Tyranids and Me

In the Beginning

So, even before I'd hear the word Tyranid, I'd hear of Genestealers. There were three of them in the Space Crusade game and not only were they very killy, they were also pretty hard to kill. Since my dad ended up playing as the aliens more often than me, he became an even bigger fan than I was.

More 'stealers

 Then, when we herd there was a game that featured even more Genestealers, well, we had to get that.

First Tyranid Sightings

Of course, me and my friends were still playing quite a bit of Space Crusade and so when some new rules were printed in White Dwarf, we wanted to try them out. They featured rules for using Scouts, Terminators, Tyranid Warriors and Genestealer Hybrids. Which made this box set a must buy.

First Steps Into a Larger World

Mind Slave Squads - such an awesome idea

Stars of the 1st ed. rulebook - whatever happened to Zoats?

The Carnifex before they were called Carnifexes

Then, in another WD that I purchased purely for more Space Crusade rules, they had an army list for use in 40K 1st edition. This came in handy when one of my friends decided to start a Tyranid army to fight against my Space Wolves.

Coming Back

After playing some 1st ed. and quite a lot of 2nd ed., I missed all of 3rd and 4th. By pure coincidence, I ended up buying the 5th ed. Codex on the same day that I had passed a promotion panel at work. Not long after, I bought myself the old battleforce boxset (the one with the Carnifex in it) Thinking that the 2nd wave of models wouldn't be long in arriving, I never actually started putting any of the models together. Since then, both Andy and Graham have started Tyranid armies so I'm not really sure that I wan to get on that bandwagon anymore.


I'll always like Tyranids (especially Genestealers!) They just have brilliant fluff - essentially even if you beat them, they'll be back. And they're relentless so eventually they'll win.

If you love Tyranids, what first got you started?