Necromunda

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Tyranids

Tyranids are a great choice for an army if you want to really annoy your opponent by having a ton of unbreakable termagants in front of a hive tyrant and a large brood of Genestealers. 

The idea of a massive horde of blood sucking aliens intent on tearing apart everything in their way always appealed to me and when I saw them in the first White dwarf I ever read (205) I knew that I would have to have an army of Tyranids. The only tactic I ever use with Tyranids is to charge every thing across the board and hope that enough of them survive to kill all the enemy.  

see the swarm list

Since the release of the new Tyranid codex, my strategies and army have had to change considerably. Gone now are the days when Termagants could helpfully die so that genestealers wouldn’t (curse that shoot the big ones rule), gone are the invulnerable saves of the Hive Tyrant and gone are the days when Venom cannons could penetrate vehicles.

Oh well, I suppose that the Raveners, cool new weapon system, instinctive behaviour, monstrous creature rules, special characters, mutable genus creatures and psychic powers slightly make up for it.

As I said my tactics have changed quite a bit, to start with I only take 1 Hive Tyrant in a 1500pt game (if you haven’t read my original Tyranid article do so now to see the changes I’ve made), Warriors I now consider worthy of use, Lictors are not usually included in my force (since they are 80pts each and not as hard as they were with the White Dwarf rules) and the number of Genestealers has dropped by about a 3^rd (I had on average 24 in an army before now its 16).

The most radical thing that I have done with my army though has been to completely redesign the list (using the mutable genus list), and this has resulted in the creation of “Hive Fleet Tyranus”.  This hive fleet is a breakaway fleet from Kraken and is currently munching its way through the Ultima segmentum. The fleet has only been used once so far and met with a rather unimpressive defeat (although one unit did redeem a lot of honour for me) at the hands of the Salamanders space marine chapter, however I’m planning on using them quite a bit in the future so once my tactics are perfected you’d better watch out (evil laughter).

The army was originally designed to fight against Necrons (hence the relatively low weaponskill of the Swarm Lord), but as of yet has only been used against Salamanders in a patrol mission. As you will know from earlier I lost this game (I think he had 1388 victory points and I had around 750), however it taught me some very important lessons.

Firstly if you are going to take two Raveners (I use the Red Terror as a second one on occasion) don’t put them in one unit, especially if you have no other fast attack. During the game I made this mistake and they were both killed by the one squad that could see them (if they had been separate then one would have been able to get into combat on the next turn and hold them up until the genestealers arrived). Secondly I learned a great trick with the Dune Warriors and Dune Stalkers. The Dune Stalkers get into combat with powerful independent characters, move around him so that he is in base contact with them only, then the Dune Warriors charge in attack with all of their attacks and rending claws without the risk of being hit back (this actually worked and killed my opponents force commander). Thirdly, unless you a certain that you are in assault range with Termagants then fleet of foot instead of shooting, it is far more valuable to waste an enemy units round of shooting than it is to fire (though this is more for normal Termagants since if mine are in range to shoot then they are certainly in range to charge).

Finally something that all new Tyranid players (I assume that anyone playing with ‘nids for a few months will know this) should come to terms with. The vast majority of your army will probably be dead when you reach the enemies units. Face it if you have an entire table length to cross under fire then a lot of stuff will die, just make what reaches them count. If you want to be sneaky then use a lot of fast stuff to get into combat quickly and tie up their units for a few rounds (my entire fleet is based around this concept), or use scapegoat units to divert their fire (for example there is the old Carnifex at the front of your swarms trick). Never infiltrate with Genestealers unless there is enough terrain to allow them to reach the enemy before they get the crap shot out of them, since at least when they are behind your other units opponents will usually shoot at the nearer stuff instead.

My current army though contains the following:

1 Swarm Lord.
5 Dune Warriors.
8 Genestealers.
8 Genestealers.
10 Dune Stalkers.
17 Dune Stalkers.
16 Dune Runners (so far these have done the best, they killed 18 tactical marines and 8 scouts in my first game).
2 Raveners with Scything talons and Rending claws (though from now on they are two separate units).
1 Mantifex.
1 Zoanthrope (with the Synapse power).
2 Biovores with pyro-acid mines.

Tyranids

Lictors

Hormagaunts

Gargoyles

Raveners

Biovore

Zoanathrope

please don't look at this

This page was designed by: 
Michael T. W. Na
Joseph Channon
Anthony Flynn

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