Editing Tyranid (section)

==On the Table==
[[Image:No Retreat.jpg|300px|thumb|left|KABLOOIE!]]

===2nd Edition===
Printed in the ancient past of 1995, the first Tyranid codex brought the hive mind to the tabletop of 40k and instantly won over the hearts of a thousand vile xeno lovers. Or not. It's hard to tell as most of those original fans have since moved on to collect power armor armies or died from several decades of soul crushing disappointment. Either way, the codex was notable for including both Genestealer Cults and Tyranids in the same book. One of the most notable differences is that they look almost completely different to their "modern" (aka [[4th edition]] ) iteration, resembling something out of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weird_fiction Weird fiction.] [[Tyranid Warrior]]s resemble giant turkeys, [[Carnifex| Carnifexes]] are bulky 4 scything armed screaming monstrosities, and instead of being a giant brain on a floating snake body, the [[Zoanthrope]] [[Wat|is a stubby humanoid bug person with a GIANT exposed brain forehead.]] This is likely a side effect of Tyranids initially being a faction that existed to merge several races from [[Rogue Trader]] into a single coherent faction (like the aforementioned [[Genestealer]]) as well as the setting in general finding its footing and identity.

Tyranids had a reputation back then of being not only rare and expensive due to most of their range being metal, but also of being one of the [[Cheese|STRONGEST]] armies in the game. In spite of their limited unit roster Tyrands had all manner of upgrades, such as one that allowed a [[Carnifex]] to [[List of 40K Cheese| '''regenerate to full wound count with lucky dice rolls if it was killed''']]. Another example was the "Jones is acting strangely" card (spoiler: one of your opponent's infantry models explodes with the same blast effect as if he'd been hit by a Barbed Strangler). Finally, there was a fun little card that created a tiny, but very, VERY angry Tyranid lurker INSIDE one of your opponent's vehicles. For context, keep in mind that in 2nd, each vehicle position actually had a crewman in it, and these crewmen could individually be killed. Therefore this critter would, in theory, wait for the right moment to pounce out of its dark corner to claw the vehicle crew's faces off. While the lurker would almost certainly be killed, in the meantime the crew would be ''very'' distracted, which was especially hilarious if it managed to kill the driver when the vehicle was moving.
Naturally this made Tyranids '''THE''' army for players to [[Butthurt|sperg on about how they were completely overpowered]] because they countered armies like the Space Marines and general Imperial factions with complete EASE. [[Robin Cruddace| And then one of them]] was given a job at GW and it all went downhill from there for the space bugs.

===3rd Edition===
6 years after the 2nd edition codex came out, a new one burst onto the scene in 2001. Again, not much is remembered from this time, aside from the fact the strong and fast Tyranids from the 2nd edition were turned into slow, clumsy beasts, a move that nerfed them into oblivion. It was also notable for introducing silly looking metal miniatures that vanished soon afterwards (like the ever popular grinfex) and cool new plastic ones that are still used to this day. This codex was extremely limited, but did feature some...interesting rules for customizing your models. The mutable genus rules allowed customized nids like 5pt spinegaunts (i.e. termagant with spinefists, at a time when classic fleshborer-armed ones cost 7pts), something which lead to a whole generation of nid players having mass spinegaunts and no classic termagants. Many of the mutable genus rules (such as changes to specific stats) would be added to the core codex in 4th edition with some of the more esoteric rules removed (barbed stranglers on termagants anyone?), but the nostalgia would linger for a long time after.

===4th Edition===
In 2005, a new Tyranid codex emerged along with an entire host of redesigned units and metal kits. It was at this point that the modern designs for the Lictor, Genestealers, Raveners, and Hive Tyrants were introduced. Also, the first plastic Carnifex kit was released, and GW capitalized by giving the unit a cubic metric shit ton of options. Indeed, this was the theme of fourth edition 'nids. The codex deliberately axed 3rd edition characters like Old One Eye or the Red Terror in favor of giving players a wealth of options for customizing their models. Want a hive tyrant with a 2+ save? Go ahead. Want a Carnifex with a better BS? there you go. Few of these would last into 5th edition and the flaws were pretty glaring as time went by. 'Nids simply did not have the tools nor the depth of an army design to succeed against every opponent, and many of the options turned into expensive traps.

===5th Edition===
When the 5th edition Codex released, it was met with [[skub|split opinions]], as usual. Some were angry at how overpowered the army looked, citing the facts that the [[Tervigon]] could create more units out of thin air using "broken" special rules, that the anti-psyker powers were so broad, and that the [[Hive Guard]] and [[Zoanthrope]]s were so good at tank hunting at a time when tanks were kings.

