[marine13]

The Dread would have the LC and ML and Tank Hunter. The Pred would have LC sponsons.

I play BT if that matters at all.

[Carnex]

The Dread hands down.

[thecuriousmonke]

Originally Posted by Carnex

The Dread hands down.

Care to explain why? The predator has better front armour which will help with survivability. Don't have my codex handy so I cannot tell you for sure. My gut says the predator, or maybe my love of tanks :

[Tom Norman]

My Assault Cannon/Missile Launcher toting venerable Dreadnought is tremendously effective at killing tanks (Assault Cannons are better than Lascannons), especially so with the Tank Hunters special skill...but there's really no comparison to three Lascannons (especially when one of them one of them is twin-linked).

The Dreadnought's advantage lies in the fact that it has only one armour facing vulnerable to small arms fire and also in it's ability to move and still fire both weapons.

The Predator's advantage is greater stationary firepower and frontal armour.

If you want to kill tanks then you don't need to wade in close to do it. You can afford some stand off distance which means you can merrily sit as far back as your deployment zone and lay waste to enemy armour with superior firepower, all the while showing that AV13 armour facing to the enemy. If there's a lot of terrain on the table then the Dreadnought's ability to find a line of sight and still fire both weapons is far more valuable to you, but generally speaking, the Predator is your top choice.

There are more AT options out there than just the Predator and Dreadnought though...don't overlook deep striking Terminators with Assault Cannons or Land Speeders with Multi-Meltas.

[marine13]

Ya, I'm definitly planning on playing with terrain so I was thinking Dread, but now that I think about it, the AC and ML sounds good.

[MalVeauX]

Originally Posted by marine13

The Dread would have the LC and ML and Tank Hunter. The Pred would have LC sponsons.

I play BT if that matters at all.

Just to note: I will throw in my opinion, based on your question. Meaning, dedicated tank hunting with the two units you listed. It's obvious there are other choices, but you specifically wanted to know about these two. So that's what we'll explore.

[size=11pt]Dreadnoughts[/size]

Dreadnoughts are good at dealing damage. Great at it. A tank hunting twinlinked lascannon will hit nearly every time and has the highest strength possible. You will glance even the mightest of armor on a 4+. Penetrate many others on less. Very reliable. And the missile hits just as hard as a lascannon does, with tank hunters. That's two very potent hits, every turn, while moving! Incredible damage output. At what cost? A minimum of 165 points! That's not even with extra armor, making it 170 points! While this Dread can pump out anti-tank damage, very reliably and great at causing damage, we're talking about a very steep cost. Which leads to the following:

They're very poor at taking damage.

That makes them weak for hunting vehicles, as a dedicated role.
Remember: If you're stunned or worse, you're not shooting; ie: not hunting tanks.
Guess what happens when you have A12. Even when you're venerable.

[size=11pt]Predators[/size]

Predators have higher armor, but you can't move and shoot all three lascannons. This is a problem in mobility. Luckily, however, the lascannons reach far enough that you will generally have the target hit anyways. But, it can be problematic, since they can move generally and if you're sitting to shoot, you may not be able to draw sight after they move out of your sight and/or range. So once again, the lack of mobility becomes a problem, even though you're resilient and have good damage capability. And we're talking about a tank which costs a minimum of 145 points. Well, he's already cheaper than the Dread, with better odds of hitting with the attacks. You have the same odds of hitting with your twinlinked lascannon as the dread, and your two sponson lascannons have better odds to land a hit than the single missile launcher does (two shots is always better than one at the same ballistic skill). The difference is you have one less strength on the linked lascannon, but more odds of strong hits. The chance of one more hit. So about the same odds of reliably doing the tank hunting, with more armor, but with less mobility. Overall a stronger option for pure tank hunting, but still not perfect.

[size=11pt]Alternative; Predator[/size]

Instead of going pure lascannon predator, or raw tank hunting dreadnought, I'd like to draw your attention to two Predators, which are excellent at hunting tanks, one of which is raw dedicated to it, and another which has a splash of flexibility.

Pure Dedicated Tank Hunting Predator

Predator Annihilator
-Twinlinked Lascannon
No sponson weapons
-Extra Armor
125 points.

That's a pure dedicated, mobile tank hunting unit. Much cheaper than a dreadnought. More mobile than a tri-las Predator. Overall, better at hunting tanks on the large scale, because of it's ability to move, fire a linked lascannon and have high enough armor to keep a good deal of damage from happening. And to top it off, if you were not able to fire but able to move, you can move 12 inches if you need to regain line of sight on something moving quickly. It's a bargain tank hunter with resilience.

Flexible Tank Hunting Predator

Predator Annihilator
-Twinlinked Lascannon
-Heavy Bolter Sponsons
-Extra Armor
135 points.

