Then what? Obviously it ruins the Imperium's day but from the Hive Mind's point of view, does it mean the various fleets lose purpose? Do they continue to devour the galaxy but in a disorganised way?

Or what if the Emperor dies before they get there? Does their push lose focus?

Theres about 500 other threads on this.

 kinratha wrote:
Theres about 500 other threads on this.

I got 0 results so what do you want me to do?

Forge onward.

The psychic presence of the emperor may draw them to Terra but there are plenty of other snacks to enjoy out there.

There are previous discussions to be found on this here, if you'd like to peruse them:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/429261.page

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/358752.page

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/342822.page

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/378221.page

Don't bump any of those threads though, they're all super old and it would be threadcromancy; use this one instead.

Probably already been mentioned, but what if the eldar where to help?as in several craftworlds behind the scenes destroying defences...

a b3ached whal3 wrote:
Probably already been mentioned, but what if the eldar where to help?as in several craftworlds behind the scenes destroying defences...

If i'm understanding this statement correctly, you mean the Eldar sabotaging the defenses of Terra? To benefit the Tyranids? Have you read any of the Tyranid fluff, Eldar got screwed big time by them. Malan'Tai WAS a craftworld, now there is a Tyranid special character called the Doom of Malan'Tai, no need to put 2 and 2 together there for you.

If there is one single threat in the 40k universe, so grave as to unite the imperium and xenos, it is the Tyranids.

a b3ached whal3 wrote:
Probably already been mentioned, but what if the eldar where to help?as in several craftworlds behind the scenes destroying defences...

I guess if they want daemons to spill into real space unchecked.

No, as in orchestrating the fall of the imperium.

a b3ached whal3 wrote:
No, as in orchestrating the fall of the imperium.

I think the Eldar probably realise the Imperium is the lesser of the two evils in this matter, as the Imperium isn't going to try to eat their babies.

The day the Tyranids get to Terra is the day the Tyranid species goes extinct.

BlaxicanX wrote:
The day the Tyranids get to Terra is the day the Tyranid species goes extinct.

If a couple of fleets got there they'd be destroyed, but if the hive mind makes its move on terra it will be a full scale co-ordinaries assault of all fleets. Do you not think that the hive fleets at the minute aren't just sharks circling their prey?

Nids move too slow to get to terra en mass. Half their fleet would either go into hibernation or eat the other half before they even got there- something we've seen already when part of Kraken (?) went into hibernation after avoiding that Tomb World.

Remember, the bigger the Tyranid force, the more biomass they need just to stay active.

edit- Though I do wonder about that part of the fluff. Why would a tendril go into hibernation out of biomass starvation, when the entire fleet somehow managed to travel there from another Galaxy?

BlaxicanX wrote:
The day the Tyranids get to Terra is the day the Tyranid species goes extinct.

This.

Terra is the most heavily defended planet in the Imperium. Not just Terra - entire Sol System is fortress that makes Cadia look like a little baby in comparison.

And Macragge was the shining home world of Matt Wards butt buddies held by a ''god of war'' and tactical genius. With the ''best chapter'' protecting it, look what happened there? Almost beaten by a single hive fleet.

I agree if the terra had time to amass the QUADRILLIONS of imperial guard to defend it might win (but more biomass after all...) and every world in the sol system would be a fight worse then Macragge but if the tyranids came in force. And i mean in total force, they could over whelm the terra. Or worse, if they got there before the QUADRILLIONS of imperial guard and marines then the massive shadow in the warp would block out the astrominicion for the entire universe. Thats like half the imperial assets lost in the warp. Good luck defending it now.

Personaly I think that once the Nid's get close enough to mars to notice the Void Dragon they will have a very tough choice.

We know that Nid's will go a long way to avoid any contact with Necrons or C'tan. They may get to within a few light years and decide that the pull of Terra is just not enough.

An interesting point, if you soak a light bulb in bug repelent will the moths still come?

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
And Macragge was the shining home world of Matt Wards butt buddies held by a ''god of war'' and tactical genius. With the ''best chapter'' protecting it, look what happened there? Almost beaten by a single hive fleet.

0_0 very poor comparison.....

Macragge was protected by poorly equipped merchant fleet, Macragge PDF and undermanned Ultramarines chapter ( I know only about 3 companies being there at that time ).
And even with this small forces they were able to defeat the Nids on the ground, and when Segmentum Tempestus fleet arrived it was all over for Tyranids. Imperium was able to win that battle with so little forces...

Now let us see at Sol System defenses: Imperial Fists fortress monastery, ADEPTUS CUSTODES, at least 3 Sisters of Battle covenants, Terra PDF ( rumored to be one of the best equipped and trained in the Imperium ), SEGEMNTUM SOLAR FLEET, ADEPTUS MECAHNICUS FLEET, MARS TITAN LEGIONS ( with capital S because they have more then one stationed there ), various Assassins, GREY KNIGHTS, LUNA ( while reading the fluff it was mentioned that Luna has some gigantic weapon that is able to obliterate entire fleets, so in short 40k Moon = Death Star ) orbital stations, Terra orbital stations, Jupiter orbital stations ( and also the main shipyards for the Imperial Navy, more than heavily defended ) and many others...

This is just from the top of my head, and I am sure that when words came out of attack that the other nearest Imperial forces will rush to assist.

So the quote from BlaxicanX was indeed true: "The day the Tyranids get to Terra is the day the Tyranid species goes extinct.". With this kind of defense Tyranid would have to eat half of Imperium to breach Sol System's defenses. Same goes for every other foe - even Orks.

For now at least - Sol System is pinnacle of galactic defense. It was so reinforced after Horus Heresy just for that one reason - to never allow anyone to assail her and to endanger the Emperor's life.

