I was feeling pretty skeptical about Von Ryan's after the Fights First nerf but I took two 3-bug squads yesterday to try them out. They really overperformed and I actually got some use out of Fights First.

In my first turn (going first), I drew Plunder as a secondary. I had some forward deployed Von Ryan's so, since they only cost 60pts, I decided to throw them forward to score Plunder for me early while simultaneously getting in the way of some Blood Angels (in LAG) Scouts that wanted to come forward and be a nuisance around an objective. 5vp for 60 points is a good start...

On my opponent's turn, he did two things that interacted with my two Von Ryan's units. His scouts shot and then charged my front unit of VRLs. Meanwhile, a brick of Bladeguard with a Sang Priest got out of an impulsor and nailed a long charge into a (wounded from shooting) Psychophage on my expansion objective. I used heroic intervention for free with my second squad of VRLs to join that combat.

First off, the shooting from the Scouts (and some extra incidental shooting) did basically nothing against the front VRLs. Stealth was a useful keyword here because I had only been able to reach my target bit of terrain with one model but Stealth meant I had cover from all the attacks anyway. Second, the free heroic from the second squad was immediately useful in that it stopped the Sang Priest from being able to pile in to the Psychophage, reducing the attacks it would be taking.

That's when Fights First showed it still had some use. One of my VRL squads was going to get to fight before their opponent. 5 scouts with the charge bonus from LAG should kill two Von Ryan's on average, and one was wounded already so he had a shot at taking out the whole unit. On the other hand if the VRLs went first they'd likely kill 2/3 and the scouts would probably end up losing the overall skirmish. On the other hand, there's a decent chance (34% with no extra buffs to the VRLs) the Bladeguard, with their rerolls saves of 1 and FNP, take 0 casualties from the other unit.

So perhaps my opponent was a bit greedy but he chose to activate the Scouts first. This meant my heroic VRLs got to fight before the Bladeguard and they did succeed at killing one of them. My Psychophage ended up surviving with a few wounds left which meant I kept control of the objective, plus the Bladeguard couldn't consolidate forward and were stuck in the open when I fell back the next turn (some of my shooting would have lost line of sight if they had been able to consolidate onto the objective). Not that it matters but the Scouts rolled really badly, only killed one VRL and were basically out of the battle from there.

Even if my opponent had activated his Bladeguard first and killed the Psychophage (not guaranteed - one more model would have made it likely but not certain) they still would've been forced to stay engaged with the VRLs and wouldn't have been able to break LoS. And in this scenario my front VRLs likely win the skirmish with the Scouts and may get some more mission play later.

So those two squads, 120pts, basically scored me 9vp directly, traded for a 65pts squad + the opportunity to kill a 245pts squad without having to contort myself. That's enormously good value. In the process of achieving these things, pretty much all their rules were useful. Even the much maligned Fights First. Very satisfying overall.

We've had some good results over the last weekend, with Tyranids winning two GT level tournaments including the (tied for) largest event of the period.

John Van Dusen at Second City Games Anniversary GT June 2026

Insect Ninjas From Outer Spaaaaaace (1,995 Points)

Disposition: Reconnaissance

Ambush Predators and Vanguard Onslaught (3 Detachment Points)

Force Dispositions: Disruption, Reconnaissance

Strike Force (2,000 Points)

CHARACTERS

Broodlord (80 Points)

Broodlord (80 Points)

Deathleaper (80 Points)

Hyperadapted Raveners (165 Points)

Neurotyrant (115 Points)

The Swarmlord (210 Points)

Tyranid Prime with Lash Whip (75 Points)

Winged Tyranid Prime (65 Points)

BATTLELINE

Hormagaunts (70 Points)

OTHER DATASHEETS

Biovores (60 Points)

Genestealers (140 Points)

Genestealers (140 Points)

Lictor (60 Points)

Neurolictor (100 Points)

Neurolictor (80 Points)

Raveners (125 Points)

Tyranid Warriors with Melee Bio-weapons (150 Points)

Zoanthropes (200 Points)

Bill Boysen at The Circuit Breaker - A 40k GT

I like big brains and I cannot lie (1995 points)

Tyranids

Strike Force (2000 points)

