Tyranid Codex review Part 3

 Tyranid Codex review Part 3: Elites Part 1

After the mammoth entries last week, I am onto Elites choices now.  These will be in places a fair amount shorter than the previous entries, simply because a lot of these units only do one or two things really well. 

Hive Guard

These are an anti tank unit sporting a very good two shot Impaler Cannon, which is basically a +1 strength autocannon, but with half the range.  On the plus side the gun is assault, like all tyranid weapons and doesn't need line of sight to fire.  Most of the creatures actual stat line is fairly irrelvant, but it does have a marine level ballistic skill, combined with monstrous creature toughness and a 4+ save, meaning they can be quite difficult to shift.  A couple of wounds completes the package nicely. 

You will probably want to use of these to dispose of transports.  The gun is fairly effective against most armour values, but 13 and upwards may be pushing it.   They are not especially points efficient being used against infantry, as the AP isn't good enough to worry marines.  Just concentrate on shooting either tough things with low armour saves, or tanks in the armour 10-12 band and they will be fine. 

Conclusion:

They have no options to talk about beyond picking 1 to 3 in a brood, they are what they are, light tank hunters, and they come in at a bargain price.  One of the best units in the codex, I have no doubt.


Lictor Brood

Ahh the Lictor.  In the past, the Lictor was a feared unit causing havoc and being virtually impossible to see and hit.  These days it is far more conventional, but has a few complex rules to look into.  First lets consider its stat line.  What first jumps out at me is its high weaponskill, strength and initative.  It hits marines on 3s, wounds them on 2s, but not being a monstrous creature it has to rely on rending to kill things.  That is a bit disappointing.   The problem is that it only has a marine level toughness, three wounds and a guardsmans armour save to protect it from being hit back.  Its Weapon Skill is not good enough to prevent 99% of things hitting it back on a 4+.  It will struggle to kill more than one power armoured model a turn, but for every 6 marine attacks back, it will take one wound on average. 

You can take 1-3 of these in a brood, which might be needed if you want them to attack squads.  Even fairly weak units like devastators, which should be its ideal targets, will likely inflict one wound on it in combat. 

It comes with, and can't change or upgrade, a 5+ save, Rending Claws and Scything Talons.  Not great, but it is what it is. 

Chameleon skin is effectively deepstriking, anywhere outside of 1 inch from the enemy without scattering or risk of death.  Unfortunately no option to charge, so you are stuck either shooting, or running.  As you don't scatter it is unlikely you will want to run, simply because you could have chosen to deploy pretty much anywhere you could actually run to.  So for shooting, what do you have?
What you have are flesh hooks.  The range is the same as a pistol, but due to deployment rules that shouldn't be an issue.  You have two shots at strength 6 and rending.  So effectively a two shot Assault cannon if being fired at tanks.  On the plus side, you can appear behind the tanks, and shoot at their weak rear armour.  This is a good use of the ability, as a Lictor brood can rampage through a parking lot of tanks, shooting and assaulting if it survives one turn of shooting. 

It comes with a selection of special rules, with stealth and move through cover being very handy, as should it appear in cover, it has a very good 3+ cover save to protect it.  If it is engaged in a combat it cant win, it can always use hit and run to escape, and with its high initiative, it should manage to do this.

Lastly Pheromone trail.  This could have been good, if the words "on the board at the start of the movement phase" were removed from the ability.  This gives the tyranid player a bonus +1 to reserve rolls when he is on the table.  The downside is, the Lictor has to have arrived the turn before, or it doesn't do anything, which means it needs to have passed its reserve roll a turn or so before.  You don't even have the option of deploying it normally or infiltrating.  Think of this as an occasionally useful, but probably hardly ever used ability and you wont go far wrong.

Conclusion:

This is a utility unit, specialising in disruption of the enemy and tank destruction.  I would avoid any infantry units unless they are heavily depleted as even relatively poor units can take wounds off them.   If you can shoot a tank or dreadnought in the rear, you should hopefully be able to do something, stay in cover as much as possible.  The good news with this is that the tank may need to turn round to shoot you, and if it does, hopefully its weaker armour is facing longer range guns on your side.  If you do get engaged in close combat, use hit and run to escape.
 

