Editing Dreadknight (section)

== Design (And Flaws) ==
The Dreadknight suit isn't awful in and of itself-- a [[Dreadnought]]-sized suit of armor that doesn't require the operator to be near-dead is a reasonable thing for a chapter to have, hence why most chapters have Terminator and Centurion armor. This is especially true for the Grey Knights, as they regularly take on massively powerful daemons with relatively few Knights, and while they are proportionally swimming in Dreadnoughts, they could always use that firepower in a usable form any Grey Knight could jump in. It does lead to some [[what|shoe-on-head]] grade rules interactions, like how your techmarine can repair your dreadnought but not your dreadknight - although that one is surprisingly justified (see below - everyone just shoots the driver).

The problem is that that it looks really silly. As in, "the pilot looks like he's in a baby carrier" silly, and from a distance it looks like a hideous mishmash of mechanical bits and pieces to boot. Even a [[Penitent Engine]], which arguably has the same sort of shape, has the contrast of some hapless victim chained against an enormous metal monstrosity surrounding it. [[Paragon Warsuit|Aye!]] In the Dreadknight's case, armor on top of armor gives it no dominant contours or lines in the same way that, say, a Dreadnought or Battlesuit does.

Combine this with the crunch giving the Dreadknight the saves of Terminator armor and the look of the pilot already wearing Termie armor, meaning by all accounts whenever he's getting hit, everyone with half a brain on the enemy's side is shooting him out of the middle, and you get a look so incompetently-designed that even "because [[grimdark]]" can't explain why it turned out that way. It really does look like the designer was watching Dexter's Laboratory/Matrix and thought his backpack robot suit was great Imperium material, or they saw Aliens at the time and thought that the Grey Knights needed power loaders. It also has a giant hammer.

Add the Grey Knights' [[Matt Ward|checkered reputation with the community]] up until 6th Ed and you get what could be the undisputed champ of units kneecapped by fluff. Awesome as a Space Marine wearing a fuckoff-huge suit of armor to go beat up really big things could be, if it's not another toy for the shiny special snowflake chapter, it's also one that doesn't even have the courtesy to look sensibly designed. Cue mockery.

===[[/tg/ Gets Shit Done|Modelers Get Shit Done]]===

Since a lot of the Dreadknight's problems are fluff and aesthetics-related, it's very easy to make a better dreadknight with a little lateral thinking: just replace its baby carrier torso with something a bit more logical. Feel free to model one by attaching its limbs to the chassis of a dreadnought to give it a torso that makes sense. A quick Google search will give you plenty of reference models to work off of, and [[Counts As|as long as it plays like a dreadknight,]] nobody will care all that much. Exposed-head chassis seem to be pretty popular for this, so you can't have everything, but screw those models. It's your dreadknight and nobody can tell you how to build it as long as it's not sillier than the stock model, which gives you pretty much infinite leeway as long as you’re not fucking insane. If you really must the show the Grey Knight inside now there's the [[Invictor Tactical Warsuit]].

Really, when you get right down to it, if you think about the dreadknight bitz as two arms and two legs with where the baby carrier would go as a blank canvas, the possibilities are infinite. Make a beefed-up sentinel. Create a penitent engine on steroids. Have orks loot it and turn it into a kustom mega dread. If you have money to toss away, buy a knight castigator and work from there. Noughtknight conversions are just the beginning.

The [[Imperial Knight|Armiger Knights]] also present an additional option. With Armigers being around the same size as a Dreadknight but far less derpy looking, you could just slap some Dreadknight weapons onto the Armiger and run that as your count-as Dreadknight, no fuss, no muss. You could say it's being driven by an Ordo Malleus Inquisitor.

As of 8th Edition and revelation of the [[Adeptus Custodes]], the coming of the Contemptor-Galatus Dreadnought has now given your Dreadknight some design options beyond your wildest dreams. Change some of the iconography a little, maybe replace the forearms, and you could be walking on sunshine.