I agree if the Terra had time to amass the QUADRILLIONS of imperial guard to defend it might win (but more biomass after all...) and every world in the sol system would be a fight worse then Macragge but if the tyranids came in force. And i mean in total force, they could over whelm the Terra. Or worse, if they got there before the QUADRILLIONS of imperial guard and marines then the massive shadow in the warp would block out the astrominicion for the entire universe. Thats like half the imperial assets lost in the warp. Good luck defending it now.

I never know that Astronomicon covers entire universe, I thought that it's reach was 50.000 light years
And I seriously doubt that Shadow of the Warp is powerful enough to block the Astronomicon at his source. It would need to be quite wonderful to do that, individual systems thousands of light years away like so far - yes. The Sol System itself - no.

Tomb world avoidance was part of the pre-reimagined Necrons, the new 'personality' necrons don't get that get out of jail free card and tyranids will indeed make planetfall and devour their worlds. So that's a point in their favor.

Points against them, however, in the new tyranid background, are significant. They burn out quickly now, if they wake and cannot feed fast enough, they starve, turn on themselves and die out. They cannot move nearly as fast due to this (crappy imo) method of space travel where they use a little scout ship to draw the rest of the fleet in, avoiding warp travel.

So the tyranid take an age to get there and are utterly incapable of fighting wars of attrition for any length of time, they use up too much energy trying to evolve and pumping out troops and then die off of exhaustion.

Basically, in the cases of both the necrons and the nids, it was decided in the GW design studio that both had stolen the thunder from Chaos as the 'doomsday badguy'. So both took a significant background nerf to bring them into a secondary place to the Dark Gods.

If the hive fleets were to finally get to terra, they'd start burning themselves up as they would not all arrive in a supermass but in wave after wave, hitting the defences of the capitol of the Imperium, center of the Mechanicus and home system of the Grey Knights. All the might of the imperium would turn from what it was doing and go to the aid of their god and their homeworld.

The hive fleets and splinter fleets arriving in waves after wave would be like throwing eggs at a brick wall.

If they get to TERRA that means they've fought through the entire solar system's defence network and all the marines guards and ordos forces and the billions of zealots that would of travelled to the solar system to defend the imperial palace, after that the imperium would die unless starchild happens, they would have nothing but bare bones left to defend whatever they had left which would rapidly fold under pressure as the other factions would definitely leap on this opportunity to try and strike a killing blow on those sectors left

Why wouldn't the shadow in the warp over come the astrominicion? Especially if there were enougth tyranids to feasibly be a threat to the terra. Neither of us have any sources to prove our claims, as i dont believe anyone has tryed to block the astromincion before. But we know that tyranids can block psycik powers and block out the astrominicion. So if we conclude that it is like throwing a blanket of a system, well you can throw a blanket over a light bulb to block out the light to the room, or you can put the blanket over an area of the room to blovk out the light to there. Does that make sense or am i crazy? Well im not, my mother had me tested

This means that a huge amount of imperial troops would be lost in the warp, any many of the chapters. Its quite possible that the entire grey knights chapter heads would explode because of the massive shadow, and even if they dont they're psykic powers would be both dangerous and dampened. Also the seer amount of Navhals arriving in system would create LOADS of natural destasters, earthquakes, volcanoes ( which mars is riddled with) and tsunami's across the system. The shadow also means effective communication between ships is impossible.

In other words the tyranids are bouncing on the shadow doing most of there work for them. Lazy tyranids

Isn't it common knowledge that the currently known Hive Fleets are thought to be scouts for a bigger force? Tyranids en masse, totally committed to wiping one planet, will wipe that one planet. It does not matter which it is.

I am pretty heavily biased in that opinion, admittedly.

hubbsey wrote:
Isn't it common knowledge that the currently known Hive Fleets are thought to be scouts for a bigger force? Tyranids en masse, totally committed to wiping one planet, will wipe that one planet. It does not matter which it is.
:

Thats one theory about the nids, another is that they are fleeing from some other bigger threat, either as a scout force looking for a new haven or what we have is pretty much all that's left.

In the end we don't know and GW will never say


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
Why wouldn't the shadow in the warp over come the astrominicion? Especially if there were enougth tyranids to feasibly be a threat to the terra. Neither of us have any sources to prove our claims, as i dont believe anyone has tryed to block the astromincion before. But we know that tyranids can block psycik powers and block out the astrominicion. So if we conclude that it is like throwing a blanket of a system, well you can throw a blanket over a light bulb to block out the light to the room, or you can put the blanket over an area of the room to blovk out the light to there. Does that make sense or am i crazy? Well im not, my mother had me tested

My assumption was that the scramble to Terra would happen before the shadow arrived (The imperium being able to work out the trajectory of the hive fleets and reacting in time)

I'm also don't know how the shadow in the warp affects warp travel but I can't imagine it being good

Then's theres always the outside possibility the corpse on the throne channels energy into trying to counter the shadow with any possible outcome

a b3ached whal3 wrote:
No, as in orchestrating the fall of the imperium.

Terra falls, the Emperor does as well. Without the Emperor, Chaos and Daemons are free to spill into real space, ensuring the galaxy is fethed, not to mention the defences at Cadia fail, meaning Abaddon can run rampant from the Eye of Terror.

So if the Eldar want to commit suicide by killing the Imperium, sure.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
Why wouldn't the shadow in the warp over come the astrominicion? Especially if there were enougth tyranids to feasibly be a threat to the terra. Neither of us have any sources to prove our claims, as i dont believe anyone has tryed to block the astromincion before. But we know that tyranids can block psycik powers and block out the astrominicion. So if we conclude that it is like throwing a blanket of a system, well you can throw a blanket over a light bulb to block out the light to the room, or you can put the blanket over an area of the room to blovk out the light to there. Does that make sense or am i crazy? Well im not, my mother had me tested

This means that a huge amount of imperial troops would be lost in the warp, any many of the chapters. Its quite possible that the entire grey knights chapter heads would explode because of the massive shadow, and even if they dont they're psykic powers would be both dangerous and dampened. Also the seer amount of Navhals arriving in system would create LOADS of natural destasters, earthquakes, volcanoes ( which mars is riddled with) and tsunami's across the system. The shadow also means effective communication between ships is impossible.

