STARTING A TYRANID ARMY IN 11TH EDITION: GROWING THE SWARM THE SMART WAY
Tyranids are the Hive Mind's army, from ankle-high organisms to living siege towers: easy to buy as a swarm and much harder to paint as one. This page covers the gaunt broods to start with, the starter box, and the first monsters.
Plan in broods
The mindset shift that saves new hive fleets: plan purchases as complete broods you paint in one sitting or three, rather than as individual kits. Termagants and Hormagaunts are the classic openers, cheap and quick to assemble, and ideal for learning a batch-paint recipe of basecoat, wash and drybrush that carries the entire fleet. Nail your carapace-and-flesh scheme on twenty gaunts before anything expensive arrives. Done that way, the army looks incredible en masse and plays like a force of nature, drowning the enemy in bodies while monsters do the wet work.
The starter box still goes first
The current Combat Patrol is the best-value entry, typically pairing a leader beast with gaunt broods and something mid-sized. Buy it, build all of it, and resist the second purchase until the first is undercoated at minimum.
Genestealers and a Carnifex
Genestealers are the faction's legend, the sleek horrors that made the Hive Mind famous, and one brood belongs in any collection with self-respect. For mid-weight muscle the Carnifex is the timeless choice: a living battering ram and a wonderfully forgiving model to paint.
The Hive Tyrant
Your centrepiece should be a Hive Tyrant. It is the army's general, its most iconic silhouette, and a kit that teaches every advanced technique the faction asks for. Larger leviathans exist for later years; the Tyrant is the right first monster.
What the Hive Mind vetoes
- A second swarm box while the first is still in bags. Biomass unpainted is biomass wasted.
- Three different monsters at once. One at a time; each is a project.
Digest what you consume
The Hive Mind assimilates nothing without cataloguing it. Register each kit the day it is devoured by your hobby queue and mark its true stage of metamorphosis, sprue through painted. A swarm you have measured is a swarm you finish. The full bestiary is on the Tyranids faction page under Data.