Last week, the FAQ for the 5th edition Tyranids codex was finally released after five and a half months of waiting with bated breath. Credit should be given to whomever was responsible for selecting the questions in this FAQ because they touch on all of the contentious issues that gamers have been arguing over for almost half a year now. However, as usual, we have a large number of rules changes disguised as clarifications, many of which harm existing army builds and limit effective combinations in an already decidedly gimped codex.

It’s not that Tyranids armies are bad, but the codex is written in such a way that it puts severe limitations on the types of armies people can take if they wish to remain even remotely competitive. By paging through the book it becomes immediately clear that most of the premiere (and interesting) selections are crammed into the Elites section of the Force Organization Chart, a poor decision compounded by the poor options available in the Fast Attack section (Gargoyles being the notable exception). The competition over these three coveted spots is made all the more intense by simultaneously concentrating all effective firepower options (Hive Guard and Zoanthropes) here (except the Tyrannofex). This ultimately serves to undermine the greatest strength of the codex, which is the emphasis on synergy and lack of spammable units. Unfortunately, this synergy does not come without making painful sacrifices, many of which doom armies to failure.

Because of the difficulty of devising an effective Tyranid list in 5th edition I have yet to face an army that can go toe-to-toe with my Imperial Guard. Certainly the strength of the IG codex is a factor, but every book (with the exception of Necrons) can churn out at least all-comers list that can overcome Guard with a little luck. Not so with Tyranids, at least from what I’ve seen so far. While it’s possible to refer to one of Shep’s super shooty, which have been extensively play-tested and documented on Dakka, these are ultimately impractical experiments in list-tailoring; a Tyranid army designed to out-shoot IG will be capable of little else. Assault armies will wreck it any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

The Good

• Mawlocs can now, without any doubt, attempt to deep strike directly on top of enemy units. (If you argued that they couldn’t before the FAQ you deserve a dragon uppercut to the testicles.)
• The effects of Tyranid Close Combat Weapons stack. This is a big deal for monstrous creatures, all of which have the option to take multiple types of TCCs with different effects (ex, scything talons + rending claws).
• Hive Tyrants and Swarmlords with Tyrant Guard cannot be targeted like Independent Characters in shooting or close combat. Most people played it like this already with regards to shooting, but the assault ruling is an unexpected bonus.

The Bad

• Hive Tyrants and Swarmlord who have joined with Tyrand Guard cannot leave them of their own free will at any point in the game. Giving Tyrants Wings and detaching from its bodyguards after getting within 18″ charge range was a common tactic, but no more. Tyranids are squadmates for life it seems.
• You can no longer attach Independent Characters to units arriving via Mycetic Spore.Allowing a Tyranid Alpha to attack to a unit of Genestealers, Zoanthropes, or Tyranid Warriors arriving via pod was a useful tactic that granted the codex a small amount of flexibility without being that powerful, and it has been removed from existence without even a justification provided. This tidbit of errata disguised as a clarification is beyond my comprehension.
• In another rules change, the Doom of Malantai can no longer affect units embarked in transports. Furthermore, his psychic ability has been changed to a shooting attack, which allows cover saves to be made against it. Strike one more viable option from the codex; you will now never see this unit fielded in a competitive army.

The Ugly

• The Hive Commander bonus does not stack, so even if you take two Hive Tyrants with this upgrade you will still only receive +1 to your reserves. While this is consistent with the Officer of the Fleet and Astropath rulings from the IG codex FAQ, it flies in the face of both math and the English language. Worse, this is a major kick in the teeth to Tyranid reserve-based armies (ie, all dual deep striking Tyranid builds). More unnecessary nerfs to something that wasn’t even that good to begin with.
• Shadow in the Warp no longer affects psykers embarked in transports. This is what the French call “a big fucking deal.” Tyranid psychic defense just went from mediocre to crap and going mechanized just got slightly more mandatory. Even with their new tools, Nids still struggle badly against armor-centric builds and this makes the uphill battle twice as painful.

To sum it up, the Tyranids were given a weak codex. To make matters worse, their FAQ weakens them further. But it’s not all bad (just mostly).

“A transport may carry a single infantry unit and/or any number of independent characters (as long as they count as infantry), up to a total of models equal to the vehicle’s transport capacity.”

-Rulebook, p.66

Here we have the rulebook very explicitly telling us that embarked units are carried by the transport. This means that wherever the transport goes the unit inside is assume to go with them. Note the lack of restrictions here (and elsewhere in the rules for Transport Vehicles) regarding types of movement.

Now let’s look at the rules for Scouts:

“To represent this, after both sides have deployed (including infiltrators), but before the first player begins his first turn, any scouts may make a normal move. This is done exactly as in their Movement phase, except that during this move, scouts must remain more than 12″ away from any enemy.”

