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How many Dreadnoughts before it gets daft?


Ash_Uk

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Hi all

 

I've played various armies, thought I might give BA a try and I can't help but notice in the Codex that you can filed quite a few Dreadnoughts. This is rather new to me and is definately intriguing :)

 

If I aim for 1500 points, for friendly games with good opponents, mostly against either Chaos SM or vanilla SM; just how many dreadnoughts can I sensibly squeeze in before the list becomes lousy? I'd love to field 3 or more of them, just not sure if it's viable.

 

TIA

 

Ash_UK

The best dreads (the ones worth taking) are those in the Elites and Troops slots. No need for rifleman dreads when you have fast predators and vindies for firesupport. Close up the AV13 of the Furioso is a lifesaver and worth taking over the AV12 HS dreads. I wish the HS dread with TLLC and HF was less expensive because it's a very nice kit in 6th ed but as it stands the Frag cannon furioso in a pod is probably the best bang for the buck in our codex. 

 

 

DC dreads are really nice provied you have a way of getting them into combat. Either by using a stormraven (expensive), having plenty of target saturation (they will probably eat a lot of shooting anyway), or units that reliably tarpit units that the DC dread can help to finish off. Death company works great for this being fearless and having a high number of basic attacks even if they multi assault and lose the rage bonus.   

 

At 1500 pts things are a bit tight. As an example three Furioso dreads with pods and fragcannons are  480 pts, a substantial part of your total and the list kinda needs to be built around them.  2 frag cannon dreads or a single DC dread might be more realistic at 1500.

 

Oh, magnagrapples are a great upgrade if you can afford them and all dreads are good targets for divination buffs.

I just fielded a 1999 point list with 7 Dreadnoughts, 3 drop pods, 2 Landspeeders and a large Death Company. Magnificent, well sort of.

My Black Templar opponent castled in cover and my Heavy Support Dreads were sloooow to reposition. Better take fast Predators next time! Buffs from Librarians gave advancing Dreads a 4+ cover save that was extremely useful.

Ash, I had the following:

Furioso Librarian with Force Stave

Furioso with Blood Talons, Meltagun, Stormbolter

Furioso with Frag Cannon and Blood Fist with Storm Bolter, Magnagrapple

Death Company Dread with Blood Talons, Meltagun, Heavy Flamer (awesome!)

Death Company Dread with Blood Fists, Meltagun, Stormbolter

Heavy Support Dread with Twinlinked Lascannons and Autocannons

Heavy Support Dread with Plasmacannon and Missile Launcher

 

5 drop pods would have been better than the 3 I used

You just can't have too many Dreadnoughts! wink.png

The Fragioso is a true killer when you pod it down. I usually go with 2 Fragiosos, 1 DC Dread and 1 HS Dread in 1500pts. But the reason I became a Blood Angel spells Dreadnoughts, so I might be a bit biased.

Biased works for me, it's the reason I'm thinking of trying the BA!!

 

It's been good to hear people tell of multi-dreadnought armies being played and have the potential of doing relatively well. As I don't magnetize arms hearing the loadouts has also been great.

 

Thanks guys!

Loadouts on the Fragiosos are usually Frag Cannon (duh), Heavy Flamer and, if you got the points for it, Magna Grapple. The Magna grapple don't have to be magnetized, it fits rather well upon the dread and sticks to it without magnets.

DC Dread need Talons, the fear it puts into your opponent is worth every bit of lost strength. pinch.gif

Ok, I'm totally sold on a Dreadnought army now.

 

Thinking around the subject, I'm wondering what will complement them?

 

HQ: I do like Librarians as an HQ choice.

 

Troops: have to have some Death Company (!), but best method of transporting them? That I'm not sure about. I have a LR but it's pricey to field.

 

Would also like to include some iconic BA units, so will look for some Baal Predator(s) too.

 

That gives me quite a mech force, which isn't seen much in my local circle so wont suffer from loads of autocannons...

