Robot Viking

Guest writer Billy Gibbs (aka ggodo) returns with the long-awaited third part of the 5th Edition Tyranid Codex review. This time, he examines the unique creatures that Warhammer 40K players can use to plague their enemies.

Ok, After the glorious trifecta of a broken computer, huge papers and more finals than should be legal I’m back to finish off the Tyranids codex review. This installment covers the unique Tyranids that have earned their place in the nightmares of the Imperium.

First on the list is the Swarmlord. I talked about the Swarmlord earlier with the Hive Tyrant, so this next part is going to be more fluff than crunch. The Swarmlord is a smarter, stronger Hive Tyrant created specifically to outwit the enemy when brute force is failing. How did this bug get so smart? Its knowledge gets reconsumed after every battle so that the next time it is needed it can be re-grown with all its past experience. Thanks to its cycle of reincarnation the Swarmlord has more battlefield experience than any human can dream of, and has done battle with nearly every foe the Galaxy can provide. The Swarmlord is a force to be reckoned with and has an appropriately high points cost.

Old One Eye is a terror of Godzilla proportions. An ancient Carnefex originally brought down by a plasma pistol fired through its eye, this creature was believed dead and its body was frozen into a glacier. Now, anyone with horror movie experience knows that freezing is the best way to preserve monsters for the sequel, and this is no exception. Old One eye gets defrosted, regenerates all his missing flesh, same for the titular eye, and goes on a rampage. He is eventually taken down again by a rocket fired into the crater where its eye used to be, falling into a canyon where its body was never found. Setup for the sequel? I think so. Should that sequel take place on your table top you’ll find that Old One Eye is extraordinarily durable. Its regeneration ability lets it recover multiple wounds on a D6 roll of five or six per wound. That’s a significant improvement over normal regeneration (getting wounds back on just sixes). As if that weren’t enough, Old One Eye gets an additional attack for each hit he scores in close combat. With four attacks base that’s up to eight attacks per turn. That’s not something you see every day. For those of you facing this monster from the other side of the table, my only advice for you is to aim for the head.

The Doom of Malan’tai is a story to keep the young Eldar in line. “Don’t go out at night,” says the mommy Eldar, “or the Doom of Malan’tai will suck your immortal soul out and use it to fire an AP1 Large blast.” The Doom of Malan’tai got its name from sucking the life force out of the entire Malan’tai craftworld. On the table it forces everyone near it to make leadership tests or else suffer one wound for every point the test is failed by. Wounds, no armor saves, no invulnerable saves, no I-think-the Ultramarines-are-indestructable saves, nothing. That is pain, pure and simple. Those souls it absorbs heal it up to a maximum of 10 wounds. TEN WOUNDS! That’s more wounds than I know what to do with. Of course its low toughness and bad armor mean rocket launchers are Instant Death, but small arms can spend all day trying to get ten wounds into it. Oh, here’s one more thing:  its Strength stat is always equal to its remaining wounds. 10 wounds? 10 strength. It can also fire an AP 1 large blast equal to its current strength if it does it takes D3 wounds, but all wounds it inflicts with the blast heal it even more. I like it. It does tend to draw quite a bit of large caliber fire, but it works great on horde armies like Orks or other Tyranids. Infantry based Gurad go down like so much delicious soul cake. The biggest negative in my book is that it takes an Elite slot, and Tyranids have way too many to choose from in that slot.

The Deathleaper is psychological warfare incarnate. Designed as an autonomous assassin to terrorize prey planets in order to ease later consumption, the Deathleaper is Games Workshop’s gift to Tyranid players who hate psykers. “It’s after me!” lets the Nid player choose one enemy character and reduce its leadership by one D3. This is a great way to cause players to be more careful with their psykers. Every psychic test they make is a leadership test, and with less leadership they’re much more likely to have to deal with The Perils of the Warp. “Where is it?” makes the Deathleaper harder to hit by forcing anyone targeting it to use Night Fighting rules to determine if they can even see the lurking predator. Oh, and they only get half their Night Fighting roll. “Where’d it go” lets the Deathleaper drop off the board and redeploy someplace else, hopefully someplace safer than before. This lets you choose the battles for the Deathleaper, dancing around enemy troops taunting them, and above all, reducing a key psyker’s leadership. If you play against anyone that isn’t Tau, use him to shut down their psykers, if you do play against Tau, he rends armor on a To Wound of 5+. That’s not bad at all. Save an elite slot for this guy

The Parasite of Mortrex feels like it would be a better foe for a roleplaying game than a unit on a battlefield. It injects it’s victims with Ripper eggs that then hatch and eat their way out of the host. Sounds like a great plot hook there, “Find the cure or bugs will eat their way out of your torso.” On the table it means that for every model it kills there is a chance that D6 ripper bases will pop out of it and add to your army. This is a good thing. Every outflanking enemy unit may already be infected, which is also a good thing. The bad things are that the Parasite is an HQ choice, battling for position with the Hive Tyrant, Swarmlord, Tervigon and Tyranid Prime, and it’s also fragile with 4 toughness and a 5+ armor save. These two traits kill it in my mind, it’s the same points cost as a Tervigon, and the Tervigon is just so much better, and it’s more fragile than the tyranid prime that costs half as much. Personally I think this guy would be hilarious fun for someone with tons of Rippers, but competitively it’s not going to see much use. Oh, and there’s no model for it! GW confuses me with it’s model line yet again.

Last on the list are Ymgarl Genestealers. They have a stat line nearly identical to normal Genestealers with one large exception: they cost nine points more per model. Let’s see what those nine points buy you. A better armor save is the most easily missed change, a 4+ armor save is pretty good in a codex where everything smaller than a house is 5+ or 6+. Next we have the abilities. The Ymgarl Genestealers can lay dormant in one piece of terrain large enough to hold the unit — this is secretly written down and when the ‘stealers pop in from reserves they arrive in that Terrain, no scatter, no drawbacks except for enemies within one inch or if you picked a piece of terrain that the Genestealers can’t enter (like inside a wall or something). That clause feels like something a rules lawyer needed, because no one is going to pick terrain their unit can’t enter, right? The second ability is “Alter Form” and allows the genestealers to add +1 to their attacks, their strength or their toughness each turn, without choosing the same one twice in a row. For example, you can’t have plus one attack the whole game, but you can alternate attack and strength, which seems like the best option unless you get counter assaulted by something scary and really need to keep the stealers alive. They take an elite slot, which is a knock against them, and really their only downside. Tyranids have so many elites that taking a slightly better version of a troop choice doesn’t seem like a good use of resources.

This concludes our tyranid codex review, if there’s any other faction that the loyal Vikings would like to hear about, just let me know in the comments, and I’ll try to be more prolific over the summer.

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4. 5th Edition Tyranid Codex Review, Part 2
5. 5th Edition Tyranid Codex Review, Part 1