Deathleaper

This is a Lictor special character, costing just over the price of two ordinary Lictors.  So it better be pretty good, as it is nearly as expensive as the HQ options!   Lets look at what you get on top of a Lictor statistic line.  Well standing out for me is the incredibly high weapon skill, the same as the Swarmlord.  This means that marines only hit you on 5+, which is a big thing.  Same poor save and average toughness, but a point more initiative, although that will only really help vs halberd armed grey knights and some eldar units.  You also get an extra attack, nice but by no means does this make it competent in close combat.   

It has exactly the same biomorphs and weapons as a Lictor as well as the same Fleet, Move through Cover, Pheromone trail, Stealth and Hit and run rules.  In addition it has a couple of unique special rules.
"Its after me" is very decent, it is perhaps the sole reason to actually include the Deathleaper.  This reduces one enemy HQs leadership by D3.  Best used on psykers.  Ability stops should the Deathleaper die, so keeping alive is important.
"What was that" reduces enemy movement in difficult terrain by one dice, down to a minimum of one dice, provided the enemy are in pistol range.  Could potentially stop you being charged.
"Where'd it go" Allows the Deathleaper to disappear if it is more than 1 inch away from the enemy, then return back to the table by Chameleon skin deployment.  Can be incredibly useful for redeploying and keeping yourself alive.  It has the added bonus that should you go second, that you could redeploy on turn 4 and reappear contesting an objective on turn 5 when the enemy can't kill you.
The final special rule is Killing Strike, causing both its combat attacks and Flesh Hooks to rend on 5+, which is quite nice, and makes it quite a lot more reliable at tank hunting.

Conclusion: 

Much like the normal Lictor, this is a disruption unit.  It is actually better at its job than a unit of two lictors, due to the variety of special rules it brings to the table.  I would therefore suggest including the Deathleaper should you ever be tempted to field more than one normal Lictor.


Venomthrope

Another utility unit, of a totally different type to the two Lictors. The Venomthrope is primarily a support unit.  The statistic line is not exactly impressive, sporting a marines strength and toughness as well as ballistic skill, despite having no ranged attacks.  It has a poor weaponskill, only two attacks, low initiative and only two wounds.

In terms of weapons, it comes with lashwhips, making its initative somewhat better and a 5+ save, which isn't brilliant.  It also comes with Toxic Miasma biomorph, perhaps the only time you will see this in a game.    However you don't really buy this creature for its statistics, you buy it for its special rules.

First up, Toxic Touch, meaning all its close combat attacks wound on a 2+.  Not bad, but really it doesn't have the stat line to be wanting to be in combat, two attacks and a poor weaponskill, coupled with a poor armour save, do not make this a combat beast.  So this probably isn't the reason you are taking this.

Second, and most importantly, is Spore Cloud.  This incredibly handy ability does a couple of things.  Firstly it gives all units on your side within 6 inches a 5+ cover save.  This protects everything, including Hive Tyrants etc, who are within range.  All units within this range also count as being armed with defensive grenades should anyone assault you.  Unlikely, but it is there.  An unusual and probably unforeseen side effect of this is that units which are normally strength 3 or lower will benefit assaulting tanks, as defensive grenades give you strength 4, allowing you to target rear armour of things.   Units wishing to charge units taking advantage of this cover must take dangerous terrain tests.  All these bonuses are lost should the Venomthrope die.

This is the first unit which has access to a mycetic spore.  This is essentially a drop pod but will be discussed in further detail in the troops entry where it appears in the codex.

Conclusion:

The Venomthrope brings a lot to the table, in terms of keeping your horde alive when crossing the table.  The only real problem is keeping it alive as a single krak missile hit and that is probably it.  Its cover save bonus is far more useful to the units around it than itself.  With this in mind, you really need to keep it out of line of sight, preferably behind one of the giant new plastic tyranids, be it a Trygon, Mawloc, Tervigon etc. 


That concludes the elites part 1 of my review of the Tyranid Codex.  Click here for part 4.