In other words the tyranids are bouncing on the shadow doing most of there work for them. Lazy tyranids

No.

IMO this is pointless. No one is going to be right cos GW will never say but however I can't resist throwing in my two cents so my vote goes with the nids. A small tendril isolated an eldar planet from the psychic connection or something like that so if the full force did make it to terra then I beleive they can block the astronomican making warp travel useless entire regiments will be lost. The narvals will badly cripple defences. If nids make planet fall then terra is screwed. It's only hope is to blast the nids in space

However, the Hive Mind has never tried to tangle with the God-Emperor directly. This bug-brain might find its bitten off more than it can chew.

So, sure, the Warp might be a mess, preventing reinforcements from arriving... but then every Tyranid bio-form with 50 light-years of Terra suffers sudden cranial evacuation. Beyond that point, He stops showing off and, instead, just head-crushes all the Synapse creatures and, because He can, the Norn Queens. Now you have space-born Tyranids turning on one another while their ships are incapable of replenishing their forces. As the population of 'Nids drops, so does the power of the Shadow in the Warp.

Once the Shadow fades, Imperial ships begin arriving to begin mop-up operations. The God-Emperor sets an entire tendril of a Hive Fleet on fire from across the galaxy, because He can.

Also... Mars may have a C'Tan shard. That might create all kinds of complications for the Tyranid Swarm.

Hmmm, yeah, No. I have not seen any real fluff about the emperor manifesting powers to that extream, and IF (big if) he is really ''alive'' enough to do the psykic-y jiggery pokery then i'd take it he is too busy keeping the universe turning and fighting daemonic legions single handedly to do any of that.

We dont know what the void dragon will do, but i strongly believe it will be MUCH worse for the imperium tghen the tyranids. Say the tyranids awake the void dragon, hey look all your tanks are revolting and killing there masters, all your titians are now killing you insted and there is a fair chance the golden throne just...stops. Remember that the void dragon got the smack down from the empy, and he wont be very happy when he wakes up.

@Shlazgor, Oh you must be right, your totaly un surrported 1 word argument totaly out weighs me...

Also, if that many tyrands converged on the terra from below the galactic plane as Leviathan did time to prepare before the shadow over came them would be minimal. The Astrominicion is the bait, imagin that the tyranids are one MASSIVE fish about to swallow it.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
Hmmm, yeah, No. I have not seen any real fluff about the emperor manifesting powers to that extream, and IF (big if) he is really ''alive'' enough to do the psykic-y jiggery pokery then i'd take it he is too busy keeping the universe turning and fighting daemonic legions single handedly to do any of that.

We dont know what the void dragon will do, but i strongly believe it will be MUCH worse for the imperium tghen the tyranids. Say the tyranids awake the void dragon, hey look all your tanks are revolting and killing there masters, all your titians are now killing you insted and there is a fair chance the golden throne just...stops. Remember that the void dragon got the smack down from the empy, and he wont be very happy when he wakes up.

@Shlazgor, Oh you must be right, your totaly un surrported 1 word argument totaly out weighs me...

Also, if that many tyrands converged on the terra from below the galactic plane as Leviathan did time to prepare before the shadow over came them would be minimal. The Astrominicion is the bait, imagin that the tyranids are one MASSIVE fish about to swallow it.

1. The Emperor might not be able to stop the shadow in some other system but you can bet your ass he can stop that gak in the Sol system. The Emperor literally gaks psychic weapons. Come at Terra Hivemind.

2. The Shadow won't prevent psykers from doing their business in battle. But even if it did the main threat isn't the GK it's the naval fortresses and fleets that were designed to make the Chaos Gods themselves back away that is the problem.

3. They would know the Nids are coming from them and would already have unfeasible reinforcements present.

4. Nids got spanked by three SM companies. Imagine how they would fare against all of the defenses previously mentioned? No contest friend.

Terra might be a little too much to handle, but who said the attack's goal would be to nom it ?
If the hive mind manages to get a sufficiently threatning force without committing too much ressources to it, it could actually be a very good move.
Such a thing could cause an overreaction from the Imperium as they allocate too much ressources to Terra's defense.
It may in turn weaken the Imperium's grip on many other systems, allowing various factions to take advantage of it.
This could cause enough chaos to make it quite a bit easier to eat new planets and make the biomass lost in the attack well worth it.

He created the Warp-Storm known as "The Storm of the Emperor's Wrath", destroying an entire fleet of Vandire's during the Age of Apostasy. It's still there, four thousand years later.

He's the most powerful psyker to have ever lived. Gods fear Him.

The fact that He *is* single-handedly holding off the forces of Hell should give you some idea of the feats He is capable of performing.

And if the Void Dragon were to awaken... it's not so much the Dragon that is of concern to the Tyranid, it is the sudden opening of gods-know-how-many Dolmen Gates as the Necrons come to retrieve the shard of this god.

4. Nids got spanked by three SM companies. Imagine how they would fare against all of the defenses previously mentioned? No contest friend.

Really depends on the size of the Hive Fleet attacking though.

As someone else mentioned we'll never really know what true strenght or lack thereof the Nids have, due to GWs fluff writing and wanting to keep everything open and the "what might happen next?!" idea.
However it would be fair to assume if recent Nid incursions are but a probing Vanguard then I personally feel the Nids pose one hell of a threat to not just Terra and its defense but the Galaxy ta large.

Wasnt there a piece of fluff - not sure if cannonised that said the Nids have possibly consumed life in all nearby Galaxies and ours is the last stop as it were, with recent invasions just the frontline tendrils of a truely all encompassing monster?