However, after some time passed, people who decried the cheesy aspects of the army faded from view as people began to realize the army only seemed cheesy on paper, and that, in truth, any cheese the army had was drowned in the army's drawbacks. The Termagants the Tervigon could spawn? Stats like a [[Imperial Guard|Guardsmen]] in close combat, but with half their weapon range and weaker armor. And to get Tervigons to the Troops slot from the HQ slot (where they were practically useless), you had to pay Guardsman prices for a unit of them. In other words, you ''had'' to use the "cheesy" special rule or they were overpriced into uselessness.

Then there were the special powers that supposedly buffed the army. Again, at a first glance, they looked broken. Certain upgrades allowed any unit within 6" of certain models to gain rules like Feel No Pain, Furious Charge, Poison, cover saves, and so on. It sounded like a serious boon, but it had a funny effect. Aside from the fact that most Tyranid models are too expensive unless you capitalize on the bubble-buffs, it also does a horrible thing to your freedom to play the army. Mainly, it forces players to keep all their units bunched up within 6" of a few key models, requiring them to spend the entire game in a rigid formation that can spell disaster for the army when broken. Tyranids already suffered from this problem somewhat due to their synapse rules, but the 6" range on the mandatory buffs only shortened the leash. Not to mention it also made blasts even worse for an army already vulnerable to them.

Tyranids seriously lacked effective long range support as well. While they possessed some weapons capable of mincing infantry units, most things with a range over 12" come at a premium. With an army so focused on close combat this shouldn't be such a problem, but synapse and buff leashes actually make it a valid concern. Mainly, the short buff leash pressures a player into a castle formation, but the lack of medium and long ranged weaponry pressures the player to advance the entire castle towards the enemy, which has a way of creating chinks in the formation. And you can't just move a few key units - when a unit moves forward, the model providing the buffs has to follow them, and then the other units relying on the buffs have to follow the model providing the buffs; it just makes the army obscenely inflexible.

Tyranid monstrous creatures, their heavy support, also got drastically [[Nerf|nerfed]] in the 5th edition update. The Tyrannofex, for example, has a 2+ save and six wounds at a toughness of six, the damn thing is almost indestructible, but the weapons are short-ranged, and if you buy it an expensive long-range cannon to shoot at tanks, you can't change any of its other short-ranged weapons which are designed to kill infantry. You just can't quite kit your heavy support to do the things you specifically want.

Which brings us to the final problem: on top of mountains of tactical inflexibility, the Tyranids also suffer from the drawback of design inflexibility. Unlike Guardsmen or Space Marines, the Tyranids don't get a lot of options to change the way the army works. When you buy Hormagaunts, you get them at face value - you can't equip them with frag grenades, give them pistols, add heavy weapons, or mess with their gear in any way. You can buy them the poison special rule if you want, or maybe the Furious Charge special rule, but those are your two choices. Almost the entire army is that way, which is vastly different than the way they worked in 4th edition. The Carnifex alone lost eighteen weapon and biomorph options between 4th and 5th edition and it doubled in points value. And with no upgrades taken! And for twenty points more, you can get a Trygon. Which is better than the Carnifex in almost every way. Cept looking good. It's possible that Tyranids are now the least adaptable army in the game.

The last kick in the teeth is that Tyranids are one of the more expensive armies to collect, requiring a larger number of models than most (this is still true in 2021). Their HQ choices, short of the Tyranid Prime, are big monsters which run at prices edging nearer and nearer to $100 each. For the fact that most Tyranid armies will play exactly the same way, having all the same exploitable weaknesses and no unique wargear surprises, it's not a wonder that the army has seen a huge drop in sales since the release of their 5th edition codex. The shorter lesson to take from all this is, if you're thinking about beginning a 40k army, even with how expensive it's all gotten, Tyranids are not the best army to start with.

The one good legacy of the 5th edition codex was the radical expansion of the army list. The previous codex had featured the addition of a single new unit (the brood lord) and the removal of two special characters. Both were brought back for the 5th edition codex and the total units jumped from fifteen to thirty-four. While several of the characters (the doom of malan'tai and the parasite of mortrex) did not survive past this codex, many others did and eventually grew into popular options in their own right.

