Your Army Sucks 2k21 Preview, Part 3: Xenos

It’s a whole new year, and your army is likely to see some changes. Goonhammer is here to help, with an unbiased preview of every army, how it plays, and what to expect. We’ll be covering each codex with the deep detail you’ve come to expect from our worst writers, based entirely on whether we play it or not, or how stupid the army is conceptually. We looked at Imperium and Chaos already, and our third and final installment will cover the heathen races of the Xenos.

Armies of the Xenos

Here we go again, the article none of you have been waiting for and few of us wanted to write. It’s the Xenos, and we’re here to see what 2021 holds for them, from Eldanuary to Sept-ember to Orktober to Tyranovember, and everything in between. Spoiler alert: anticipate intense trauma.

Craftworlds (Regular Eldar)

Silks Biel Tan Display 2
Credit: Silks

What’s their deal?

Greg: Elves who went on a million-year bender and have been suffering a reality-sundering hangover ever since. You gotta respect it. Craftworlds have been an unholy terror on and off since they showed up, and are currently on a pretty brutal down-swing.

Rob: Craftworlds Eldar basically spent the better part of 6 consecutive editions being somewhere between “completely broken” and “Merely insanely good” thanks to a mix of great shooting, great psychic powers, and most recently, some absolute bullshit rules for their planes. A series of latter-day 8th edition nerfs to their psychic powers and 9th edition emphasizing melee while removing things like stacking to hit modifiers and the Air Wing detachment have left Craftworlds Eldar without a top-tier build for the first time in a long time. Which is pretty great, if you ask me. The consolation prize is that Craftworlds players can just make a top tier army by adding a bunch of murderclowns to the good Forge World vehicles Eldar have.

Wings: gently rocks back and forth poor skybabies. Why did they have to do this to you?

What are the good units?

Greg: Whoooo caaaaares. Wave Serpents, I guess.

Rob: The Hornet from Forge World is a very good unit, and I’m generally OK with forcing Craftworlds Eldar players to buy a bunch of resin nightmares if they want to stay competitive. In the current meta, anything that can hold a star cannon is probably worth considering, and War Walkers are a solid choice given they can hold them and outflank. Shadow Spectres also seem decent, and the Farseer Skyrunner is still OK.

Wings: Shining Spears are like the one unit that actually competes with everything else in the game at the moment. They’re p. good, though even they need both the extra attack from Ancient Relics and the re-rolls from Expert Crafters to be good enough.

Time Lapse Wings: You prep and schedule a lovely article nice and early then GW own you by FAQing stuff. Ok, as of the point changes Dire Avengers are now also priced to move, and look for them performing alongside Asurmen. Thanks to the changes to Bring It Down, going wide with War Walkers and Hornets also looks pretty great once more.

How much will you hate painting this?

You’ll probably hate it a little bit. Not because they’re overly difficult – the models are clean and don’t demand ornate techniques or anything – but because you’ll be painting plastics from 3rd edition, and the lack of updates pisses everyone off.

Rob: I’ve been painting a few of these things for some upcoming How to Paint Everything articles and while they’re not difficult, they are extremely fiddly. I dropped an arm for one of the (relatively) new Eldar bikes and it took me two days to find it on a relatively clean hardwood floor. Although models like the Falcon and Vyper are very old, they still hold up very well. On the other hand most of the actually good units for Craftworlds Eldar are Forge World now so I hope you like scrubbing resin, then getting angry when you realize you missed a spot after priming the model and you watch paint slough off the first time you take a brush to it.

Wings: Shining Spears are a resin conversion kit on top of 1990s plastic jetbikes. Have fun.

What’s Happening for them in 2021?

Nobody knows. With Drukhari getting a new book or two soon, we’d be surprised to see GW double-dip on elves, but stranger things have happened. Personally I hope Craftworlds stay gutter-tier for a while longer. The Craftworlds did just come out of the recent FAQ changes with some good boosts – the changes to Abhor the Witch and Bring it Down really help them, and the point drops for their Troops choices help undo the war crime that was the first iteration of the 9th edition Munitorum Field Manual.

Rob: Same. I think I lost maybe 50 games to Eldar back in 2nd edition when I was first starting and I’ve hated them ever since. Wings dumpstered me in like our first game of 9th edition running Expert Crafters Eldar and while I’ve since repaid the favor with my Night Lords, I’ve never forgiven him for this perceived slight.

Wings: Gathering dust.

Time Lapse Wings: Marching across the board in a blue wave.

