Tyranids First and Not-so-First Impressions - A guest article

So the new Tyranids have been out a couple of weeks now, and me and the rest of the Tyranid players are slowly but surely rising out of the craters following the bombing that was the first impressions of the new codex. I'm not gonna lie, it was bad. Things had been removed, stuff that was good had been nerfed, and the new things in the codex seemed lackluster to say the least. I'm sure I wasn't alone in sending slightly angry e-mails to Games Workshop asking them what the playtesters of this mess had been smoking, but deep inside we knew nothing was going to change.

The new models were on their way, so I figured I would just ignore all the bad things I had been reading myself and that others had been telling me and just go for it. Try to make it work. I had noticed things like the Venomthrope being buffed, and some new statlines that could work (including the BS4 Hive Tyrants. Lovely!) so I tried to feel as positive as I could as I prepared for my first game with the new bugs, which so happened to be against the very person owning this here blog!

I was stunned, really, I was. Things were going really well. I was dodging shots left and right with my 3+ cover saves from the Venomthrope/Intervening models combo I had figured out, and my shooting went very well, with Warp Blasts from my Zoanthrope piercing Centurion armor, and my Hive Tyrant's Venom Cannon killing regular Marines. Slowly and steady I was stomping my way up the table, and soon enough I was ready to charge. The assaults went well, and with the constant spawning my Tervigon did, I never really ran out of cover for my bigger creatures. The game ended with a pretty crushing victory for the Hive Mind. ”New-codex-luck”? Maybe, but it had gone really well, and I felt pretty damn good.

The next targets for my dear Tyranids were the Orks of a player another town over. I had heard to be careful when playing against him from some of his friends and this time, I thought, the new Nids were going to meet their doom. This game was longer than the one with Mike, so I won't go into detail, but I won this game too! 2-1 in victory points, so not a huge victory, but a victory nonetheless.

So, in short, my first impressions were terrible. I was hugely dissapointed, and I really felt almost betrayed by Game Workshop. They had released a half-baked mess, I thought. However, as I 've played more games with them, they still have that Nids feeling. A lot of bugs, running around, giving cover to the big boys, stomping behind them. Venomthropes is the name of the game now. Venomthropes and lots of shooting. Preferably two Flyrants with devourers. Carnifexes are also really appealing now, being a lot cheaper. So if you were like me kids, and you thought the new Nids were nothing but xeno trash, think again. There is potential, and while many things were indeed nerfed, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised if you really try to create interesting combinations of different units. For the Hive Mind!

-Anders Alléus

'New' Tyranids Vs Iron hands. Tourney battle 1250 pts - The Relic

So Anders and I once again play the Relic mission. But this time he's bringing the new Tyranid Codex and units! The Spore pod (spore pod prime!) down on the right side of the image is the Relic for this game. worth 3 victory points.

His army looked something like this.
a hive tyrant with boneswords and a venom cannon, with two Tyrant guards, A Tervigon, a Venomthrope, 2 units of termagaunts, an Exocrine, 3 hive guard, a Zoanthrope and a Hive Crone.

I brought my Chapter master with artificier armor, plasma pistol and Axe of medusa.

5 honour guard, with chapter banner and 1 power axe, the rest toting power swords.

10 tactical marines, heavy bolter, meltagun and a sgt, with a gravgun and meltabomb.

5 sniper scouts, one with a missile launcher+ flakk.

3 centurions, 2 grav-cannons a TL-Lascannon, omniscope and 3 Missile launchers

Ironclad dread with 2 HK-missiles, heavy flamer and meltagun, in a Drop pod

3 Attack bikes, 2 Heavy bolters and one Multimelta

There was a couple of things we got wrong in this game, the biggest one is that we have always thought Instant death took away all saves except cover saves (!) wich is pretty huge.
I didn't know I could move and shoot with slow and purposeful as if stationary, thus severely shortening the range of my grav-cannons in this game.

I got first turn + night fighting and I have never deployed worse in my life! I dunno what the heck I was thinking. My centurions were off on the right side, far back in a ruin, not in range for anything, my tacticals were far back in the centre, which was so stupid because I already knew I was gonna have a hard time to even get to the relic against the Tyranids. my snipers were in a good positions in a ruin to my left, backed up by my attack bikes.
But on top of my poor deployment I decided that hey! lets just move the attack bikes further up on the left flank in behind a building so they can't do shit for a turn, waggle my Centurions up to try and get in range/LoS so at least the lascannon+missile launcher can fire and hey, lets move my only close combat unit into the central ruin so they will be even slower! And then I moved up my tactical squad, out of cover and into the open.  Then instead of drop podding my Ironclad near his warlord to try and go for first blood/slay the warlord I drop him near the exocrine and zoanthrope and do one wound to the Exocrine...

in total I killed two Termagaunts on turn 1 because everything pretty  much had 3+ cover saves.

Tactical genius achieved!

On tyranid turn one he managed (due to us not knowing how Instand death worked!) kill 5 tactical marines in one blast from the venom cannon, then he killed the dreadnought with the exocrine taking one hull point and then the Zoanthrope one shotted it with a s10 ap2 Lance shot! Giving him first blood and breaking Dreadberts run of staying alive for 3 turns and smashing things up :(

on my next turn I instead of keep the bikes going towards his table edge, I doubled back and shot the 2 Heavy bolters and multimelta + TL-bolters into the gaunts that had moved up to the Relic. Missing horribly!

I dropped the Orbital Bombardment on the Hive tyrant, killing a tyrant guard. in hindsight I should have nuked the Venomthrope. That would have made shooting the rest of his army so much easier.

My centurions did very little on turn 2 as well, which is really bad. I need them to start wasting enemies turn 1....Not turn 3!

The Tyranids then opted to kill one centurion and take the Relic. And then just generally moved up the board, the Tervigon spawning even more termagaunts. The Hive Crone came in and killed two honour guard in the ruins with his vector strike! 

The Iron hands answered by letting the rookie bs3 scouts fire at it, one sniper and the flakk missile actually hit. the sniper failing to wound but the missile not only put a wound on him, it also grounded the foul beast, taking another wound from it! the halved tactical squad shot at it bringing it down to one wound left that the Chapter master saw fit to take with is plasma pistol, slaying the Hive Crone. Thank the Emperor!

The tyranids retalieted by charging the honour guard through the ruins with a group of fresh termagaunts, stalling the Chapter master from getting to the Relic. Needless to say the Honour guard decimated most of the gaunts, but as they are fearless in synapse they didn't move. the Gaunts with the Relic started moving away from my lines to steal it away.

My Honour guard and chapter master cut their way through the last gaunts and moved to try and catch up to the relic, but was intercepted by even more gaunts with the tervigon right behind them.

the attack bikes tried to drive past and go for line breaker to give me at least one victory point for the tournament, but the hive tyrant chased them down and crushed them.

I think I had lost my centurions around this point to the Exocrine and Zoanthrope duo.
My snipers tried to make the gaunts drop the relic but even though I got a precision shot in, it failed to wound. 

At the end the snipers were all that was left and we decided that the game could end now with Anders getting all the Victory points possible from the Relic mission and me getting 0.

Not a great start to the tournament for me but at least it was cool to see the new Nids in action. Not a bad codex, with lots of cool combos possible. Not an OP codex either wich, as always, leave the internet trolls raging like it's the end of the world. I like it. though Venomthropes are such a pain!