Detachment Focus: Warrior Bioform Onslaught

Merry Grotmas! Games Workshop is releasing a new series of detachments – one per army, every day until Christmas. In this series we’re looking at these new detachments, covering what’s in them, how they play, and how they’ll fit into the broader meta and your games.

Currently there are a myriad of ways to play your psychic bugs. Crusher provides a solid way to throw a bunch of big bugs on the table, Vanguard gives you a bunch of tricky strats and the framework to make a solid pressure list, and Invasion Fleet lets you take a very flexible list of best ofs and enables you to react to what your opponents are doing. That said, what about the humble Tyranid Warrior? These get some play in Vanguard but are noticeably absent from most Tyranid lists. This is the gap the Warrior Bioform Onslaught detachment is looking to fill.

We’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a preview copy of this Detachment for review purposes.

Detachment Overview

The Warrior Bioform Onslaught detachment focuses on bringing Warriors to the forefront of your list building. The detachment provides an incredibly solid detachment rule, some very flexible enhancements, and some pretty good stratagems. While most of the enhancements and stratagems focus on Warriors, there’s also some good support for your regular bugs and this detachment clearly wants you to make an even and balanced Tyranid list with Warriors being your core. That said you can absolutely just go ham on Warriors to make a solid fighting force.

The Video Version

If you’re looking for a video version of this review, you can find it here:

Detachment Rule: Leader-Beasts

Tyranid Warriors and Winged Primes get a 5+ invulnerable save, and Warriors of both flavors get 3 OC, and the Battleline Keyword.

Norman: This rule is as strong as it is simple. The invulnerable and 3 OC make Warrior bricks a fantastic objective-bullying piece that is just annoying enough to remove. Think Plaguebeaerers but with an extra wound and a melee profile that doesn’t mess around. Making them Battleline is the real juice here, though, allowing them to benefit from all the buffs to Battleline in Pariah Nexus and allowing you to take 6 of each unit if you really wanna get spammy with it.

Enhancements

Most of your enhancements are centered around creating specialist units of Warriors. 

• Synaptic Tyrant (10 Points)– Allows a Neurotyrant to lead a Tyranid Warriors unit.
• Ocular Adaptation (20 Points)– (Winged Tyranid Prime only) Grants models in the attached unit +1 to hit.
• Sensory Assimilation (20 Points)– (Winged Tyranid Prime only) Grants models in the attached unit -1 to be hit.
• Elevated Might (30 Points)– Can go on any Tyranid Character. Gives the bearers unit advance and charge.

Norman: These are all really solid if a bit pricey. Synaptic Tyrant is fantastic since you’re likely to toss a Neurotyrant in all your lists anyway to help out with Shadow in the Warp. Ocular Adaptation and Sensory Assimilation are interesting because they aren’t limited to ranged or melee attacks, allowing you to decide on the fly if you want the buff on your ranged or melee units. That said they could both stand to be a bit cheaper. Elevated Might is also interesting since it can go on anything. An advance and charge walk tyrant could be cool, but most of the time I suspect you’ll be throwing this on a prime for early pressure from a Warrior unit or a Broodlord for a taste of some of the vanguard Genestealer tech.

Curie: Hear me out – a Winged Tyranid Prime with Sensory Assimilation leading 20 gargoyles. The Detachment rule gives Winged Tyranid Prime units the invulnerable save. Now you have a tarpit that is -1 to be hit all the time, 21 bodies that move 12”, can advance and shoot, and then scoot another 6” after having shot. You also have an on-demand -1 to be wounded Stratagem when you’re near Warriors.

TheChirurgeon: There’s no world in which you take this Detachment and don’t put Elevated Might on a unit. Advance and Charge is always great and here you probably want it on a Broodlord, even though everything else in the Detachment is geared towards Warriors. You also probably want Synaptic Tyrant in most armies in order to get +1 to hit on a unit of Warriors.

Stratagems

The Stratagems here are geared toward buffing your Tyranid Warriors. Some of them require a Warrior target while others feature a bonus for Warriors units and models. 