Do you want to play this?

Ehhhhh. Eldar aren’t the worst army out there, but they’re for sure in a bad spot. Still, we have a hard time imagining that they won’t be back on their bullshit before long. In the meantime, don’t expect to win much, but at least you’ll be everyone’s least-favorite opponent.

Rob: Craftworlds Eldar are like Chaos Space Marines in that they’re not very good but you can add a few of their units into an army built around a top-tier faction (i.e. Harlequins for CWE, Daemons for CSM) and end up with something that’s very competitive. That said, people get really angry for some reason when you write a competitive article suggesting that the best way to compete is to not try and build a mono-subfaction army in their pet subfaction, so I look forward to lots of vitriol around this idea. I dunno, maybe things will change for them post-FAQ but it seems like Harlequins will still be the jam, though maybe Drukhari will also be sick as hell.

Wings: Desperately.

 

Drukhari (Dark Eldar)

What’s their deal?

Riff Raff from Rocky Horror lookin-ass army.

The Drukhari – or “Dark Eldar” as they were known before a series of strategic rebranding exercises in the early aughts – are the Eldar who decided to fuck off to the webway and become pirates. They were pretty good in 8th edition until GW suddenly nerfed Eldar soup by making it so that Craftworld Eldar spells wouldn’t help anyone else. Now they’re pretty bad, having been done dirty by points adjustments and the new marine codex.

What are the good units?

Taloses and Ravagers both seem decent still, but there isn’t even a good list I’ve seen that combines these guys with Harlequins, which should tell you all you need to know about them. They’re probably better standalone than Craftworlds Eldar but less good for soup since they don’t bring much to the table that Harlequins can’t already do.

Wings: Drukhari are in a weird place – your best bet currently is Wracks in Venoms backed up by the Forge World vehicles (including the Tantalus if the number showing up in video reports these last few weeks is any indication), which can both be Covens for some fucking reason and thus get to benefit from the wildly stupid Dark Technomancers custom trait.

How much will you hate painting this?

I gotta hand it to the weird murdereleves – the faction has some lovely models and really benefit from a near army-wide reboot in 5th edition. There are still a few finecast stinkers in the range, but the newer models – especially Drazhar and the Incubi – look great. So aside from the fact that they’re pretty small models and covered in spikes, you might enjoy painting them.

Transporting them though, that’s gonna be a nightmare.

Wings: Yeah these are surprisingly easy to paint for how detailed they are, the infantry armour takes drybrushing really well, and the vehicles needed to be edged but Drukhari edges are sharp as hell, which makes it easy.

What’s Happening for them in 2021?

Rejoice, perverts! The Drukhari are among the next in line for a new codex, with lots of new rules and a new model for Lelith Hesperax, the other character in the book. That’s great news for a faction hovering only a few steps above garbage tier, and it’ll be interesting to see how they land with new rules. At the very least, it looks like Incubi will get to benefit from the proliferation of 2-damage weapons and will return to their god-intended purpose of being space marine blenders.

new incubi rules
Credit: Games Workshop

They’re also set to get rules in the upcoming Charadon Campaign book, though what those will entail is anyone’s guess. How you feel about these rules will depend entirely on how good they are and whether you think it’s OK for GW to charge for additional army rules right after selling you a codex.

Finally, the FAQs and points updates that went out yesterday clearly show the points for Codex: Drukhari stuff, which is cool even if it leaves us scratching our heads at some of the costs (there are likely rules we don’t know yet). At a glance it seems like they’ll improve significantly, and we’re eager to see what the full rules look like, They may also be good in soup, though we suspect Drukhari will join the trend of factions that get bonuses for going monofaction to discourage souping.

Do you want to play this?

Greg: If you get horny over any or all the following: Gladiator pits, Frankenstein, or Tim Burton’s Batman, this might be the army for you. Pervert.

Rob: I dunno, the neon colors and modeled nipples definitely scream “Joel Schumacher’s Batman” to me. As an aspiring pervert, I’ve been tempted by the Drukhari many times over the past few years, but getting the Necrons half of Indomitus probably derailed my plans for Drukhari by a year or more.

Greg: Maybe it’s just because I’ve been google image searching switchblades a lot recently, but I think I can get behind this.

Wings: Ask me again in however many weeks it takes the new book to escape from wherever the horny police have impounded it.

 

Harlequins (Cool Eldar)

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

What’s their deal?

