Hierodule
Hierodules are one of the largest Tyranid creatures, smaller than the Hierophant but a lot larger than the Carnifex. They are often treated as bio-titans, but they are roughly the equivalent of super-heavy tanks in both size and battlefield role. They come in two known flavours:
- Scythed Hierodules are armed with four massive claws and armour that is up to 30cm thick. It also have an acid-spitting organism on its back, resulting in it's hunched stance.
- Barbed Hierodules exchanges the secondary organism and one pair of claws for even heavier armour and a pair of barbed stranglers.
Forge World makes two Hierodule kits, one for the Scythed and one for the Barbed. Both cost £95, or about $160.
On the tabletop
Tyranid players, please write something about how, preferably both types of, Hierodules preform in the game.
Hierodules fucking suck. You pay twice the points value of a Wraithknight for a virtually identical statline (only it's worse because Wraithknights are now GCs who also have jump, letting them move at GC speed, then jump) and they have no access to the all-mighty D, and can watch your overpriced garbage unit get the shit kicked out of it by Iron father Smashfucker or a Wraithknight with a shield, while your AP3 gun means that terminators are going to laugh at you and a Riptide isn't going to be even mildly bothered. They're an absolute joke of a lord of war unit and should be avoided like a cocktail of Herpes, Syphilis, AIDS, Cancer, and the Black Death.
They are actually surprisingly useful, if you take the Barbed Hierodule. The Scythed Hierodule can wipe the floor with most squads of Melee units, and has some absolutely devastating firepower in the way of its huge fucking flamer, which can reduce MEQs into bubbling piles of goo before they even get within firing range of it. It gets 8 attacks (9 on the charge) at Strength 10, AP2. Ouch. While this isn't much compared to how much D-strength most Super Heavies in other armies can put out, its by far the most devastating assault option you have outside of some lucky rolls for Old One Eye, a full brood of Crushing Claws carnifexes, or its bigger brother, the Hierophant. The Scythed Hierodule, while nothing to sneeze at, doesn't really have much over its Bio-Cannon toting brother. S10 AP3 Assault 6 (You get 2 of these guns per Hierodule, by the way!), is absolutely nothing to look over. While it might struggle against Termies, it will wipe out squads of MEQ with ease, and outright kill most vehicles you fight without an issue. That Imperial Knight you struggled so much to kill before? Well, it won't be looking so hot when it gets almost all of its hull points stripped in one turn of fire. The Barbed Hierodule is acually fairly well worth the points in normal scaled games of 40k, as it gives you the same guns as its bigger brother, the Hierophant, without taking up half or more of your army's total point cost. And yes, it costs more then a Wraithknight. The average Flyrant almost costs AS MUCH as a Wraithknight. (Throw on Regeneration and Hive Commander, and it literally costs more then the damn thing, for fucks sake) Wraithknights are just underpriced as all hell. Comparing a fairly balanced unit to an EXTREMELY OP unit is pretty silly.
In apocalypse though, you are probably better off with the Hierophant or Harridan though, with the higher points values.
But I do agree, Hierophants look absolutely fantastic.
Gallery
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Scythed Hierodule