The storm of the emperor's wrath is only consided the big E's doing (''The storm was considered the Emperor's will incarnate'' lexicantum) so we can no more say it was him then say eldradstill lives.

It is also said quite a lot more that there are a LOT more tyranids on the way then saying there arn't. 1 sentence says they are running, lots say that new fleets are emerging.

Where is your proof that the emperor can stop the shadow in thhe warp? We know the tyranids can blocks the Astronomican. We know the more tyranids the stronger the effect. So if its all the tyranids vs the Terra we can assume with out bias that they would block it out.

During the heresy the traitor legions got in-system with a fleet and didnt get blasted out the skies. We could assume the is because of traitors in there midsts slowing the proccess down and such, but we also have to take into account that the imperium was stonger back then. With better tech, or understanding of that tech. And if the big E was so powerful, why not just burst all them into flames? In him life the stongest power i have heard of him doing is blowing up a planet...big whoop. So if the traitor legions can get in-system why is it proposterous that they tyranids could with ultamately a LOT more ships, prohibiting psykic powers, and coursing natural destruction? I'd love to see mars put up a good defense while all its massive volcanoes are exploding simultaniously.

Where is your proof that the emperor can stop the shadow in thhe warp? We know the tyranids can blocks the Astronomican. We know the more tyranids the stronger the effect. So if its all the tyranids vs the Terra we can assume with out bias that they would block it out.

The Shadow is formed by the "static" created by the sum of the Tyranid bio-forms in a given region (which may be a huge area in space). The more Tyranid you have, the stronger the Shadow gets. The fewer, the weaker. Kill more Tyranid, the Shadow dissipates.

However... there is no list of the psychic powers the God-Emperor commands. What is known is that He is the most powerful human psyker to ever live. We have, from a variety of sources, other human psykers who do some pretty insane stuff. Crank those powers up to 11 and we might have an idea of how powerful the God-Emperor is.

And if the big E was so powerful, why not just burst all them into flames?

Because until the absolute very end, He believed that Horus could be saved.

The Tyranids also cannot cause volcanoes. They can cause tectonic upheaval with the narvhal, but that relies on the planet being the target destination. If Terra is the destination, not Mars, then the narvhal can't do anything to Mars. It's a mode of transport for the Tyranid, not a weapon. Trying to use it in-system, however, will crush the bugs within the gravitic fields of the local planets and the local star itself, and thus cannot be used at such close ranges.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:

Also, if that many tyrands converged on the terra from below the galactic plane as Leviathan did time to prepare before the shadow over came them would be minimal. The Astrominicion is the bait, imagin that the tyranids are one MASSIVE fish about to swallow it.

Considering that the galaxy is 3D and not that flat, I think they'd have plenty of time to figure it out. And if they do, then they can tear chunks out of it whilst it's still hibernating.

ALEXisAWESOME wrote:During the heresy the traitor legions got in-system with a fleet and didnt get blasted out the skies.

They lost, what, a third of their fleet against the Lunar defences alone? A lot of it was intact, and that was with half the forces of the Imperium at Horus' command, as well as the Mechanicus turning traitor. This is completely different. Not to mention I seem to recall (but alas, I've no idea where) reading that the defences have increased since the Horus Heresy. Also, we've no idea how destructive Narvhals actually are.

Ratius wrote:Wasnt there a piece of fluff - not sure if cannonised that said the Nids have possibly consumed life in all nearby Galaxies and ours is the last stop as it were, with recent invasions just the frontline tendrils of a truely all encompassing monster?

Something like they've left the barren husks of a dozen galaxies. On the other hand, how powerful and advanced the civilisations of those galaxies were is unknown, and the amount of biomass used up in traversing the void between galaxies would be immense.


I would say that judging by how the Battle for Macragge ended (a detonating Warp Drive), the Imperium could if all else fails (or even as a preliminary weapon) get ships to, well, fly into\near the Hive Fleet and detonate their Warp drives. The Imperium has no shortage of fanatics willing to give their lives, the Mechanicus could be convinced of the necessity of it, and it appears to be a horrendously powerful weapon. Really, why the Imperium doesn't do it more often is beyond me (yeah, I know, they tried a dumb way in a book, but with a little bit more intelligence it would work (i.e. having a timer or some fanatic). In fact, if it was so damaging to a Hive Fleet you could probably plunge planets into the Warp doing it.

The Tyranids also would of had to got through several hundred systems, meaning that the fleet that would have arrived would be massive in scale. We're talking Tyranid numbers in the sextillions, and having fought all that way, the Hive Mind would probably have a fairly tactical mindset, with newly evolved creatures and such.

But them we have the Imperium.

Terra and the Sol System is incredibly well armed, defended and ready to do so. Several Titan Legions, the Grey Knights home world, massive defensive fleets, the Imperial Fists, Custodians, Assassins, the Inquisition, and that's only to name those well known to be defending Terra. Black Templar's and other devout Space Marines would simply abandon their current activities and fight of the Tyranids.

Then we've got the Eldar.

If Big 'E is om'nomed, then Terra will become a daemon world of epic proportions. Daemons will spill out and the Imperium will break apart and splinter, meaning the forces of Chaos could spill out of the Eye, the Maelstrom and so on. The Eldar would almost certainly wish to stop such an event from occurring.

Then we've got the Necrons.

While not directly linked to defending Terra, the Tyranid's are taking away the only chance at returning to life, and the warp corrupting and destroying it will not help.

I recently read a book that, if ultimately accepted as canon through a new nid codex, will throw an interesting wrinkle in the Hive Fleets.

The Last Ditch by Sandy Mitchell

I feel like if the true full might of the Hive Fleets show up (since, it has been hinted at before that what has hit the galaxy is only the farthest tendrils), then it would really be the one thing that might just unite all the races together for a small time being.

