Invictor Dreadnought?

 Stupid Tom, doesn't he know it’s a warsuit not a dreadnought?  No shit Inquisitor Obiwan Sherlock Cluseau.  But Warhammer is all about making it yours, so I made it mine.

Why

Ok, so, first up, in my mind there is a difference between a Walker, and a Mech.  So for the sake of today’s article I’m going to define a walker as a vehicle with legs, but those legs are basically autonomous and the pilot just pushed the joystick to whatever to “go forwards” and the vehicle automatically makes the legs do whatever they need to do to achieve that.  The Imperial Guard Sentinel is a classic Walker, but also maybe the Aeldari War Walker and the Mechanicus Ironstrider.  Think of it kind of like riding a horse, you have the reins and give directions, but the horse decides where to put its feet.

On the other hand, a Mech is, for my purposes at least, a machine that allows a person to directly control a large mechanical body.  This can be via control machinery that reads the pilots limb movements and duplicates them, such as the Sisters of Battle Paragon Warsuit or the Grey Knights Nemesis Dreadknight.  Alternatively this can be via direct neural control such as Imperial Knights, Ork Killa Kans and Deffdreads and Space Marine Dreadnoughts.

Notice that Walkers are not very good at melee, whereas Mechs are.  It's hard to fight if you don't directly control your arms.  

So the pilot on the Warsuit annoyed me.  Partially because of the classic “lightly armoured pilot on the front of a heavily armoured vehicle is an obvious weakness” but also as he’s clearly using a few joysticks to pilot the Walker, which begs the question of how the hell he could use its arms to fight in melee.  Given the presence of its melee weapon, and indeed the weapon's apparent manual dexterity sophisticated enough to use a (giant) pistol, it should be a Mech, not a Walker.

That pistol though.  God damn.  It’s goofy as hell and I love it hard.  One of the things I like most about Mechs is the size difference between them and normal stuff.  I never really liked Gundam because they’re mostly in space.  Give me mechs fighting in cities and picking up people and throwing cars at each other and such nonsense.  So having what is recognisably a heavy bolter rigged as a pistol really does it for me.  It emphasises the scale with a built in comparison, and it also shows that the Invictor is a Mech with complete manual dexterity.  

So, when considering how to make the Invictor work for me I found a bunch of Etsy sellers selling a simple conversion piece cockpit.  This fixed so many issues for me immediately.  But with that done, I also considered that there was no reason it still had to be a Warsuit (especially as the cockpit no longer has an obvious hatch on it) and I considered instead having it be a Dreadnought and it just made so much more sense.

Lets face it, a Space Marine is already basically a mini-Mech.  Wearing an armoured powered exoskeleton and then climbing into an even bigger armoured exoskeleton is pretty dumb.  Also, why would you take it as a stealth/recon vehicle when you have actual skimmers that would just be better in every way?

So, instead let us consider Brother Navaer.  As one of the chapter’s foremost recon experts, he was naturally preserved as a Dreadnought when mortality wounded.  But he didn’t adjust well to his new situation.  He didn’t love suddenly being a big heavy brick, it wasn’t the way of making war he’d ever excelled at.  So he kept asking the Techmarines to strip his chassis back, make it lighter and faster and conceal its emissions.  

It no longer matters that it isn't a very sensible recon vehicle (Storm Speeders make way more sense), because that isn't what it was designed for, it’s simply a dreadnought that has been modified to be as stealthy as possible.  Poor chap probably hangs around with all his Phobos Brothers and gives great advice to them, but gets very frustrated having to constantly be left behind at the FRV as they sneak in the last few km without him.

How many sub assemblies?

Yes.

This isn’t my first rodeo with a Dreadnought, and they have a lot of bare metal to paint in awkward places, which I have found to be very tedious and time consuming.  This chap was going to be even worse, so I decided to save myself quite a bit of effort by building it in sub assemblies and undercoating them in either silver or black as appropriate.  This went a little overboard when it got to the toes, I wasn’t quite that obsessed about spraying parts differently.  But I really struggled to pose them without glueing the hips in place first, so I decided to leave them off and only attach them later when it was time to attach the subassemblies.

Other things of note: 

The antennae are magnetised; I try to do this wherever possible so when you inevitably catch them they just twist or pop off instead of getting permanently damaged.  

I shortened the heavy stubbers because the original length just seemed silly to me.  When would he pause to carefully aim his belly at someone when he already has three other anti-infantry weapons that are easier to use?  I figure these are really just used for suppressive fire when approaching an infantry position or similar, they don’t need accuracy.

Finishing up

So there you have it, one completed Invictor Dreadnought.  I don’t think it’s going to be a top favourite, but I’m very pleased to have it in my arsenal.  Partially because I just feel I should, since it’s a Phobos (ish) unit and I play Raven Guard.  I like the idea of using an army purely made up of Scouts, Phobos and Skimmers, and this fits into that.  

But it’s also a weaker Dreadnought, which I think is quite important.  There are a lot of melee vehicles in 40k, and having none in your army often leaves a painful gap in your lineup. But the Space Marine ones have generally, in my opinion, been a bit strong.  So being able to field something a little lighter lets me avoid always having to take a potent Redemptor, without being entirely devoid of melee vehicles.