We may earn a commission when you buy through links in our articles. Learn more.

Warhammer 40k fan builds epic Lego dreadnought inspired by Space Marine 2

Experienced Lego builder Matlad Bricks saw the wall-smashing, Heldrake killing dreadnought and created an original Warhammer 40,000 MOC.

This Warhammer 40k Brutalis Dreadnought is the work of Matlad Bricks, an experienced Lego builder with several great sci-fi designs to his name. Matlad was inspired to make this posable Lego warmachine.by clips from Space Marine 2 showing a venerable dreadnought going postal on a Chaos Helbrute and hurling a statue into the face of a Heldrake.

Matlad has been building custom Lego designs (MOCs, or “My Original Creations”) for “over a decade”. This isn’t their first Warhammer 40k build: they’ve already made several Space Marines, including both Terminators and Black Templars (their favorite Warhammer 40k faction), and even a Necron warrior. But the Dreadnought is the biggest of their 40k pieces, with 1,251 pieces total.

Warhammer 40k Lego Brutalis Dreadnought MOC by Matlad Bricks, front aspect, showing its armored sarcophagus and Ultramarines chapter heraldry

Though they have a lot of experience creating original Lego designs including “Star Wars, Ninjago, fighter planes, cars, and space vehicles”, they only started uploading them to ReBrickable “about a year ago”. You can download instructions for this and the other designs for free over on Matlad’s Rebrickable profile.

The Dreadnought design took “about three and a half days to finalize”. The hardest tasks were “the main body, as it kept having to be rebuilt and modified as I built the rest of the build around it”, and “the upper arm joints”, for which they “had to use an outdated part to get the right size”.

Warhammer 40k Lego Brutalis Dreadnought MOC by Matlad Bricks, rear aspect, showing its power plant and less-armored rear

Matlad credits YouTuber “Chubbybots” for many of the ideas in the design, saying “they helped me on my way of designing better buildable figures” – we’ve embedded Chubbybots’ own video about building a dreadnought below!

YouTube Thumbnail

Matlad discovered Warhammer 40k through “fan films on YouTube such as ‘Astartes’”, and playthroughs of Warhammer 40k games like Space Hulk: Deathwing and the original Space Marine. A comment on their Space Marine Terminator build suggested they should make a Dreadnought next, but it wasn’t until they saw clips of the Dread’ in Space Marine 2 that they acted on the idea.

At the moment Matlad is designing a F-104j Starfighter MOC, which sounds like a Lego Star Wars set but is actually a real-world fighter jet, “and multiple new variations of my original Space Marine design”. They also plan to make some of the Imperium of Man’s ungainly fighter aircraft.

We’ve said it before: if Games Workshop ever teams up with Lego, the partnership will create some of the best Lego sets for adults (not to mention some of the most expensive Lego sets) of all time. Until that glorious day, we have to content ourselves with excellent MOCs – check out this Imperial cityscape made from 250,000 bricks for some real inspiration!