Dreadnoughts are thousands-upon-thousands of years old, old enough to make even their near-dead occupants look young. The methods required to build a Dreadnought from scratch have been lost in the mists of time. Some are supposedly old enough to have taken part in the Great Crusade 10,000 years ago when the Emperor still walked as a man. These most-ancient relics are known as Venerable Dreadnoughts. Given their ancient status, it follows that a few of them out there still brandish experimental technologies, Chapter-specific weapon types, variant power generators, or different armoured casings altogether. Perhaps a Chapter lacks the raw material to refit their Dreadnoughts with the latest mark of weaponry, or maybe the Dreadnought's inhabitant is just plain stubborn — after all, who's going to argue with a Dreadnought?

Modeling your Dreadnoughts so that they stand out as Venerable can be as simple as slapping a bunch of neat bitz on the standard plastic kit or as involved as redesigning the chassis and weaponry. As Dreadnoughts are often rather important centrepieces to any Space Marine army, it pays to give them a little extra special attention. On these next few hallowed pages, you'll see how two experienced modellers took on the challenge of making the already-extraordinary Dreadnought even more so.