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Hi all. Have recently aquired 4 Dreads. 1 Iron Clad plus Drop-pod, 1 Venerable Dreadnought and 2 'nilla Dreads. I normally play against Orks and C:SM + Daemons and tend to get battered. This is probably cos my lil Bro is a sh!t hot player, but it could also be because im relying too much on Dreads with the wrong weapons! I have a Master Of The Forge army, and am struggling with the Orks especially. The rest of the army consists of a 10 man Tac Squad, a Command Squad, a unit of 5 Termies, the 4 Dreads and a 5 man Scout squad. The rest of the army is ok, but I need help with useing the Dreads to their full effect. Anyone? Thanks in advance guys n gals!

Assualt cannons are great!


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If you keep their close combat weapons on they kick buttox in combat.

Ok, sadly I only have 2 Ass Cannons that I can use and one of those ALWAYs goes on my Venerable dread cos he hits on twos!!!

Oh well


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you can buy them off GW

Please try to convey your point in proper typed English. It makes posts so much easier to read.

The question is how you want to expand your army. There are two main paths that you can take with a MotF Dread Army, Gunline or Pods.
For Gunline, you take normal dreads, load them up with heavy weapons (x2 Autocannon is a pretty neat configuration), back them up with other mobile elements able to fire on the move (Razorbacks? Land Speeders?) and roll across the board. The Ironclad generally doesn't fit very well into this style of list.
Walking termies also fit well with this list, probably with 2 Cyclone missile launchers in a 10 man squad. A MotF on bike with conversion beamer is also hillarious (Moving 12" and firing a heavy weapon = Priceless)

With Drop Pods, you can take 6 dreads, cram them into drop pods, and go to town on your enemy. Back them up with infantry squads that come in on regular reserves to capture objectives and so on. For these dreads, Assault Cannons and Multi Meltas are your main ranged weapons, and you should definitely keep the CC weapon. Ironclads are also great here.

Venerable dreads are generally considered somewhat sub-par due to their increased cost. I've never run them, but I would guess CC Weapon + Assault Cannon should work well enough.
Command Squads are usually there to deliver 4 special weapons from a transport. Lacking a transport generally makes them subpar.

General advice, whatever you chose to do, you should probably get another 10 man Marine squad. Dreadnaught heavy flamers also help against hordes, as do infantry flamers & bolters.

As Irdiumstern stated, a shooty dreadnought is very very effective. A shooting dreadnought will make back points, with interest, whilst a CC dreadnought has the annoying habit of being singled out straight away, as opposed to a force across the board, whilst the other tanks are getting nearer.

NamTaey wrote:Assualt cannons are great!


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If you keep their close combat weapons on they kick buttox in combat.

No, Assualt cannons never work out in all the games i played! Multimelta+ Drop pod is excellent for taking out CSM land raiders!

General things to keep in mind.

If you're drop podding in the dreads then go all out. You need double the pods (minus one) so they all turn up turn one. Target saturation is key, If the enemy has 4,5 or 6 dreads turn up turn one they'll ether blow one up or in effectively shoot at all of them.

Taking shooting Dreads then you should take some multimelta/H.flamer speeders. You want to slow the enemy down as much as possible so you can make use of their shooting as long as possible.

Venrable dreads. Cons much more expensive ... pros TL BS5 is 97% odds on hitting (or 35/36); you simply cannot get better odds with out auto hitting. However since you are also paying for WS5, and reroll on the damage table, i recommend you don't do down the duel shooting weapon root. Some people swear by them others find them too many points ... myself I would only upgrade if i had nothing else to take.

Tri wrote:
If your drop podding in the dreads then go all out. You need at double the pods (minus one) so they all turn up turn one. Target saturation is key, If the enemy has 4,5 or 6 dreads turn up they'll ether blow one up or in effectively shoot at all of them.

Agreed. Drop one Dreadnought in the midst of enemy forces and it will eat all their available anti-tank and die. Drop two and one of them might survive. With three or more, target saturation will mean that the enemy can not reliably stop all them.

You also need a captain for the command squad, a MotF will not give you access to them.

I've had great success with a Ven Dread with a Plasma Cannon. The Ven Dread's stats means that on average he only deviates 2 inches from where he aimed at. with a small blast marker that would really put the hurt on heavy infantry like Space Marines and Terminators. Assault cannons are a must for other Dreads, they pump out needed firepower. while you should not hope for the rending dice to go through, 4 S6 AP4 shots are nothing to laugh at. They will chew through anything that's not a space marine, and even space marines will be hard pressed if you bring two of these to the game.

If you have a few dreads tooled out for CC, invest in a Heavy Flamer. those little flame squirters can thin the enemy's numbers before you get in close and personal, especially if you aim at taking on something hidden in cover (most units in cover usually have pathetic saves, or ones that can be outright ignored by the heavy flamer).

here is my Article on Gunline marines

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/unit_choices_for_a_Space_marine_gunline

about halfway down is the section on Dreadnoughts and nearly every possible configuration and the Strengths and weakness of each.

'Nilla SM dreads have 2 options: Shooty for vanilla/venerables, Ironclad for assaults.

A good mix of the two always works well. 3 Ironclads is hard to take down no matter who you are. I'd honestly use the ironclads to tie up large orc mobs (because they need a 5 or 6 with the PK to do anything) And follow it up by charging normal marines in to swing the tide. Also, this draws the PK away from the squishier troops.

I'd run a bunch of tacs w/ flamer + ML/Lascannon if your facing demons/orks. I'd run 2 Ironclads/2 'Nilla Dreads w/ AC/DCCW or Lascannon/DCCW. Get a few rhinos for the tacs, sit back and fireline. I might even venture to suggest a raider w/ TH/SS termis for a counterassault element.

This won't work as well against mechinized armies, but Orks/Demons it should be sufficient to win. Unless a bloodthirster charges you, then your f***ed.