The Bugs are Back: Review of the New Tyranids
The Tyranid Codex has (seemingly) leaked, and I think it
looks absolutely awesome. As ever, there’s the caveat that these rules may not
have been the final draft, so it’s possible that some things could change a
little between this and the full release. For the moment though, this book
looks super exciting, and I think bugs fans everywhere should be rejoicing.
Even better, I actually don’t think it looks like it’ll be oppressive in the
way we’ve been (reluctantly) getting used to: basically everything is a lot
stronger, but everything's also gotten more expensive, so we’re not going to have a
Custodes or T’au experience where everything gets better and there’s more of
it. A lot of the most problematic units in the book (Hive Guard and the Swarmlord) have also had substantial tweaks, so fingers crossed that that will hold it back a little.
I’m not going to do a full rule-by-rule review here, because the internet is already filling up with those and I find them pretty dull to write anyway. If you’re looking to just read all the rules, everyone’s favourite online repository has been freshly updated with them, so peruse away. Instead I’m just going to touch on my first impressions of the book, the rules and models that stand out to me as strong, and where I think this book is going to do well and fall behind. I’m also going to round things out with the first list I built from the new book, because that’s just fun.
First Impressions
This book looks really strong. Basically everything that
isn’t a Winged Hive Tyrant or Impaler Hive Guard has improved a lot, some
things by an absolute ton. I’m not the most across the old Tyranid rules, but
I’m relatively certain no one was looking at Pyrovores going ‘the range isn’t
great, but that damage output is incredibly strong’ before. At first
glance, the internal balance also looks really good, with a number of
viable looking builds that don’t share that many common tools. Monster mash, hordes,
shooty ‘Nids and even March of the Brain Bugs look like they have play. Everything oozes flavour (sometimes literally), and it really feels like a proper
Tyranids book. On the flipside, the price increases almost army-wide mean that
a ‘Nids player should expect to put down one or two less units than before,
which will hopefully be enough to keep the army in check. Or maybe GW will
implement Day 1 points reductions again, and we’ll be in for six months of
misery. Time will tell.
New Army-Wide Rules
The old Synaptic Links from the Psychic Awakening book are
gone, replaced by three things:
First, all the HQ bugs gain unique Command Phase buffs they
can hand out in the normal way (although some of them can use Synaptic Link
range, as I’ll discuss in a moment). There’s seemingly no limitations on
stacking these buffs on the same units or anything, but they’re also not
massively exciting: the Hive Tyrant hands out reroll 1’s to hit to a Core unit,
for example. With the exception of the Neurthrope, who still hands out its old 'roll 3D6 pick two for psychic' buff, these are good but not great.
The second replacement to Synaptic Links is a new rule for
measuring ranges for spells and auras, called, uh, Synaptic Links. Basically
all your Synapse creatures have 12” bubbles of Synaptic Link range around them,
and you can ‘chain’ these bubbles together to hand out a buff to or cast a
spell at a model on the other side of the board, like how the old Synaptic
Links worked. This seems really strong, as if you keep a chain of Synapse
creatures across the board then you can hand out buffs to almost anyone, or
fire off your psychic powers from way outside of Deny range. Of note, that’s
the main benefit of Synapse. Otherwise, it’s mostly just a 6” bubble of autopass
morale, with Instinctive Behaviour going in the bin entirely. Of course, the
one other thing that Synapse does do is…
It lets you use Synaptic Imperatives! These are basically like the Necron Codes of Conduct, but you get to pick the buff at the start of the turn instead of before the game, you’re generally limited in your choice of buffs by the types of Synapse creatures you have on the field, and the buffs are actually strong. So, for example, at the start of Turn 1 you could opt to use the Zoanthrope Synaptic Imperative if you have any Zoanthropes on the field, which means all your Synapse creatures start broadcasting an aura of 4++ saves for monsters and 5++ saves for everything else. You couldn’t then use the Zoanthrope Imperative on future turns (which is good, because otherwise you absolutely would be mashing that button 5 turns out of 5), but could pick something else if you had other Synapse creatures on the board. The buffs themselves range from mediocre (your Death Throes go off more reliably, and you get the old Acid Blood for little bugs) to solid (two different brands of ‘sixes to hit generate an additional hit') all the way up to busted (the Zoanthrope one. Yeah). I imagine they will be genuine listbuilding considerations, with at least one squad of Zoanthropes being auto-includes and other units being taken deliberately to unlock their Imperatives for lists that need them. Overall, it’s a fun and fluffy rule with a lot of power but some decent counterplay (shoot the Synapse creatures! Break the chain!), and I like it a lot.
