Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K – Let’s Talk About Those New Tyranid Rules!
Goatboy here and whoa boy did GW give us some interesting new Tyranid rules. Let’s dig in!
GW decided to dump a new Army of Renown in the latest White Dwarf. Now is it me – or is this where they should be putting these armies? It would bring some sales to White Dwarf, force players to think of new bits of nonsense, and seems pretty simple enough to build out. In fact – let’s just leave the Campaign books for little “Codexes” and bring Armies of Renown back to White Dwarf – with an Army Battle report as well. That’s just my two cents.
Anyway I won’t bore you over too much of the details about it as there are a few sites out there that dived right in with some Tyranid Fanatics to bring you some deeply serious break downs of the army. Instead I just want to tell you what excites me about this release. I can’t just dive right in, I need you guys to sit around and hear a tale from Goatboy’s past.
“Let Me Tell You Of The Days of HIGH ADVENTURE!”
It was a long and stormy night when I finally breached some fog in my past. A relationship ended and I looked back to a game that brought me a lot of joy and decided I needed to get back into that game. Lucky for me an old friend opened up a game store and I came along just at the right time and place to purchase an army designed to help me win events and win “a new army”. This was back in the past when GW would give stores “free” boxes to give away at events. The army I decided to come back and play was of course – Nidzilla.
Nidzilla!
Back in the day the game was locked into one detachment but Nids had a fun way to break that by utilizing Carnifexes in 2 different slots. Mix that with a precursor to some of the damage output we see now with a large dice pool of shooting, cheap upgrades to make them hit better, and a sweet “big” model that everyone like to play with. Nidzilla was a perfect list for the young hurt Goatboy who needed a hobby to whisper sweet nothings in his ear and let me exercise some daemons in the form of massed Devourer spam.
Nidzilla was my first foray into the big base conspiracy I seem to fall into when I play current games of 40k. If it isn’t on a big base I don’t want none. Its pretty simple as bigger monsters mean a lot more fun painting them as some of the hobby aspects are easier to accomplish. When you have a large bumpy canvas – washes, glazes, and color wheel tricks do you well.
Crusher Stampede!
I am sure as you can figure out I am talking about the new Flashpoint Octarius Tyranid Army of Renown known as the Crusher Stampede! This army is all about the beef as you can’t take any Swarms or units with 2 wounds or less. This leaves you with all the big monsters and Tyranid Warriors as your main source of army building. In fact if your unit doesn’t contain the Monster keyword you have to take at least one Monster for a non Monster unit. You also have to have all Tyranids in the army from the same Hive Fleet. You do not gain any of those Hive Fleet Adaptations but you get all the other fun stuff – aka you take the Leviathan Mini Codex and go to town.
It also means no GSC friends to help teleport – but if you are playing Thick beats you want only thick beats on the table top. Who would want their appetizers to run along with them when they should be in your bellies.
New Tyranid Rules – Crushing!
With this Army of Renown you get a few Keywords added to your guys, everyone gets a 5+ invulnerable save, Monsters get a -1 damage added, and the big monsters count as the remaining number of wounds for controlling objective markers. These are all pretty dang sweet if you ask me and it makes a very easy and simple army to figure out and play.
The army doesn’t get any Relics but it does get 7 new Stratagems, 3 new Warlord Traits, and a new Psychic Discipline. I really like the 2CP that lets a Monster target a Monster of a Vehicle and get +1 to hit, +1 to wound, and add 1 to the damage roll. That is pretty sweet batch of bonus’s that will put a hurt on a Talos/Cronos unit. They get a Transhuman ability as well that is 1/2CP depending on the type of unit that asks for it. They even get a Fight after Death that isn’t limited to a model that hasn’t fought yet.
Remember those days of a Blood Angel Captain going to town, killing 2 things in its assault and then dying and killing another. The Mortal Wound charge strat is also interesting as it can guarantee 6 mortal Wounds to simple units which can be great to deal with some tough things like Bladeguard or Terminators. Heck they even have some fun Tyranid warrior stuff with a buff to WS and BS and a way to have them shoot when in close combat.
On the Psychic and Warlord trait front you get a lot of abilities to help your Monsters be better. A 4+ Invulnerable save, there is a d3 extra attacks, and a way for the whole unit can reroll melee hits. On the Warlord front I like the Aura of Exploding 6’s as anything that can benefit all the Monsters around you that seems great. There is another d3 attack option but again it feels like unless you are Leviathan you can’t easily grant more Warlords to your army to help these out.
More Please, White Dwarf!
Overall this is a pretty sweet little release and the perfect thing for a White Dwarf. I would love to see more of these come out to give very specific cool army builds a chance. I am sure we will end up seeing some kind of Full Primaris option at some point but so far while interesting the only really powerful one was the AdMech one – which took some point nerfs to get back in line. Time will tell if this one is too good or one of the other ones (Speed Mob seems interesting). I do like how in some ways the simplify the army which is always a nice touch.
NOM NOM NOM!
