Librarian Dreadnought

"And for an added bonus! I can fly like Superman! Our Spiritual Liege has truly gifted us!"

Ah yes, the Blood Angels' infamous and we mean INFAMOUS Librarian Dreadnought. Potentially debated as one of the most derptastic and bullshittery idea to ever grace the face of Ward, the Librarian Dreadnought ties with the equally infamous Grey Knight Dreadknight and the Centurions in terms of balls-to-the-walls, over-the-top stupidity. Seriously you would think that a baby carrier would top the list, but a psychic quadriplegic in a mech suit shooting warp lightning and even flying is just as rage-inducing to any reasonable members on /tg/. Though, to be fair, it makes sense that sometimes a Librarian would earn the right to be interred into a Dreadnought and that it would be specialized to capitalize on his psychic power. However, GW fucked it up by making it into basically a giant fairy godmother. That, and a playable Librarian in a psychic battlemech would be kinda hard to replicate on tabletop without causing serious problems, anyway. Putting it in the lore probably would've sufficed.

Overview

The Librarian Dreadnought is a variant of the Furioso Dreadnought design utilized by the Blood Angels. Piloted by crippled and wounded Librarians from the Chapter, Librarian Dreadnoughts are perhaps the most lethal impractical dangerous of their kind. They combine the psychic might of a Librarian with the unyielding body and heavy firepower of a Dreadnought. Librarian Dreadnoughts have the ability to call upon the same psyker powers that they and many of their Astartes Librarians would call upon during combat.

The Librarian Dreadnought is equipped with two Fists, one armed with a built-in Storm Bolter and the other equipped with a Dreadnought Force Weapon (Don't ask why or how the Blood Angels manage to get their hands on Force Weapons exclusive to the Grey Knights, then again they somehow found the secrets to make the Baal Predator and Furioso Dreadnought so I guess our pretty little bishonen vampires actually live on a hidden archeo-tech city underground Baal).

The cheesy part here, of course, is the "Librarian" part, or more to the point, the Wings of Sanguinius psychic power. You see, at one point for some reason Librarians didn't have access to Jump Packs. In order to remedy that, Blood Angels Librarians were given a psychic power that (in essence) gave them a Jump Pack for the turn if they successfully called upon it. (They actually manifested wings which might sound a bit retarded, but it's fitting for the Sons of Sanguinius and his whole angel-shtick.) Of course, when used on no-name average Libby so he can accompany his pals into the fray or act a suicide one-man distraction/character killer when combined to a Force Weapon, it was decent. Strong in the right circumstances, but definitely not OP. And then, suddenly, A GODDAMN DREADNOUGHT (you know, the thing that many units simply can't harm in melee thanks to it being a vehicle) CHARACTER (meaning it could attribute its melee attacks and strike those few that could harm him) WITH STRENGTH 10 (Hello, Instant Death!) AND A FORCE WEAPON (even more Instant Death!) could suddenly move twice as fast and ignore terrain... Yeah.

Some people thought it might just be a little too much and expressed their concerns. This... thing's answer was to introduce even more broken stuff into the game. That's GW for you...

On The Tabletop

	Pts	M	WS	BS	S	T	W	A	Ld	Sv
Librarian Dreadnought	172	6	2+	3+	6	7	8	3	9	3+

The librarian Dreadnought is a highly effective HQ choice for the BAs since it's wounding everything on 2s in fight if it charged with the red thirst, it has a furioso fist (Sx2, AP-3, 3 Damage) with a storm bolter (RF2, S4, AP0, 1 Damage) which can be swapped with a meltagun ( Assault 1, S8, AP-4, D6 Damage, 15 extra pts) or a heavy flamer (Heavy D6 Autos, S5, AP-1, 1 Damage, 15 extra pts), then a Furioso Force Halberd (S+4, AP-4, 3 Damage). It has smite +2 powers from the sanguinary discipline, deny 1, cast 2 per psychic phase.

It has 3 attacks, +1 on the charge with shock troops, and can get either +1 with unleash rage or +D3 with quickening if you use either of those powers, giving it between 4 and 8 attacks in the fight phase and always wounding on 2s (regardless of which weapon you use, but let's be honest the fist is pointless on this guy) with the Red Thirst, giving you massive damage, -4 on the halberd will pierce anything with a 3+ or worse save, and making 2+ saves go to a 6+ (not counting cover), giving you a possible 12 - 24 damage (if all attacks wound and the enemy fails saves). This is absolutely insane, dealing massive damage against anything, being able to obliterate anything in the fight phase with ease.

If you're dead set on a psyker, either take this guy or Mephiston. you really can't go wrong with either, and since Mephiston is about to get his primaris model, he'll get that much better, so hey, maybe he's the better choice. Just keep in mind that being able to fly means you'll also be vulnerable to a lot of anti-flyer weapons until the power wears off.