In this series of articles we take a deep dive into a specific detachment for a faction, covering the faction’s rules and upgrades and talking about how to build around that faction for competitive play. In this article, we’re covering the Invasion Fleet Detachment for Tyranids.
The Tenth Edition release of Codex: Tyranids came packed with a whopping six Detachments, each with a different style of play and a different set of supported units. The most general of these was the Invasion Fleet Detachment, which acted largely as a reproduction of the faction’s Index Detachment. It’s by far the broadest of the options available, giving the army a flexible rule they can cater to the opponent while not pushing players to build toward any specific units or categories of unit.
Detachment Overview
Anyone who played Tyranids with the 10th edition Index will be familiar with this Detachment, which is an updated version of the faction’s Index Detachment. The name of the game here is flexibility – the Detachment’s Hyper-Adaptations rule lets you pick the benefit you’ll receive at the beginning of the game, and while the benefits are largely going to be dependent on the opponent you’re facing, the options you have are pretty good. The Stratagems here are mostly a toolbox of utility effects.
Detachment Rule: Hyper-Adaptations
At the start of the first battle round, pick one of the following abilities to be active for Tyranids units in your army for the rest of the battle:
- Swarming Instincts: Your units get [SUSTAINED HITS 1] when making attacks against enemy Infantry and Swarm units.
- Hyper-aggression: Your units get [LETHAL HITS] when making attacks against enemy VEHICLE and MONSTER units.
- Hive Predators: Each time one of your units makes a critical hit against a character unit, that attack has the [PRECISION] ability.
These are all pretty solid effects. The first two options are solid output boosts that can shore up your weaknesses depending on what the opponent is packing. The last one comes up a lot more rarely, as it’s much easier for opponents to play around, but luckily you can switch it on on-demand with the Predatory Imperative Stratagem, which lets you activate an additional one of these for a unit in Synapse range. The biggest downside to all of this is that you can’t switch up during a game but as mentioned you can use Predatory Imperative to switch out if you’re in a pinch against a particular unit.
Enhancements
The Invasion Fleet gets two great general buffs for hefty CHARACTER monsters like Hive Tyrants, but among these only Adaptive Biology sees regular play in lists as a durability buff.
- Alien Cunning – After both players deploy, you can pick up to three TYRANID units from your army and redeploy them. When you do this you can put your units back into Strategic Reserves, regardless of how many units are in reserves. Being able to move around your heavy hitting monsters, or your infiltrating and scouting units to respond to where your opponent has put their choicest targets is a strong reason to consider this if you have the points.
- Perfectly Adapted – Once per turn you can re-roll one hit roll, one wound roll, one Damage Roll, one Advance roll, one Charge roll, or one saving throw made for the bearer. That’s a lot of options, even if you only get one per turn. This is neat, but it’s not a must-take or anything, particularly since you’re going to take Adaptive Biology first. It’s your port of call if the points don’t work out for its more expensive cousin.
- Synaptic Linchpin – While a friendly Tyranids unit is within 9″ of the bearer, they’re within Synapse Range. A fine little 3″ boost if you have the points to spare, but not something you’ll notice often.
- Adaptive Biology – The bearer has the Feel No Pain 5+ ability. At the start of any turn, if the bearer has fewer than its starting number of wounds remaining, it gains the Feel No Pain 4+ ability instead for the rest of the battle (even if it regains those wounds). This is very, very good and basically increases the durability on a Hive Tyrant to the tune of 5-10 extra wounds on average. Allowing you to keep one of your key monsters safe without the use of the Rapid Regeneration stratagem means you can have multiple areas covered with the poweful Feel No Pain rule.
Stratagems
Invasion Fleet’s standout stratagems are Rapid Regeneration and Overrun, the former providing a very solid defensive buff of a 5+ Feel No Pain (dropping to 6+ outside of Synapse Range) and the latter letting you either Consolidate extra far or make a Normal Move instead, allowing a bug to seize some space after killing something.
- Rapid Regeneration (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Used in your opponent’s shooting phase or the fight phase, after an enemy unit picks targets. One Tyranids unit they picked gains the Feel no Pain 6+ ability, or 5+ if they’re within Synapse Range. This is a really solid way to shrug off some heavier firepower, particularly with Synapse units.
- Adrenal Surge (Battle Tactic, 2 CP) – Used in the Fight phase on up to two Tyranids units from your army which are in Synapse Range an eligible to fight, or just one Tyranids unit outside Synapse range. Until the end of the phase, those units score critical hits on a 5+. This combos really well with the Detachment’s ability, and really likes to be cost reduced by the Hive Tyrant’s Will of the Hive Mind ability.
