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Hi everyone!

The dreadnought from Assault on Black Reach has a multi-melta and a close combat arm with a storm bolter. What does this setup specialize in, or is it necessary to do some plastic work and change the weapons?

Thanks for any advices!

I use two of the Black Reach dreads in my SM army all the time. They work well with a mechanized marine army, killing medium-range threats to your vehicles and blocking assaults.

How you want to convert/gear your Dread really depends on army composition.
What I would recommend is getting some magnets (from ebay) so you can hot swap arms based upon what army you are fielding. That saves you from buying a new dread every army list.

While you are on ebay, look for dreadnought arms. There are enough companies, such as horde_o_bits, that sell pieces so you can get just what you want for a few bucks. Buy the arms and use magnets to give you a number of different configurations.

My favorite configuration is 2 TL AC. TL AC / ML is very popular as well. AC / CCW is not bad, depending on the army.
I tend to not like CCW in my dreads, due to the ease they can be killed with a PF. One hidden fist can easily cripple the dread, so I perfer to keep them far back acting as long range shooting support.

Hope that helps!

Do as Labmouse says with most of your vehicles, like Predators, Rhinos and Razorbacks. Always spring for a Razorback over a Rhino, since you get both for an extra 2 American dollars.

As for the Dreadnought, it kills medium and heavy tanks, and guards your Tacticals from melee combat. It isn't great at close combat, but it is hard to kill and will tie up squads you wouldn't want getting at your Marines. Use it to escort your Tactical Marines, running to keep up with the Rhino untill you get into range.

The standard mm ccw dread in a drop pod is a fairly cheap way to drop a high value vehicle and still have a chance of killing something else or at least diverting some fire for a turn or two.

The points level your playing at is important too. At 500 points the AoBR dread is the center of your armies world owning face at CC and putting down high armor units. At 2,500 he's a decent CC and AV counter but he loses effectiveness as the points scale up because your options get better.

I field mine with the TL multi melta , but swapped out the CC arm for the rocket launcher. Makes a very effective medium to long range tank killer.

The multi meltas on a dread are not twin linked, why do people always confuse this?

^^^ I assume it's because the multi-melta has two barrels. When compared to a regular meltagun, it would appear to be twin-linked. Simple, if flawed, reasoning would result:
1. Lascannon=1 barrel, Shoota=1 barrel
2. TL lascannon=2 barrels, TL Shoota=2 barrels
:. 2 barrels on a MM=TL MM

Except that a Multi-Melta always has 2 barrels. 1 barrel is a Meltagun, 2 is a Multi-Melta. I do agree with you on the thought process, but that little hiccup should have been enough for most people.

I think the Multi Melta and CC arm dread is the perfect drop pod dread. It drops in really close and most likely slags a vehicle. After that they tend to get shot to hell making the tactic questionable by those who are squeamish about the risk of losing a dread, but if you're going to drop pod a dread it should be a MM/CC one. MM/CC dreads are a real menace that need to be dealt with because the last thing anybody wants in their back racks is a MM and/or a walker with a str10 CC weapon. A MM dread needs it's CC arm if it's going to drop in really close. Without the CC arm small 5 man squads of MEQ will run in with a power fist and laugh at the dreads str6 attacks that they get full armor saves for. They might run in anyways with a pfist, krak grenades, and hope that the dread misses it's CC attacks, but that tactic is very dangerous and can easily result in the squad being massacred.

Added bonus: The MM arm from the Assault on Black Reach set is the only Plastic MM made by GW. If you want other ones, got to go through FW.

NewGuyWhoDontKnowAnything wrote:The dreadnought from Assault on Black Reach has a multi-melta and a close combat arm with a storm bolter...

Small point of contention, the standard dread has a CCW with storm bolter, the AoBR dread is modeled with a weapon that much more closely resembles the flamer/heavy flamer upgrade for dreads.

Back to the topic though, the AoBR dread is a little bit of a pain to customize, a good start is filling in the hollow shoulders with greenstuff or if you can find cheaper 2 part epoxy putty then this is a great place to use it. I drilled out the pin type attachments for the arms and used magnets to make them swappable. This seemed easier to me than cutting/grinding/sculpting the weapons to be modular and the arms to stay. Cruise ebay/craigslist/"dakka swap shop" for potential extra arms and/or weaps and your good to go. I'd just proxy anything I wanted until I find the right parts.

As can be seen in this picture, the AoBR dreadnought definitely has a storm bolter attached to its dccw.

willydstyle wrote:As can be seen in this picture, the AoBR dreadnought definitely has a storm bolter attached to its dccw.

Son of a bitch your right, I could swear I remember that ccw arm having a flamer slung underneath. Maybe my memory is just going fuzzy, oh well.
Apologies for the mis-correction.

You add a fuel pack and a pilot light, then take off the ammo belt, and you have a heavy flamer. Easy easy conversion.