Tactica - Venerable Dreadnought with Fenrisian Great Axe and Blizzard Shield

Today, brothers, we speak of the ancients who bear the shield and axe to battle. These durable battle brothers are a lumbering force to contend with on the battlefield. However, the Venerable Dreadnought with Axe and Shield require that care be placed in how one uses the unit. 

            This variant of the Dreadnought is one of the tougher units in the game to harm, requiring a weapon to be at least strength six in order to even begin scratching the paint of the great mechanical warrior. What makes the unit even more durable is the combination of Venerable (since it is a requirement for the Dreadnought to take the Axe and Shield) and the 3++ conferred to the ancient warrior’s front facing. Most units that will be able to harm him reliably will have either a ballistic skill of 3 or 4 which at best gives a 50-66% chance of success in harming the Dreadnought; depending on the strength of the fire power that is brought to bear further determines, as it always does, the survivability of the unit. Your opponent will need to bring either melta weaponry or strength 9 or above weapons to reliably harm your glorious beast of war, or, conversely, several strength 6 to 7 shots. The Venerable Dreadnought deals best with small amounts of high strength fire power and actually does worse against massed out shots at strength 6 or 7. If your opponent brings a pack of 6 long fangs equipped with 5 Lascannons to fire on your Dreadnought then the run down would be, on average, your opponent will hit 3 times and will more than likely get either 2 penetrating hits or a glancing hit and a penetrating hit. More often than not your Blizzard Shield’s 3++ will prevent the enemy’s shots to harm your Dreadnought. However, if you are faced with a unit that is capable of massing out strength 6-7 shots then the amount of glancing hits may overwhelm your shield and glance your Dreadnought into oblivion, and you won’t gain the benefits of the Dreadnought’s venerable status to mitigate the damage as you would with penetrating hits.

            To bring death to your opponent and allow the Dreadnought to demolish his or her lines then you should give your Venerable Dreadnought a drop pod and extra armor. The drop pod allows you to ignore the need to slog up the field with your Dreadnought; even though your Dreadnought is fully capable of doing this because of his defensive capabilities, he is more suited to present an immediate threat to your opponent’s line and act as a distraction. Your opponent will have to make a decision with this mechanical monster on his front lawn: either he will need to destroy the Dreadnought before it gets stuck into combat or allow him to run rampant across the field and allow it to destroy important units, such as vehicles. More often than not your opponent will target the Dreadnought since 4 strength 10 AP 2 attacks on the charge with master-crafted does not sound appealing to many people, and in there lies the trap. Your opponent, if they choose to run this route, will more often than not be wasting their time with the Dreadnought because of his 3++ save. Your Dreadnought should have the extra armor upgrade for those times where you would have received crew stunned so that he can still make charges and attacks. Use this Dreadnought in conjunction with other deep striking units to present a real problem for your opponent.

            Though, for as great as this ancient warrior is, he is not without his faults, the first of which is that he must choose his targets carefully. He will not do well in combat with marines or any other unit that is equipped with a large number of high strength attacks or krak grenades (or equivalent). As stated earlier, you will at some point fail saves and you get no benefit from your venerable status from glances. Send your Venerable Dreadnought after targets that he can easily demolish with his 4 attacks on the charge such as tanks and transports. Once he is out of combat he has a greater chance to move on to his next target and destroy it better than your normal Dreadnought. Go forth brothers and conquer! For the Wolftime! For Russ! For the All-Father!