Warhammer 40,000 Venerable Dreadnought review

Dreadnoughts are large walking tanks piloted by mortally wounded Space Marines that have been entombed within so that they may continue to serve the Emperor of replica watches mankind.

Venerable Dreadnoughts are the oldest Dreadnoughts in service and have fought in thousands of battles over several hundred or even thousands of years.

First impressions

The first thing you notice about the new plastic Venerable Dreadnought is that it looks more like a normal Dreadnought than the old metal model did, which was very ornate. For me this is a good thing, it fit’s with the game background which for the past several thousand years has seen the Imperium of man outlaw scientific or engineering experimentation. In this world without progress we would expect the core chassis of a Venerable Dreadnought to be identical to an ordinary Dreadnought, with the addition of extra detailing and honours on its armour, added over centuries of service.

So all in all, first impressions are positive.

The pro’s

The new Venerable Dreadnought kit is fundamentally a normal Dreadnought kit with the addition of dozens of customisation options. The basic kit can be overlaid by numerous armour plates & panels meaning that each Venerable Dreadnought can look subtly different, see sprues. As far as I’m aware this is a new feature in a Games Workshop model and one I’d really like to see applied to future kits.

Another great feature is the fact that weapons are easily swappable out of the box, they can just be pushed into place meaning no additional work (magnetisation or pining) is required to allow this to be possible. Weapons supplied with this kit are an Assault Cannon, a Lascannon and a Plasma Cannon. Weapons are also completely interchangeable with the two other Space Marine Dreadnought kits, the standard Dreadnought and the Ironclad Dreadnought.

Possibly the best part of the kit is the number of options for the sarcophagus, the bit where the pilot is housed, there are are 4 sarcophagus panels, two of which use either of the supplied sarcophagus visors and can optionally use one of two available sarcophagus front plates. The other two sarcophagi are designed to be used with any of the three marine helmets included in the kit. This means there is a total of 14 different sarcophagi to choose from, quite an achievement when we consider how little plastic was used to achieve this level of customisation.

Finally this model is very easy to build, the core model comes together in no time at all and it’s then just a matter of adding any of the details you want.

The con’s

So far so good, there are some great things going on with this kit that are really easy to pin point, some of the negatives are a little less easy to nail down.

Firstly, weapons options, as mentioned previously there are three weapons provide with this kit, an Assault Cannon, a Lascannon and a Plasma Cannon. My big question here is where is the Multi-Melta, which is after all the default weapon for a Dreadnought (Venerable or not), we now have three Dreadnought kits none of which include this weapon. Due to the very modular nature of this model it should have been possible to add this option to one of the sprues.

Secondly, and here is where things are a little hard to pin down, for all it’s great features I can’t help but still feel slightly disappointed by this kit. When we get down to the core components of the model they are identical to a model that was first sculpted several years ago.

I’m not talking about how the model looks here, as mentioned above I feel the fact that the new Venerable Dreadnought looks more more like the Standard Dreadnought is a good thing but I would have liked to have seen more thought given to how the kit works.

I’m thinking that maybe it could have been made more poseable. The legs for example, once built, are are essentially a solid lump of plastic from ankles to waist, as is the Dreadnought close combat weapon arm. If these parts were broken down into a few extra components there would be a much larger number of posing options available. The addition of hip joints would have allowed the model to look like it was moving or standing still and the addition of an elbow joint would have made it possible to pose the model so that it appears to be attacking with it’s close combat weapon or taking aiming with it’s storm bolter or heavy flamer.

This would have allowed your Venerable Dreadnought to really stand out on the battlefield and is a real missed opportunity in my opinion.

Summary

There are some really good things going on with this model, the ability to customise the little details is something I’d love to see extended to more new Games Workshop kits as it is having identical details that often stops a model looking truly unique.

That said I can’t help but be slightly disappointed by the Venerable Dreadnought due to the fact that it is essentially an old model with window dressing, no matter how nice that window dressing is, meaning the new Venerable Dreadnought gets an..

Overall score: 7/10