Hi all,
Another week arrives and I have another narrative review for you all to enjoy. Today we will be looking at the beastly bugs and will find out if their crusade rules measure up to the table-top power. As with the other reviews I have divided up the review into sections: Army Special Rules, Agendas and Relics, and Army Traits and requisitions.
Army Special Rules:
So to kick things off, we will tackle the Tyranid-specific crusade rules centered on devouring planets. These rules are an interesting combination of the Tau and Genestealer Cult crusade rules, as you generate planets but will lean on your agendas to accrue the points necessary to eat them. One thing I like about this rule set, is that you focus on a single planet at the time and not a whole system. This will make it easier for the GM to manage and for a player to track. In order to start eating the world, you need to get enough Biomass and Crushed-Resistance points equal to the number of points for the planet (what is unusual about this is you can lose these points if you lose battles too). There are three stages in the devouring process with the points stacking between levels.
One of the things I love about this rule set is that at each level different units gain buffs according to their place in the lore. In the early stages, Genestealers and other initial organisms get +1 experience while later units don’t get any. It will encourage you to keep a wide array of monsters and deploy only the ones getting the benefits (if possible). I absolutely love this as it provides an easy way to motivate players to create lore-friendly armies, just a brilliant idea. The Tyranids also get access to special strats that are only usable for their specific stage, I worry some are too good (i.e. full re-rolls to wound if charged, charging or intervening on several units including Genestealers)
After you finish devouring a planet you can spend your bio-mass points on a series of upgrades for your roster. One increases your supply limit, others give free exp (thankfully they cap this), another great option allows you to give a unit a free warlord trait, even if it hasn’t leveled up yet. I think these rules walk the line between amazing and fluffy. I do worry that players can snowball early, but if they can’t increase their force limit enough the limits on experience will slow them too.
Agendas and Relics
Tyranids get a number of really good agendas. The first gives you 2 exp for every unit in your opponent’s deployment zone at the end of the game, as well as an escalating series of Biomass and Crushed Resistance points as well. “Hunt and Slay” gives you fewer points but is easier to score, with your opponent marking 5 units to be targets of the swarm. Each unit that kills one of these targets gets 2 exp for each unit killed (if you want to build a strong character this is a good way to do it). You can Tyrano-form a planet, which is fun, as a unit can perform an action that places a new objective marker down (ignored for all else save this agenda), each new marker must be at least 12″ away from another one. You get 2 exp for each marker and a modest amount of Biomass and Crushed Resistance points too. Finally, the creatively named “Tyranid Attack” (really guys? Was “Placeholder 01” taken?) lives up to its name as the copy-paste “table your opponent and good things happen” agenda. It is a risky agenda, but it gives you an obscene amount of points to take over a world so may be worth it. GM’s Note: if you are using unbalanced scenarios you may want to ban this as it can tip the balance of a campaign.
The Tyranid relics are decent, though you are unlikely to select too many of them as level-up rewards, for reasons we will discuss later. Their base relic is a solid option giving you +1 strength for each mortal wound you do in the psychic phase (only lasts until the next turn) as well as regaining a lost wound. The next option is also good making any psychic power or action undeniable on an 8+. For antiquity relics you can get a relic that provides a small buff to your melee attacks but more entertainingly gives you the Parasite of Mortex effect to create a ripper base (though it can only be added to an existing unit) if you kill 1+ models. The Slayer Sabers give you more mortal wound powers and anti-psycher gear, if you play against a lot of psychers this will allow you to mow through them, and even if not you still do D3+1 MW on a 2+ each time you fight. Finally the legendary Norn Crown gives you a once-per-game ability to reuse a synaptic imperative, which is nice while also counting all synapse units as being within 12″ of one another. I like that GW has tried to tackle legendary relics with more buffing powers rather then through pure combat ability.
Army Traits and Requisitions:
When it comes to traits GW keeps the fluff train rolling with a series of clever new ideas to shake up the bog-standard upgrades. Having synapse gives them a lot to play with, and they take full advantage of these rules. The traits are divided between upgrades for non-synapse units, synapse units, and fortitudes. For non-synapse units you can get an insane ability that makes any charge or advance roll of a 1, or 2 a “3” (hello minimum 6″ charges). The synapse unit table is also insanely powerful with one result giving you immunity to enemy psychic powers (unless I am misreading it) and a 3+ invuln against mortals in that phase. You can halve enemy unit’s move and advance rolls (if you roll high enough), increase your toughness, regain wounds etc. it says something if the worst result on the table is the option to use the Synaptic Legacy strat for free. The psychic fortitudes are likewise bonkers making your opponent perils if they roll a double on their Deny rolls (note: does not work against most Eldar psychers). You can also give out free Ob sec when you cast a power, get a free 3″ move or (in my opinion one of the best options) deal a mortal wound to an enemy unit within 6″ on 2+EACH time you manifest a power.
GW has also made some interesting changes in army-specific battle scars. The first major change of note is that they have finally integrated the core book battle scars into the army specific table. Now if you roll a 5-6 on the battle scar table you choose one from the rule book. This simplifies so many aspects of the Battle Scar selection process it’s hard to mention them all. It’s also good to see that the battle scars are all negative (no halve damage bonuses here!) and are all themed appropriately. Whoever wrote this book put a lot of care into these traits and I think that they will give your army some quirks, but will not ruin too many units.
As for Requisitions, the Tyranids get five options, and an interesting limitation that it costs double the amount of RP’s for them to increase their supply limit. One option gives you a mulligan on your unit to pick new battle traits, though they must not have any scars. The second option is one you should always take as it allows you to take an additional Tyranid agenda on each battle (though your army will be very RP hungry). You also have your standard “Gain an adaptive Phsyiology trait”. You get a mulligan on one of your synapse creatures too if you want to get id of someone with too many scars or pick a different unit for your phase of consumption. Finally, you can swap synaptic imperatives on two synapse units.
Summary
It is hard to overstate how big this codex is. We have seen some shifts in the narrative rules through the release of codexes. The initial rule set for marines and Necrons were very vanilla, this began to change with the Death Guard and escalated with the Drukhari codex. The Tyranid codex has marked the next evolution of the crusade rules. There are multiple iterations GW has made on the standard crusade rules here that simplify and balance running the army. At the same time this codex has the fluffiest rules out of any crusade rules so far. Every option seems pretty well grounded in the lore and specifically tied to how the army acts in the fluff. However these rules are very powerful, they do have some limiting options and you can see hints that the writers are already trying to balance them. I am not sure if they were wholly successful and my advice to any GM with a Tyranid player in their Crusade campaign would be to keep an eye on how quickly they are leveling up. Lastly I am a bit sad that we haven’t seen any from of supplement or accommodation for the poor Necron and vanilla Space Marine crusade armies. To compare their rules with this new rule set is like comparing a Volkswagen Golf to a Ferrari.
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