With Warhammer 40k’s Codex Tyranids available for pre-order in just a few days’ time (Saturday, April 9, to be precise), you’d be forgiven for thinking we’d had our fill of sneak peeks. However, there’s still time for a few more tasty rules morsels. On Thursday, Warhammer Community revealed the newest Crusade rules for everyone’s favourite big, hungry bugs.
Crusade rules provide an overarching narrative to your Warhammer battles, typically allowing your armies to earn experience, abilities, and more than a few battle scars. In the Warhammer 40k Codex Tyranids, the Crusade begins by choosing which planet you’ll break down into bug-friendly appetisers – which you can do by rolling on a table of planet types. Then, much like every good meal, your Crusade is broken down into three courses – Invasion, Predation, and Consumption.
According to the Warhammer Community post, each of these stages has a certain amount of Biomass and Crushed Resistance points allocated to them – 3D3 Biomass and 2 Crushed Resistance during the invasion stage; +2D3 and +D3 respectively in the Predation phase; and, finally, +2D3 and +D3 in the Consumption stage. If you want to progress to total planetary mastication, you’ll need to earn the same number of points as the planet has for each stage.
Winning battles is the best way to earn those points, of course – though you’re also going to lose them again if you suffer defeat. “Every battle you win will earn your Crusade army one Biomass point and one Crushed Resistance point”, Warhammer Community says. “Lose, and you’ll lose a Biomass point as your army burns calories to regroup.”
Straightforward victory isn’t the only way to fill a Tyranid belly, however. You can also reportedly complete specific Agendas that will please the Hive Mind and accelerate world domination.
Warhammer Community also introduces some specific rules and stratagems that will apply at each stage of your planetary assault. For example, during the Predation stage, the Command Benefits of your Outrider Detachment will now be +3 – as long as your Warlord is part of the Detachment. Several types of troop units gain an additional experience point from the Battle Experience rule at this stage, but not all (sorry Hive Tyrant).
One Battle Tactic Stratagem you may find useful in the Consumption stage is ‘Guard and Consume’, which costs you one Command Point. It must be used in your Shooting phase, and you need to pick either a Biovores, Exocrine, Haruspex, Hive Guard, Hive Tyrant, Pyrovores, Ripper Swarms, Tyrannofex or Tyrant Guard unit to fire. This means that, until the end of the phase, an attacking unit within range of an objective marker can re-roll a hit roll of 1 – plus re-roll a hit roll if the unit is within range of an Implanted Tyrannoform Spore objective marker.
Once you’ve earned enough points and broken the planet down into tasty organic matter, you can spend some time upgrading your Crusade army thanks to Biogenesis options available in the Tyranids Codex. By spending five Biomass points earned in battle, for example, you can unlock Rapid Adaptation, which allows you to use the Adapted Physiology known as Requisition once for 0 Requisition Points.
To learn more about the Tyranids ahead of pre-order day, check out this Warhammer 40k Tyranids guide. Or, for some community news that isn’t from, well Warhammer Community, this unofficial Warhammer 40k film was made with a robot arm.