Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - A look at the new Tyranid units

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AlbertoC
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Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - A look at the new Tyranid units

Post by AlbertoC »

Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Tyranids is coming out tomorrow!

We know many of you cannot wait, but it's almost there. While you wait, why not have a look at the new Tyranid units?


Hormagaunts
Basic close combat infantry unit
Hormagaunts are vicious and extraordinarily single-minded predators that will pursue their victims without pause or respite. With powerful hind legs, Hormagaunts dart across the battlefield in a series of bounding leaps, ignoring injury and tiredness until they have run down their exhausted quarry and torn it apart with frenzied strikes of their scythe-like claws.

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Termagants
Basic infantry unit
Termagants are agile and cunning creatures. They are amongst the smallest of the Hive Mind's warriors and were originally created to roam the arterial passages of bio-ships in search of intruders. In planetary invasions, Termagants scuttle forwards on four legs whilst unleashing torrents of fire from the anti-personnel bio-weaponry - commonly fleshborers - clutched in their clawed forelimbs.

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Gargoyles
Jump infantry unit
A Tyranid attack is preceded by the beating of thousands of membranous wings as Gargoyle broods descend upon the foe, blotting the sun and spitting death from their fleshborers. Their winged manoeuvrability gives Gargoyles a distinct hunting advantage. Wherever Tyranids attack a planet, the defenders look fearfully to the skies, for they know that every sky-borne shadow could be a flock of Gargoyles about to attack.

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Tyranid Warriors
Versatile synapse infantry unit
Tyranid Warriors are the most adaptable of all the Hive Mind's bioforms. They are creatures from the blackest of nightmares, unstoppable killing machines with pulsing ichor for blood, needle-sharp teeth and darkly gleaming eyes that reveal a terrible intelligence at work. A Tyranid Warrior stands twice the height of a man, its carapace protected by a thick chitin. One might expect such a creature to be slow in its actions, but a Tyranid Warrior is lithe, with reactions as swift as a whip.

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Raveners
Fast beast unit bred for close combat
Raveners are voracious predators, their clawed and snake-like bodies driven onwards by an all-consuming hunger. Twisted musculature grants these beasts a terrifying turn of speed. Raveners can bound over small obstacles in an eye-blink, dart between larger obstructions and even slither through flooded marshland with bewildering swiftness. The power house within the Raveners' wiry forms allows them to burrow long distances beneath a world's surface, before emerging in a spray of earth right in front of an enemy position, claws eviscerating their ambushed prey whilst their thorax-mounted weapon symbiotes spit death.

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Zoanthropes
Synapse infantry unit with devastating psychic abilities
Zoanthropes are created solely to harness the psychic potential of the Hive Mind, and their bodies are perfected towards such a function. If necessary, a Zoanthrope can be used to extend the range of the Hive Mind’s synaptic control, utilising the beast’s vast cerebral capacity to relay its instructions to lesser creatures. A Zoanthrope’s link to the synaptic web is such that, by flexing the merest part of its mind, it can rain incandescent power on the enemy, projecting destructive bolts of energy that boils through adamantium plate and disintegrates flesh with equal ease.

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Lictor
Stealth infantry unit
The Lictor is a highly specialised development of the Tyranid Warrior bioform, specifically adapted to fill a scout role in the vanguard of the Tyranid advance. Lictors rove ahead of the main body of a swarm, seeking out pockets of resistance to be eradicated and native life forms to be absorbed. Able to move swiftly and without sound through even the densest terrain, and concealed by a chameleonic carapace that renders it all but invisible to the naked eye, a Lictor can remain hidden until it chooses to strike. It can wait motionless for days, unnoticed by its victims, an unseen herald of approaching disaster.

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Malanthrope
Support unit that consumes tiles and founds new cities
Malanthropes are rarely seen Tyranid creatures. This is because they are not truly warrior organisms, and so are not usually encountered by a prey world’s defenders. Instead, these floating creatures follow behind the Tyranid attack; they are typically created only after a prey world’s protectors have been defeated and the swarm is in the process of devouring the planet’s biomass. On those few occasions that a survivor has seen a Malanthrope and somehow escaped, they have brought with them a tale of horror. They report seeing these giants drift across corpse-strewn battlefields, but unlike other Tyranids, which mindlessly devour everything in their way, Malanthropes seem to selectively search through the slain – as to what they are searching for, none can say.

