Grey Knight review, Dreadnoughts both types

All the Marine chapters have these, even the eeevil chapters, Dreadnoughts. They are the sort-of and close to dead warriors thrown in a robot body to continue the fight. Sure it sounds great, but sometimes dead is better.

What Dreadnoughts should look like

The Grey Knights are no exception. They can field two types of Dreadnoughts, an elite Venerable and a heavy regular. These come with both the Grey Knight warrior and vehicle special rules; the Aegis, Psy Pilot, Fortitude, Preferred Enemy (Demons), and the Aegis which is reinforced and a bit better. They both are armor 12,12,10, have 2 attacks and initiative 4. The regular or heavy support Dreadnought has a WS 4 and BS 4. The elite Venerable has a WS 5 and BS 5 so it is a bit better. it also has the special Venerable rule. These both come armed with a Nemesis Doomfist with built-in storm bolter, mulit-melta and smoke launchers. The elite version will run $1.75 and the heavy version is cheaper at $1.15.

Now both of these have a version of the Aegis, the Reinforced Aegis. It gives all the benefits as the regular version but has a range of 12" and instead of a -1 it gives a -4. So if you fire a psy power at a unit within 12", or at the Dreadnought itself, then you are taking a -4 to your leadership. That will make even the most powerful psykers cringe.

The Venerable rule is the same as it is for all other Astartes chapters. If you r Dreadnought suffers a penetrating or glancing hit you can force your opponent to re-roll that dice. You must however take the second result. It can really help keep these elite Dreadnoughts around longer than your opponent wants.

These guys also share the same wargear and weapons. Hell, they even cost the exact same points.
They may replace their multi-melta for...
Heavy Flamer- free
Twin-Linked Heavy Bolter- +5
Twin-Linked Autocannon-+10
Plasma/ Assault Cannon-+10
Twin-Linked lascannon-+30

Replace Doomfist storm bolter with heavy flamer-+10
Replace Doomfist with Missile Launcher/ Twin-Linked Autocannon-+5

May have...
Searchlight-+1
Psybolt Ammo-+5
Psyflame Ammo-+5
Warp Stabilization Field-+5
Truesilver Armor-+10
Extra Armor- +15

I like the concept of Dreadnoughts. Back when I started I loved these things. I have since gotten away from them though. Probably due to the fact I have a Chaos army and they kind of suck in that codex.
Now, like all Dreadnoughts, these can be built to be anti-horde, anti armor, or all-arounder's, yet there seems to be only one choice for the Grey Knight Dreadnought.......this guy.



What all Grey Knight Dreadnoughts look like

 The twin auto cannon on for each arm and psybolt ammo. Now this thing is being taken in pairs, trios or even more.Why? Well it wrecks armor with 4 twin-linked strength 8 shots. Personally I like this pattern, but I have had little success with it. I have used them a few time and they can wreck the Rhinos of the world fairly well. However, they tend to get ripped open by Demon Princes and Obliterator lascannons pretty easily.

The biggest problem with Grey Knight Dreadnoughts is that everyone is taking the same pattern. It will get annoying, but it is the world of gaming. Just remember back to how much you all hated Long Fangs and thier 4-5 missile launchers (unless you were a Space Wolf). Well, the twin auto cannon x2 with psybolt ammo is the new to hate/to have unit. I don't think that will change either as gamers are a fickle lot and don't try something new to see if it works. Grey Knights will be bringing (and boy have they) these to the battlefields, so be ready.