40K: Tyranid Psychic Powers
Big bugs giving you a big headache? That probably means your brain’s about to explode.
The Tyranid Hive Mind is a powerful presence–a shadow in the warp that drives humanity to the brink of despair, terror, and insanity. As the Hive Mind guides its fleets to an Imperial World, the effects of its looming presence in the warp can be felt the world over, giving the Tyranids an advantage as they invade and consume the world. However, certain tyranid biomorphs can call more directly upon the power of the Hive Mind, using it to manifest some powerful effects indeed.
In 8th Edition, this takes the form of the potent Hive Mind Discipline, which features 3 new psychic powers on top of the ones already present in the Tyranid Index. Check them out!
Joining the ranks we’ve got Dominion, Paroxysm, and Psychic Scream, which add some incredibly useful tools to the Tyranid’s psychic arsenal. Old familiar favorites the Horror, Catalyst, and Onslaught are back as well, so let’s run through the powers. To begin with we’ve got:
Dominion
This power is a handy get out of Instinctive Behavior Free Cad. It’s got an incredible range, which is good, it needs it, given the revamp to syanpse. But it’s super useful for when you need to either run a flank way outside of your synapse coverage, or when your enemy gets lucky and wipes out one of your synapse nodes in the worst moment. Temporarily extend your synapse.
Catalyst
This one is a classic. 5+ feel no pain, this one is handy for keeping gaunts and big bugs alike alive under the withering firepower of your enemy’s Hellblasters/Leman Russes.
The Horror
This one is absolutely worth it for the -1 to hit. The leadership is going to be situationally useful, but, in a pinch you can make sure that Wraithknight is hitting your spore-cyst covered Carnifexes at -2.
Onslaught
An all around useful tool. You can advance without penalty, move and fire heavy weapons, and advance and charge. All useful things to have no matter what kind of bugs you’re running. I don’t now that I’ve seen a bug list that didn’t feature this one. Plus the (even if it advanced) that they’ve added in seems to imply you can advance and fire heavy weapons.
Paroxysm
Make sure your opponent can’t Counter-Offensive your important charge. This one is probably a sleeper hit. It’ll help you catch your enemy off guard in an assault-heavy list, and it’ll let you dictate the flow of battle a little more. Want to make sure your genestealers get to hit that big old unit of berserkers first, but also need to make sure your Swarmlord doesn’t get devoured by that Bloodthirster? We’ve got what you need right here.
Psychic Scream
This one is amazing. Shut down your enemy psykers. It’s like smite but objectively better. Put this one a unit that can manifest more than one power and you can deal out 2d3 mortal wounds, and have the potential to just erasel a psychic power from one of your enemy’s forces. Good times had by all–it’s a little awkward in that you have to actively choose it, and if you can only take one psychic power, you often also know smite, so the net effect is mostly going to be the same–it can be hard to position yourself to take advantage of that other benefit–but if you can manage it, go on and live the dream.
And there you have it folks. The Hive Mind Discipline–it’s got some good tools for all your total dominion needs.
I think I’m going to go buy some raid…