New Hive Fleets
The Hive Fleets are all massively improved, gaining a much
better primary trait and then a sneaky little Adaptive trait as well. What that
means is that if you decide, in a given matchup, that your Adaptive trait isn’t
going to be particularly helpful that game, you can swap it out for another one
from a list of about ten custom traits. Everyone’s a custom Chapter now! This
is honestly incredibly strong, and means that lots of otherwise niche traits
like rerolling Denies can be picked up when you face a Grey Knights player and
otherwise ignored.
Beyond that obvious boost, all the named Hive Fleets look pretty strong. Hydra and Gorgon make hordes hit harder, Kraken makes you faster, Behemoth makes you kill stuff better in close combat, Kronos boosts your ranged attacks and messes with enemy psykers, and Jormungandr and Leviathan make you a bit tankier. Leviathan has a pretty big edge over the others as a result of its powerful primary trait, psychic power and supplement (assuming that remains legal), but I could probably see all of these having a place in the right list. The fact that you can trade out half of any of the traits for something better in a given matchup is a massive boost to all of these, and probably makes taking a custom Hive Fleet less appealing.
Standout Units
I’ve opted not to make this a ‘most improved’ section,
because aside from being repeatedly run over by Crusher Stampede I didn’t
really know the old Codex that well. So without any real preconceptions, I can
tell you that Pyrovores might actually be great. For 30 points you get a model
that’s pretty tanky and has an extremely good flamer with two firing modes
(either hitting really hard, or with 18” range and double the shots). Venomthropes
are better than ever, handing out their -1 to hit aura to everything
that isn’t Titanic and actually being somewhat scary in combat with Fight Last and heaps of poison attacks.
They’re dirt cheap as well, so I’d imagine 3 to be an auto-include in most
lists.
Speaking of auto-includes, the brain bugs are back! Zoanthropes
lost their 3++, but they give you access to their incredible Synaptic
Imperative and a squad of three will average about 5.5 mortal wounds every time
they cast Smite. That’s just great value, and makes my Harlequins cry. You can
also use them to cast Psychic Scream and actually have a great chance of making
a psyker forget one of their powers. Take that Eldrad, you jerk. Also on the
brain bugs, Maleceptors get their old stratagem turned into a psychic action,
and every time they cast or do a psychic action and roll above a 7 they’ll hand
out mortals to the nearest enemy unit. With the right combos they’re going to
be casting three powers AND doing their action super reliably, and churning out
9-15 mortal wounds as an added bonus. I’m not really sure you want to be
investing the two CP that requires every turn, but even if they just sit in the
middle of your army, debuffing the enemy’s Strength and throwing out chip
damage, that’s still going to be worth it. They also gained the massive
durability buffs that the rest of the monsters got, with T8 and 15 wounds to go
with their 4++. Trust me, that's not even that durable for this codex.
Still in the Elites section, Toxicrenes and Haruspexs both
look super solid, while Tyrant Guard get Bodyguard for Hive Tyrants. Hive
Tyrants are pretty awesome themselves, so that's a great little niche for the
Guard.
The Fast Attack section got a lot more sidegrades, with the Mawloc and the new Parasite both looking interesting but most of the rest seeming mediocre. The exception there is the Trygon, which looks absolutely terrifying with 13(!) S7 AP-3 D2 attacks. It's not the most durable, but it's pretty fast and pretty cheap, so I'm impressed. I'm also maybe underrating the Raveners, as while they don't look especially exciting this army likely has a problem with speed and spreading out, both of which they're good at.
In the Flyers section, the Harpy honestly
looks super strong: it’s got a great bomb, it’s a little tougher, and it can
pump out 6 S9 AP-3 D4 shots from its Heavy Venom Cannons every turn. It can’t
move 30” then charge anymore, sadly, but it can still go into hover mode and shank
stuff , which is fun. The Hive Crone is the budget option, but is so much worse I'd never take it unless I absolutely knew I was playing Harlequins every single game. Aside from how miserable that sounds, I'd probably just take more brain bugs instead anyway.
The Heavy Support slot is now dominated by the Carnifexes,
with basically everything else looking fairly unexciting. The Hive Guard are
probably still decent in the right list, but no longer will they dominate the
meta with indirect fire that’s efficient into everything. The vanilla ‘Fexes seem
solid, roughly equivalent to a Wraithlord for pretty equivalent prices.
Interestingly, I think they’re a little weaker in close combat but much better
at range, with the Heavy Venom Cannon being decisively better than the Bright
Lance that the Wraithlord can mount. If you want melee bruisers then Screamer
Killers are fairly fast, cheap, and have 11 Damage 3 attacks on the charge,
although they’ll want something to buff their Strength above S6. Otherwise,
both the Tyrannofex and Exocrine seem pretty solid, I can imagine them fitting
in well as fire support pieces that blow up stuff from range.
