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.

Hi all.

So, im ploughing on with my Vanilla marine list, which is an army for fluffy and fun games, not big tournies, but getting a win every now and again is still fun.

So, my idea for a unit, is to make a Venerable dreadnought, who is entirely focussed on getting into melee. I love the idea of a nigh-indestructable walker ploughing into hand-to-metal claw combat and wreaking havoc.

But I have no idea as to what to arm it with when I get it. What's the best combo to take, especially considering it will be moving and/or running every turn to get close enough to assault, as it won't have a drop-pod. So it's likely it won't be able to shoot, but you tell me, what do I give it?

Thanks all.

Close combat weapon, multimelta because it's cheapest. Heavy flamer if you want to thin the herds first.

Who do you tend to play against more often?

Swarms of orks.

Take the TL heavy flamer, and the wrist mounted heavy flamer aswell.

If you mostly fight green tides a CC Dread is likely just gonna get tarpitted until the end of time :-/ Sure, it's killy, but not enough attacks to chop through the tide. I'd go high volume, Heavy Flamer and whatever else puts out the most lead. Hell, I'd go double Flamers if you could, that'd scare the bejesus out of an Ork player. Not a Space Marine player so I don't know their loadout availabilities.

^What Hotsauceman1 said

It's worse than that. Any unit that isnt' able to hurt a walker in close combat can just run away. You can't even guarantee the safety of staying in close combat anymore.

Unfortunately, you showed up one rules edition too late for this idea of yours to be all that viable. I'd give it at least SOME sort of weapon so that the dread can be useful outside of CC.

On the contrary, I think this makes it more viable! I have a shooty army otherwise, if they can escape combat with the dread, and I give it the flamer and melee with wrist mounted flamer, then I can use this to chase ork squad's away from my shooting lines! Might smack a few, or roast a few as they run away too

Vanilla list would an Iron clad which is the strong silent type.
Else BA allies to bring some of their cool dreads.

if you fight lots of orks you should go with the heavy flamers. You will need a DCCW to make sure you can win a challenge with a klaw nob.

You will have to avoid the mega nobs and the nob bikerz/footy nobz.

I might even suggest an ironclad dread instead of a venerable. Venerable just arent that good. Iron clads are gonna take about 1/2-2/3 the damage venerables do from rokkits and klaws and are immune to krak grenades. They are still gonna fold against Gazzy, but what won't

Ailaros wrote:It's worse than that. Any unit that isnt' able to hurt a walker in close combat can just run away. You can't even guarantee the safety of staying in close combat anymore.

yes, but can't you be caught in a sweeping advance when that happens, so instead of a tarpit creator you got a blender? Or did my friend misinterpret/misread that rule?

Jihallah wrote:

Ailaros wrote:It's worse than that. Any unit that isnt' able to hurt a walker in close combat can just run away. You can't even guarantee the safety of staying in close combat anymore.

yes, but can't you be caught in a sweeping advance when that happens, so instead of a tarpit creator you got a blender? Or did my friend misinterpret/misread that rule?

yup you risk the blender. SM, though, that's playing the game on easy mode. There is no blender.

Unfortunantly, Dreadnoughts can't issue challanges. If they could, hidden PKs and PFs would be almost no threat as you could issue a challange and either way the Nob is boned.

Jihallah wrote:

Ailaros wrote:It's worse than that. Any unit that isnt' able to hurt a walker in close combat can just run away. You can't even guarantee the safety of staying in close combat anymore.

yes, but can't you be caught in a sweeping advance when that happens, so instead of a tarpit creator you got a blender? Or did my friend misinterpret/misread that rule?

You read it right.

But seriously, let's look at your ven dread against, say, a bunch of guardsmen. I have the option of either slowly dying, or taking a decent chance of making it out alive. If I chose to run, then no matter the results of the sweep, that dreadnought is now stuck out in the open mere inches away from all of my meltaguns, and is now likely in LOS of a bunch of other stuff, and probably doesn't have a cover save (especially if the sweep is successful).

Running a not-THAT-dangerous risk of losing 60 points to be able to auto-kill a ven dread is the smart play in my book.

Stuck between being tarpitted, or being unable to tarpit, CC dreads don't make a lot of sense in this edition, and that's even before you start looking at new rules like using WS for nailing one with a meltabomb, etc.