I say this mostly out of the fact that the Tyranids are really the only thing that threatens every race equally. Look at it this way:

The humans would fight to no end to save Terra, we're talking basically every human being conscripted to fight and every Marine that they can get to hold Terra

The Eldar aren't stupid, arrogant but not stupid. They would realize that letting the Imperium be destroyed would basically screw over everyone, including themselves, as Chaos would be able to freely walk right on in.

The Tau take a similar reasoning as the Eldar, but maybe not fighting to prevent Chaos incursion.

The Orks love to fight, nuff said *shrug*

I'm honestly not sure about the Necrons, but I feel like they would fight a hive fleet if it got close

Chaos wouldn't likely get involved at first, but the Tyranids likely would nom Chaos souls just as fast as Loyal souls, and im also not quite sure about the relationship between the Hive Mind and Chaos besides the whole shadow in the warp thing.


Even if all the races aren't "allied" I feel like it would come down into a "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" kind of thing. I feel like most of the races could put away their total and utter hatred of each other for some time so they could beat back the Tyranids before going back to killing each other. Take the Damocles Crusade for instance. The Tau and IoM were going at it, then the Tyranid's came and they went separate ways to deal with that problem (as it was a much more pressing issue for both armies)

clively wrote:
I recently read a book that, if ultimately accepted as canon through a new nid codex, will throw an interesting wrinkle in the Hive Fleets.

The Last Ditch by Sandy Mitchell

Spoiler:

A mechanicus installation had some captured 'nids on ice that included parts of a bio ship.

The installation was faced with a hive fleet invasion from a different hive fleet. Interestingly, the hive fleet spent a considerable amount of resources attacking the installation in order to destroy the bio ship pieces and captured 'nids.

The book basically says that the hive fleets don't get along and will attack each other on site. It even goes on to say that the bio ships from different hive fleets can interfere with each other. Now, if multiple fleets are heading towards Terra then it stands to reason that more conflicts like this are going to happen.

If this is held as canon then the Imperium could be saved if they can distract those fleets into a civil war while picking off the outliers.

I know BL sometimes goes off on interesting tangents; however, having recently read Mitchell's other Cain novels it's patently obvious that a lot of 6th edition rules ideas and other fluff came from his stuff.

Combine that with all of the Necron fluff changes which show internecine fighting and I'm of the opinion that the next codex is going to feature a fair amount of 'nids fighting 'nids.

The 'Nids are lead by one single Hive Mind driving them on one single purpose, it would make no sense for it to have them fight each other. If what you are suggesting is true, to me it would suggest one of two things, either independently thinking Hive fleets, or more than one Hive mind, and each fleet is from a different Mind, which is a scary, scary thought.

Eldercaveman wrote:

clively wrote:
I recently read a book that, if ultimately accepted as canon through a new nid codex, will throw an interesting wrinkle in the Hive Fleets.

The Last Ditch by Sandy Mitchell

Spoiler:

A mechanicus installation had some captured 'nids on ice that included parts of a bio ship.

The installation was faced with a hive fleet invasion from a different hive fleet. Interestingly, the hive fleet spent a considerable amount of resources attacking the installation in order to destroy the bio ship pieces and captured 'nids.

The book basically says that the hive fleets don't get along and will attack each other on site. It even goes on to say that the bio ships from different hive fleets can interfere with each other. Now, if multiple fleets are heading towards Terra then it stands to reason that more conflicts like this are going to happen.

If this is held as canon then the Imperium could be saved if they can distract those fleets into a civil war while picking off the outliers.

I know BL sometimes goes off on interesting tangents; however, having recently read Mitchell's other Cain novels it's patently obvious that a lot of 6th edition rules ideas and other fluff came from his stuff.

Combine that with all of the Necron fluff changes which show internecine fighting and I'm of the opinion that the next codex is going to feature a fair amount of 'nids fighting 'nids.

The 'Nids are lead by one single Hive Mind driving them on one single purpose, it would make no sense for it to have them fight each other. If what you are suggesting is true, to me it would suggest one of two things, either independently thinking Hive fleets, or more than one Hive mind, and each fleet is from a different Mind, which is a scary, scary thought.

The way I took it was a shift away from a single Hive Mind into each fleet having it's own that it has carried with it in the form of the Bio Ships. However, I would love to hear others opinion after reading that book. It just seems to me that a fair amount of the BL books tend to throw interesting ideas out there to gauge reception. But that would require probably more planning that GW is actually capable of.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
And Macragge was the shining home world of Matt Wards butt buddies held by a ''god of war'' and tactical genius. With the ''best chapter'' protecting it, look what happened there? Almost beaten by a single hive fleet.

I agree if the terra had time to amass the QUADRILLIONS of imperial guard to defend it might win (but more biomass after all...) and every world in the sol system would be a fight worse then Macragge but if the tyranids came in force. And i mean in total force, they could over whelm the terra. Or worse, if they got there before the QUADRILLIONS of imperial guard and marines then the massive shadow in the warp would block out the astrominicion for the entire universe. Thats like half the imperial assets lost in the warp. Good luck defending it now.

Yep behemoth destroyed macrages orbital defenses and pretty much crushed the polar fortresses. Now that they know a war masters tactics they have a plan. Instead of just expending biomass by throwing themselves at the enemy.

