The time has finally come! I have my copy of the 10th Edition Tyranid Codex in my hands! And as it sits here, still in the shrink wrap, I prepare to dive into a nearly blind review of this new tome.
Now I say nearly blind, as there's been more than a little buzz over points changes in this Codex. But this brings up a point I haven't seen anyone mention in all of the discussions about the nerfs that came in Thursday's points update.
It is my understanding that doing a production run of a book like this is no small endeavor. For most companies, a turn around of about 90 days is about the best you can hope for. Even for a big company like Games Workshop, that kind of turn around is still the norm. While yes, they can throw money around to get things done faster, the scale of a printing the number of necessary Codexes for all the various territories takes up any advantage they have. So in all likelihood, this book was already on its way to the printers before any of us had our hands on 10th Edition. This means the book probably predates everything GW has learned since release. Or, to really hammer the point in:
This book was balanced to play into unnerfed Eldar.
That being said, I'm going to be judging this book on the current point values for each unit. This will be a temperature test opinion, with maybe a little napkin math to backup any thoughts I have. I'm still planning on doing the deep dive, but health issues have greatly slowed my progress. Hopefully it won't be too much longer, and it'll be more useful to have the deep dive for the Codex instead of the Index.
With all of that said, let's finally dive into this book!
THE BOOK ITSELF
Let's start with the good.
I much prefer this new style of Collectors Edition cover to the one for 8th and 9th Edition. The unique art is much clearer, the purple stamped lettering is much easier to read, and the trim on the pages is gorgeous. The book looks really good!
However, while the art itself is very nice, I don't feel like it makes a good Codex cover. It's just a single Tyranid beast. And while that monster is beautifully depicted and looks quite towering and menacing, it doesn't really tell you anything about the faction just from looking at it. On a similar note, I'm really bothered by the fact they recycled the 9th Edition artwork for the standard Codex. I think this might be the first time GW has done that, and it makes a bad precedent. Plus, as others have pointed out, it makes it difficult to distinguish the 10th Edition Codex from the 9th Edition one. I'm worried some unscrupulous sellers might try to take advantage of this.
As things stand, the art on the 8th Edition Collectors Codex remains my favorite.
Also, on a smaller note, the Codex looks a little smaller. This isn't necessarily a big deal, as faction rules are greatly compressed. The official page count is only slightly smaller, but I do think it's important to point out the GW is charging more for less book.
Also, I note as I open the Codex to proceed, can we please get rid of this stupid face texture on the inside of the cover in the next edition?
Also also, I like this table of contents. I think this is one of the most well designed and clean tables I've seen in a book like this.
LORE
The Codex begins with a first hand account of a successful Tyranid invasion. It's an incredibly well written and gripping read. One thing I like is they've avoided a pet peeve of mine where they name every unit or model taking part in the battles. I don't know why this always kills the immersion for me, but at the very least the prose of "x was doing this, while y did this, and z did this" for multiple paragraphs is bland and clumsy. For Tyranids, it's especially important that the account given here doesn't name any of the creatures seen. It drives home the unknowable, alien nature of the faction. We're off to a solid start.
We then come to the standard faction introduction. This particular work has been repeated in one form or another throughout the editions. I'm not sure how old it is, but it's been a while. This isn't a negative for me, it's like the classic "Grim Dark Future" opening to the setting, or the Emperor's "And They Shall Know No Fear" edict that's been in probably every Space Marine Codex. It's nice to have these little touchstones.
The sidebar of the next page actually begins with some notes on Hive Fleet Jormungandr. Nice to see one of the lesser known Hive Fleets get such immediate love.
From there, things get less glowing.
Everything from until page 14, including some of the sidebars, is a nearly identical reproduction of the lore from the 9th Edition Codex. I know there's only so many ways you can retell the same lore, but did they even do an editorial pass on this? This feels very lazy.
Again, they charged more for this book.
After this section we get some rarely discussed lore in the actual makeup of the Hive Fleets themselves, including the inside of Tyranid ships. We're also introduced to Tyranid Narvhals, which I don't think have ever been covered in the base game before. These are definitely some welcome additions to the Codex, and it's good to see them.
Next we get the Tyrannic Wars, and, as before, the first three are a copy/paste from the last book. We do get an absolutely striking piece of artwork for the Norn Emissary here, a new lore snippet for Hive Fleet Kraken, and some updates on Baal. Speaking of the Norn Emissary, that beast is all over this section with four pieces of artwork dedicated to it.
