The New Tyranids: Surgical Insertion!
Hey everyone. Bigpig is back talking Tyranidturkey and take a look using all the new bugs in an all new way!
First of all, go read the first part here:
Here’s the recap of the new units and then take on the more important task about what the big changes in the second wave mean for the way the Tyranid army is played.
- Mucolid Spores: Dirt cheap, deep striking, multiwound, and a troop choice that lets you fill two troop requirements for only 30pts. In min troop lists these may replace Rippers as the go to placeholder. Thanks to “Living Bomb” rule they can’t score or contest, but they can do some cool damage when need be. Grade: B-
- Sporocysts: What? What the hell do I do with these? Everyone is sure there is a use for these beyond cool theme games but is still struggling to find them. A neat idea but just might not have enough punch or utility to justify the cost and, more importantly, Heavy Support slot. Grade: C
- Bigger Zoanthrope Broods: They can be taken in larger broods now. Problem is people rarely took them in broods of more than 1. Being able to spore in a tac nuke unit may make you take more than 1 now, but going up to 6 is unlikely. Zoans still remain a valid choice, just don’t think increased brood size is that big a deal. Grade: B
- Neurothrope: Not the Doom, not even close, so stop calling it “Return of Doom”, “Doom 2.0”, “Doomlite”, etc. Psychic Shriek, however, is one of the better witchfires so this as a delivery system is not a bad thing. Its power dice creating feature probably won’t gain you dice most of the time so don’t count on it. Grade: B
- Tyrannocytes: This is the big one, of course. Tyrannocytes single tentacledly change the character of the Tyranid army and are the focus of the rest of this article. So let’s dive right in . Grade: A
The next option now available to Tyranids is less playstyle and more of a tactic. This is surgical insertion, which can be either offensive or tactical. Both options are used to supplement a more traditional Tyranid approach such Trapdoor Spider an advancing MC spam, with a drop element. The offensive insertion is used to deliver a tac nuke into the enemy where it proceeds to remove a key element. The classic ‘nid example of this is dropping a spore with a couple of Zoanthropes in it to take out a Land Raider or other big AV14 target. Alternatively you could take out a smaller target that you would otherwise play hell trying to get to. Examples of this are dug in Thunderfire cannons or enemy objective campers hiding in corners or out of line of sight like scouts or 5 man tac squads. When going after smaller enemies, try to remember the flipside of mass, which is Economy of Force, and don’t overcommit resources better spent elsewhere. Typically, your offensive surgical insertions are designed to be throw away units. They will make their strike and complete their mission. After that, you would love for them to live, but if they don’t its ok. This is why they can drop in unsupported.
A viable way to play the offensive Surgical Insertion options may be to take two Tyrannocytes; One with two or three Zoans and one with a less expensive cargo like a fistful of gaunts. The Zoans can go target the high value enemy nut which is tough to crack. The Termagaunts can go after the small unit that is dug into a hard to reach spot.
Tactical surgical insertion is used to put our units in tactically advantageous positions and not to make an offensive play against enemy units. This will usually be done to claim far flung objectives or secure linebreaker. You will be dropping single pods and their cargo, unsupported across the board. The MC Tyrannocyte and its payload can be pretty tough to shift. Just be cautious and remember synapse. An interesting option for tactical insertion may be to drop a Sporocyte. For 150pts you bring 12 wounds of T5 and 10 guns to the board and put it on an objective. This can be pretty difficult for some enemies to deal with using the small reactive elements that typically go after objective grabbers, especially if the rest of your army coming at them. This one is just theory hammer at this point, but seems fun.
One final point is that Surgical Insertions really benefit from the fact that Tyrannocytes are not dedicated transports. You can decide what goes in them at deployment. This means you could take that pair of Zoans and just deploy them as backfield synapse or psykers and put something else in the spore if the enemy doesn’t field viable Warp Blast targets. The game is often won or lost during deployment and our ability to decide what goes in the pods and what doesn’t each game will make that even more decisive. Remember to put effort into deciding if and why you want to deep strike your units
Concerns
There are several new concerns which come up when using Tyrannocytes to create an offensive, go out and meet the enemy, playstyle which aren’t as prevalent in the way Tyranids have been played since 7th edition came out.
Synapse: Yes, synapse has always been an issue and the punitive chart in our recent codex made that even more apparent. The slow moving blob or MC spam approach that many Tyranid players have taken to this point has helped to minimize the impact. With an alpha strike drop army, however, synapse is going to be the biggest problem you face. With your army effectively split into two components, the home camp which started on the board and the meet and great drop element, you need to plan synapse for both. This means planning for redundant synapse as skilled players will know to kill the brain bugs if you leave yourself light in certain area. The scattering of the drop units could also space your elements out enough that a tight web may be hard to make. Just keep this in mind when the units come down so the guys that need babysitting like a large unit of Devourer Gaunts don’t get left without a babysitter.
Redeploying: Despite the added versatility granted by Tyrannocytes in grabbing initial board position, Tyranids will still be a slow army. Once down, most of the elements can only move 6” a turn and, unlike a marine drop army, we don’t have the fast redeploying support units. Keep this in mind if you face an army that can run away from you or if you will need to move to objectives in the later turns.
Minimal Deploy Alpha Strike Armies: These are a pain if you go first, of course, because most of their heavy lifters will be off the board when yours come down. This just becomes one of the hazards of playing a list more oriented towards rock, paper, scissors play (which an alpha strike drop army is). If you see this across the table, you may want to change the way you deploy and go back to a more traditional Trapdoor Spider style approach and drop empty pods onto scattered far objectives, keeping the rest of your offensive force together to weather their alpha and hit back hard.
Deployment Space: Because we are deploying Monstrous Creatures out of the pod there is a very real danger of not having enough room to place the model on a bad scatter. This removes it from play as destroyed. For this reason, I really like the Carnifex with double brainleech. It has a much smaller base than the 6 wound models and is easier to fit into tight spaces. This is also why I would never drop in a Hierodule, even though you can per RAW; Too much risk of not being able to place that huge base. To minimize risk, carefully consider the order in which you bring them down, maybe dropping the big base models first.
Getting shot off the board: Unless we get a formation with the drop assault rule, be very careful to ensure what you have on the board can survive the first turn alpha. Enough said on that.
That’s a healthy start to it. So what do you think? Do you agree that this is a huge change to the way that Tyranids are played? How will you use Tyrannocytes? Any cool list ideas?
