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Last weekend I played a game with one of my friends, it's was 2000pts of my chaos vs his new grey knights.
He had 2 normal dreads and a venerable dread all with
Twin Lascannons. I on the other hand had just one chaos dread with two arms and a heavy Flamer.
Throughout the game my dread ate a dread every turn and never went crazy. He killed all 3 of the grey knight Dreadnoughts without sustaining anything worse then a shaken result.

So tell me why everyone dogs on Chaos Dreadnoughts? If you roll right he,ll always be sane, buy extra Armour so he'll get mostly shaken so no worrying of rolling a 1 on his craziness, and make him a close combat monster for when you roll a 6 on the crazy chart. I have come to enjoy Chaos Dreads as my Noise Marines need the much needed CC and vehicle popping capability

Well, a strength 10 Chaos Dreadnought is going to win against strength 6 GK Dreadnoughts any day of the week. You're going to wreck their AV12/13 and you will only get glanced at worst.

However, I'm a fan of Chaos Dreadnoughts, and use one with my Iron Warriors. One out of three turns they do something you might not want them doing, but as long as you keep them out of sight of your troops they can do alright. People generally get down on them because they're a bit unpredictable and loyalist dreadnoughts are so often AV13 these days.

Because, on average a single round of those loyalist Dreads shooting the chaos dread would have rendered it useless. "My Dread did well once, why do people say they suck?" is a much less hyperbolic version of "My gretchin once killed an entire TH/SS terminator squad in close combat. Why do people say gretchin suck in close combat?".

People say a Chaos Dread sucks because it's far too big of a risk to take with Crazed. If you take a specialised loadout 1/6th of the time it's going to do exactly the wrong thing and ruin your plans. If you take a generic loadout 1/3rd of the time it's going to do something outside your control, and it's never going to actually be as effective as a specialised Dread.

They can be helpful, but kitting them out is also just giving yourself a bigger gun to shoot yourself in the foot with. It all really depends the fickle dice gods.

A dreadnought with 2dccw isn't much of a threat to your own troops and is still a huge potential threat to the enemy. Worst case scenario is he tries to flamer your rhinos (which any half decent general will position them to avoid) and on the other hand he has the same chance of fleeting towards the enemy, which is just where you want him.

That said, not wanting any troops with an element of unpredictibility is also totally understandable.

While a fleeting 2ccw dread is certainly fun, when 1/6th of the time he isn't moving forward and is actively trying to kill your own troops potentially presenting rear armour to enemy troops that's a big downside.

If Fire Frenzy prioritised enemy troops over friendly then the risk would be more reasonable. As it is Fire Frenzy makes the Dread a big risk, especially in the first few turns.

This is why I try to find a LOS blocking building and put my Dreadnought and other stuff on opposite sides of it.

Chrysis wrote:If Fire Frenzy prioritised enemy troops over friendly then the risk would be more reasonable. As it is Fire Frenzy makes the Dread a big risk, especially in the first few turns.

That is probably my main beef with Chaos dreads. I think it is also one of the main reasons why the majority of homebrew rulesets usually suggest this. It’s interesting that there is a simple fix to a complex issue.

The current fire frenzy ruleset doesn’t do a good enough at emphasising the risk versus reward aspect as the risks are too apparent, making the entire ruleset tactically restricting. Players are encouraged to either isolate their dread or have them accompany a unit they cannot break with their gear loadout (such as another dread, Rhino, Land Raider etc). The ruleset has also resulted in the majority of CSM dreads equipped with dual DCCWs.

I think if GW were to release errata correcting this, not only would we see a lot more dreads on the table, we’d also see more variety as far as dread loadout is concerned.

The last Crazed rule was perhaps a little bit too much reward for a little risk, while the current one has swung too far the other way.

The only thing I believe it needs to balance the risk and reward is to change Fire Frenzy to fire at the closest enemy, and if no enemies are options the closest friendly. That way equipping the Dread with any ranged weapons isn't a huge liability and they can be used for slightly unreliable fire-support again.

Chrysis wrote:While a fleeting 2ccw dread is certainly fun.

Isn't that just a defiler?

Seriously Chaos dreads are not terrible, though they are a bit unreliable. They suffer more from the fact that defilers can pretty much do anything you want from a dread and do it better. Battlecannon, twin-linked heavy flamer, 2 ddcw AND fleet? Oh and it is immune to stunned and shaken for free...

Hopefully the next Chaos dex gives a little love to some fantastic models (who are hopefully redone in plastic!).

Dreads are in a different slot, and can be equipped for more specific roles than a Defiler. They're also a much smaller model, and so more easily hidden. Twin CCW Dreads also have more attacks than a Defiler and a higher BS and WS.

I'll agree that they aren't terrible. But they are too unreliable to really be equipped with more than either 2CCW or CCW + Missile Launcher. Certainly a 100 point 2CCW dread can be a beautiful sight to behold, and mine tends to absorb a huge amount of firepower before succumbing. Or the first shot in it's direction immobilises it and it stands fuming impotently for the rest of the game because it fire frenzied first turn and presented it's rear to half the enemy army.

I agree even a simple change to fire frenzy to shooting the closest enemy then I would actually be really really happy with the chaos dread.

That way there would still be a little risk and randomness to it. You can go an all shootie dread but risk getting rage or go all CC and risk getting frenzy. Or go with one of each. Not ass effective in each role but either a 1 or a 6 wont totally ruin your day either.

Oh and an actual chaos dread would help. Which reminds me. Did Chaos ever get a 2nd wave after there book came out?

I think they had a new set of Possessed that came out later (not sure when the plastic possessed came) and you can *sorta* count the DP as new (although really it's more of a CD wave). Everything else, AFAIK, came out with the codex.

I enjoy my Dreads.
I've had relatively good luck with them, so much so that I'm considering switching their MLs for MMs.