Synaptic Nexus and Talons of the Norn Queen (3 Detachment Points)

Force Dispositions: Disruption, Take and Hold

CHARACTERS

Deathleaper (80 points)

Hyperadapted Raveners (180 points)

• Enhancement: The Dirgeheart of Kharis (Aura)

Neurotyrant (125 points)

• Enhancement: Power of the Hive Mind

OTHER DATASHEETS

Biovores (60 points)

Maleceptor (180 points)

Maleceptor (180 points)

Neurolictor (80 points)

Neurolictor (80 points)

Norn Emissary (250 points)

Norn Emissary (270 points)

Screamer-Killer (125 points)

Screamer-Killer (125 points)

Von Ryan’s Leapers (60 points)

Zoanthropes (200 points) attached

The first list up there is a popular favourite archetype. I particularly like that he's found use for all the melee infantry: Genestealers, Raveners, Warriors and Hormagaunts. Each with character support. That's quite pleasing in my book.

The second list is more unusual. Clearly Bill has gone for a heavy battleshock focus. I guess the plan was to stick Norn's with Maleceptors on objectives and then to battleshock anything that wanted to try and take them out or somehow out OC them. Without stratagem support, killing off a Norn is pretty tricky. Maleceptors are just great in this addition, and the fallback shoot and charge strat in Synaptic will stop opponents from taking a point off of them by charging them with trash. This was run as Take and Hold, by the way.

There were some other good results that are worth looking at, though I won't reproduce the full lists. Shawn Campbell went 4-1 at Battle For The Capitol GT 2026 with a Sub Assault list that featured triple Mawloc. His loss was against a Custodes Recon list, who are pretty hard to battleshock or injure with those Mawlocs. I also noticed Sveinung Nøding going 4-1 at Dawn of 11th: Vår has passed with Crusher + Talons, running Purge. I thought Crusher and Purge would be pretty weak for us this edition if I'm honest, as I figured we'd struggle a bit in the Purge mirror match. However Sveinung has done well with it, running a very low unit count list with two Norns, two TFex (one acid, one rupture), two Maleceptors and an OOE+Carnifex brick.

According to some early stats in the competitive sub, Tyranids are doing well overall this edition. Let me know if you've seen any other cool lists doing well that I haven't spotted yet.

Hello. We've had the first handful of 11th edition tournaments over the weekend. I spent a bit of time this morning looking through the results of any GT level event I could find and have picked out all the Tyranid lists I could see which had managed a >50% win rate. This totalled just three GT events, all fairly small, and just 3 Tyranid lists to report on. Here they are:

4-1 Sub Assault at Thess Tabletop

- Think tank

- 2 lash whip primes with 10 man hormagaunt squads

- one attached hyper-raveners

- one un-attached hyper raveners

- the red terror

- deathleaper

- 6 shockcannon hive guard

- maleceptor

- norn assimilator

- biovore

- neurolictor

4-1 Crusher + Warriors at Major Warfare: Road to Nova

- 2 melee warrior bricks with lash whip primes (one with elevated might, one with occular adaptation)

- hive tyrant

- red terror

- 10 hormagaunts

- 2 T-Fex (rupture cannons)

- 2 lictors

- Norn Emissary

- Haruspex

- Exocrine

- Biovore

3-2 Vanguard + Ambush at Major Warfare: Road to Nova

- 3 broodlord + genestealer bricks

- hyper ravener brick

- winged prime with 3 melee warriors

- deathleaper

- red terror

- winged hive tyrant

- biovore

- lictor (with encircling horrors - reactive move upgrade)

- raveners

- neurolictor (with encircling horrors)

Lots of interesting quirks in these. I was quite excited by the Crusher+Warrior list. I can't tell from BCP which Disposition they were using - if anyone happens to know I'd be very interested to find out! (Edit: Found it - it was running Take and Hold) This list's loss was to a Blood Angels player who also went 4-1 overall, who interestingly managed a perfect 100 score in their 4 wins.

