Grey Knights Dreadnought - Felix's Gaming Pages

An excellent birthday present I got, was a Grey Knights Dreadnought from Forgeworld.

This is a fantastically detailed model, with lots of engravings, purity seals

The only thing missing are the arms???

Not sure whether to go for the Grey Knights arms, or make as Mortis version… Yes I know the fluff doesn’t support Grey Knights Mortis pattern dreadnoughts, but when have I ever been one for following fluff to the letter… oh me the heretic! I am thinking about Lascannons for range and Autocannons for firepower.

The Mk IV from Forgeworld is a really nice model, and when you look at the new Venerable Dreadnought from the main Games Workshop, you wonder why they didn’t just copy the Forgeworld model.

The GW model looks clunky and as though the venerable components were just stuck on, whereas with the Forgeworld model the detailing is part of the model.

There is also the matter of the “helmet” which on the Forgeworld model looks fine, but just looks “plain weird” on the new GW model.

If you have a choice, get the Forgeworld model everytime.

Before I think about painting I have taken a look at how others have painted their Grey Knights Dreadnoughts and there are some fantastic examples.

Forgeworld have a nice painted example on their website.

Beautifully painted as are most of the FW models and certainly very inspirational.

Agis Neugebauer has some beautfully painted Grey Knights on his website including this fantastic Dreadnought. Next to his (on the left) is the Games Workshop conversion as shown on the main GW site.

This is a winning Golden Demon entry with some nice pictures here.

This is a refreshing change from the silver of most Grey Knights.

As you can see there are some fantastic painters out there and some very inspirational models, hopefully I can achieve a result which is similar.

These are the parts that you get.

You can see the detail on this close-up.

This is another view of the parts this time with the bits that you need to cut off highlighted.

These are the cleaned parts.

One of the issues I had with the model was the large piece of superfluous resin on the back which I literally had to hack off.

This was no small piece of sprue this was a large chunk of resin.

It was a simple model to put together and went together really easily.

I then flocked the base using GW sand.

I like the sand as it has small stones in it. After leaving the sand to dry fully, the next stage was the undercoat. I decided on a black undercoat. I used a GW black spray.

When I was at GamesDay 2006 I got a couple of weapons for my Grey Knights Dreadnought from the Forgeworld stand.

I got a Psycannon…

and a Mortis pattern twin-linked Lascannon weapon.

Yes I know according to the rules and fluff that this is not a “legal” combination, but when I have ever followed the fluff! It was a slightly beardy choice, as generally my opponent uses a lot of tanks, therefore a Dreadnought Tank Killer is a better choice than a close combat version and I don’t like the missile launcher weapon variant.

Both weapons came with small amounts of flash, the Psycannon targeter has a small amount of sprue to be removed, see the red shaded area.

The Lascannons had a much bigger piece of sprue see the red shaded area (which looks small in this photo) which took a bit of cleaning to get off.

Here is a photograph of the Dreadnought with the arms temporarily attached.

(For some reason) I gave the Dreadnought weapons a white undercoat.

I have had a Mark IV Forge World Grey Knights Dreadnought on my workbench for a while.

After getting some weapon arms for the model. I gave the main model a black undercoat and started base coating with a metallic paint.

Getting it out from storage, I decided to almost start again and gave the model a base spray of Leadbelcher. I sprayed the arms separately.

I then attached the weapon arms.

What I wanted to do was to give the model some shadow. I gave the model a wash of Nuln Oil Shade.

For the next stage I used some Citadel Leadbelcher. I took a large brush and gave the model, what I would call, a heavy drybrush. I put paint on the brush, and then used some kitchen towel to remove most of the paint, and then using a stippling process added paint to the model.

This removed some of the pooling of the shade paint.

As you can see from this before photo.

I followed this up with some lighter drybrushing, first with Base Grey Knights Steel, then Layer Ironbreaker and finally Layer Stormhost Silver.

The aim was to add brightness to the Dreadnought.

I did intend to paint the base for the model next, but upon checking the workbench feature for my Grey Knights, I realised that I needed a paint I didn’t have. For my Grey Knights I painted the flocked (well sanded) bases with Bestial Brown and then drybrushed with Bleached Bone. After that I went over the edge of the slottabase again with Bestial Brown.

I don’t have a pot of Bestial Brown, and Citadel no longer manufacture that colour. According to the Dakka Dakka paint compatibility chart the best option is Mournfang Brown.

I did though paint the paper for the purity seals on the Dreadnought using Layer Ushabti Bone. I also used Bronze and Gold Sharpie pens for some of the metallic aspects of the model.