===6th Edition===
[[Image:Haruspex.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Is it me, or does the [[Haruspex]] look like it belongs in a [[/d/|bad hentai movie?]] ]]
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Again, this one was a mix of good and bad. On the bad side, Tyranids no longer had Mycetic Spores, the Doom of Malan'tai, Ymgarl Genestealers or the Parasite of Mortrex (GW lost a court battle with Chapterhouse Studios and simply deleted all their models from the game). They even lost the ability to use psychic powers from the Biomancy table along with their Hive Mind powers being nerfed. Why GW thought that the most underpowered army needed even MORE nerfing will remain a mystery, but odds are that Cruddace had something to do with it. A perfect example of unnecessary nerfing is the Tyranid Prime; it was rarely fielded in 5th edition, and the 6th edition codex inexplicably increased its cost by over 56%.

On the good side, this one introduced the first piece of lore that showed Tyranids actually winning for a change (the [[Fall of Shadowbrink|Shadowbrink]] campaign, during which they own the Chaos Daemons) rather than coming close to winning but failing at the last minute due to the 'heroic' actions of some character who appears out of nowhere (looking at you Calgar and Yriel), and also gave us the Hive Crone, a killer anti-flyer unit that finally gave us a reliable option to beat Kelly's supercharged Dark Eldar (first by walking over their paper planes and then by liquefying infantry in and outside transports with the flame template). Carnifexes got to use crushing claws as power fists (as they have crap initiative Unwieldy doesn't matter, especially when you get to raise their Strength to 10) and the Exocrine was introduced to become the bane of Space Marines with its AP 2 cannon.

To compensate for Cruddace's additional nerfing, GeeDubs released some Dataslate formations which allow you to ignore the force organisation chart and spam flying monstrous creatures to overwhelm an opponents anti-air defenses because the flyer rules are an even bigger catastrofuck than the Tyranid codex. <span style="color:purple">'''**SSSS rippaaaahhhssss will be put in crudfacessss bedssss for what he hasssss done to ussssss**'''</span>

===7th Edition, DLC, and white dwarf updates===
Geedubs finally noticed how badly nerfed Tyranids have been during the last editions so they took opportunity to get your money by releasing new waves of Tyranid units supported by White Dwarf updates. Things started poorly with a pair of monstrous creatures who really didn't bring anything new to the table. The [[Toxicrene]] was fine on paper, bringing Poisoned 2+ Instant-Death-on-a-6 attacks, but as yet another floot-slogging MC it had trouble catching the things it WANTED to kill. The [[Maleceptor]] was just an overcosted, overcomplicated, and underpowered hunk of plastic that would be lucky to kill more than 20 points worth of models in a given turn.

The most unexpected announcements came from GW around Fall 2014, coinciding with the coming of [[The End Times]]: New models for the Tyranids. The first pack that was announced was a dual kit for the Maleceptor and Toxicrene. While the Maleceptor proved to be unpopular within ''minutes'' of having its rules announced in White Dwarf as it was an overpriced drain of warp charges, the Tocxicrene proved to fare a bit better, as the copious amount of poison and Instant Death on a 6 to-wound using said poison made it a menace against Monstrous Creatures (though its intended targets, the [[Riptide]] and [[Wraithknight]], merely scoffed at it because they're jumping monstrous creatures, and thus able to kite it like a toy). The second release proved to be the most popular by far: The return of Mycetic Spores (now [[Tyrannocyte]]s), the living fortifications known as [[Sporocyst]]s, and new [[Mucolid Spore]]s that not only assault flyers, but are also the cheapest troop choices, making starting an army of Tyranids a much simpler task. While the Tyrannocyte proved an incredible weapon that made several units (including the infamous [[Pyrovore]]) suck slightly less, that power came with a hefty price tag (for a Transport, not as a Monstrous Creature), and Sporocysts are completely immobile and are equally pricey in exchange for synapse bonuses and the ability to spam spore mines. Needless to say, people actually thanked GeeDubs for this rare show of intelligence.The third release gave new Sprues for the [[Zoanthrope]]/[[Venomthrope]] as a multi-part kit with a new set of rules for the Zoanthropes: The [[Neurothrope]], a sergeant that gave the brood a new power that could potentially give them more Warp Charges to spend on Warp Lance. Not bad, but the new sprue was still welcome. After these releases, it became clear as to why the 'Nids got new shit: promotions for a new Campaign called ''Shield of Baal'', which involves 'Nids chomping through a system near the territory of the [[Blood Angels]], meaning that [[Dante]] has to call all the successor chapters to stop the mob. He had to take help from [[Anrakyr]] to save even part of the system. This now concludes the awesome part of all things Tyranid. If you look at the gallery below the Cutenids, you will require a mind scrubbing and be lobotomized into a servitor. No exceptions. Of course you now have players mocking 'Nids as being a DLC faction.

