Warhammer 40K: Detachment Breakdown – Mastering the Tyranid’s “Warrior Bioform Onslaught”
Goatboy here to breakdown the 40K Advent Calendar Detachment – the Tyranids ‘Warrior Bioform Onslaught’ with tips, tricks, and a sample army!
With this 2024 Advent Calendar of fun stuff for Warhammer 40K coming out, it’s time to review the detachments as they come out. We’ll do as usual a Good, Bad, and Ugly little break down for each one then a look at the type of list I would play for this army. I will begin with one of the detachments and as the weeks go on break down a few in batches as they come out. I am very excited to see some new rules and maybe some new ways to play an army and create something new and unique. Right now the game is sorta of locking into “best” of style armies and while we do have some innovation from time to time it feels like the same tricks are what is going to carry “best of” armies to the top.
‘Warrior Bioform Onslaught’ – The Good
The new detachment has two rules that separate it from the other Tyranid options. The first one is the default – make all the Tyranid Warrior units good rule in Leader-Beasts. It grants all Tyranid Warrior and Winged Tyranid Primes a 5+ invulnerable save. This is pretty good as adding any more survivability to those units is a good thing – especially on units with a large pile of wounds.
The next piece of the rule now granites the Battleline keyword to Tyranid Warriors with Ranged/Melee Bio Weapons the Tyranid Warrior and Battleline Keyword. This lets you take up to 6 units of each of these units if you have the points available, grants some fun stuff you can do in some missions, and is just a nice way to “spread” out more choices in the army. On top of that all Tyranid Warrior models now get Objective Secured 3 as another rule which creates a very thick brick of models to chew thru to take over an objective.
Both of these rules combine to create a very big meaty center to hold a bunch of objectives in a game. It might not let you kill a ton of stuff – but if you hold all the points it is hard for the opponent to win the game. Which of course is the important thing in 40K right now – just holding the most objectives.
From there we have 4 Enhancements that all seem pretty good. The first is an interesting one that is cheap and lets you take a Neurotyrant and attach it to a Tyranid Warriors unit. This seems like an Auto-take as having one of these in your army is important and allowing to get more wounds with a unit its attached to is powerful. From there we have two Winged Tyranid Prime options that either grant a unit it is attached to a +1 to hit or a -1 to be hit. The final one and probably another one of the more interesting one is just any Tyranid model can get Advance and Charge. This lets you create a nice little Winged Hive Tyrant murder machine if you want to add it to your army.
On the stratagem front of things we have a bunch of powerful options that just all feel very useful. Which of course is one of the things you want to have in any detachment you play. We have a few “double” action powers that lets you select a Tyranid Warrior unit and then an Endless Multitude within 6” to power up. Synaptic Amplification is one of those that lets you give a reroll 1 to wound for the Endless Multitude unit and then reroll a hit roll of 1 for the Tyranid Warriors unit. The other one is Synaptic Shield that lets you do the same type of picking 2 units and granting a -1 to wound if the Strength of the shooting attack is greater than the units toughness.
The other good ones is of course a Sticky Objective option you can use during your movement phase with a Tyranid Warrior unit. These are always useful to help control the backfield objectives as you move forward with all your Tyranid monsters. The other neat one is just a default any Tyranid unit can use it. It grants a +2 to the ranged weapons strength of a unit or a +1 to the melee weapon strength on a unit. This can be done in either the Shooting phase or Fighting phase which leads it to be a pretty powerful option. The final one lets you get Ignore Cover on a units shooting attack that then turns off any cover benefits to the unit after it is “shot”.
‘Warrior Bioform Onslaught’ – The Bad
This isn’t a bad detachment it just probably doesn’t do enough for you to take it over other things. The Warrior horde idea is a neat one and while it looks pretty fun on the table top it really doesn’t do enough damage to things as it mills around. I can see some use in a “board” control army but it really need more options to boost the damage potential of the Warriors or other methods to help them chew thru other Elite options.
‘Warrior Bioform Onslaught’ – The Ugly
Where is my cool “super” warrior upgrade options? I also wonder if this could have used some kind of “choice” per turn power that lets you tweak your army turn to turn. You could have done some kind of weird Warrior like evolution thing that lets you take on other “forms” of warriors to help create a unique blend of an army. That would be one of the things I would look at to have made something a bit more unique.