The official army of Psychopathic Records and the Gathering of the Juggalos, the Harlequins are here to get revenge for every theater kid and TikTok user that got bullied in junior high. And they mean that shit – after a quiet stint in 8th edition they’re insanely legit in 9th, and may currently be the strongest faction in the game. That’s where we’re at – Modern Competitive Eldar: Literal Clowns.

What are the good units?

Most of them (out of a whopping 7 in the codex) are good, but in particular the characters, where you can stack bullshit relics and warlord traits to make them stupid powerful, but in a way that’s supremely irritating. It’s one thing to tank hits in combat while lashing out with your own, but it’s something else entirely to heroically intervene, do a bunch of poison attacks, and dip out before you’re hit back. Absolutely frustrating to pin down.

Wings: It’s honestly easier to list the bad unit, which is the Voidweaver, and “bad” is extremely relative here. Also it got buffed in the point changes. No clown left behind.

How much will you hate painting this?

An awful lot. Harlequins don’t have a ton of models but they have probably the most complex painting scheme in the game, with lots of gradients and harlequin diamond/checker patterns. Or you could not paint those, if you are a coward.

What’s Happening for them in 2021?

If they get anything, it probably won’t be for a while. Harlequins seem like they’d be ripe for an over-the-top maniacal crusade book, but given that they’ve always been more of a mix-in soup faction than a full army, they’re unlikely to be high on the priority list for additional support. Hell, their last rules update was in an issue of White Dwarf, which should tell you all you need to know about how the writers feel about the army. That said, they can still dominate in games, so that’s not at all a bad thing – the army’s only likely to get worse with rules updates. They fortunately made it through the FAQs and points updates pretty much unscathed and ready to continue rolling in 2021.

Do you want to play this?

Mondo dickhead army, so sure.

 

Ynnari (Death Eldar)

The Yncarne. Credit: Wings

What’s their deal?

Ynnari are the death cult Eldar, which sounds like it would be cool, but instead, check this out: it sucks. The “codex” is three characters and the ability to slam all the other types of Eldar into one army, but that army is bad. Since their release at the end of 7th, GW has kind of forgotten that they ever created Ynnari, which rules. They’re akin to Fallen, a vestigial faction created to support the narrative that never had reason to be an actual army except that some doofus in the studio insisted.

Rob: Well except that unlike Fallen, the Ynnari rules actually function in the game. Also, hot take: Cypher sucks. Sure I’ll grant that he looks cool with his pistols or whatever but he’s a complete nothingburger in any story he’s in. Just shows up and says and does nothing, then peaces out being like “My work here is done.” There was a great bit where he got clowned hard after showing up to help Guilliman and demanded to speak to the Emperor and instead they just threw him in prison. Anyways, Yvraine is better than Cypher.

What are the good units?

Every unit from every Eldar codex comes in with everything for a HUGE party. Also Yvraine is pretty solid as a source of reliable mortal wounds. But you’re better off putting her into a non-Ynnari Eldar army than you are adding a bunch of Eldar units into a Ynnari force.

Wings: The problem is that the huge party has some pretty stringent social distancing rules – only one type of elf in each household detachment. Now I respect that in this day and age, but the army construction stuff doesn’t really need to be as stringent since they got landed with the Bad Stratagems.

How much will you hate painting this?

Refer back to the different Types of Elves above, with the addendum that the Yncarne is a nightmare that you’ll never paint, Alfredo.

Rob: Fuckin’ Alfredo. Paint the Yncarne, coward!

Wings: It was surprisingly fine. Obviously this only increases the number of coward points Alfredo gets.

What’s Happening for them in 2021?

The Ynnari don’t seem like they’re ever getting a book of their own, and their rules currently live in the Psychic Awakening: Phoenix Rising supplement. Their next update is probably lurking in an issue of White Dwarf some time in late 2021 or early 2022.

Do you want to play this?

I mean any Eldar army is a Ynnari army if you want to add the cat lady, but no, you do not want to play monofaction Ynnari.

 

Genestealer Cults

Genestealer Cult Army
Genestealer Cult Army. Credit: That Gobbo

What’s their deal?