After some more teasing about the enigmatic Hive Fleet Tiamet, we get to the Fourth Tyrannic war and the new lore of this edition. While this is only an abbreviated telling of the lore from the Leviathan Core Book, it is still a welcome addition. Finally we end this section with a little snippet about a war between the Tyranids and Huron Blackheart.
We then get another short story to introduce us to some of the new horrors we have at our command. It's not a bad short story, though I don't think it's as good as the one that kicked the book off. Additionally, it ends on a weird sentence. I'm pretty sure the author meant to write, "driving its filthy teeth into the flesh of her neck," but the sentence instead ends, "driving its teeth into the filthy flesh of her neck." For a short story like this, that last sentence should really punch home, but, whether a mistake or deliberate choice of wording, this fails there.
Another piece of striking new artwork is paired with some copy/paste text. Well, mostly copy/past this time. While I'm not going to go back and see if there were any similar changes to the previous sections, I did spot some edits to the section on Devourers and an entirely new part under Barbed Strangler to cover stranglethorn cannons. The art here is also reused, but I'm less upset here as one, it's good, and two, this art has been reused before because it's good.
So it does at least look like someone at least went through these sections one or two times to try to make some improvements.
Why This is Bothering Me
So I guess I should talk a little about why I don't like how much was copied from the last Codex. After all, while it might seem lazy, they did already put the work in. The lore section of the 9th Edition Codex was good. Maybe they shouldn't change it? After all, as I mentioned earlier, there's only so many ways you can tell the same lore, right?
The thing is, you really can. In fact they really should, considering the direction the story began for 10th Edition. You see, while the facts of a lore section will mostly be the same, you can still put new perspectives on it, new angles, or just bring up specific details. And the perspectives, angles, and details you use can carry themes and ideas on them to emphasize the kind of story you want to tell. This is one of the reasons why the lore in the 9th Edition Codex is so good.
Previous versions of the Tyranid Codex always looked at things from the perspective of the defenders. Despite this being our faction's Codex, the focus was nearly always on the battles from the side of The Imperium or the Aeldari. But in the 9th Edition Codex, they tried to shift it. They couldn't really tell the lore from the Tyranid's perspective, especially with the new push to emphasize just how alien the faction is. But they shifted the feel to put the focus more on our faction. In addition to focusing on the monsters and horrors in the Hive Fleets, they dehumanized the enemy forces often in the text. While important characters and victories were still mentioned, more often the opponents on the other side weren't valiant defenders or heroes of the Imperium.
They were just prey.
And this change of focus and theme really hit home for me in the 9th Edition Codex. For all the unbalanced mess the rules were, the lore really delivered.
They could have done that again here. They had the opportunity to go further, rework things even more to keep the focus on our faction, and emphasize how our foes are nothing but food to us. They could made the Codex solidly about the Tyranids, the mystery behind them, and the sheer alien majesty and horror of the faction.
Or they could have gone with another angle. One of themes that keeps popping up in the lore around the Fourth Tyrannic War is that the Imperium is just never ready. They're always underestimating us, always dismissing the warnings, never taking the threat seriously. And even when they do realize the threat, even when the veterans of the last three wars are on the front lines, we always prove their experience meaningless and their confidence unjustified. If they had rewritten the lore, focusing on the prey's complacence and arrogance, and how we come back from each defeat stronger, the codex would have resonated with the wider story being depicted so far.
Instead we get a slightly photoshopped cover and copy pasted lore on a book that, I will continue to emphasize, we payed more for.
Finishing the Lore
We end the lore section with a final short story, and it's definitely the weakest of the three. In it, we meet a new Inquisitor that has taken the obsessive path Kryptman did in dedicating his life to fighting the Tyranids. One interesting thing from this short story is that it features a ton of quotes. The Inquisitor is going through reports, and in them we get quotes from previous lore, including short stories in this book. I didn't recognize all of them, but I caught enough of them to find the call backs amusing. The overall tone was to emphasize just how desperate the fight against the Tyranids is, how seemingly inevitable the fate of the galaxy and humanity has become. While it's not the team's best work, it's still a great note to end the lore section on.
But it definitely doesn't save it. Because that is, indeed, the end of the lore section. If you've read one of these Codexes before, you know that this is a pretty lackluster section. Not only was the vast majority of it copied from the last book, but there's so much that isn't here. Sections covering the hive fleets were replaced with little notes in the margins, and sections on the stages of Tyranid Invasion and the types and purposes of bio-forms are gone. The last book had a two page spread with lore and analysis for the Parasite of Mortrex. But not even our new big bad, The Norn Emissary, gets such a treatment here.
This may legitimately be the worst lore section we've ever had.
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