-Rulebook, p.76

Let’s use the example from my second ‘Ard Boyz game. What has the Scouts rule? The Vendetta does. What is making the Scouts move? The Vendetta is. Why can the Vendetta do this? Because the move is made exactly as in the Movement phase, where embarked units are carried by the transport vehicle. The Veteran squad inside doesn’t need the Scouts special rule because the unit is no more making a Scouts move than a Furioso Dreadnought is making a skimmer move when its Stormraven moves over enemy infantry.

Those who argue that the Vendetta cannot perform a Scouts move with a unit on board need to confront the logical extensions of their argument. Claiming that embarked units need to have the same special movement rules as their transport in order for the transport to use these rules opens up a can of worms that breaks 40k completely. This same argument would prevent units like Drop Pods from using Deep Strike deployment with units inside because the embarked squads don’t have the Deep Strike rule. The fact that it is a dedicated transport means nothing because while a unit’s special rules are conferred to its dedicated transport, the inverse does not hold true. In fact, it would prevent transports with embarked units from moving at all since the infantry inside do not possess the vehicle movement rules.

The anti-Scouts interpretation is therefore not supported by rules and also leads to situations where transport vehicles cease to function entirely. As such, it is a bad interpretation.

Please note: I welcome challenges to my position, but require that those challenges use direct references to rules and organized logic. This isn’t Warseer or Dakka and if I see that kind of unsupported gibberish it will probably be deleted.

On January 20^th, a new version of the Space Wolves FAQ was released that reversed the ruling made regarding the combination of counter-attack and furious charge. The reversal now concludes definitively that the counter-attack does NOT trigger the bonuses associated with the furious charge universal special rule.

Presumably, this was done because of the unanticipated side effects that the ruling would have both for Tervigon swarms and IG Straken infantry blobs. It’s a good ruling that’s consistent with how most people play the game and settles the issue once and for all. I’ve decided to leave the article up because the Tervigon mathhammering is still applicable, and because the unit remains the premiere selection in the codex.

On the eve of the 5^th edition Tyranid codex release, it looks like GW is poised to drop their third top-notch quality codex in a row. While I don’t think the Tyranid book will throw them into the same competitive level as IG and Space Wolves, anything that improves upon the crapfest that is their current army is a giant leap in the right direction.

A few weeks ago, a scanned copy of the new codex leaked from stores in Germany and perhaps the first stand-out unit apparent to everyone was the Tervigon. In addition to being an affordable monstrous creature that can count as Troops and spawn new units, the Tervigon also serves as a potent force multiplier for all nearby Termagaunt units. With the appropriate loadout, these beasts are giving counter-attack, synapse, Ld10, furious charge, and poisoned attacks to an infinite number of critters, albeit within a small radius. Sounds good? Yes, it does. But that’s not the half of it.

Last week, GW released an extremely comprehensive FAQ for their last codex release, the Space Wolves. In it they included the following gem:

Q. Picture this: My Grey Hunters unit including Ragnar Blackmane is assaulted and makes a successful Leadership test to Counter-attack. Do they then benefit from his Furious Charge ability (+1 S and +1 I)? Also, can the original assaulter then deploy defensive grenades to rob the Space Wolves of their Counter-attack bonus.

A. The Counter-attack special rule states ‘all models in the unit get the +1 assault bonus to their attacks, exactly as if they too had assaulted that turn.’ Therefore Ragnar’s unit does indeed benefit from Furious Charge. Also, we think it is a bit rich for an assaulting unit to get the bonus for attacking and defending, so no, defensive grenades cannot be used to negate the bonus attack from counter-attacking.

The question of whether or not Counter-attack triggers Furious Charge has now been definitively answered: yes. One small step for gray Vikings, one giant fucking leap for man-eating bugs.

How exactly does this impact Tyranids? Refer back to the Tervigon and notice that the model is capable of granting not only Counter-attack and Furious Charge, but also Ld10 to ensure that the Counter-attack leadership check is passed. Relative to the points they cost, that’s a truckload of hurt coming your way. Oh, and they’re armed with S4 AP5 assault weapons.

Let’s go over the math of bugs getting charged by MEQs:

That’s a FIVE-FOLD increase in offensive power in addition to the less quantifiable but equally valuable benefit of killing attackers before they’re able to strike (I5 versus I4 from Furious Charge). Jack that up by another 50% by throwing in a Hive Tyrant with Ancient Enemy to get the Preferred Enemy bonus and revel in the uberness of your free throwaway Troop units.