- Death Frenzy (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used in the Fight phase after an enemy unit picks its targets. A targeted unit can fight on death, with models needing to roll a 4+ to be able to fight before they’re removed from play. Fighting on death is always useful, though that 4+ means you’ll either want to save this for high-leverage situations, i.e. if this big monster does fight it’ll kill whatever hit it, or for situations where you have multiple models about to die and you can be pretty sure some of them are going to get to fight on death.
- Overrun (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used in the Fight phase before one of your units consolidates. That unit can Consolidate an extra 3″ as long as it ends up within Engagement range of one or more enemy units. If your unit is in Synapse Range and not within Engagement Range of any enemy units, it can instead make a Normal move of up to 6″ instead of a Consolidation move. Look for opportunities to use the Neurotyrant’s Neuroloids ability to have your units that are exploring away from the pack to abuse this additional movement to keep themselves safe, or flip key objectives.
- Predatory Imperative (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used in your Command phase. Pick up to two Tyranids units in your army in Synapse range, or one unit otherwise. Pick a Hyper-Adaptation and those units gain that Adaptation until the start of your next Command phase, and that’s in addition to any others which are active. This is very good, letting you audible to the adaptation you want mid-game in a pinch. It’s pretty much your only way to do that, and helpful when you need to punch up against a key vehicle or shred a big infantry unit. Watch for any units that straddle both sides of these keywords due to attached characters, or to try to snipe out a key character that thought it was safe.
- Endless Swarm (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used in your Command phase. Pick up to two ENDLESS SWARM units in Synapse Range of your army, or one such unit otherwise. You can return up to D3+3 destroyed models to each of those units. This stratagem allows you to almost always keep your high OC chaff ticking at high strength, and getting it on two units is just good value. This stratagem also opens up one of the most frustrating primary approaches for opponents that Tyranids have: put your ENDLESS SWARM unit with a few models on an objective, while the rest hide. If your opponent needs to shoot them to clear said objective, but lacks the firepower to kill the full unit in one activation, you can kill the models on the objective then use this stratagem to regrow your models onto the point before primary is scored!
Playing This Detachment
Invasion Fleet rewards you taking the best of the best datasheets and making them even stronger; there’s not much here to make something bad into something good, but adding Sustained Hits or Lethal Hits to something that already does its job means it can do that job even better. This results in Invasion Fleet lists often looking like a grab bag of all the most commonly used datasheets available to Tyranids.
The exception to this rule of thumb is anything with natural hit re-rolls, which strongly appreciate the Critical Hit-focused output of the detachment. Genestealers with Re-roll 1s to hit, and Old One Eye who’s leader benefit is full hit rerolls both present as the most obvious options for this particular synergy.
Within Invasion Fleet, the biggest draw is the durability provided by Rapid Regeneration. Having access to an on demand 5+ Feel No Pain (and for free with a Hive Tyrant none the less) means you can expose less to hold objectives than in other detachments, and with the output increase, do more damage after doing so with what’s left. This encourages a trading based gameplay pattern, as exposing multiple things at once threatens to overload your defensive abilities: pick fights you know you’ll win and use your infantry like Gargoyles and Hormagaunts to limit what your opponent can hit back and you’ll get much more value out of Rapid Regeneration on the big things your opponent can interact with.
Melee units with Synapse like Genestealers, or Old One Eye with a Neuroloid from a Neurotyrant can lean even further into this, keeping themselves safe with Overrun is another way you can avoid ever playing a fair game where your opponent gets to actually do their full damage to you.
Lone Operatives, Shenanigans with regrowing Endless Swarm units, and durability through monsters with a Feel No Pain will keep your primary score high, while those selfsame units cripple your opponent’s damage, and ability to move around the board. Hit them with Shadows in the Warp when it hurts: you have plenty of synapse units to keep that aura of -1 to hit going with Maleceptors and the Neurotyrant having particular strong synergy with the detachment.
Kayu Orellana’s List
Invasion Fleet lists took a bit of a hit with the March 2025 Balance update, mostly because they were likely to take multiple Exocrines and Tyrannofexes, the only units for the faction to see a points hike. That said, the small decrease to Hive Tyrants and Neurolictors can offset these increases in some builds, and you still have multiple options for how you build.
This list comes from Kayu Orellana, who piloted it to a 5-0 finish at the NurgleMania 6 Teams event in Nürnberg, Germany in late March. The list runs a pair of Exocrines and Tyrannofexes, dialing back a bit from taking 3 Exocrines to fit a bit more variety. There are still plenty of Endless Swarm units here to back up the lists’ big monsters.
The list - Click to expand
This is a bit of a varied list compared to the ones we were seeing late last year with Winged Hive Tyrants, and runs a little lighter on big monsters.
Final Thoughts
The Invasion Fleet Detachment represents the broadest take on the Tyranids faction, and the fact that it’s pretty competitive is a good sign for the health of the faction overall. You can make a lot of different units work in this build, and if you’re starting out and looking for something to work with that encourages the best datasheets in the codex, Invasion Fleet is the place to go.
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