For slightly more points, we get flexibility. It works exactly as described above, but instead, should you lose your lascannon to a damage result, or should you have no important tank targets left, or should there be a much more important infantry target present for you to fire upon, you have two more separate weapons that can both fire on the move. Heavy bolters rock infantry. They are not effective against vehicles, but that's the price of flexibility. The lascannon will kill infantry just the same, so it's not necessarily wasted on infantry when you're using your heavy bolters to roast some wounds.

This vehicle is overall you're better choice, if you want to hunt tanks and remain flexible with it, as to not burn yourself by dedicating too much.

[size=11pt]Note on Weapon Choices[/size]

While statistically, the Assault Cannon has a chance to be better at anti-tank, it's limited and unreliable for general dedicated anti-tank roles. It's more of a chance, with decent odds, but still a chance. A linked lascannon is reliable. The strength is already high, thus being more reliable. Average rolls based on chances go down and down and down, as you have to roll to hit, roll to penetrate, etc. The assault cannon only triggers off the 6. You will not always get a 6. You can go the whole game and never roll a 6. You can also go the whole game throwing out several 6's every phase. It's random. It's unreliable due to that. The range also keeps you limited. At 24 inches, you're not doing much unless you're up close. Most dangerous vehicles can move just as fast as you can, and keep that distance locked and keep you from doing your job.

Now on another note, tank hunting assault cannons are very good at tank hunting skimmers with the tank hunters skill. It's the equivalent of an autocannon at that point, and with 4 shots, it's very capable of dealing out good glances. The lascannon, however, is superior for all vehicles, when it comes to that glance. Remember, the assault cannon can penetrate well, but only if it rolls a perfect 6, which is not every time, thus unreliable. And remember also, if you're running at 24 inches to do that hunting, you're close enough to be put into assault, or hammered by nearly any gun in their army.

So it's up to you about which weapon type you want to use. Do you want probabilities and chances? Or do you want reliability? There's a big difference between statistical "should be better" and experience of every-game-you-play "is reliable." You be the judge.

And of course, there are better ways to hunt tanks, but you asked about these two units exclusively. A squad of 6 marines with a lascannon is superior to all of these options, by far, due to cost and due to resilience and the ability to always be fielded even in escalation matches. A tank hunting squad of Veteran marines with a lascannon are even more effective at dealing anti-tank damage.

Cheers!

[Impulse]

The best anti-tanl to me is a Dread with a multi-melta + drop pod. That way, it has a very good chance of blowing up most vehicles and it would easily hold it's own in CC.

However, if Lascannons is what you want (DS melta-dreads are risky, preds are a lot more realiable, kudos to Mal), than the pred is right choice for you.

[Balloz]

I agree with MalVeaux: a Predator is more resilient and so can make the difference.

On the other side, a dread is far better vs infantry and it can cause problems to tanks too with the assault cannon and DCCW, but it is risky because you must be close to them and this means that they have time to destroy you while you walk....

So I vote for Predator.

Extra: in my signature there is a link to a topic about odds of dread's weapons vs infantry and tanks (but the lascannon is also the Pred weapon , so just look at the odds and think that a pred has 2 lascannon and 1 TL-lascannon).
This link shows that the rending of the assault cannon is great both vs infantry and tanks (even better than 1 lascannon), but remember that it is true only on average and that range isn't considered. Range makes the difference.

[Howloutloud]

so what you all are saying is that armor 12 is not good. and the fact that its venerable with extra armor shouldn't help any in survivability.

Seems that I was a fool last night when I took a tank hunting ven dread against a army that has 2 predators and a chaos army with another one.

Except that I won, and my dread was still alive at the end of the game. Oh, and every one of the predators were destroyed. That was in a 4 way game with 2000 pts a side.

What everyone fails to realize is that Mathammer is nice, but real life doesn't always follow.... And a dedicated tank hunting dread always trumps a dedicated predator.

[MalVeauX]

Venerable status allows for a nice chance to re-roll a bad roll on the chart when glanced or penetrated, but don't think of it as a saving value. It can help immensely when you're glanced often. Just like it helps Falcons in the Eldar. But when you're penetrated, which is very often the case with an A12 Dreadnought, then the re-roll ability is less and less useful. Why: 1 = Not dead, but not shooting. 2 = You lost your tank hunting gun. 3 = Lucky you. 4+ = Whoops. Even if you're venerable, this chart will always hurt you. There's only one result that actually is "ok" for you to get, and that's immobilized. Everything else = you're not shooting and hunting tanks anymore.

And isolated cases where a single dreadnought was never destroyed by an opponent with lascannons, which ended up destroying multiple vehicles, is not a rule to go by. It's either luck of the roll, or a really poor opponent in terms of target priority. That's no different than someone who says their Rhinos never fail them. And that they always deliver and survive the game, only to tank shock things the rest of the game. It can be true for you, due to your opponent and your environment. But it doesn't hold up in others. And all of which is notably not working in tournaments. But hey, whatever works for you is best.

A single dreadnought doesn't cut it for dedication. Several venerable Dreads work better. But again, we're talking about very expensive and easy to destroy, even with venerable status walkers here.

Cheers!