How To Play 40k Tyranids: Army Guide, Rules & Review

By Travis Pasch | February 5th, 2024 | Categories: 10th Edition 40k, 40k News & Articles, How To Play 40k, Tabletop Gaming News & Rumors, Tyranids, Warhammer Community

New Warhammer 40k Tyranids are here – from Stratagems, Datasheets, and army rules; here is our codex review guide on how to play them.

Exciting changes to the Tyranids army’s gameplay, rules, and style are here with the release of their new Warhammer 40k codex. This review guide provides an overview of the new codex, including Stratagems, Datasheets, and army rules, to help players understand how to play Tyranids in 10th Edition Warhammer 40k. Additionally, we’ll take a closer look at the new detachments and their rules, giving you everything you need to dominate the battlefield. Get ready to unleash the bug swarm and conquer your enemies with these powerful Tyranids rules!

Contents

Click Gallery below for full-size images.

View Gallery: 24 Images

How To Play Warhammer 40k Tyranids: Army Guide, Rules & Review

First, Synapse has changed quite a bit, but it will really make your units much harder to battle-shock. Shadow in the Warp is insanely strong against certain armies. This can take enemies off of objectives, and even if you battle-shock a few units, this can really be a game changer.

Tyranids Combat Patrol

If you missed the Leviathan Box Set, the Tyranids Combat Patrol box is a great way to start a new Tyarnids Army for 10th Edition Warhammer 40k.

Tyranids Codex YouTube Reviews:

If you’re looking for reviews on YouTube, be sure to watch your favorite presenters talk about their take on how to play Tyranids and their new codex book at the links below:

Tyranids Codex Detachment Rules:

Now, let’s get into all the new detachments; the six Tyranids Detachments for 10th Edition 40k are:

Invasion Fleet (same as index cards)
Crusher Stampede
Vanguard Onslaught
Unending Swarm
Assimilation Swarm
Synaptic Nexus

Synaptic Nexus Detachment Rules

Starting with the detachment rules, you can either get invulnerable saves for most of your army, add to your advance and charge range, or make them better at hitting. Just remember, this is only while in Synapse range, so there are plenty of Synapse creatures hanging around all over the place.

For Enhancements, they have some exciting options. With added strength and AP, it reduces damage and can stop units from dropping down onto the battlefield.

Synaptic Channeling is nice to get your detachment benefits when you run a unit up and get ahead of the rest of your army. Override Instincts are quite strong as you can fall back and shoot for just one CP.

Vanguard Onslaught Detachment Rules

As you might expect, these sneaky critters specialise in assassinating key enemy units with blistering assaults. VANGUARD INVADER units also include most flying creatures, as well as Broodlords and Genestealers, so even if stealth isn’t your cup of tea, you’ll have plenty of lightning-fast bruisers to pick from.

If you want to run your army up the board (or fall back) and charge, this is the detachment for you! You can even take a Deathleaper as your Warlord, so there are even more list-building options.

Just imagine the new Winged Tyranid Prime barrelling towards your opponent’s Warlord with the Chameleonic Enhancement keeping it safe and the Assassin Beasts Stratagem in your pocket.

Giving a unit both stealth and constant cover is no joke. This should make a vulnerable unit able to make it to combat.

For 1 CP, you can snipe off characters in combat with this Vanguard Onslaught stratagem! Then, Unseen Lurkers is a great way to get your models into range without getting shot to bits.

Assimilation Swarm Detachment Rules

This is the detachment for you if you want to keep your units alive longer. You can regenerate a bunch of models or wounds (as each Harvester unit can do it), but make sure they are on objectives.

Most of the enhancements focus on regenerating more wounds and models, so overall, it’s a pretty interesting army.

Reclaim Biomass can be crazy if your opponent just used their last shots to destroy a big bad bug, and then you bring it back for 1 CP. Next phase, you can regenerate even more wounds on it.

Secure Biomass is also quite powerful, as you can get Lethat hits on a 5+ for 1 CP.

How To Play Warhammer 40k Tyranids: Unending Swarm Detachment Rules

The Unending Swarm is great if you take a bunch of combat units; just to surge forward as fast as possible! The Enhancements all follow the same suit with a bunch of movement and melee buffs.

2 CP to add back an entire unit that was destroyed is quite strong, but unfortunately, the characters don’t come back. Then, Swarming Masses is also good, as you can get sustained hits on a 5+!

Crusher Stampede Detachment Rules

If you like your bio-monsters large and stompy, you’ll be glad to see the return of the Crusher Stampede. This Detachment powers up your big beasties once they start taking damage, and they’ll be able to take plenty of it now that MONSTERS and VEHICLES are much tougher overall.

Crusher Stampede is back! Once your giant monsters get hurt, they will be much more accurate and even wound their enemies better!

If you’re going with the Crusher stampede, you’ll want all the big monsters.

With army construction being much easier in the new edition, you can now fill your force with all the Carnifexes, Mawlocs, and Tervigons you’d like, and it’s a doddle to make sure that every unit on your side of the battlefield benefits from the new rules. Don’t worry about having fewer miniatures on the board to contest objectives – the Ominous Presence Enhancement shores up the OC stat on your Characters.

While the big monsters already have a lot of OC, you can make it so one of your monsters puts in overtime scoring objectives!

Corrosive Viscera is one of the most fun stratagems out there, as you get to deal an insane amount of mortal wounds without rolling!