Onto the Troops, where there’ve been some definite
sidegrades. The Termagants definitely got a lot better (aside from their
devourers, which are now both bad and expensive), but are also now 7ppm, which
hurts a fair amount. The Hormagants seem better value, being much faster and
hitting surprisingly hard in combat, but again they’re 8ppm so it’s a little
hard to justify. The Hormagants do seem like you could really build around them
with Hive Fleets though, so there may be play there. The Warriors also got more
expensive, although basically all their weapon options are now free, so it
depends how you were running them before. They’re a bit tankier and much
scarier in combat now, so they’re probably a bit better value than before.
Unfortunately, both kinds of 'Gants feel a little overshadowed by the Gargoyles now. At only 8ppm you get a fairly cheap squad with a pretty good gun, great mobility, and the ability to jump into Deep Strike for a CP. Outside of Crusher Stampede, I can imagine myself mostly just fielding these unless I was building around the ‘Gants.
Finally, in the HQ slots, Neurothropes are about as much of an auto-include as ever. Stick them in a big blob of Zoanthropes and you’ll probably end up healing any injured models for free, and they still cast a lot and pretty well themselves (plus handing out their old ‘3D6 pick the highest to cast’ buff). Pretty much everything else in this slot also looks like it has a role, which is definitely a nice change from the past. The footslogging Hive Tyrants look particularly tasty, with two Heavy Venom Cannons being even better here than on the Harpy. A pair of those with some Tyrant Guard looks like a fairly terrifying firebase to be honest. The final point to mention on HQ’s is that Swarmy now hands out Chapter Master rerolls and ObSec instead of letting squads move again. That’s honestly probably good for the health of the game, and handing out ObSec in the Command Phase via Synaptic Links is potentially extremely strong if you’re not Leviathan.
Crusher Stampede: Still a Thing?
Now, I’ve just spent a decent while talking about how much
all the monsters have improved, how they’re so much tougher now, etc etc… For
players who’ve lived through the last few months, that’s probably going to make
you look at the Crusher Stampede supplement with a bit of new fear. From what I
can see of the new Codex, there’s nothing that stops you running it as Crusher
Stampede, and that may still be a strong army. Thankfully, it’s also probably a
little less of an auto-include than it used to be. To start with, all the Hive
Fleet abilities are vastly improved, so losing them is now actually a pretty
big loss. A Leviathan list has Transhuman on all its Synapse models by default,
which is pretty great, and being able to tack on either free rerolls or
something like army-wide Heroic Interventions looks strong as well. You also
probably care less about the 5++, with the Zoanthrope buff making it irrelevant
for one turn and the improved armour saves on lots of monsters making it less relevant
for the them generally. Even the -1 damage rule, while obviously still awesome,
is already replicated on the Carnifex datasheet, so if you wanted to run them
you’re not getting as much from the Stampede. Finally, the listbuilding
restrictions of Crusher Stampede feel tighter than ever, with lots of lists
likely wanting to run the medium-sized ‘Nids en masse and at least Gargoyles
being a shame to leave at home.
In saying all that, Crusher Stampede still does look like it’s gotten a lot stronger from this book, for all that it’s missing the old Swarmlord and Hive Guard. In fact, I’m going to showcase a build below that I think really leans into this, although it could easily be run as a standard Leviathan build as well.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The biggest new strength of the ‘Nids is their psychic
phase. A list with 9 Zoanthropes, a Maleceptor and a Neurothrope could easily
be outputting around 30 mortal wounds on average dice, which is the kind of
mind bullets that melts whole Harlequin armies. Their other powers are also
going to be extremely reliable and hard to Deny, making them arguably the best
psychic army in the game.
Durability is another strength, with massive buffs across
the board there. Flinging half-a-dozen monsters forward with a 4++, -1 to hit,
-1 Strength to ranged attacks and an absolute pile of wounds seems terrifying, and
even ‘Gants are gonna be pretty tough with some of those buffs. This army
should just stick around for a lot longer than it used to.
Finally, the melee output on almost everything has been
tuned way up. Even Warriors are gonna be hitting you with some scary swords
now, and the melee bugs feel like they will genuinely do scary damage in close
combat.
A potential weakness of the army is definitely speed. With
the Swarmlord losing his iconic buff, there’s a lot less room to ram a Dimmy
down someone’s throat turn one. Genestealers at least get forward deployment
now, so could still be an option for that, but otherwise you’re unlikely to be
making many Turn 1 charges. And in the lategame, it’s going to be a lot harder
for your models to casually zip across the board and onto an objective. This is
all compounded by the fact that Malaceptors and Venomthropes, which both look
awesome now, want you to hang out in a bit of a deathball and not spread out
too much. On maps with lots of objectives, that could leave you with the old
Death Guard problem of one flank being overwhelmed and the other struggling to
help out. Your mobility is admittedly still a lot better than Death Guard’s,
but it’s no longer a strength of the army unless you really build for it.
