Tyranid Codex review Part 1

Welcome to the first part of my in depth Tyranid Codex review.

Tyranid Codex Review part 1: HQs Part 1

Hive Tyrant

First up, the traditional Hive Tyrant.  This is a monstrous creature, with good statistics, a large choice of biomorphs, weapons, synapse creature and a selection of prepaid psychic powers and upgrades.  Shadow of the warp is always a good bonus to have, limiting enemy psychic powers.

This sets you back close to 200 points without taking anything.  So it isn't cheap.  This is important to bear in mind, as the other HQ choices bring quite a lot to the table meaning the Hive Tyrant is not quite the same auto include unit it was in previous editions. 

It comes free with a 3+ save, a lashwhip/bonesword combo and a pair of scything talons.  Not the best of the available combinations, but not terrible.  Lets go through the options as they are presented in the codex;

Replace Lash whip and Bone sword for an extra pair of scything talons.  This is a so so choice, and can work on a budget tyrant build.  Will allow the tyrant to reroll all his "to hit" dice in close combat.  Its free but you sacrifice the lashwhip and bonesword.  This is bad against armies like grey knights where the whip comes in handy for striking first and it is also good vs dreadnoughts.  The bonesword is good for dispatching multiwound creatures, but these are relatively rare so the loss of this isn't all that important.

Replace any set of Scything talons with either a twinlinked Deathspitter or a twinlinked Devourer with brainleach worms.  Both cost exactly the same price, but the devourer has twice as many shots and at a higher strength.  This is a good option.  Twinlinked Deathspitter is pretty much worse in every way, except having a slightly better ap value.  Two sets of Devourers can turn you into a gun platform with 12 shots at strength 6, but this means not casting one of your psychic powers.  All in all a good anti infantry choice, and not bad against light armour and rear armour in general.

Replace one set of Scything talons with either a Heavy Venom Canon or Stranglethorn cannon.  In this case the Heavy Venom cannon wins hands down.  It is an effective tank supressor as it has high strength and with a small blast can be used somewhat usefully vs infantry.  The Stranglethorn cannon is an anti infantry weapon but unlikely to be more useful than a twinlinked devourer.  I beleive the Heavy Venom Cannon is a strong choice, as it can be used with a psychic power, where as to get the most out of the Devourer you really want a pair.

Take any of Hive Commander, Old Adversary or Indescribable Horror.  Ignore Indescribable horror, for the points it really isn't worth it.  Hive Commander is very useful if you plan on using reserves, infiltrators or deep strikers and Old Adversary is exceptionally useful if you don't have scything talons and keep your Tyrant near other units which can take advantage of the rerolls.  That said, the rerolls are probably worth the points on just the tyrant on its own, but if it happens to be hanging around units that don't have rerolls built in, then that is all the better.   Gargoyles can take the most advantage of this to increase the amount of blinding venom hits, and they should be hanging around a flying hive tyrant anyway.

Now lets look at biomorphs.  Some of these can be ignored without too much looking into them.  First up Adrenal glands.  Do you really need to be strength 7 and initative 6 on the charge?  Thought not.  Toxin sacks.  Do you want to wound on a 2+ or swap that for a 4+ rerolled and pay points for it?  Again, thought not.  Acid blood could be entertaining against a low imitative combat army but I can't see it being especially useful as you have to lose wounds, so I am not sure it is worth the points.  Implant attack is not terrible, but if you have a bonesword it is probably not needed.  Toxic Miasma is probably better than Acid blood and could kill quite a lot, but it doesnt help towards combat result.  I would probably avoid all of these biomorphs.  Regeneration is however useful.  It is cheaper here than elsewhere in the book and it could keep the tyrant alive longer. 

Psychic powers can be seperated into good and bad quite easily.  Lets go through these.  Horror requires you to pass a psychic test, so they can take a moral test and then if they fail they fall back, fearless units are immune.  Lets not be wasting time with that.  Leech Essence has the same range as Horror, but inflicts d3 low strength, low ap hits, which can heal you.  Yes please.  Paroxysm has the same range as the others and reduces the targets weapon skill and ballistic skill to 1.  A very good choice and a key reason to include a Hive tyrant.  Finally another poor choice, just incase you didn't realise you should be taking Paroxysm and Leech Essence, up steps Psychic scream.  Enemy units take leadership tests and lose one wound per point they fail by.  Just not as useful as the other powers, and certainly not as useful as actually shooting them with one of the available guns.