The Sub Assault list was a little more familiar. We have seen the Hive Guard do well in this detachment before so it's not a surprise to see them back. This players loss was to an Ad Mech list running Purge the Foe. We all predicted that Sub Assault would struggle with Purge due to the missions. This is perhaps our first evidence of that being true? The Ad Mech player was the overall event winner though, so not exactly clear evidence :) Edit: I've since checked all the other games this player matched into and they were against purge the foe in every round bar one. So actually, this list went 3-1 against Purge. Clearly not much of an issue.

Not too much to say about the third list. I think a lot of us have been predicting that Vanguard+Ambush playing Recon will be the best way to play Tyranids. I'm not sure what the little Warrior + Prime unit are for so that's an interesting include.

Not my list but certainly one I can appreciate. Marvel at its simplicity and purity:

Invasion Fleet

Hyperadapted Raveners x3

Raveners x3

Tyranid Prime with Lash Whip x3

20 Hormagaunts x3

Biovore

10 Genestealers x2

Neurolictor x3

Who hasn't dreamed of just running loads of melee bugs and tearing apart your enemies? Many congratulations to Greg Chamberlain on this stroke of genius.

With this list, Greg went 6-1 (according to BCP, not sure if there were shadow rounds or anything like that) and managed the perfect 100 score in 3 matches, finishing 3rd of 233 players. His loss in the finals was against a Chaos Daemon list running 5 greater demons. Before anyone asks, he did face down some Defilers on his way up (in round 3). He also beat down (in no particular order) Mont'ka T'au twice, some Orks, World Eaters and Ultramarines.

Anyway, goes to show what can happen if you think outside the box. I don't believe I've seen anyone else trying 3 Raveners in invasion fleet. Seems to have worked out nicely though.

There have been a few new rules revealed, by the live stream yesterday, that impact Tyranids fairly significantly, which I think are worth discussion.

First off, pivot costs are gone! This seems like a pretty big buff for our monster heavy lists: We have an awful lot of monsters on oval bases with lowish movement speed. Getting to pivot for free will help a lot with Crusher Stampede lists that want to run a real stampede - it's effectively a movement boost compared to the old rules.

Also, we no longer need to get monsters fully into a terrain area in order to shoot out of it. Another buff for monster lists. I think that cover might be slightly easier to achieve with monsters than with infantry as well, due to infantry needing to be wholly within a terrain feature to benefit from that, though I'm not sure yet.

The other big one that caught my eye was the change to how saves are allocated and resolved. For those that missed it, once a group of attacks have resolved their number of wounds, the defender will divide their unit into groups of defensive profiles and decide the order in which they are prioritised (with characters always going last). You roll all the save dice together and the lowest results are assigned to each defensive profile in order. This means, if the target unit has some models with an invulnerable save, you're much more likely to need multiple activations to wipe it out.

For example, if an Exocrine lands 5 wounds against a target with 3 bodyguard models with a 3+ save and one character with a 4+ invuln and the save rolls are 5, 2, 4, 1, 2, the three lowest rolls will all be assigned to the base guys and then the 4 and the 5 will be assigned to the character and will be saved. Under existing rules, if those had been rolled in that same order, the 5 and the 4 would have been failed saves on the bodyguard unit and the character would have failed with a 1 and a 2.

So this change means attached characters with invulns are more likely to survive, and units with mixed non-character defensive profiles will have many scenarios where they become tougher too (though they can't do the thing where they assign high AP attacks to the invuln save models first in the hope of getting lucky and absorbing a bunch of attacks on one model).

For us, this is good for Tyrants with Tyrant guard but not terribly impactful otherwise. A very minor boost for the Broodlord I suppose, or for the Prime when leading hormagaunts if you use the Warrior detachment. It'll be more of a buff for space marines I would think.

Precision turns this on its head by allowing the attacker to define the order the defensive profiles are selected. This means precision attacks, especially those with good AP, are more likely to splash over from the character into the bodyguard unit, and that units with precision can handle mixed profile units (like Wardens of Ultramar) more effectively. This is a useful buff for the Assassin Beasts strat from Vanguard Onslaught, in particular. I don't know if the Epic Challenge core strat will still be there but that gets better too (and we can already make good use from that with our Tyrants).

What else was there that you noticed? Stealth and infiltrate no longer combine. We don't have that combo anywhere so that's good for us. Our lictors won't get so out-manoeuvred by enemy infiltrators any more. Any others?