 

After that, should finish off with some capturing Assualt SM. But thinking that maybe on Rhinos rather than Jetpacks, for a complete armour presence on the table.

 

Workable?

Librarians are the best HQ IMO.

 

I usually drop down the DC in a pod, it works just fine.

 

Baals are also fun, but those points might be better invested in a aegis def line with a quad gun since a Dreadnought army lacks AA firepower. 

 

If you go with Rhinos I would rather use Tacticals, if you use Assault squads the Razorback is the one to go with. Same mobility but more firepower. The AssCan can work as AA if you don't want to use the dedicated AA we can have.

Ash, I had the following:

Furioso Librarian with Force Stave

Furioso with Blood Talons, Meltagun, Stormbolter

Furioso with Frag Cannon and Blood Fist with Storm Bolter, Magnagrapple

Death Company Dread with Blood Talons, Meltagun, Heavy Flamer (awesome!)

Death Company Dread with Blood Fists, Meltagun, Stormbolter

Heavy Support Dread with Twinlinked Lascannons and Autocannons

Heavy Support Dread with Plasmacannon and Missile Launcher

 

5 drop pods would have been better than the 3 I used

 

Other than modeling reasons, why arm the fursioso with a Force Stave?  Given that Dreadnoughts don't suffer from Unwieldy, would not a Force Axe be better suited?

I ran a 10 dreadnought army at a tournament last year and did...poorly :(  However I figured out my problem (mobility) and thus my army has been modified to 8 dreads, 6 of which are in drop pods.  I am currently play testing this army, and so far it's pretty nasty.  I'm running the following:

 Librarian

 Librarian Dread

 Frag cannon furioso

 Frag cannon furioso

 Talon DC dread

 Fist DC dread

 10 death co

  5 scouts

 Multimelta dread

 2x autocannon dread

 plasma cannon dread

 defense line with quad gun

 

  The scouts, librarian, rifleman and Plasma cannon dreads hang out behind the aegis, everyone else pods in.  Loving it. Im gonna experiment with 2 taloned DC dreads next game to see what works best.

 Good luck with this army set up, it's tons of fun and great to see the look on the opponent's face.

what do you guys usually use for troop slots to fit in pointswise with the dreads?

 

Same thing as always... as little as possible :P  DC and a DC dread fill the mandatory slots, after that it's a question of allies or not.

what do you guys usually use for troop slots to fit in pointswise with the dreads?

Same thing as always... as little as possible tongue.png DC and a DC dread fill the mandatory slots, after that it's a question of allies or not.

No i mean for scoring purposes, DC cant be scoring units, neither can the dreads can they?

I try to minimize scoring troops too actually, at least if I think it dilutes the theme of the list. I'm comfortable playing with one unit of scoring troops at sub 2k, rarely do I take more than 2-3.

 

"Why?" You might ask.  "40k is an objective based game, right?"

 

It's actually easier to get away with few scoring units now than it was in 5th thanks to the secondary VPs.

DC and all infantry units can score 'line breaker' and all units can score 'first blood' and 'slay the warlord', so that's the secondary VPs covered.  

In 'big guns' and 'scouring' you get extra scoring from FA and heavy, 'emperors will' and 'the relic' tend to stalemate and depend on those secondary VPs, in 'purge the alien' scoring doesn't matter. So it's really only in 'crusade' that you are really hurting. 

 

Focus on sheer killing power goes a long way in vanilla 40k.

With that many dreads you might not have points to spare for your FA slots though.

Attack bikes are a good pick since they are fast melta (or HBs if you really need them) that unlike speeders or baals are an infantry sub category and thus can be used as a denial unit on objectives and get you the 'line breaker' VP. In an emergency they can also tarpit an enemy unit reasonably well, just don't expect them to win since they have few attacks. 

I had a long running thread with batreps in the list subforum (6-3 dreads, usually 4-5, depending on build and points). Unfortunately it was one of the threads that got deleted by mistake at the same time the forum was updated.

Not quite the dread spam some people here want to run though... biggrin.png

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