And just how many bugs can you expect to create with a Tervigon anyway? With 10.5 Termagaunts spawned on average per attempt and a 44% chance to burnout, the answer is a lot:

Rounding to the nearest bug, you can expect to generate 23 Termagants over the course of a game for each Tervigon that you can keep alive, which shouldn’t be exceedingly hard to do given their T6 W6 Sv3+ profile and the ability to grant Feel No Pain. With 5 Tervigons on the field you will generate 112 free models (+30 more bought as Troops) all of whom can claim objectives and wreck face in the presence of a Brood Father and/or Hive Tyrant.

Now that’s not to say that a 5 Tervigon list will be effective, but it has a brutal and overwhelming appeal to it. It’s a gimmick list like any other and is unlikely to fare well in an all-comers tournament environment, however it is also incredibly hard to beat in Sieze Ground scenarios. Perhaps the biggest challenge will be Capture & Control due to the fact that mobs of infantry do not move quickly across even open terrain.

As for myself, having recently playtested a 4 Tervigon list against Brother Captain James, who has been very successful in local tournaments, I’m leaning more towards taking 3 and investing the leftover points in more mobile units that can hope to contest home base objectives that inevitably find their way into a corners of the board. 100 furiously charging, poisoned gaunts is still nothing to sneeze at.

The Imperial Guard Valkyrie, a shiny new model with a mammoth new price tag ($58), was released along with the new codex last month. Its over-the-top rules and undercosting make it the stand-out choice for Fast Attack, however it has become apparent that GW never actually play-tested the model in a game of 40k.

The problem with the Valkyrie model is the new flight stand, which measures about 5 1/4″ inches tall. The increased height allows the model to fly quite a distance above the tabletop plane (fly, plane, get it?), and while this may look impressive, it creates some fundamental problems for how the model functions in the game.

First of all, let’s look at the rules for transports. In order to disembark a unit from its transport vehicle the unit must be able to be placed within 2″ of an access point. Many players assume that you measure along a horizontal plane, therefore (incorrectly) believing that you can place the unit on the ground under the access point. The rulebook, however, makes no such limitations on distance.

The language of the rules simply requires us to measure the distance between point A and point B. If you place the disembarking models on the ground they will not be within 2″ of the access point and therefore cannot disembark (measurements are made from the base of the disembarking models). Yes, this means you cannot use the normal disembarkation rules for the Valkyrie without suitably high terrain beneath the model. (Note: this is also a problem with embarking.)

On the one hand, it seems plainly obvious that units aboard the vehicle should be able to disembark normally. On the other hand, GW did specifically give the Valkyrie a special rule which allows embarked units to exit without the normal restrictions, including transport moving speed. Fortunately the Grav Chut Insertion rule does mitigate the effects of this problem, and is a sufficient workaround until GW addresses the issue via FAQ.

Unfortunately, the flight stand creates another glaring issue. The rules for vehicles state that all measurements are made to the vehicle’s hull (the skimmer rules tell us to ignore the base), which logically also extends to mission objectives. Because the Valkyrie is so high off the ground, it will never be able to get within 3″ of an objective in order to contest or score (with an embarked Troop unit) unless that objective is elevated or more than 2 1/4″ tall. That’s a pretty big “oops”, GW.

But look on the bright side, disheartened IG players–the double-edged sword cuts both ways. There are some killer advantages that come with being up so high.

First of all, Valkyries are almost immune to being within half range of meltaguns (remember: measure from the base of the firing model to the vehicle’s hull). An infantry model will need to be completely underneath the flyer in order to be within 6″ for 2D6 on the penetration roll. The height shaves distance off of all conventional weapons that need to measure range; you can use the formula for calculating the hypotenuse of a right triangle to figure out exactly how much your range is impacted based on your distance from the Valkyrie’s base.

The other added bonus for fielding a Valkyrie is that the gunship’s height allows it unobstructed lines of sight to models that normally would receive cover saves. The high angle measured from the gun barrels (or nosecones) of its weapons will often be enough to see over intervening models and terrain pieces rather than through them, thereby denying cover saves from these conditions. This is especially valuable when arming the flyer with S8 AP3 rockets or taking the Vendetta loadout (triple twin-linked lascannons).

Some argue that all measurements must be restricted to the two-dimensional plane because this is how all of the diagrams in the rulebook are presented, and because most of the rules do not take into account the third dimension. However, this logic is flawed. The section on Ruins (specifically, moving within ruins) shows that the developers were indeed aware the third dimension with respect to how Warhammer 40K functions. It cannot be reasonably concluded that the game must be played in 2D simply because the majority of it typically is–the introduction of the Valkyrie drastically changes things.

Many players on Dakka (and elsewhere) are outraged that anyone would even consider not letting passengers disembark or claim objectives, however these same players are unlikely to similarly discount the rules when acting in their favor (for example, when a meltagun is not within 6″). People have to realize that you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Regardless of its rules oddities, the Valkyrie is still a monumentally efficient choice that packs a huge punch and comes with more special rules than you can shake a stick at.

Use it, but use it correctly.