Genestealer Cults are both a very old army, hailing from the earliest editions of 40k, and also one of the newest, having only gotten a real Codex in late 7th edition. Their units are a mix of things pulled from the Guard, Tyranid, and Grubby Imperial Weirdo ranges. Their main gimmick is that they deploy entirely differently than any other army, making the deployment phase vastly more important than it already is. Much like grinding a rail on a skateboard, if you’re good at it you can pummel your opponent with pure Chaos Energy, but make one single mistake and you are going to publicly eat shit. Their gimmicks kind of also rely on your opponent being caught off guard by them, which means that Genestealer Cults tend to clown players playing against them for the first time and then eat shit against players who know what their deal is. They were decent for parts of 8th edition, then someone on the GW rules writing team got tabled by an army running a lot of Aberrants and the army got nerfed out of competition in the following rules update, as is customary for Tyranid-related armies.

Wings: Being handed the hand flamer buff has given these a surprisingly huge bump, and they’re pretty OK again now. Having units that can drop in and flame stuff to oblivion on multiple fronts at once gives them a lot more ability to control the game, which is vital in 9th.

What are the good units?

Hybrids and Ridgerunners are great. The honest-to-god best things are all in the Start Collecting box. Just buy like six of those.

Wings: This is barely a joke. Acolytes and Ridgerunners, all the way.

How much will you hate painting this?

Debatable. The models are mostly fairly new (except Genestealers and the ones on loan from the Astra Militarum, though the latter at least gets a sick new upgrade/conversion kit), and loaded with cool details that will reward the methodical painter. But you also have to paint a lot of them. They’re also running close to admech levels of expensive to field, with a really bad dollars-to-points ratio.

What’s Happening for them in 2021?

Yikes. With the slow-down on Codex releases to one a month, and many of the non-Imperium slots already spoken for (between announced releases and Rumour Engine or preview teasers), it seems unlikely that GSC will sneak onto the schedule. The FAQs and points updates didn’t do them too many favors either, dropping Aberrants by only 2 points per model and giving the faction a small drop on Goliath Rockgrinders while increasing the costs on Brood Bros.

Do you want to play this?

Ideally, you’d skip the Tyranids and the looted Guard stuff and stick with the cool trucks and dirt bikes, but we acknowledge the appeal of mutants and bug men swinging concrete blocks and stop signs like powerfists. This is the closest thing to an Imperial Guard Renegade army that we’re ever likely to get, so if that’s what you’re really holding out for, Cults aren’t a bad option.

Wings: It helps that combining them with Tyranids is pretty good, so if you have one or the other you can dip your toes into the second half.

 

Necrons

Necron Monolith – Credit: Games Workshop (Gregness supplied)

What’s their deal?

Necrons have had an interesting run that reflects their growing importance to GW’s real-world plans in their in-game fluff. Starting off as a legion of boring but implacable skeleton warriors that lust for murder, Necrons have seen their background and rules expand with each codex, starting in 5th edition, to that of bickering nobles who hate each other and still lust for murder. If you like robots and internecine warfare, you’re gonna love them.

What are the good units?

The Necrons are lousy with good units now. It’s great! The Silent King is great, the Nightbringer is a murdermachine, Scarabs and Warriors are solid, Skorpekhs are good. Destroyers and Wraiths are solid. The Tesseract Ark is good. You’re spoiled for choices now.

How much will you hate painting this?

You won’t. Or, more accurately, if you do, that’s entirely on your own head. This is an army notorious for the ability to actually look solid on the table while barely hitting the three-color minimum standard for “painted”: spray them Leadblecher, wash with Nuln Oil, and hit the gun parts with Tesseract Glow.

Obviously you can do more than that, but you don’t have to.

Rob: The one exception is the Silent King, which is apparently a hateful fucking model to assemble. Also the Ghost Ark still exists.

Wings: The Ghost Ark is the one model I’ve ever painted where I’ve sworn never again, I will spend £200 commissioning that shit if I ever need another one. On an unrelated note, I’d like to thank GW for making the book good enough that “whoops all Arks” isn’t the only decent build now.

What’s Happening for them in 2021?

Credit: Games Workshop

Almost certainly nothing, bar a few holdover releases – we’ve been waiting on several key Cryptek varietals to release, chief among them the Chronomancer, plus the new Flayed Ones. The recent Kill Team preview announcement suggests that Flayed Ones may be releasing alongside that release, which means that A. They’ll hopefully be out soon, and B. Odds are good that you’ll have to buy them alongside a Kill Team rulebook, a squad of Space Marines, and $80 worth of terrain. The upside is that Necrons are also getting a rad store anniversary model, and that’s more than they could ask for after the best 2020 that anyone on this planet had. Necrons just got a starring role in the starter sets, a thorough range refresh (when’s the last time anyone got their main troops choice re-done?), a new Codex, and a Crusade supplement in which they feature heavily. You don’t deserve anything new in 2021 yet you’re still getting at least one thing you weren’t expecting, and frankly it seems uncouth to even ask this question.

