New King Of Suppression

Ah the rifleman dread. For those unaware or who can't tell from the picture, rifleman dreads are the slang term given to Space Marine Dreadnoughts who are armed with 2 twin linked autocannons.

Putting out 4 strength 7 shots a turn with re-rolls to hit, they may not sound impressive on paper, but they are the kings of suppressing light vehicles and transports and have become a popular addition to many Space Marine armies.

I use three of them myself, hitting the points sweet spot and levelling a perfect balance between anti-tank and anti-personal, they have come into their own time and time again on the battlefield. I particularly like chewing up expensive Thunder Wolf Calvary with mine, but I digress.

A modern day classic, but Grey Knights simply weren't happy enough...

So they brought in PSYBOLT AMMO!

what this does is increase the strength of a weapon by one. Only certain weapons though, bolters, storm bolters, heavy bolters (which were expected). But also assault cannons and autocannons! What this means is you can arm dreadnoughts with psybolted assault cannons (effectively turning them into psycannons with 24" S7 AP4 Heavy4 Rending) or psybolted autocannons, turning our favourite weapon up to Strength 8! This is the sweet spot where we can instant kill T4 units, wound monstrous creatures on 2+ and even harass Land Raiders (although I still wouldn't bother with the latter, but it's nice to have), as well as doing everything it did before, just better.

The cost of this awesome unlock? 5 points.

That's pretty amazing on an already tastily priced unit, but as usual that wasn't enough for our boys... ooo no!

Being a Grey Knight vehicle, dreadnoughts in our list have the psychic pilot rule, and the fortitude power. Which means, on passing a psychic test at the beginning of our turn, they can ignore any stunned or shaken results they have received on the previous turn. So this awesome base of suppresion firepower is now incredibly hard to suppress itself!

The cost of this upgrade? Oh yes, 5 points.

So, improving on an already good design. Sounds like Grey Knights to me! Expect to see alot of these on the field. Also you might see quite alot of psybolt-assault cannon & nemesis DCCW armed dreads who have been given the ability to be summoned by the librarian (at the cost of... um... 5 points! Seeing a theme?).

Thoughts and comments welcomed. Will YOU be using them?