Tyranids army rules, detachment abilities, stratagems and lore for Warhammer 40k, with links to the full unit datasheet table.
The Tyranids are an extragalactic composite species of hideous, insectoid xenos. They actually comprise an entire space-faring ecosystem comprised of innumerable different bioforms which are all variations on the same genetic theme.
The Tyranids are unlike any other intelligent species encountered by Humanity. They are the ultimate predators; to them, all living things, from the lowliest insect to the most advanced starfaring civilisation, are mere prey. Only now are the inhabitants of the galaxy realising the scale of the threat; unless the Tyranids can be stopped, it will mean nothing less than the extinction of all life.
The Tyranid species is ultimately dedicated solely to its own survival, propagation and evolutionary advancement. The Tyranids collectively form a monstrous superorganism that travels across the universe in their great hive fleets of biomechanical Hive Ships, systematically consuming all other biomatter to enable their own rapid evolution and reproduction.
The Tyranids are likened to a galactic swarm consuming everything in its path, feeding on entire worlds and leaving only dead husks in their wake. Their threat is such that an unprotected planet can be infested and stripped clean of all its organic material in a matter of solar weeks without even slowing down the advance of the hive fleet.
All Tyranid organisms are "synaptic" (psychically-reactive), and each Tyranid creature within a hive fleet shares and contributes to a communal Hive Mind, which allows the trillions of beings comprising the Tyranid hive fleets to communicate and organise instantaneously on a staggering scale.
The mentality of the Tyranid approach to warfare can be described with the phrase "quantity has a quality all its own." From the "lowly" Ripper, to the deadly Hive Tyrant and beyond, the signature of the Tyranid species is that they overwhelm their foes with sheer numbers, reproducing massive numbers of highly virulent organisms in record time from the biochemical soup that they derive from the biospheres of the worlds they consume.
The components of a Tyranid hive fleet travel almost exclusively in large groups known as "swarms" that possess specialised biomechanical creatures for destroying and consuming a wide variety of prey life forms.
The Tyranids have evolved sophisticated methods for facilitating genetic transfer across species boundaries. As a result, a significant goal of any Tyranid invasion is acquisition of useful new biological traits from other lifeforms.
These are used by the Hive Mind to enhance the Tyranids' effectiveness in consuming new worlds to gain more of the necessary organic raw materials for further reproduction and directed evolution. All Tyranids are reproduced by a single, highly intelligent female bioform known as a Norn-Queen.
A hive fleet's Norn-Queens are the most important Tyranids within the fleet, for if they are injured or killed the Tyranids cannot reproduce their numbers from the captured bio-mass. As a result, Norn-Queens can be found only at the heart of the largest and most-well defended Tyranid Hive Ships.
The Tyranids are not native to the galaxy; they have journeyed across the unspeakable cold of the void, where time and space conspire to hold the stars apart with inconceivable distances.
Yet the Tyranids crossed this expanse nonetheless, moving through the empty darkness for countless millennia to reach the rim of the galaxy.
Who can say for sure what could compel an entire species to make such a venture? Perhaps the Tyranids have already consumed everything of worth in their home galaxy and must find new feeding grounds or starve.
It is possible that the Tyranids have been preying on galaxies since time immemorial and this is but the latest to feel their predations.
Some have even speculated that the Tyranids are in flight from an even greater threat, be it a cosmic disaster or another fearsome alien threat, and have risked the nothingness between galaxies rather than face extinction.
Whatever the truth, for the Tyranids to have endured such a voyage must have required utter single-mindedness and unimaginable energy. During their journey, the Tyranids slumbered in a state of frozen hibernation, but now they have arrived, they have awoken and they are hungry.
The first recorded contact between the Imperium and the Tyranids places their appearance in the Eastern Fringes of the galaxy in 745.M41. However, it is rumoured that the Ordo Xenos of the Inquisition had identified possible appearances of this xenos species as far back as the 35th Millennium.
The xenos emerged from the intergalactic space of the Local Group of galaxies, their Hive Mind drawn to the Milky Way by the psychic beacon of the Astronomican transmitted by the Emperor's presence in the Warp from Terra.
The first officially recorded contact with the Tyranids for the Imperium of Man came during a Tyranid attack on an Ocean World called Tyran, and from there Hive Fleet Behemoth continued directly towards the centre of the galaxy, consuming all the worlds in its path.
The Tyranids were defeated, barely, by the efforts of the Ultramarines Chapter of the Space Marines during the Battle of Macragge, although the Ultramarines suffered devastating losses that would take centuries to replace.
In 942.M41, Commissar Ciaphas Cain, while on a mission on the Ice World of Nusquam Fundumentibus, discovered hibernating Tyranids buried deep in the permafrost; the swarm was apparently carried to the planet by a Hive Ship that had crashed on the planet seven millennia earlier, prior to any human colonisation.
Members of the swarm and subsequently, the Hive Mind, were awakened, but this swarm was eventually defeated. However, the Inquisition was unsettled by the fact that the Tyranids had developed a presence in the galaxy possibly before even the start of the Age of the Imperium.
It is not known whether the crashed bio-ship was on a scouting mission when it was lost, was a casualty in a pre-Imperial Tyranid invasion force that was defeated by unknown adversaries, or part of a plan by a Tyranid super-intelligence that may have "seeded" the galaxy with many such slumbering broods.
In 993.M41 the Tyranids returned to the galaxy with Hive Fleet Kraken which, instead of assaulting its targets as a single massed Hive Fleet, split into countless smaller fleets, each enveloping whole star systems before reinforcements could arrive.
The brunt of this new attack was borne by the Space Marine Chapters known as the Scythes of the Emperor and the Lamenters; the former Chapter was almost completely destroyed.
Tyranids appear in a multitude of genera, and all have an extremely rapid rate of evolution artificially directed by the Hive Mind, rapidly adapting genetically to threats in direct response to their presence. Tyranid biomatter is constantly reabsorbed into the digestive enzymes of biomass Reclamation Pools to create new species and adapt existing ones to suit the Hive Mind's immediate tactical and strategic purposes.
Lore excerpt from Warhammer 40k Wiki on Fandom, available under CC BY-SA 3.0.
50 Tyranids datasheets on the current roster, each with its points, model statistics, keywords and abilities.
7 Tyranids datasheets that are no longer part of the current army roster. They are kept for reference and for players whose collections still contain the models.