On the plus side, enjoy having one of the few single-book armies, aside from the Crusade stuff. At least until a Campaign supplement comes along that includes new Necron rules.

Wings: R E L E A S E T H E C H R O N O M A N C E R.

Do you want to play this?

Easy alley-oop here for anyone looking for a non-specific Xenos faction. The ready availability of fresh new models makes them a no-brainer. If you bought Indomitus and didn’t immediately trade them to double-up on the marine half, you’re already sitting on a pretty solid thousand point army, and the Recruit edition is basically just a troops box with a free character and some marines.

 

Orks

Credit: Games Workshop

What’s their deal?

The deal is that I’m not going to write this in Ork-speak because I don’t think spellcheck can handle it and because I refuse to play to the cheap seats. Orks are buff and stupid and fight literally all of the time. They are the coolest dudes imaginable.

Orks are an army that does a lot of shooting and punching, but aren’t really great at either. That’s OK because you’ll make up for it with numbers. You’ll throw a lot of dice and most of them will fail, so if you enjoy loud noises and futility, this is the army for you.

What are the good units?

It turns out Ghazghkull is pretty good, and the old standby strategy of “throwing 90-120 Ork Boys right down your opponent’s gullet” has continued to be a good strategy in 9th edition. Early concerns about Blast weapons ruining everyone’s days were way overblown and it turns out just stopping up the middle of the table with hordes of green bodies works fine.

Wings: Almost all the Orktober buggies too, especially the Scrapjet. Hell even Bonebreaka Battlewagons are good now. Orks have it good.

How much will you hate painting this?

Painting Orks rules, but through sheer volume, if nothing else, you’re going to go a little bit crazy. That said, the basic Ork model isn’t a terrible time, and even the vehicles you can get away with slopping metals and Contrast on, if you just want the project to be over with. The models have incredible amounts of character, and they’re also a great canvas to do weathering techniques on, if that’s your thing.

Rob: Ork vehicles are a katamari of old garbage and converting them is fun as hell.

What’s Happening for them in 2021?

One of the quick shots from the preview videos last year showed some unmistakably Orky abs and a squig, so we’re betting big on a 2021 Ork release – we’d be shocked if they didn’t end up getting something, though after all the griping from the last attempt at Orktober, you don’t deserve it.

Rob: I for one, am ready for the massive amount of salt we’ll be seeing in uh, ORKPRIL.

Do you want to play this?

Reader, you cannot afford not to play them.

 

T’au Empire

Tau Army
Tau Army. Credit: Jack Hunter

What’s their deal?

The less said here the better. Tau rode high on the hog for a spell, entirely off of a couple of units and one build – shield drones and Riptides – that could exploit their rules to an absurd degree. The Gundam buffet is closed now, less due to nerfs to those units and more that the Tau playstyle straight up does not work with 9th edition scoring. Don’t bother until they get a new book, unless you like getting bullied off objectives and punched to death before you have a chance to score anything on your primary objective, and finding a build that doesn’t bleed secondary points is almost impossible. You might think you can just shoot your way out of this situation, but T’au shooting was never as good as people gave it credit for.

Wings: Ehhhhh the shooting kind of was as good as people thought, but they really relied on racking up points from kills for three turns then moving out onto objectives to score in the late game, and in 9th’s shorter games with no Kill Points you just fucking lose if you try that.

What are the good units?

So, the second-biggest problem you’re gonna have is that the old Triptide build got body-slammed through a folding table and then had dirt thrown on it. The actual biggest problem is that your only units with Objective Secured are W1/T3/4+Sv models that are instantly annihilated in combat, which is exactly where they’re gonna end up due to smaller tables and how objectives work now. An army with zero staying power messily eats shit in 9th. Small, fragile, units (eg, drones) bleed secondary points, your vehicles are still atrocious, and the Supremacy Armor is no longer a BATTLESUIT, so it can get in the sea.

That said, Breachers are probably the best troops option you’ve got, with a Guardian Drone for a 5+ Invulnerable and decently brutal close-range firepower (plus the T’au’s free overwatch) maybe giving you a chance to die gloriously instead of ignominiously. Piranhas could be fine, but again, aren’t compatible with the 9th edition scoring system, because Bring It Down exists. In a Farsight Enclaves list, a squad of Veteran Cadre Crisis suits will put in work, and there’s probably a way to make railgun Broadsides with the prototype S9 rail rifles work, now that they can move and shoot. Max out your prototype weapons systems and run FSE and you can maybe hope to go 2-3 if you get first turn every game, but that’s as far as we’d go with this one.

