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I haven’t forgotten this one. Finally proper pictures of my Ultramarines Venerable Dreadnought.

The Venerable Dreadnought is a very well thought out kit and packed full of options. Sadly, not all of them look that good. As I am a graphic designer in real life, specialising in typography and type design, I shiver when looking at all the inscriptions. First, the font used in those is Copperplate Gothic, kind of a fake ancient looking sans serif type, looking rather cheap. Second, the center aligned type and the way it wraps around edges is just awkward. Continously running lines like on old Roman monuments would have looked much better and would fit the ancient Roman/Greek theme of the Ultramarines much better. Third, it is the only model in the Space Marines range with such a design feature which will make the model stand out – but not in a good way.

Fortunately you can cover up all of the inscriptions. I’m not a big fan of the alternate gothic fence shaped leg armour plates, so I used the regular shaped ones from the Ravenwing sprue and carefully removed the Dark Angel symbol. Another problem I have with the kit are the chest armour plates. The plain ones are nice, you can do some freehands there or use them as Extra Armour on regular Dreads as well. But the second set with the random insignia is really daft. I mean, there are already enough icons to glue on your plain plates if you like sculpted plates. Instead, I really miss some Aquila wings like plates like on the old metal Venerable Dreadnought or the Forgeworld Ultramarines Dreadnought. In the end I chose the gothic fences flavour even though I feel they are better suited to Dark or Blood Angels…