Your also assuming Thre forces of chaos would let this happen. The Dark Gods KNOW they need the imperium to survive so its very likely that as the Tyranids try to launch a attack on Terra that the forces of the TRAITOR legions and all the DAEMON legions show up within one giant warpstorm to fight the Tyranids. Now just think the might of all the traitor legions and renegade chapters COMBINED with all the Daemonic legions of the dark gods. I think that alone would **** the tyranids over never mind if the Outcast decides he dosent like the Tyranids

Captaintyrius wrote:
Your also assuming Thre forces of chaos would let this happen. The Dark Gods KNOW they need the imperium to survive so its very likely that as the Tyranids try to launch a attack on Terra that the forces of the TRAITOR legions and all the DAEMON legions show up within one giant warpstorm to fight the Tyranids. Now just think the might of all the traitor legions and renegade chapters COMBINED with all the Daemonic legions of the dark gods. I think that alone would **** the tyranids over never mind if the Outcast decides he dosent like the Tyranids

Except the warp would be effectively shut down, if all the Tyranid Hive fleets emerged on Terra at once, the shadow would be undeniable.

Eldercaveman wrote:

Captaintyrius wrote:
Your also assuming Thre forces of chaos would let this happen. The Dark Gods KNOW they need the imperium to survive so its very likely that as the Tyranids try to launch a attack on Terra that the forces of the TRAITOR legions and all the DAEMON legions show up within one giant warpstorm to fight the Tyranids. Now just think the might of all the traitor legions and renegade chapters COMBINED with all the Daemonic legions of the dark gods. I think that alone would **** the tyranids over never mind if the Outcast decides he dosent like the Tyranids

Except the warp would be effectively shut down, if all the Tyranid Hive fleets emerged on Terra at once, the shadow would be undeniable.

That assumes that the Emperor does diddly squat to try and combat it

@Eldercaveman it does say in the Chaos Daemons book tho that the gods can create warp portals at will however they basically wont do it to often as it weakens them.

I very much doubt the emporer would give a damn if the forces of chaos were attacking the Tyranids infact he would probably let them

Captaintyrius wrote:
@Eldercaveman it does say in the Chaos Daemons book tho that the gods can create warp portals at will however they basically wont do it to often as it weakens them.

I very much doubt the emporer would give a damn if the forces of chaos were attacking the Tyranids infact he would probably let them

I don't think he would let the Daemons get that close to Terra, even if the Daemons want mankind to survive, I don't think the Emperor (assuming he is more than a corpse, that has more than residual psychic energy left to keep the astronomican going) would humor the Daemons that close, especially not the traitor legions/

What about the sisters of silence? They are all psychic blanks based on Luna, what effect would they have on tyranid synaps creatures in battle? The silent sisterhood strike teams could throw enough confusion into a hive fleet to tip the balance.

Ugly Green Trog wrote:
What about the sisters of silence? They are all psychic blanks based on Luna, what effect would they have on tyranid synaps creatures in battle? The silent sisterhood strike teams could throw enough confusion into a hive fleet to tip the balance.

I don't think the Nids draw power from the warp in a conventional sense, it stead it is challenged through the synapse creatures, by the hive mind.

In one fo the caphias Cain novels when Jurgen - a blank- (I think that's the adjutant's name) approaches a synapse Tyranid it inflicts pain on the bug.

it could be that the Hive Mind uses the warp to communicate (Like subspace is used in B5) and a blank cuts them off from that connection

Eldercaveman wrote:

Ugly Green Trog wrote:
What about the sisters of silence? They are all psychic blanks based on Luna, what effect would they have on tyranid synaps creatures in battle? The silent sisterhood strike teams could throw enough confusion into a hive fleet to tip the balance.

I don't think the Nids draw power from the warp in a conventional sense, it stead it is challenged through the synapse creatures, by the hive mind.

I was given to understand (maybe in complete error) that the reason the shadow in the warp happened was because of the vast amount of psychic energy being used by the tyranid synaps creatures. I thought that synaps creatures used some form of telepathy, surely this would be disrupted by blanks?

Would never happen as the eldar would detonate all the worlds around terra to stop the nids. The eldar have no qualms about killing the entirety of mankind to stop the nids and chaos. This means that the nids would not devour the biomass leading up to the conflict with terra.

If they did reach they would reach as tendrils. That means lots of time to prepare as the sol system is practically a giant fortress designed for the sole purpose of guarding the big E and the high lords.

So, the IoM would go exterminatus on the planets them selves if they felt the need, which they would if faced with a full on incursion aimed at terra. So the most likely turn of events is a withdrawal action wiping out the planets in the path of the tyranids taking as many as possible with them and then a full on conflict just outside sol system where the tyranids face the full might of the IoM with eldar, tau, and possibly even Deldar/ork support (probably indirect as the IoM would not allow them near sol but even in-cutting the rear of the hive fleet would be devastating) Not to mention the chaos gods would probably be let loose in places that the IoM withdrew from.

The tyranids might win in the end but that would take thousands of times more forces than they currently have in galaxy and the assumption that these reinforcements come in successively larger waves. If this assumption is not true then they will never make more progress than they currently have been as they seem to only do lasting harm to the eldar.

The really interesting question is would the end result be the fall of IoM that would likely be inevitable (with the above assumption) when the big E is left with a single system intact. Would the void dragon awaken due to the conflict or would the chaos daemons be unleashed? and do the necrons kill nids as fervently as they do everything else?

btw tell your mother she should not put blankets on lightbulbs they do not block all of the light (depends on the blanket) and they tend to burst into flames and burn the house down, very unsafe(google it)...hmm somewhat like what would probably happen between the nids and big E.

Eldercaveman wrote:

clively wrote:
I recently read a book that, if ultimately accepted as canon through a new nid codex, will throw an interesting wrinkle in the Hive Fleets.

The Last Ditch by Sandy Mitchell

Spoiler:

A mechanicus installation had some captured 'nids on ice that included parts of a bio ship.

The installation was faced with a hive fleet invasion from a different hive fleet. Interestingly, the hive fleet spent a considerable amount of resources attacking the installation in order to destroy the bio ship pieces and captured 'nids.

The book basically says that the hive fleets don't get along and will attack each other on site. It even goes on to say that the bio ships from different hive fleets can interfere with each other. Now, if multiple fleets are heading towards Terra then it stands to reason that more conflicts like this are going to happen.