Sample Detachment Armylist – Warrior Bioform Onslaught
Tyranids
Warrior Bioform Onslaught
Strike Force
CHARACTERS
Neurotyrant (105 Points)
• Warlord
• 1x Neurotyrant claws and lashes
• 1x Psychic scream
Winged Tyranid Prime (85 Points)
• 1x Prime talons
• 1x Ocular Adaptation
Winged Tyranid Prime (85 Points)
• 1x Prime talons
• 1x Sensory Assimilation
Winged Tyranid Prime (95 Points)
• 1x Prime talons
• 1x Elevated Might
BATTLELINE
Gargoyles (170 Points)
• 20x Gargoyle
◦ 20x Blinding venom
◦ 20x Fleshborer
Hormagaunts (65 Points)
• 10x Hormagaunt
◦ 10x Hormagaunt talons
Hormagaunts (65 Points)
• 10x Hormagaunt
◦ 10x Hormagaunt talons
Tyranid Warriors with Melee Bio-weapons (150 Points)
• 1x Tyranid Prime
◦ 1x Tyranid Warrior claws and talons
• 5x Tyranid Warrior
◦ 5x Tyranid Warrior claws and talons
Tyranid Warriors with Melee Bio-weapons (150 Points)
• 1x Tyranid Prime
◦ 1x Tyranid Warrior claws and talons
• 5x Tyranid Warrior
◦ 5x Tyranid Warrior claws and talons
Tyranid Warriors with Melee Bio-weapons (150 Points)
• 1x Tyranid Prime
◦ 1x Tyranid Warrior claws and talons
• 5x Tyranid Warrior
◦ 5x Tyranid Warrior claws and talons
Tyranid Warriors with Melee Bio-weapons (150 Points)
• 1x Tyranid Prime
◦ 1x Tyranid Warrior claws and talons
• 5x Tyranid Warrior
◦ 5x Tyranid Warrior claws and talons
Tyranid Warriors with Ranged Bio-weapons (130 Points)
• 1x Tyranid Prime
◦ 1x Deathspitter
◦ 1x Tyranid Warrior claws and talons
• 5x Tyranid Warrior
◦ 3x Deathspitter
◦ 5x Tyranid Warrior claws and talons
◦ 2x Venom cannon
Tyranid Warriors with Ranged Bio-weapons (130 Points)
• 1x Tyranid Prime
◦ 1x Deathspitter
◦ 1x Tyranid Warrior claws and talons
• 5x Tyranid Warrior
◦ 3x Deathspitter
◦ 5x Tyranid Warrior claws and talons
◦ 2x Venom cannon
Tyranid Warriors with Ranged Bio-weapons (130 Points)
• 1x Tyranid Prime
◦ 1x Deathspitter
◦ 1x Tyranid Warrior claws and talons
• 5x Tyranid Warrior
◦ 3x Deathspitter
◦ 5x Tyranid Warrior claws and talons
◦ 2x Venom cannon
Tyranid Warriors with Ranged Bio-weapons (130 Points)
• 1x Tyranid Prime
◦ 1x Deathspitter
◦ 1x Tyranid Warrior claws and talons
• 5x Tyranid Warrior
◦ 3x Deathspitter
◦ 5x Tyranid Warrior claws and talons
◦ 2x Venom cannon
OTHER DATASHEETS
Zoanthropes (200 Points)
• 1x Neurothrope
◦ 1x Chitinous claws and teeth
◦ 1x Warp Blast
• 5x Zoanthrope
◦ 5x Chitinous claws and teeth
◦ 5x Warp Blast
‘Warrior Bioform Onslaught’ Tactics
The idea here is to just have a massed amount of nonsense running around on the tabletop. You can utilize the big Garagoyle Squad with the Tyranid Prime with the Sensory Assimilation to create an annoying -1 to hit unit that is just a pain. You use all the other bodies to help just cover the table in bug-beef. The Zoanthropes with Neurotyrant is just a great unit where you can easily boost their shooting strength with the Spontaneous Hypercorrosion and just be a pain in the butt to deal with behind all the beef coming at them.
Download the Detachment Here (PDF)
NOM NOM NOM!
