Carcharadon Venerable Dreadnought.

This is my finished Carcharadon Venerable Dreadnought.

He has gone through 3 different iterations to get to this point and its been a long stuttering journey. I built the Mk1 version of this dread approx 7 years ago. The GW venerable dread kit had not long been released and i knew i wanted to go nuts with a 50% or 60% conversion. My first plan was to use the legs from the Sisters of Battle Penitent Engine but quickly ditched this idea as they were metal at the time and i wanted more freedom with the pose. Imperial Guard sentinels were really the only choice but that brought 2 issues.
 1. They were spindly and having seen them used before for a dread i knew they could look comical and chicken like if done wrong.
 2. The main issue with using long legs like the ones from the IG sentinel kit was the imbalance it created when you came to the small weapon sponsors the dread kits have as arms which causes a mechanical T-Rex effect.
I have seen people use the arms from Ork mech kits to decent effect and even the arms from the above mentioned Penitent Engine can work too but again with a limit on pose. It wasn't long before i realised there was not a one stop fix for the look i had in mind. I would have to treat both arms like individual conversions in their own right and for the model to look balanced it was best if the structure matched the legs.... so one sentinel kit became 2 sentinel kits.

You may have run the math in your head by this point and realised that this model was not cheap... eeek.

Here is the Mk1 version of the dread i built.

I was pleased at the time with the first pass of this model but as time went by and each time i looked at it something wasn't quite right. I decided at some point that he would be back on the projects list and every time i looked at him i got a cleaner idea on what i didn't like but he stayed like this while i worked through different projects.

Eventually i caved in and realised the 2 arms were poorly done, the pose was nearly what i wanted but i felt you had to tell yourself he was moving at speed and if you didn't the model just looked like he was going to tip over. Also i have no idea what the wings were representing?

First to get an overhaul were the arms. the original main weapon was removed and i knew i had to build my own weapon that was balanced, fit the size of the model correctly and looked like it was actually a weapon designed for a purpose rather than a gun stuck onto a IG Sentinel leg.

I kept the sentinel leg as the main strut and used it also as the barrel of the weapon. The end of a predator auto-cannon completed the barrel conversion while the main body was buffed with the addition of a dread meltagun underbelly.


The left arm was a little more tricky as i actually liked the mace weapon but felt there was something not right with the finished look. The plan was to take the weapon off and rework it but when i removed the weapon i broke the hand... shiiITT! This is one of those moments where a negative actually becomes a positive. Years ago i bought 2 horrifically painted, badly mauled unusable 2nd hand Abbadon The Despoiler models from A1 in Glasgow. I have no idea why i bought them as they just sat in a box.... until this moment. The claw is a reworked venerable dread hand with the fingers chopped and re-positioned and then the lightning claws from the Abbadon character model pinned in place. In my eyes it works better than the mace but it only happened as i broke the original and kinda panic fixed it.
If you are reading this and you sold 2 shitty Abbadon The Despoiler models too A1 in Glasgow about 7 years ago??? here they are...the claws at least.... oh and thank you.

The original base was a normal dread base with 2 terminator size bases cut, shaped and glued together but i was never pleased with it. Rebasing not only makes the finished model look better but allowed me to tweak the pose. The original pose above was supposed to look like the dread was advancing at speed but it also looked unbalanced. I was able to remove the feet and work the joints out a little to give the model a more stable look. He seems to be walking now rather than running.

The head, front armour panels and the wing armour decorations were all changed to new pieces.  As a side note. I fully stripped the model of paint before starting the new conversion work. The model was fully stripped with DIY paint stripper. I covered the model in stripper and leave it for an hour. I then clean it all off with washing up liquid and then re apply more paint stripper to clean any residue. A final clean and dry and its good as it was on the sprue.

I mentioned before that there were 3 versions of this dread. The 2nd version was the rebuilt model but painted in the original red of my own marine chapter. I am not a great fan of constantly stripping paint. I only really do it now for one off models or old rare pieces that have not been given the level of quality they deserve but i decided to change this dreads colour scheme as for one very simple reason but im going into that in a later blog post.

Why Carcharadons?

Carcharadons are a fairly unknown entity in the background of the 40k universe. When i was a kid they were only called Space Sharks but as 40k grew up a little bit and started to take itself alot more seriously, the Space Sharks vanished as GW became drenched in Ultra Marines, Blood Angels & Space Wolves.
Forge World and their Imperial Armour books finally brought them back to life under the guise of The Carcharadons with new symbolism and a very loose back story. Now the reasons i love them so much stem from my childhood.... and Chaos.

In appearance they are almost Chaos Renegades. Pale white or grey skin with pupil-less eyes that are simply jet black wells and mouths filled with serrated razor sharp teeth...... sharks basically.
They are also very close to Chaos in their style of warfare. Brutal and pretty over the top with no real care for things in the way. Systematically crippling the plasma cores on Badab Pimaris causing the the death of an entire planet and rendering the planet inhospitable when your orders are to take the planet at any cost is maybe too literal for some but if you wanted nicely nice then maybe be more specific. All in all in my mind they take as much enjoyment from fighting Imperial forces as they do from helping them. In D&D they would be Chaotic Good. They are the good guys until you give them a reason to be the bad guys.
The vague back story allows me to do what ever i want with them too. When i started in the hobby, I always played Chaos but that was a time when Chaos was an unregulated force for destruction and carnage but in my head it was an unregulated force for creativity and experimentation. Each Chaos renegade was a an island. Totally different from the next until GW felt they could make more money buy essentially turning Chaos Renegades into just evil Space Marines. This change turned them into a regulated marine chapter prime for mass consumption with the only difference being the inclusion of 8 pointed stars, spikes and tusks..... bloody tusks.
Carcharadons are the Chaos Renegades i want but without planting a flag and burdening the whole thing with expectation, rules and canon. Simply put, they are an official clean slate that can fight everybody.

Final Model Component List:::

• Space Marine Venerable Dreadnought.
• Imperial Guard Sentinel Walker Kit x2.
• Space Marine Predator Auto Cannon.
• Space Marine Dreadnought Meltagun.
• Chaos Knight Head.
• Abbadon The Despoiler Lightning Claw.
• Undead Command Sprue Banner.
• Electronic Chip From My Bank Card. Yes Really.
• Thousand Sons Chaos Space Marine.
• Cables From The ForgeWorld Blight Drone.
• Space Marine Rhino Hatch Storm Bolter.

I hope you like the finished model.

Thanks.