Finally the upgrade that determines what your tyrant will be doing.  The choice is essentially do you want to fly, or walk.  If you want to fly, you will need to sink a large amount of points into Wings.  Please note if you do this, and you need to have WYSIWYG, the new plastic kit forces you to replace one of your weapons sets for the wings with built in scything talons.  I suggest converting this, as it really isn't a good build to have just one set of talons.
If you plan on walking, get the Armoured Shell for a 2+ save.  Don't bother with the Thorax swarm, it really isn't as good as the other options.


Conclusion:
The Hive tyrant can be customised into pretty much every role you can think of, provided you are willing to pay a substantial amount of points to include him in your list. 

Good options:  Lashwhip/Bonsword, Twin Devourers, Heavy Venom Cannon, Regeneration, Wings, Armoured Shell, Hive Commander, Old Adversary, Paroxysm, Leech Essence
Bad options: Twin Deathspitters, single set of Scything talons, Toxin sacks, Adrenal glands, Thorax Swarm, Horror, Psychic Scream, Horror

Swarm Lord

This is the special character Hive Tyrant choice.  So for 110 points more than the basic hive tyrant, what do you get?  Looking at the statistics, you gain a point of Weapon Skill, which takes you to the threshold where a lot of basic troops, such as marines in all flavours only hit you on 5s in combat.  This is a massive advantage.  However it won't make a great deal of difference against enemy characters.  You also gain another wound, which is always nice, and a point of initiative.  The initiative is effectively worse than the regular tyrants against elite eldar and grey knights with halberds due to the lack of a lashwhip, but for most opponents, you won't really notice any difference.

The bone sabers inflict instant death regardless of toughness, which isn't bad, but a regular Hive Tyrant can get this built in with Implant Attack without sacrificing its weapon slots.  It comes built in with synapse and all four psychic powers as well as Shadow in the Warp, which is useful against a lot of armies.   It gets more out of this because it can cast two powers a turn, but it needs to be able to, in order to counter the lack of shooting attacks.  The increased synapse range is also very useful for a foot tyrant.

Its four swords give it a 4+ invulnerable (4++) save in close combat which will go a long way to keeping it alive against other armies.  No tyranid creature has a ward save, so this is about as good as it gets. 

The Swarm leader special rule is okay, the option for furious charge and acute senses will probably not be as useful as taking preferred enemy, but since furious charge on the Swarmlord itself makes it initative 7, this could come in handy on some of the occasions mentioned above.

Alien Cunning is similar to the Hive Tyrants Hive Commander ability, but trades off outflanking a unit of troops for re rolling the side an outflanking unit appears on.

Conclusion: 

So we reach the point when we determine if he really is worth including.  The Swarmlord comes with a fair amount of special rules, good statistic increases and a 4++ save in close combat, but at quite an expense.  Notice there is no option for wings or armoured shell, which doesn't fill me full of confidence in his abilities.  Taking everything into account, the Swarmlord can be a competitive choice, but it is perhaps not an optimal one.  He just doesn't have the flexibility of the standard tyrant.


Tyrant Guard

Any hive tyrant and indeed the Swarmlord can include a tyrant guard unit of one to three models. 
These are expensive costing the same price as the wings upgrade and offer a fairly reasonable statistics line.  Above average weaponskill, strength, toughness and attacks, along with two wounds and 3+ saves they are fairly formidable in close combat. 

They come for free with scything talons and rending claws, but can trade the talons for either a lashwhip or a bonesword.  The entire brood must take the same option.  Depending on what you gave your hive tyrant, and if you took Old Adversary, this may or may not be a good idea.  Remember the idea with close combat is to be able to kill an enemy unit in their close combat phase, so you can consolidate, then charge again in your next turn.  You really don't want to be out in the open in their turn.  So with this in mind, you probably don't want to include the boneswords, but you might want lashwhips.

Conclusion:

A unit with strong statistics, but expensive.  If included will bring the price of a foot tyrant up to that of a flying one, with nowhere near the speed, but a better close combat ability due to extra attacks.  Due to how the unit works, the tyrant cant be picked out by shooting, but as an independant character suffers from wound allocation and can be attacked specifically in close combat.  If you buy the tyrant regeneration you can put a wounding hit early onto the tyrant in the hope that you recover it through regeneration and leech essence.  I would include one or two of these for a foot tyrant, but none for a flying one.  Swarmlord will want his armed with lashwhips.

This is continued in Tyranid Codex Review Part 2