Going Into The NEW Tyranids Codex From A Tyranid Player’s Perspective

One of the best things about 40k is the community. One of the worst things about 40k is the community.

I am very excited for the new Tyranids codex. I’ve been excited for it since I started playing (around 8th edition). Ever since I started playing 40k, Tyranids have been my ride or die faction for what feels like ages even though realistically it’s more like 3 years. With all the slogging we had to do to perform though, it felt like a decade.

During that time, I’ve had to sift through garbage with a book that just did not play very well. The highest they performed while I was playing was around a solid C tier with units constantly getting hit with points hikes until only recently. Let me remind you of the time that Swarmlord was pushing close to costing almost 300pts. just to take him.

Generstealers were 300pts. for 20 (iirc correctly it might have 320) and died to lasguns and Devilgants were a meme.

It was a grind trying to pull out wins with the faction especially when running them mono. We had a small glimpse of the promised land when the Forgeworld book dropped and Dima’s and Hierodules became more of a staple to the army because every other datasheet inside of our codex was either overcosted or didn’t perform at all. But then Dimachaeron’s got a points hike and the Hierodules were good but were either hard to get or only worked in specific situations.

I mean, the Haruspex was a “melee” threat in our army that hit on 4’s…It was terrible. Carnifexes sat on my shelf since I bought them, Harpies were a joke, Tyranid Warriors were overcosted and Hive Tyrants always underperformed. We had some Exocrines that could fill in some patches and Hive Guard to still make us somewhat useful. We were a Jack of all Trades army but a Master of none. We did things, we just didn’t do them well.

But still, Tyranid’s found ways to apply themselves and win through playing the mission. Being on the backfoot facing into Space Marines, T’au and Sisters on a constant basis really felt awful especially when you consider during the time that I started it was Space Marine buff after Space marine buff after new Space marine units and rules and all these Space marine news that it made me feel like I just picked the wrong faction and it was saddening.

When the new edition was announced and Space Marines again got a new book for 9th edition with army specific missions felt like another huge blow.

Fast forward to now and although we still have an 8th edition army we can finally punch up at people consistently thanks to the Leviathan Supplement as well as Crusher Stampede. When these rules came out, it was the most excited I’ve been playing Tyranids in such a long time. Instead of having to spend what felt like 200% of my brain power to achieve what most armies spent 50% of their brain power to accomplish I finally felt like we were on an even playing field.

Finally I could take things like these big forgeworld bugs. Finally the Harpy was good. Finally Hive Tyrants felt good to run and not just a mistake. Finally Genestealers were cheaper, Devilgants were no longer a meme.

Even though we were still playing with an 8th edition codex it felt nice to be able to run the army and not feel like you’re going to be exhausted by the end of it just to win by 2 points because your opponent messed up and you were able to capitalize on it. It felt good to play Tyranids again…until the 40k online community started up their outcries.

Everywhere I looked it was Tyranids are broken this, Tyranids aren’t fair that, Tyranids need to be nerfed, Tyranids shouldn’t be allowed, Crusher shouldn’t be allowed, Tyranids don’t need a new codex etc.

It felt awful. It felt like finally my codex was playable but people just didn’t want to play against it. Even though I already put in so much effort just to play the army to a decent degree without these rules and still came out with victories. To a degree, I was upset about seeing Imperium armies getting what felt like favortism by GW, but it never felt like things were unbeatable.

Whether I was fighting against new Death Guard at the time, whether I was going against new Blood Angels, new Drukhari or Admech my mindset was never, this game I auto lose and it’s over – it was instead what can I do to fight these armies? What can I do to make my list better?

Even though I had to read through the core rules and my codex so many times over just to pull out the smallest of advantages like making more use out of my pile-ins and consolidations. Learning to deal with trading poorly for the sake of scoring points. Leaning into units that are absolute garbage but still let me score (rest in peace Lictor).

The worst was reading through “nerfs” the community was upset about. Breaking Through is a powerful stratagem, but stripping that away from Crusher Stampede with the 8th edition datasheets that we have and the number of attacks we just didn’t have (at most maybe 8) it would be hard for the army to deal with things like chaff or just completely whiffing attacks on a model that costs 275 points and just dying without getting use of their 275 points.

A lot of the worries that came up from Crusher Stampede were things that didn’t make much sense to me, but the online community was so up in arms about it I started to feel like I was being gaslighted into thinking I was wrong and Stampede was the most broken army in the game.

And this was happening when things like Drukhari, Admech, Grey Knights, Tyranids and Orks(ish) were placing well at tournaments. 5 armies that could slap into each other that felt like a good time. The meta felt healthy to me, but apparently not so for the verbal online community which sucked. I played a game of Tyranids going into a non-meta Custodes build and even though I had to spend all of my CP turn 1 and shoot my entire army at a single unit to just almost kill it with some luck of dice and clutch saving throws, for some reason – Tyranids Crusher Stampede were still broken and that absolutely baffled me.

Sometimes it just feels like there’s absolutely no winning to the online community of 40k and the leakage of sensationalism as gospel is really starting to make me hesitant about any book that comes out. I feel terrible for T’au players who finally after years of being on the back burner finally got an update that makes them both feel like T’au and also perform well, but the outcries call for nerfing them into the ground. It just feels terrible.

So in all, I’m excited for the new Tyranids Codex – but I’m also afraid of it being too strong to the point where I could bring a fluffy list of something like Carnifexes and Old One Eye but because I’m playing Tyranids I’m already a “bad guy,” and to me – that goes against the spirit of this hobby.

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