Greetings one and all,
From beyond the Galactic Plain comes the Great Devourer, the ever hungry gestalt mind that would strip the galaxy bear in order to sustain its own survival. There is no negotiation, no reasoning with it. Your choice is either to fight it, or flee, and your chances of successfully doing either are slim. Today we look at Combat Patrol: Tyranids, and find out if this boxset is both value for money, and worth anything on the tabletop.
So, what's in the box?
Combat patrol: Tyranids contains the following; 1 Hive Tyrant, 36 Termagants, 3 Ripper Swarms, and 3 Tyranid Warriors, all for the price of £85.
At that price, it already seems like a no-brainer that this boxset would be a good deal, but let's have a look at the combined cost of each item before we jump to conclusions.
1 Hive Tyrant = £36
3x boxes of Termagants = £63
3 Tyranid warriors = £35
All in all, the individual models in the Combat Patrol: Tyranids box come to £134. As this box costs £85, that's a saving of £49…
So as it turns out, it’s not exactly the best saving after all when compared to some of the other Combat Patrol boxes, such as the Aeldari (which you can read the review of here). But for £49, it is still a rather nice one. But now we need to ask, are the units of any real value on the tabletop?
Let's start with that monster of an HQ, the Hive Tyrant. This is easily one of the most customisable kits Gameworkshop has in their range. Want it to fly? You can do that. Want it to specialize in range or close combat? You can do that. Fancy building yourself a swarmlord? You can do that too. Not to mention it's a synapse creature, and a powerful psyker to boot. This HQ really can do anything, if you build it right.
Next up are the 36 Termagants. Now, that's quite a lot of bodies to throw at your opponent, and they’re all core units too, so you can really inundate any objective with the numbers. Plus, it looks like the Fleshborers might have even received an upgrade for this boxset. (Exciting, yes, but the idea of those Fleshborers for some reason still really makes my skin crawl.)
Following the Termagants, the 3 Ripper Swarms in this set give you even more bodies to throw at your opponent. And as each sprue of Rippers actually comes with 5 Ripper models, and you only need 3 models on the base to represent the model as a whole, you can actually add 5 units of Ripper Swarms if you can get the extra bases and divide the models between them all… Just a thought.
Last, and certainly not least, are the 3 Tyranid Warriors. These, much like the Hive Tyrant, are some really good models for customization. And when battling with them, they can easily act as lynch-pins to your synapse network, making them fairly formidable opponents to come up against.
So what are my final thoughts?
I must say, while the saving on this Combat Patrol box isn’t the best we’ve seen, it’s certainly one of the better out there at the moment. It’s perfect for a beginner, it has a good amount of re-buyability, and is so much better than the Start Collecting: Tyranid boxset that the two are like night and day.