnought goes into a Fire Frenzy, then that's easy: Use its Smoke Launchers to prevent it from firing if you don't want to get shot as you advance, or otherwise don't worry. You didn't get to fire, but it's not like you're relying on that Dreadnought to take out Land Raiders; after all you didn't arm it with guns that could kill a Land Raider.

Just wanted to point out that this is covered in the newest CSM faq:

Q:"If a dreadnought rolls a fire frenzy can it fire smoke launchers to prevent it from shooting?"
A: "No, the dreadnought must fire."

Nurglitch wrote:
But that distracts from the salient point that any position that leads it closer to the enemy is a good position for the Chaos Dreadnought. Not all Blood Rages will take it out of position, but you seem to be claiming that having the Dreadnought chase the Rhino rather than shoot the Sanguinary Guard puts the Dreadnought out of position, which is false because being closer to the enemy is good for a shock unit, and which is true because you apparently didn't have a back-up in position just in case the Dreadnought did exactly that.

That's actually not my point. There are two issues you raise here, and I'll address them one at a time.

First, you claim that any position leading the dread closer to the enemy is a good position. I don't agree. Not in the 5th edition metagame, and it's why walkers don't make good shock units. In most competitive games that I've played in the last year, my opponents are fielding several meltaguns. They're short-range weapons that are extremely good at taking down vehicles. Being short range, it's usually a couple of turns before these weapons are in range to do anything.

If, on turn 2, my dreadnought feels the urge to charge my opponent's rhino (regardless of whether or not he can actually get to it), not only does he lose the opportunity to shoot - a missed opportunity cost - but he also runs right into the meltagun range of my opponent's troops. If he had stayed put, those meltaguns would still be out-of-range, and wouldn't earn any points that turn. In short, the assumption that any move towards the opponent that the dreadnought makes is beneficial is false. Moving towards opponents with short-ranged melta-weapons is bad. It gives them an extra turn of utility out of their weapons, and doesn't so much shock your opponent as it hands them easy points.

In the lots-of-walkers approach, this problem is mitigated by having lots of things run at your opponent. But, in that case, you have the opposite problem. If one dread decides not to run forwards and the rest of your army is running forward, the chance that they're the closet target goes up significantly. One of the worst examples (and, a statistically rare one, I'll grant), is where you've got two dreads, and one of them is required to run towards the closest enemy, leaving it directly in front of another that has to stay still and shoot it. You can plan for this by keeping your models spaced out, so that if one stops to shoot, it still cannot see any of the others. But then you're presenting a necessarily wide front to your opponent, when strategic conditions might dictate that a narrower concentrated front is a better plan.

If you go with a narrower front, because that's what the mission/opponent mix requires, then you're gambling that your walkers won't hit fire-frenzy, and with three chaos dreads in the monster-mash list, that gamble will fail more often than not. If you spread out to avoid that, you may well be handing the game to your opponent as they are then able to pick a flank and defeat you in detail.

In other words, since you regarded the Chaos Dreadnought charging the Rhino as a bad thing because it wouldn't be able to shoot the Sanguinary Guard, you had already assumed in stating the scenario that it would be out of position.

So yeah, if you replace my argument with something stupid, I guess we shouldn't be surprised when you paraphrase it as something stupid. Why you keep doing this I'm not sure, but since it is clearly just miscommunication, I'll just try to restate my point more clearly:

That the Chaos Dreadnought, in the scenario you describe, chases after the Rhino should not be a problem because you know it might do that, and you have positioned your units accordingly. If it is a problem, it is because you have no anticipated it and no positioned your units accordingly, and that can only be considered bad tactics.

You keep saying this is bad tactics, but I think you're not understanding the real problem. It's one of lost opportunity, and one that, short of removing all of your opponent's models from the table, cannot be solved with better tactics.

There is an opportunity to be had for a model with a plasma gun to destroy 250 points of enemy models. If the plasma cannon is mounted on a chaos dread, there is a 1/6th chance that you completely lose this opportunity (Bood Frenzy), and a further 1/6th chance that you probably lose the opportunity (Fire frenzy, unless that target is the closest one).

I know my opponent has Sanguinary guard in their list, and I know they're going to deep strike them at some point. But there is nothing I can do to control where my opponent deep strikes them. If my opponent is smart, and deep strikes them further from the dread with the plasma cannon than any other unit, he profits from a 1/3rd chance that I don't get the opportunity to wipe that unit away.

Sure, I can anticipate that my dreadnought won't get to shoot them. I can hopefully have something else in the army shoot at them, I can make sure that the dread has something else of some value to do that turn, regardless of what crazed result I get. But, I still miss out on the opportunity to score 250 points off that shot - the one that the weapon is ideally suited for.

What good tactics overcome this lost opportunity? The fact that I was able to destroy a 35 point transport instead is meant to be consolation?

Now the question I would like to ask everyone, what would be the best ways to equip a dreadnaught and how many to take, taking into account everything discussed so far (such as reliability and effectiveness).

DCCW x 2
or
DCCW + ML

Those are the 2 safe builds...and funny enough the cheapest/straight-forward builds.

Yeah, those are the options I would agree on. A popular option is 2-3 dreads with ML. If a dread goes nuts then they fire a frag missile at each other, no harm done.

Personally I am not a big fan of the DCCW setup as BA with their fancy Furiso dreadnaughts just do it better.

I know this is a rule thing, but is does actually say pivot on the spot - so that is rotate on the spot and find the nearest target. It doesn't say pick the target in front, but instead pivot.

Anyway, missile launcher is probably the best build because if your dreads go mate then fire frags lol

It says pivot on the spot to face the closest visible unit.

Fifth edition defines the line-of-sight for walkers to be 45 degrees from the weapons (which are mounted pointing straight ahead. That means that the 'visible' targets don't include models behind the dread, because they're not in his line of sight.

As for set-ups, I like the plasma-cannon/CCW w/ flamer approach. There are few places to get plasma blasts in the Chaos codex, and they're generally useful for something.

I very much agree with Redbeard's last post, and add that such a configuration is easily made using the Venerable Dreadnought kit with only slight modifications. Oh, and to reiterate: Extra Armour is a necessity.

I guess that makes sense. Thanks for explaining that

I agree with Redbeard on all points. That said, I have started using a Dreadnought with PC recently, because 105pts and an Elite slot seems to be a pretty reasonable price for a PC template, some possible S10 attacks, and an AV12 hull which is reasonably easy to get cover for, in a list with multiple vehicles.

Admittedly, there is the chance to roll the exact wrong rage/frenzy at the exact wrong time. And this can potentially lose a game. But the cost invested is low enough that I think it's probably worth the risk for the nice things the Dread brings to the table and its low cost. So far I've only used him in around 8-10 games, and I've had a few moments where I sweated that frenzy roll, but not too many.

They are a very random unit, but I love them. I have been running 3 Dual DCCW dreadnought with a lot of success for a few month now. They did very well for me in both the Gladiator and the Championships at Adepticon.

I think they are worth it, but they need to be in a list that supports them correctly. Like Walker spam Chaos, which works rather well.

There is also the whole aspect of the book defining how a walker can fire:

"When firing a walker's weapon, pivot the walker on the spot so that all guns are aimed at the target (assume that all weapon's mounted on a walker can swivel 45degrees, like hull-mounted weapons)"