If this is held as canon then the Imperium could be saved if they can distract those fleets into a civil war while picking off the outliers.

I know BL sometimes goes off on interesting tangents; however, having recently read Mitchell's other Cain novels it's patently obvious that a lot of 6th edition rules ideas and other fluff came from his stuff.

Combine that with all of the Necron fluff changes which show internecine fighting and I'm of the opinion that the next codex is going to feature a fair amount of 'nids fighting 'nids.

The 'Nids are lead by one single Hive Mind driving them on one single purpose, it would make no sense for it to have them fight each other. If what you are suggesting is true, to me it would suggest one of two things, either independently thinking Hive fleets, or more than one Hive mind, and each fleet is from a different Mind, which is a scary, scary thought.

We actually don't know that for sure. There's no definitive statement of what the Hive Mind truly is, though it *seems* to be a gestalt consciousness formed by the totality of all Tyranid bio-forms in a given Hive. There may or may not be a single individual creature somewhere at the back that is the actual Hive Mind entity. Based on the concept of it being localized to the members of a given Hive Fleet, if two Hive Fleets encounter one another, they're now in competition for the bio-mass of a target planet, and are also viable food to each other. If they join forces to eat one world... well, that's not enough food for both of them. One is going to have to eat the other after the bio-mass expenditure of travel and then battle for the world. Otherwise... they both starve.

If Tyranids reach Terra, then they will eat like kings. Then leave gassy and bloated and end up with that 'too full' feeling where you don't want to get off the couch and do anything. eventually falling asleep.

Do Genestealer cults exist in the Sol system? Could they exist?

Sure, the overall security would be second to none, but you have a lot of space traffic to and from the planets. Pilgrims, soldiers, traders etc. Mistakes happen.

Maybe a cargo hold isn't holding just foodstuffs. Maybe one of the pilgrims is expecting, and the father was a charming man who didn't seem quite right. Maybe one of the nobles smuggled in a fascinatingly vicious creature for its menagerie that seems to always be testing its cage.

Hundreds of billions of humans to hide in. Could be the Tyranids have already reached Terra.

Could be.

A shard? The thing under the Noctis Labyrinthus is a whole C'tan.

Think about it. None of the Shard powers are related to manipulating machines, which we know is the Dragon's speciality.

Mechanicum has a dream sequence from the Dragon's point of view in which it was a Star God, unbound by Necrodermis, until a Golden Warrior defeat it and cast it down to be bound under the soil.

No other C'tan 'Shard' has specifically prompted a Necron raid - the largest canonically known battlefleet fielded by Necrons (Admittedly, that does mean "Two ships") - against such a highly defended target. The Necrons managed to land a Shroud-class cruiser on Mars itself.

Would the Tyranid risk waking up an unbroken C'tan? They avoided a Tomb World. It's never been retconned that the 'nids target Necron worlds, despite the 'new' fluff (which is less different from the old fluff than people like to think). There's very little biomass on Mars as it is.

On top of that, even if they C'tan remains dormant, Dalia is still on Mars, with the full power of the Dragon available to her should she need to call upon it. A human with a natural connection to the Source of all Knowledge, wielding C'tan reality-warping powers. Even if in the last ten thousand years, Dalia's found a replacement guardian, that still leaves a human with a C'tan's power standing watch over Mars.

Of course, there's always the possibility of a billion hive ships just coasting in and smashing everything aside with their bulk.

Terra is one hell of a fortress, it's a tribute to the paranoia of the Imperium.

However we know the Nids have consumed multiple *galaxies* (Number unknown to keep it mysterious), thats a lot of biomass any way you look at it. Thanks to Leviathan we also know they are encompassing the galaxy as at least some of them are coming from underneath not just the galactic east. They are often descibed as jaws tightening around the galaxy. Who knows where the next major fleet will strike.

Leviathan is the most recent and largest to date so the threat is growing.

Narvhals cause massive tectonic upheaval and Nids can spawn whatever they need. They could spawn a fleet of them and point them at Terra. Biomass wise it's a drop in the ocean but it could devestate the planet without sending your troops anywhere near. The blow to Imperial morale seeing large parts of Terra in ruins...

Now excluding magic Emperor brain popping, which frankly I think is way beyond him, since he apparantely could even stop 5 light necron ships on their way to Mars I personally think the Imperium is in trouble.

The Nids started out simply charging worlds like Macragge head on but have since grown far smarter and far more cunning. The Hive Minds agents like the Swarmlord now understand Imperials well enough to outwit Calgar at every turn. Also who knows what secrets Tigerius gave up when he looked into the Hive Mind, he saw into it but never even stops to consider whether it saw into him...

The noose is tightening year by year as more worlds are lost and while they can exterminatus and the Eldar can burn whole imperial worlds not every world is Imperial. The Orks, Tau and all those minor races in the galaxy wont go quietly, the Imperium will have to fight them to destroy those worlds. Any world with a hint of rebellion may not be so quick to lay down their lives either and the Dark Gods and Tau emissaries will become very popular all of a sudden.

All the while the Imperium is bleeding war resources and it has many other enemies. Chaos is safe in the Eye and would totally take advantage, the Orks who weren't fighting Nids too so now the Imperium is fighting on two fronts. The Eldar may come to their aid or may finally simply give up on the Galaxy and either flee into the darkness between stars or into the webway and try and wait it out. They may not get on with their dark kin but they are Battle Brothers and the same people, they either need to make peace or die. I doubt they'll get a good deal from the DE but they may live to see another day. The Necrons are largely avoided by Nid's so what would they care, they'd likely go back to sleep till it's over and then retake the galaxy once the nids are gone. Only the Silent King would even notice.