• Synaptic Amplification (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used in your Shooting phase or the Fight phase on a Tyranid unit. If you pick a Warriors unit you can also pick a bonus Endless Multitude unit within 6” of them that isn’t battle-shocked. Until the end of the phase, models in the selected units re-roll wound rolls of 1 and your Tyranids Warrior unit also re-rolls hit rolls of 1. Despite being worded very oddly, this is a nifty two-unit bonus, helping you get more out of your high volume of attacks.
• Spontaneous Hypercorrosion (Wargear, 1 CP) – Used in your Shooting phase or the Fight phase on a Tyranid unit. Until the end of the phase, models in that unit get +2 to the Strength of their ranged weapons and Tyranid Warrior and Winged Prime get +1 to the strength of their melee weapons. Ironically this may be better served on non warrior units. Zoanthropes moving to S14 shooting, or Tyrranofex Acid Spray moving to S8 overcome some important breakpoints. The +1 strength in melee is also great for melee Warriors which, with Synapse, become S7, allowing them to punch up nicely.
• Restorative Impulse (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used in your Command phase on a Warriors unit below Starting Strength. Return one destroyed non-Character model to the unit. 1 CP for a 3W model isn’t a terrible deal to pinch an objective before scoring.
• Synaptic Micronodes (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used in your Movement phase on a Warriors unit. Pick an objective marker you control in range of that unit, and it becomes sticky – it stays under your control until an opponent puts greater control than you on it at the end of a phase. Being able to sticky objectives is always crazy useful. 
• Parasitic Payload (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used in your Shooting phase on a Warriors unit with Ranged bio-weapons. Until the end of the phase they gain [IGNORES COVER] on their ranged weapons, and after you finish shooting, pick an enemy unit hit by any of those attacks and until the end of the turn, models in that unit can’t have the benefit of cover.
• Synaptic Shield (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used in your opponent’s Shooting phase after an enemy unit selects targets. Pick a Warriors unit in your army selected as a target, and up to one Endless Multitude unit within 6” of them. Until the end of the phase, each time an attack comes in, if the Strength of that attack is bigger than your unit’s toughness, they get -1 to the wound roll. 

Despite some weird wording, this is a great slew of stratagems. Funnily enough, some of the most interesting stuff here is on non warrior units. Specifically Spontaneous Hypercorrosion opens up some really interesting avenues for buffing stuff past common strength breakpoints. Warriors don’t walk away without anything however, there’s a lot of great support here for both offensive output and utility play.

Playing This Detachment

Overall, this detachment is going to focus on overloading objectives with High OC, surprisingly durable units of Warriors and focusing on playing the mission instead of removing your opponent. The downside of Warriors is that they are for the most part a damage 1 unit, which means they will struggle to remove a lot of units in the game. That said there’s a lot of support here to juice them, and the rest of the Tyranid roster isn’t exactly cut off to you. We expect to see most folks using this detachment to have a solid warrior core but will bring common Tyranid staples to most games. Zoanthropes, Biovores, Exocrines, and Genestealers are all still very much on the table, so while you’re building around Battleline Warriors, don’t feel like you have to go overboard on those and run twelve units of them.

Strengths

• Makes Warriors more durable and gives them Battleline, making them much more versatile in missions using special rules like Stalwarts 
• Ability to spread bonuses to a unit of Gargoyles using a Winged Tyranid Prime as Leader
• There’s an Enhancement to give any Tyranids unit with a Leader the ability to Advance and Charge

Weaknesses

• Tyranid Warriors are still a bit underwhelming, particularly in melee where they lack damage 2 output
• Limited Leader options for Tyranid Warriors
• Very little support for other units

A Sample List

You know coming in what you’re going to be building when you take this Detachment. If you aren’t taking at least three units of Warriors you’re likely better off using one of the other Detachments available in Codex: Tyranids.

The list - click to expand

The list provides a pretty standard fare of Tyranids good stuff, while throwing in some extra goodies for the detachment. You have a slew of Warriors to sit at midboard and either apply early pressure with advance and charge or just sit back and strip cover with Parasitic Payload. The Zoanthropes get access to S14 brain blasts thanks to Spontaneous Hypercorrosion and a lot of the rest of the list focuses on scoring while you bully with your tough bodies. 

Final Thoughts

This is definitely an interesting Grotmas treat for GW to drop on us. Will it replace other Tyranid competitive staples? Probably not – Warriors are an interesting Battleline choice but just lack the raw offensive power in their datasheet, making them difficult to build around. That said, this Detachment does introduce an interesting new way to play the army that feels distinct from the other detachments in the book. I expect to see this pop up a few times in the next year at events and may even present a strong teams list framework that focuses on overloading objectives.

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