ARTICLE UPDATE:

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.