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Hive Crone
Synapse flyer unit that excels against airborn targets
The Hive Crone is a flying monstrosity used by the Tyranids to establish air superiority over prey worlds. It is a creature perfectly adapted to aerial combat, able to wrestle enemy aircraft out of the skies as proficiently as any daredevil pilot at the control of a sophisticated jet-fighter.

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Haruspex
Monstrous creature unit with a grasping tongue
The Tyranid Haruspex is a ferocious beast created to consume biomass at a sickening pace. It is possessed of a rapacious appetite, driven by the need to sate an infinite hunger. Few foes are foolish enough to stand before a feeding Haruspex, for it can devour an entire platoon of soldiers in a matter of moments, shovelling victim after victim into its craw without ever slowing down. Any morsel that proves too large to be swallowed in one gulp is seized with the Haruspex’s gargantuan claws and ripped, crushed or battered apart with negligent ease.

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Carnifex
Monstrous creature unit with devastating close combat capabilities
Carnifexes are living engines of destruction, towering monsters of unyielding armoured chitin and knotted alien musculature. They are one of the toughest and deadliest of all of a hive fleet’s warrior creatures, created to spearhead assaults in massed battles. Though the Hive Mind’s has since created larger warrior-organisms, few are the Carnifex’s equal in terms of size to strength, nor in terms of sheer destructive potential.

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Trygon
Monstrous creature unit that can initiate subterranean assaults
The Trygon is a vast serpentine creature, so colossal that it towers over even the mighty Carnifex. It is a heavily armoured monster, covered from head to tail with a thick carapace of shifting plates. As the Trygon moves, these plates generate a potent bio-static charge that courses along the length of the beast’s body and wreathes its bladed forelimbs with crackling power. The Trygon can direct this energy as a lethal high-voltage discharge – unleashing pulsing arcs of lightning that leave its prey as little more than a charred pile of scorched bone.

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Exocrine
Monstrous artillery unit
Exocrines are feared for their ability to deal death from afar. The most distinctive feature of an Exocrine is its dorsal bio-cannon, which emits a high-pitched hiss a second before firing, giving its prey just enough time to realise the danger they are in before searing plasma scours them into atoms.

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Tyrannofex
Monstrous creature unit with long-range weaponry that annihilates evne the heaviest vehicles
There can be little doubt that the massive Tyrannofex exists purely for destruction – it is a monster created for the most apocalyptic and gruelling of battlegrounds. Striding ominously towards their prey, these alien giants deal death from afar, shattering enemy battle lines with merciless salvos of bio-weapons fire. The only way to stop the unrelenting slaughter is to slay the beast, but a Tyrannofex has the fortitude of a living battle fortress and is heedless of all but the heaviest enemy ordnance. Clad in ablative layers of chitinous armour, a Tyrannofex is as unyelding as any war engine built of steel and born of conventional technology.

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Tyranid Prime
Fearsome synapse hero unit that boosts allied Tyranid Warriors
Tyranid Primes are the apex of the Tyranid Warrior strain, faster, stronger and smarter than the other Warriors they lead to battle, who instinctively emulate their deadly skills. Armed with deadly boneswords and a deathspitter, the Tyranid Prime mows through enemies with horrendous speed and strength.

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Hive Tyrant
Flying synapse hero unit with terrifying psychic powers
Hive Tyrants are the commanders of the Tyranid swarms and enact the Hive Mind's will on the field of battle. Though individuals display a wide variety of physical characteristics, all Hive Tyrants are fearsome hulking monsters that tower over even a Dreadnought. They are brutally strong, able to shatter ferrocrete with sickening ease. Every part of such a beast's body is perfectly created to kill, even the layers of chitinous plating that protect them. A Hive Tyrant is a formidable opponent at any distance, as deadly with ranged weapons as it is with boneswords or claw.

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Tervigon
Synapse hero unit that spawns armies of Termagants
The Tervigon is a massive synapse creature whose towering carapace shields a swollen abdomen. Though possessed of a formidable array of bio-weapons, from monstrous claws that crush any prey that ventures too close, to banks of razor-tipped spines that can be fired a considerable distance, the Tervigon's true threat lies within... Every Tervigon serves as a living incubator, within whose bloating form dozens upon dozens of Termagants slumber in a state of near-life. The Tervigon can spawn its dormant broods at will, jolting their minds into wakefulness.

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Broodhive
Allows units to tunnel from one Broodhive to another
Where the Tyranids arrive, the plants that constitute the Broodhive travel with them. Rapidly proliferating from seeds left by the Tyranid swarm as they pass, these plants burrow their giant hollow roots through soil, metal or stone, enabling Tyranids to pass undetected between areas.

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