Rampaging Monstrosities is also strong, as re-rolling all your hits with a monster is excellent.

How To Play Warhammer 40k Tyranids: Invasion Fleet

We’ve seen this rule already, but these are huge; you can either go anti-infantry, anti-tank, or anti-character!

Getting a 5+ or 4+ FNP for a giant monster is awesome, as it should more or less double the number of shots it takes to kill it.

Rapid Regeneration is huge and, most of the time, will give you a 5+ FNP (when in Synapse range) for only 1 CP.

Death Frenzy can be a great way to destroy enemy units, even if they destroy you first. Adrenal Surge can be fantastic to get a ton of attacks through when you go against something that is super tough.

Lastly, Overrun will let you consolidate or make a normal move up to 6″!

Now, let’s check out some of the new Tyranids units and how to play them:

Norn Emissary & Norn Assimilator

The Emissary gets a 4+ invulnerable save, but other than that, the profiles are the same. Either way, though, they have a pretty crazy profile with 16 wounds, 11 toughness, and a 2+ save!

So powerful is each Emissary that just one was able to smash through Imperial lines and get within a hair’s breadth of killing Lord Solar Leontus, only thwarted at the last moment by the timely intervention of Trajann Valoris and his Custodian Guard. Even still, the creature slaughtered many of the Emperor’s bodyguards before being brought down.

The Emissary has some potent psychic attacks, with the option to take out infantry, snipe characters, or even take out tanks! This gives it some outstanding versatility.

The Assimilator doesn’t have as much versatility, but it can harpoon toward the enemy, deal serious damage, and then add 2″ to the charge roll against a unit it shot!

The Norn Assimilator, however, trades psychic prowess and protection for raw damage, spearing infantry and armoured targets alike with its razor-sharp toxinjector harpoons. As if being impaled by poisonous barbs the size of a telephone pole wasn’t bad enough, these wicked weapons help the Assimilator to reel in larger prey when the beast charges.

Tyranids Lictors

The Lictors and Deathleaper have both received stunning new miniatures, but the Neurolictor is perhaps the most fascinating new biomorph of all. Created for the battleground of psychological warfare, these Lictor variants combine intense psychic abilities with formidable claws – crippling enemy morale either by subtle suggestion or wanton brutality.

These hidden killers work well with the Tyranids’ Shadow in the Warp army ability, debilitating the combat skills of Battle-shocked units by sheer proximity. Once the enemy is in disarray, the Neurolictor slinks into close combat and assassinates a protected leader with a barrage of Precision melee attacks.

With Lone Operative, Stealth, and Infiltrator, this is plenty sneaky and should almost always get to combat with what you want before taking too many shots. It should also be decent at sniping off weaker characters; however, it doesn’t have a crazy amount of damage.

Its abilities may make up for it by forcing units to take Battle-shock tests and then give big buffs and NERFS. Not to mention getting you CP for killing characters.

This ability can cause a lot of disruption for your opponent and force them to take way more Battle-shock tests.

Von Ryan’s Leapers

Infiltrators, Stealth, and Fights First should be really annoying for your opponents to deal with. Not to mention, they get to intervene for free and get a decent amount of attacks.

Neurotyrant Rules

Their unique cerebral structure acts as a focal point for the Shadow in the Warp, increasing the mental pressure exuded by the Hive Mind until it reaches an excruciating level, dominating their prey with Psychic Terror.

On top of a decent stat line and some potent weapons, they have a vast debuff. It’s a full army-wide NERF to your enemy, and with more LD tests forced on them, this should have a considerable impact.

Barbgaunts & Nuerogaunts

With a big unit of these, they will get an insane number of shots (on average, you should get 3.5 per model, so five would give you 17-18 attacks).

Then, with the blast rule, the number can get really crazy. So, while they don’t have AP and only D1, they could still be able to take out tons of infantry. Plus, they also minus the enemy movement, which is huge.

Well, all Tyranid swarms need some cannon fodder, and these are looking to fit the bill, but only one attack in combat and no shooting makes them nothing more than models on the table to get objectives and disrupt the enemy; however, they do have one excellent rule.

They may look like bayonet or shovel fodder, but they have a little trick up their spindly chitinous sleeves – they can increase the Synapse Range of your leader-beasts, such as the Hive Tyrant and Winged Tyranid Prime. It turns out those weird things on their backs are synaptic conduits.

This is interesting, as you can run them up ahead of your big bugs and treat them as a middle ground between your super fast combat troops and your leaders.

How To Play Warhammer 40k Tyranids: Points

You can find the latest points for playing this faction in 10th Edition Warhammer 40k here on our Munitorum Field Manual Points Updates Page.

Tyranids Get 10th Edition 40k FAQ

Well, there it is; we can’t remember when we saw GW release an FAQ with just one question and no errors. Either way, you can’t use the stratagem on a unit that was just destroyed. If you’ve been playing it the other way, it’s time to change. We assume many people have been asking about this; otherwise, Games Workshop would not have to publish this.

Is It Still Worth Playing Tyranids?

Of course! The “Bugs” of the Grimdark are super fun to play. Overall, the 10th Edition Warhammer 40k Tyranids Codex offers plenty of changes and new rules to make the army exciting to play. Each detachment offers unique enhancements and stratagems that cater to different playstyles, making it a versatile army to build and play. Whether you’re a veteran player or just starting out, this how-to-play Tyranids Codex review guide provides all the necessary information to get you started on your journey with the faction.