Dreadnoughts and Venerables - best builds?

I built a dread for a tourney yesterday and quite enjoyed it, so I was wondering what the best build is for dreadnoughts and venerable dreadnoughts?

I've also seen the furioso and irnclad - can we take those, where do I get the rules for those from?

Having come from the world of 'nids, I'm not too versed in the art of dreadnought building...

For Grey Knights there's one standard build that's absolutely awesome, and hated by everyone:
Dreadnought with 2 sets of Twin Linked Autocannons and psybolt ammo(making them str8) dubbed the psyfleman build. This thing is very cheap at only 135pts and absolutely murders any light mech, and thanks to hull points can be a threat to the heavier stuff like Land Raiders.
The only other build I ever bothered with was assault cannon with psybolt ammo and heavy flamer with psyflame ammo to provide reinforced aegis and some close range fire/assault support to my footsloggers, but in 6th I've found them too vulnerable to the enemies mid ranged stuff like plasma so i just stick to psyfleman.
I wouldn't bother at all with venerables unless you really need lots of dreads, or you want to take other heavy support slots. Venerables lost a lot of their survivability in 6th with most people these days going for glancing hits.
Unfortunately we can't take furiosos or ironclads, except as allies. If you want to find out more about them Furiosos are Blood Angels, and ironclads are in the vanilla space marine book.

Thanks bri - I was looking at the Assault Cannon/psybolt and heavy flamer with psyflame myself

I think I may invest in a new dread for the new year with the autocannons

Venerable are to expansive for what they give.. They get no special weapon load outs the normal dread can't take. With twin linked weapons u don't need bs5

What are peoples opinions on the missile launcher for a dread? I'm loving the idea of them, but do they actually work?

At this rate, I can see myself building at least 4 dreadnoughts!

Missile launchers these days are inferior to a psybolt autocannon, which is a shame, because I still have 3 lascannon/missile launcher dreads from the old DH days when they were the only viable long range we had.

For 130 points you could give one a twin-linked heavy flamer with another heavy flamer on the powerfist with psyflame. Obviously he's not going to be a key part of your line-up like your heavy support auto-cannon dreadnoughts, but he's going to come in useful at dissuading ork hordes from getting too close to your thin silver line until he's dealt with.

If using him offensively you can always pack him on the back of a raven and hope he doesn't break his ankles on landing. At 2500 points I'm thinking of using one to escort a dual incinerator interceptor squadron. It's basically a distraction, but one an opponent has to deal with while my main force achieves objectives.

Bigbri is right about the high strength mid-range guns being able to take the dread out, but seeing as it only has heavy flamers I can hide the walker out of LoS until it's needed without the feeling that I'm wasting firepower.
Or I can drop it from the Raven like an adamantium, promethium spewing bouncing bomb.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying this is a 'best build' or even a 'good' build but it's good to keep your options open.

Yeah the missile launcher is the same points as an auto cannon and not twin linked. Sure it's ap3 but its doesn't do any bonus dmg to a vehicle like ap2 or ap1 so the TL ac is the way to go. At. 48" it's one of our most reliable long range fire support.

If your up against hordes like sia said, the double flamer looks boss on paper. And you get to keep the dccw for destroying vehicles. And in cc you are i4

Looks great on paper but GK have much better methods of killing hordes.
Generally speaking there are hordes that can't touch your dread that you'll assault and everything else which you probably don't want to unless you are fully kitted out with a combat orientated dread (hint: GK don't have them).

Psyfleman dreads are still the best/cheapest option available for anti tank across pretty much all armies. If you find not many people take mech spam anymore they might be less useful, but generally speaking they are amazing.

Zealadin wrote:Psyfleman dreads are still the best/cheapest option available for anti tank across pretty much all armies. If you find not many people take mech spam anymore they might be less useful, but generally speaking they are amazing.

+1 sir!

+2 brother!

Psyfleman spam is the only way to go. Two TL autocannons with psy ammo. This config covers pretty much all of the GK army weaknesses.

The only time you might consider anything else is a multimelta and heavy flamer with DCCW IF you build your army around stormravens. A charging melee dread from a stormraven can kill vehicles and tie up shooty units quite well although only very specific builds will benefit from this one and you need to gear your whole army around this if you want to have it work well.

I ran a dread with psybolt assault cannon and missile launcher at a recent tournament and he did really well; took 2 hits across 3 games and managed to pop a fair few enemy units...he will make another appearance shortly...

Ven dreads have been nerfed to absolute uselessness. Dont ever take a ven dread, even in friendly fluffy games. they are to crappy even for that now.