Dreadtober: Planning

Hi folks,

Dreadtober is nearly upon us and it is time to start planning. My first idea this year was to get myself one of the new Deathwatch Venerable Dreadnoughts. The wifey saw me checking all of the different dreadnoughts out online and justifiably questioned “Don’t you already have three of those?”… I have six! On second thought, there are better things for me to spend a disposable $80 on, so I spent a bit of time in my garage exploring other options.

My second idea was to finish Old Six Eyes, a Carnifex that I have been putting together for a while now. I may actually complete him during October but, as he is already half finished, it didn’t seem much of a challenge.

At the bottom of one of my bitz boxes, I happened upon a horrible looking Iron Clad Dreadnought that I acquired some time ago. I think it came from Craig R. who may have got it from someone else. For the past couple of years it has been sitting in my “too hard” basket. Not anymore! Here is a look at some of the problems I will have to overcome:

Take a close look: do you see anything weird?

I'm not a big fan of the additions to the sarcophagus. The segmented armour of the Iron Clad is iconic and I would love to get it back.

What the? That thing has to go. I wonder what was used to attach it?

Terminator shoulder pads for knee pads and a broken seismic hammer. I'm going to have to do something about that...

I still liked the idea of a Deathwatch Dreadnought. Remembering that I actually have a Deathwatch member in my Dark Angels army, I looked there for inspiration. Hephaeston was my character in the Deathwatch roleplaying game; a Dark Angels Techmarine that specialises in exotic weaponry and the hunting of xenos (two pursuits which are not mutually exclusive). Constructing the model, so that it paid homage to all of the factions this guy was aligned to, was a real challenge. After the campaign finished, we played a 40K game to decide his fate, a rollicking six way battle in which he was eventually slain by a Scythed Heirodule (of all things). The idea that he may have survived that battle in some form is the heart of my Dreadtober project this year.

My task will be to clean up the myriad problems of the Iron Clad Dreadnought I have and strip the primer off it. To be representative of a Techmarine, the Dreadnought is going to need some big servo arms, perhaps including a plasma cutter, as well as a potential coil. To really champion the theme, I am going to arm it with a Conversion Beamer and Seismic Hammer (with Meltagun). Any iconography I can fit on, whether it be Dark Angels, Adeptus Mechanicus or Ordo Xenos, will be a bonus. Here are some other bits that I found that will be used in the project (...somehow...):

Some may say I am wasting a perfectly good Ork dreadnought, but I am getting a reputation for reclaiming and re-purposing Ork bits for more... respectable... projects.

So that’s the easy part. Now the real work begins.

See you across the table,

M4cr0