Shooting is a bit of a mixed bag. The guns on just about
everything have gotten a lot better, and the shooty bugs look genuinely scary
at range. 38 Fleshborer shots from the Tyrannofex anyone? Perhaps more importantly, literally everything that can mount a Heavy Venom Cannon is instantly almost as good at anti-tank as a Drukhari Ravager, and lots of big bugs can take two! At the same time, the
Hive Guard’s transition from ‘What Basilisks should be’ into ‘Handy for killing
sneaky objective grabbers’ is a real hit to the army’s shooting capacity, and
in concert with the low movement on the shooting bugs could make killing stuff
tricky if it doesn’t come out and play. I could honestly imagine a lot of armies starting with two Harpies to try and resolve this problem, especially in Crusher Stampede.
Finally, while not a weakness per se, the army has a decent
amount of Core-locked buffs from all its Command Phase abilities, and not that
many models with Core that can actually do damage. Probably the most powerful
targets for any of the buffs like reroll failed hits would be a big squad of
Hormagants or Warriors, or maybe a lone Carnifex. None of those options feel
amazing, so I guess the message is to take the Core-locked abilities with a
grain of salt unless you're actively building for them.
Sample Army List
There’s a heap more to talk about in this book, with
Adaptive Physiologies, warlord traits, relics, unique Secondaries and
stratagems, but for now I’m going to go through a sample list instead. If you
want a deep dive on the rest of the book, Auspex Tactics did a particularly
thorough one that I enjoyed. Now onto the list!
Hive Fleet Leviathan/Crusher Stampede Army of Renown
Patrol
Hive Tyrant with Gestalt Commander, Voracious Ammunition, Heavy
Venom Cannon and Shardgullet 205
Neurothrope with Synaptic Tendrils 100
Trygon Prime with Gestation Sac 175
3 Warriors with deathspitters and dual boneswords, 1 venom
cannon 80
2*3 Zoanthropes 300
3 Pyrovores 90
2 Trygons, one with Synaptic Enhancement 300
Patrol
Hive Tyrant with two Heavy Venom Cannons, Strategic Adaption
190
3 Warriors with deathspitters and dual boneswords 75
Maleceptor 170
3 Venomthropes 105
Trygon 145
This list tries to adapt Crusher to the new codex, ditching
the indirect fire for a massive core of mind bullets and actual bullets (well,
whatever venom cannons shoot. Venom?). The central core of the Malaceptor,
Venomthropes, Hive Tyrants and Zoanthropes all barrel up the middle, blasting
anything they can see with 12 heavy venom cannon shots and ~30 mortal wounds,
while daring the enemy to try and break through a pile of monsters with -1D,
-1S, -1 to hit, dozens of wounds and a 5++ (going to a 4++ on a critical turn!).
The Trygons can either use that deathball as a staging ground to start charging
and killing stuff, or pop up from deepstrike where needed. The backfield is
held by the Warriors and the Pyrovores, with the latter lurking in hiding to
absolutely incinerate whatever tries to outflank me.
I can imagine the list going for one of the Warpcraft
Secondaries, Stranglehold and then one of Synaptic Insight (much better when
almost your whole army is Synapse!), Grind, To the Last (if I think I can hide
my Trygon Prime), or maybe even Banners. It’d likely do well against opponents
that were aiming to contest the midboard, as the mortal wound and melee output
of the list will likely roll them right off the field, but will probably
struggle against a list that can pick at it from outside 24” or line of sight and outmanoeuvre it,
and on missions that force it to spread out a lot.
If I was adapting this list to not be Crusher Stampede, I
probably trade in a couple of Trygons for Screamer Killers, and likely another
for two squads of Gargoyles. I’d have a little bit less melee and a good chunk
less durability, but my mobility and ability to play the mission would probably
be increased and the list wouldn’t really suffer much from the change.
If you made it to the end of that, congratulations! You’ve
just wasted 30 minutes of your life on a review that will become useless when
GW reveals that this was a fake all along, and the actual codex is just the
statlines for 55 different Primaris Lieutenants, all with different relic
pistols.
I hope you enjoyed this article, and let me know in the
comments what you think looks strong from the new book. Are mind bullets as
good as they seem to me (a Harlequins player, deathly terrified of them)? Are
18 Hive Guard still going to shoot every list off the tables in the name of
Mani Cheema? What effect do you think this codex will have on the meta, twisted and
suffering as it is?
Until next time, may you always have the right bugs alive
for your Synaptic Imperatives!
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