Thursday, November 5, 2015

The next 'chapter' in the life of an old dreadnought...

If I recall correctly, approximately 20 years ago Brad, one of my 40k buddies in Florida worked at a resin casting company. Working the graveyard shift and under the guise of 'training' he cast multiple copies of his SM dreadnought (the multi-melta version), and gave several of us in the gaming group a copy. Forgeworld, whilst in existence wasn't producing dreadnoughts of their own yet, meaning all dreadnoughts were made of pewter! Indeed, when I moved to Tennessee this feather-light dread took many people by complete surprise when they picked it up to give it a look. 

I had to dig almost all the way back to the beginning of this blog just to find some good pics of this beast!

Last time I spoke to Brad in person, about five years or so ago whilst visiting in Florida, I mentioned that I still had one of his resin dreads in regular use. He'd long since left mini gaming himself, and was pleasantly surprised to find that any of his old dreads even existed anymore. As such it seems that this dread is the sole survivor!

Like many of my older minis, this Dread has fought in several past armies including the: Iron Hands, Silver Skulls, Chaos Undivided (up to and probably including the Red Corsairs prior to FW getting ahold of them), and The Blood Eagles (CSM Warband of my own creation and in who's colors you see above) just to name a few. 

Back in the day of fire frenzying dreadnoughts, I changed it's weapons loadout from the then equipped twin-lascannon and missile launcher to the current twin-heavy bolter (a FW piece), and a dreadnought CCW with heavy flamer to minimize my own casualties. That said, I distinctly remember it killing three of my own chaos marines during it's battlefield-debut with these new weapons.

Damnit.

Anyways, skipping forward to the present, and this venerable model has begun the first stage of ritual cleansing in a bath of Simple Green. After a few weeks of that it'll be fully-stripped first of its paint, the old, skinny base as well as any incriminating CSM bits, before being refit for battle with loyalist marines once more. I'll be keeping the twin-heavy bolter, but given that dreads still suck in close combat, I'll be replacing the CCW arm with a missile launcher. This will relegate it to purely the role of fire support, but given that heavy firepower of any kind is generally lacking amongst the few survivors of my (now quite small) 40k armies these days, that'll be just fine I think.


And if it still sucks? Well...its a dread, so what did you expect from it anyways?
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5 comments:

  1. KushialNovember 5, 2015 at 7:13 AM

    Hey now, no dissing the Dreadnoughts. I love my contemptors and iron clads, and even basic venerables are good for that drop pod to kill off that hidden tank on turn one with a multi-melta shot. The Space Marine Dreadnought is a finely honed and forged killing machine of exceptional capability.

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  2. Da Masta CheefNovember 5, 2015 at 8:04 AM

    Contemptors are a whole different animal from the standard dread.

    However with the various Xenos giant stompy robots all going to the MC stat line (the poor Orks excluded, as usual), in close combat they generally murder dreads. That and an ancient, venerable hero, encased in an admantium shell really ought not be a drop podded 1-trick pony.

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  3. nevernessNovember 5, 2015 at 2:03 PM

    I haven't seen that thing in so long that I forgot about it! And, yes I agree, dreads suck in the game. But I still like them!

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  4. Knight of Infinite ResignationNovember 5, 2015 at 3:36 PM

    I don't know about Simplegreen, but a lot of strippers soften resin, so beware!

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  5. Da Masta CheefNovember 6, 2015 at 7:02 AM

    Hmm, I've never had that issue before...still, to be safe I won't forget about it and leave it in there for a year or more like I did with my old predator! ;-)

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