Finally, Kroot are bullshit.

Rob: The Tau-haver has logged on, I see. I mean, Tau are really bad and the units they have that are good – Piranhas and Tetras – still kind of suck and open you up to giving up easy Bring it Down points.

Wings: There are some good Crisis teams you can build, Remoras are a small point of light for the faction, and Commanders are still strong, but these do not combine to make winning lists. Broadsides and Devilfish were already decent and just got point cuts too.

How much will you hate painting this?

Not too much. The battlesuits are all fun, and the infantry paint up shockingly fast. It’s all flat surfaces and edge highlights, basically an entire army of Dreadnoughts. Not the rules, because they are very bad, but in terms of slamming out thicc bois. You can have a real sharp looking army without it taking a ton of effort.

What’s Happening for them in 2021?

Losing games, mostly. Yesterday’s points updates and FAQs do help the faction a bit – points drops for some key units and the nerfing of Bring it Down help them build a bit easier, but points increases to Commanders and drone squads are just head-scratchingly bad and hurt the army. Though the idea of taking The Eight as a single unit for While We Stand, We Fight is hilarious.

Rob: My one wish for the army is that they give Crisis suits some kind of melee option. Make the fusion blades relic a squad upgrade for models running double fusion. A. This would be cool as hell, B. It would give them a solid punch that would help the army considerably, and C. It would be cool as hell.

Do you want to play this?

Absolutely not.

Rob: The best part is that no matter how dogshit the T’au army gets, casual players will still call you “that guy” and bitch and moan about your T’au army for playing them because of that one time they got tabled back in 6th edition by a Tau’Dar army playing on planet bowling ball and whenever they play T’au they refuse to change their play style in any way to enact WAAC strategies such as “avoid being shot in the face.”

 

Tyranids

I only used this image because those are my Dark Angels are in the background. The shamefully unpainted Space Wolves I had nothing to do with, though. Credit: BuffaloChicken

What’s their deal?

Hungry Hungry Space Hippos. Tyranids run the gamut from tiny greebly monsters to giant greebly monsters, and haven’t gotten a good codex, or a new model, since approximately the last ice age. Someone at Games Workshop severely hates them, and this isn’t even the worst they’ve ever been. While the Tyranids are better off than T’au, they’re still kind of in the same boat in that they need a full codex rework that takes some of the ideas presented in Blood of Baal and expands them to the army’s core design.

What are the good units?

Ah, cool, another possibly-intentional rules fuck up that made sold-out Forge World models necessary. It’s the Dimachaeron this time. Between fighting twice and jumping over stuff, this big dinosaur idiot is bound to make you a lot of friends.

That’s all of them. There are no more good units. According to our in-house analytics system, the Your Army Sucks Quantitative Warhammer Extreme Edition Number (or Y.A.S. Q.W.E.E.N.), this entire army completely sucks the most ass. Smells like a pile of wet leaves and is roughly as dangerous.

Wings: Ehhhhhhh so the Forge World update has hit just as people had worked out the “best efforts” list you could do without it, and the lists that were scraping by combine well with hand flamer GSC acolytes too. In a vastly better place than a couple of months ago, definitely. Also Hive Guard were already strong and just got point cuts so never leave them at home.

How much will you hate painting this?

Not at all, as long as you enjoy painting meat. Tyranids are the original basecoat/wash/drybrush army, and while the top-tier painters will do some incredible work, a good color scheme combined with the most basic techniques pays off extremely well.

What’s Happening for them in 2021?

Your guess is as good as ours, but given how terminally neglected this army is, we wouldn’t hold our breath. That said, the points and FAQ updates yesterday do help this army quite a bit – not giving up nearly as many points for Bring it Down is a major plus, and having Abhor the Witch get nerfed makes Hive Tyrants and other psychic monsters much more viable. The points changes are largely favorable as well. There’s enough good stuff here that Tyranids might make a small comeback and move up a tier.

Do you want to play this?

Doubtful.

Wings: I mean do you want big, beautiful but also extremely resinous bugs? Cause you can have them. Unless they’re sold out again. They probably are.

 

Next Time: There is no Next Time

Well that’s that, no more posts for 2021. We had a good run but I think we’ve covered everything, time to shut the site down until next year. Questions? Feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below, or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.