Zone Mortalis: Fighting in the Bowels of Tyranid Bioships

What's up guys?  Today I'll be talking a bit about adding a Tyranid twist to your games of Zone Mortalis.  These are some homebrew datasheets for turning your battlefields into Tyranid hives, complete with living walls that rearrange their configuration as the battle progresses! 

DATASHEET:
Hive Ship

Zone Mortalis Board

      The prototypical flagship of the Tyranid fleet, the Hive Ships act as the brain of the entire Hive Fleet.  Each one is swarming with a teeming hoard of defenders and traps.  Even the ship itself is not defenseless, as it is able to intelligently shift it’s layout to trap and kill invaders.

      The loss of even one Hive Ship is grave for a Tyranid invasion, as each one contains a precious Norn Queen, the progenitor of the swarm, and the organism responsible for genetically engineering new organisms to respond to battlefield threats.

The Hive Ship is a Zone Mortalis board, consisting of 9-16 1x1” tiles.  Each Tile is numbered in ascending order.

Organic passageways:  The walls of a Hive Ship are an ever-changing maze of intestines, arteries, and stomach chambers.  

At the beginning of each Player turn, D3 tiles are to be moved.  Randomly select which tiles will be rotated, and roll a D6 for each, consulting the following chart.

D6 Result:	Direction Rotated:	Degrees Rotated:
1	Left	90
2	Left	180
3	Left	270
4	Right	90
5	Right	180
6	Right	270

Units on each moving tile are moved along with the tile itself.  If a unit is forced to break coherency during a tile shift, it is now considered 2 separate units for the rest of the game.  Any model with its base partially in a moving tile must move the shortest distance possible into either tile. If it cannot move or it has gone to ground, it is destroyed, devoured by the living ship.

Tyranid players may take the following Biomorphs for their Hive Ship in a game of Zone Mortalis:

Biomorphs:

Bioluminescence  10 pts

The Hive’s walls are lined with pulsating bluish light that Tyranid organisms are especially sensitive to, allowing them to see well even in the darkened interior of the Bioship.

·      Friendly Tyranid Units gain Night Vision when within 1” of a Wall.

Enhanced Immune System  20 pts

Some ships are so vital that the organisms defending them are spurred into a battle-frenzy by the will of the Hive Mind.

·      Friendly Tyranid Units gain Preferred Enemy (Infantry) when within 2” of an Incubation Node.

Digestion Chamber  15 pts

The Hive must dissolve and digest all that stands in it’s path.  These chambers are massive stomachs, where the corpses of the slain are dropped off for processing into the nutrient-rich gruel that powers the Tyranid advance.

·      ONE TILE ONLY:  Enemy non-Tyranid units in this tile treat all ground as dangerous terrain.  Any hits caused by dangerous terrain in this room are resolved at AP 3.

The Tyranid board we use.  Prepare for a hobby segment on making one of these beasts!

DATASHEET:
Kraken Bio Ship

Zone Mortalis Board

      The Kraken is a Bioship that latches onto enemy space-faring vessels or structures like a monstrous leech.  A Kraken’s primary attack entails the living vessel boring an entrance into an enemy ship, and vomiting forth Tyranid organisms to slay the crew and harvest their biomass.  

The Kraken Bioship is a Zone Mortalis board, consisting of 9-16 1x1” tiles.

Special Rules:

Boarding action:  The Zone Mortalis Board should be divided into two sections.  One section representing the Kraken’s interior, the other representing the interior of the vessel being attacked.  Deployment zones for each force are limited to their respective vessel, but otherwise follow all the rules for an Attacker/Defender mission found in the Zone Mortalis supplement. 

Into the Breach!: Infiltrators may only be placed in their respective ships.

The Kraken area of the Board may take the following Biomorphs:

Biomorphs:

Bioluminescence  10 pts

The Hive’s walls are lined with pulsating bluish light that Tyranid organisms are especially sensitive to, allowing them to see well even in the darkened interior of the Bioship.

·      Friendly Tyranid Units gain Night Vision when within 1” of a Wall.

Enhanced Immune System  20 pts

Some ships are so vital that the organisms defending them are spurred into a battle-frenzy by the will of the Hive Mind.

·      Friendly Tyranid Units gain Preferred Enemy (Infantry) when within 2” of an Incubation Node.

Adrenaline Gasses  15pts

This potent cocktail of vaporized adrenaline sends the boarding Tyranids into a rage, propelling them into the enemy ship at blistering speeds.

·    Up to 3 Tyranid units gain Scout.

For more units and formations, read the second part of this article here. 

Have fun y'all, and be safe in there.  It's dark. 

-Vitsika