Why Null Deployment

So why reserve everything? Why subject yourself to the risk of coming in piecemeal, having your rolls disrupted (I'm looking at you, Officer of the Fleet), your assaults delayed until turn 3 at best, and the chance of mishaps? The risk isn't a small one; last weekend Tyranids failed to reach the top table at Adepticon  because two large outflanking Genestealer broods took a turn too long to arrive.

The short answer is because the alternative is worse. Tyranids are neither a resilient nor a shooty force. There are too many builds out there that we simply cannot suppress while advancing up the field. The renewed popularity of Devastators and Longfangs is a particular problem, as they can shred swarms and monstrous creatures easily and can't be dealt with reliably at range.  Against many armies Tyranids will never make it into assault with the numbers they need to win - whatever survives the first few turns stands a good chance of being out of place or too injured to prevail.

An all reserves list negates these problems.  Your opponent loses an entire turn of shooting - two if you choose to go second. So do you, but the odds of coming off the winner in a firefight were pretty low to begin with. You get to choose your ground and get in the first shot. Delaying your army's arrival increases the number of bad alternatives your opponent has to choose from. It's much harder to coordinate fire against multiple units that will assault you next turn than against those same units 24" away - especially if parts of your own line of battle is in the way.


Finally, Tyranids are set up like no other army to ignore the perils of deepstriking. With Hive Commander it's possible to get more reserves in faster, even in the face of disruption. We also possess more units that just don't care about mishaps than anyone else. Mycetic Spores will stop short of other models or impassable terrain, and can be taken by half the codex, while units like the Trygon and Mawloc have the same ability built into their rules.

This is hardly an exhaustive discussion, and I don't mean to say that this is the only viable Tyranid build - it isn't. But it is a strong one, and does give Tyranid players an answer to some of the problems we've been facing.