When the Wahammer 40,000: Conquest Living Card Game was released in 2014 the core set included 7 playable factions. However, the rulebook stated that there would be a total of 9 playable factions. In 2015 the first of those two additional factions - the Tyranids - was released. In my first article, Buying Guide - The Basics, I talked about the structure of the Living Card Game format and game a general overview of some good starting purchases. In this article I’m going to talk about getting started with the Tyranid faction.

General

Someone who hasn’t seen much of the 40k universe in the past would might think of the movie Starship Troopers the first time they see the Tyranids. The comparison would be apt and one can imagine that Robert Heinlein’s original novel served as inspiration for Games Workshop back in the day.  The Tyranids are a swarm based faction that can combine a press of tiny bodies with the brute force of some enormous units. Mechanically, these space bugs focus on generating and buffing tokens, infesting planets to gain additional benefits, and start out with a unit that acts as a second pseudo-warlord.

Starting out, Tyranids are actually one of the fastest and cheapest way to get into Conquest and be competitive. You can have almost everything you could ask for with just a single core set and the Great Devourer deluxe expansion. The expansion is chock full of Tyranid goodness, including two warlords - each with their signature squad, five synapse units, and a host of army units, events, attachments, and supports. The core set provides you with the rulebook, tokens, planets, and the neutral cards needed to supplement your deck. Because there aren’t many War Packs released to date that include Tyranid cards there isn’t much more to say beyond the recommendations I’ve already made. As more of the Planetfall cycle is released there will be a greater selection and thus more options to choose from.. We’ll revisit this recommendation towards the end of the cycle, so come back and take a look again in a few months.