===Return in 8th Edition===
Tyranids were an early-middle codex release of 8th and at that time were a contextually powerful army mostly due to how fast they were, like, "My Hormagaunts just moved 20" in one turn and my Stratagem can give them a second Movement Phase," fast. This speed has given them absolutely amazing board control combined with their easy access to deep striking units, good mix of swarms and big monsters for heavier damage. Carnifexes received a less-nerfed range of biomorphs, and proved to be useful and cheap Swiss-army knives capable of fulfilling a variety of roles.

Nevertheless, despite ostensibly being a melee focused army, Tyranids continued to suffer from relatively low strength melee attacks which compensate for their lowered wound chance by having higher damage. This means that while they dealt a lot of damage when they wound a vehicle it's a toss-up as to whether or not they could actually wound it; ''Space Marines'' have easier access to Anti-Tank melee than us. Some of the big beasties are still overcosted and underpowered for their roles, and the flyers aren't too good either. While the little guys still died in droves and our big guys were either very good or just suck, the mid-sized bugs were decent but tended to require some planning to make the most of them. For example, Lictors were fragile but useful as deep strike beacons, Warriors and Raveners were a bit overcosted but could stick around much longer than before now that Instant Death is gone, and Zoanthropes were stuck as the obligatory Smite spammers.

As of 2020 Tyranids are once again severely hampered by ongoing codex creep and FAQs, with and have reverted to a reputation of being lacklustre. It was hoped that Blood of Baal would bring some updates, and indeed it did, but as usual everything else got more and stronger updates, and even new models in some cases. It would have been good to put Genestealer Cults and 'nids in one book, like Eldar and DE, but nope, you can buy two, yay.


===9th Edition===
The changes made to the core rules were something of a mixed bag for the Tyranids. On the plus side, Monsters received two huge buffs; they can move and shoot heavy weaponry without penalty and can even fire these (non-blast) weapons ''while'' they're in melee. Getting into melee is also much safer than ever before, since Overwatch is now a once-per-phase stratagem (unless you're the [[Tau]]). However, the addition of blast weaponry and the changes to unit coherency have severely punished swarm builds while additional changes to melee combat hamper the damage they can deal when tarpitting other units. Other than that, the power creep left over from 8th edition is still very much in effect and much of what the Tyranids have access to simply pales in comparison to the slew of shiny toys and abilities being handed over to the Space Marines. However, with the release of the Imperial Armor Compendium, most of their [[Forge World]] units have gained some significant buffs that make some of the larger units to become more viable, with Dimachaerons being able to jump over terrain and enemy models, Harridans gaining the Aircraft keyword (yes, this is important), Hierodules becoming about 40% cheaper and being moved to Heavy Support (making them viable), and Hierophants that can now be fielded in non-Apocalypse games. And now they have a new Army of Renown known as Crusher Stampede, which gives an army-wide 5++, and all monsters take -1 damage, along with some unique psychic powers and stratagems. That's right, Nidzilla is back! Until it was outmoded.

Then the full contents of their codex leaked and all hell broke loose. Synapse link has been expanded to include psychic powers and most, if not all, unit buffs while also removing instinctive behavior altogether. Also, there are a lot of powerful abilities that can do things like disable re-rolls or overwatch (suck it Tau!). But the real kicker is the fact that when after seeing your opponents army, you can change the adaptive trait on your hive fleet to give your army more of an advantage. For example, are you facing an army with a lot of AP -1 weapons? Well now you have an adaptation to makes those weapons count as AP 0 instead. Or perhaps your opponent's army can cause a lot of movement debuffs? Don't worry, because there's an adaptation that allows you to ignore any modifiers to movement characteristics, advance rolls and charge rolls. Or maybe the enemy army going heavy on melee? You should use the adaptation that allows your entire army to heroically intervene. Unfortunately this now has to be chosen during army construction before the start of the game.

Also, [[Pyrovore|Pyrovores]] are great now, take that as you will. And oh yes, the [[Parasite of Mortrex]] is finally returning, with a spiffy new model.


===10th Edition===
As of the announcement of Warhammer 40k's 10th edition, Tyranids will be receiving a range refresh, and with that a whole swarm of new and improved voidborn terrors. (Expect this page to be heavily edited in the near future!) With the narrative focus on the sudden and massive Tyranid invasion of Segmentum Pacificus, now declared to be the 4th Tyrannic war, we can expect the Tyranids to sit in the limelight for a short while as well.