The Nids won't rush Terra, they are winning the war and have only just begun bringing their force to bear. The Imperium will crumble and if they are lucky may mount a last expensive defence of Sol come the end. If they aren't the Golden Throne will break down before the Nids arrive and the Imperium will collapse without a shot fired as they lose all warp travel, their spiritual leader and their defence against the Daemons all in one swoop...

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The Necrons managed to land a Shroud-class cruiser on Mars itself.

This was retconned by 5'th edition Necron codex fluff. Not only that Necrons ships are slower than Tau ships ( they literally need decades to reach nearest star system ) but Imotechs entire space armada was defeated by Black Templar strike fleet. The text even says that Necron ships were fleeing from Space Marine ships that destroyed them mercilessly.
Giving this incident the Necrons simply don't posses power to stand against Imperial Navy battlegroups ( who are much, much stronger than Space Marine ones ) and they cannot just "pop up" near Mars because they don't have their fast FTL anymore.
So Necron Mars raid from 3'rd edition codex edition never happened.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dunklezahn wrote:

However we know the Nids have consumed multiple *galaxies* (Number unknown to keep it mysterious), thats a lot of biomass any way you look at it.

Actually we know the exact number - 12 ( Tyranid codex, rulebook entry ). And no matter if they gathered a TON of biomass, the travel between galaxies are LONG and they lost a LOT of it on the way.

Leviathan is the most recent and largest to date so the threat is growing.

The actual quote goes "The last and latest Hive Fleet", not the last part. That could mean that Leviathan is indeed the last large Tyranid fleet in existence, the other ones begin small fleet like Gorgon. Is this Crudance's type mistake or something else we don't know, but we know about it's plans a lot.

1/3'rd of Leviathan is already destroyed at Tarsis Ultra ( the entire fleet divided into 3 parts ), the other two are going toward Baal and Terra.
Leviathan will be destroyed in 42'nd millennium, Terra cannot be breached and Blood Angels will have most of their successor Chapters defending Baal. If undermanned Ultramarines can destroy Behemoth then Blood Angels at full strenght + several other chapters can stop this part of Leviathan.|

I can't wait to read about this one day, the Battle for Baal and 2'nd Battle for Terra will be as much if not more epic than Battle for Macragge.

Remember there's also a huge choas horde heading for Baal lead by M'Kar, not so straight up but even the renegade BA successor have shown up. Could just end up with very few survivors. Either way any victory will be costly

While the Emporer may not like the thought of letting the traitor legions and the Daemons near terra he may also realise it may be humanities only hope. I mean lets face it Greater Daemons are more powerful than any tyranid and are in fact harder to destroy.

The tyranids so far have inflicted only the lightest damage on the Imperium, and have time and again collapsed in the face of all but the very lightest and haphazard defenses. The Imperial navy, when it engages them with any halfway decent fleet butchers them, and on the ground the guard tend to as well (such as four thousand guardsmen and some PDF troops taking out a splinter fleet, only losing about half their number in the process). Their hardest problem has been one of predicting where the tyranids will strike early enough that they have time to move available assets to counter them.

Were a force several times greater than the sum of all hive fleets to date (which, attacking the most vulnerable and ill-defended targets it can, has inflicted, has destroyed less than one hundredth of a percent of the Imperium, all of it far-flung backwater) to move against Sol, it would very likely be mauled before it even got close, and if it somehow wasn't (or it was sufficiently large that even after it's inevitable downsizing it would still be greater than all the hive fleets to date), it would still smash itself apart upon the system defenses, then turn upon itself in confusion as the controlling nodes are slain.

And Macragge was't so much an "epic" battle as it was a pathetic one: the ultramarines turn tail and flee almost immediately, with their leader abandoning the planet altogether in order to intentionally stumble into a trap he had no power to defeat, with only the timely arrival of Imperial Navy warships saving the ultramarine fleet. At which point they return to Macragge to mop up the scattered remnants of the ground forces (remember that the ultramarines fled in the earliest stages of the battle, and died in the middle of nowhere (as in, not fighting the main host in the populated regions), meaning the PDF were the ones to rout the tyranids after having been abandoned by their leaders).

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
In one fo the caphias Cain novels when Jurgen - a blank- (I think that's the adjutant's name) approaches a synapse Tyranid it inflicts pain on the bug.

it could be that the Hive Mind uses the warp to communicate (Like subspace is used in B5) and a blank cuts them off from that connection

Actually, Jurgen disrupted Tyranid synapse in several of the Cain books. Not sure if this was because the author had started down a path with that over 10 years ago or if there is simply a difference between BL and the codex fluff dealing with the warp and nids.

Ah I see, I've only read the one Caphias Cain novel, didn't realise it was a recurring thing in the series

Dunklezahn wrote:Narvhals cause massive tectonic upheaval and Nids can spawn whatever they need. They could spawn a fleet of them and point them at Terra. Biomass wise it's a drop in the ocean but it could devestate the planet without sending your troops anywhere near. The blow to Imperial morale seeing large parts of Terra in ruins...

Actually we have no idea how much tectonic upheaval Narvhals cause, and neither do we know if more than one can 'target' the same planet.

 Brother Captain Alexander wrote:

This was retconned by 5'th edition Necron codex fluff. Not only that Necrons ships are slower than Tau ships ( they literally need decades to reach nearest star system ) but Imotechs entire space armada was defeated by Black Templar strike fleet. The text even says that Necron ships were fleeing from Space Marine ships that destroyed them mercilessly.
Giving this incident the Necrons simply don't posses power to stand against Imperial Navy battlegroups ( who are much, much stronger than Space Marine ones ) and they cannot just "pop up" near Mars because they don't have their fast FTL anymore.
So Necron Mars raid from 3'rd edition codex edition never happened.

It is never stated in the Necron Codex how slow Necron ships are or the time it would take them to travel without the Webway. The size of the fleet Imotekh was using is unknown (it's unlikely it was his entire fleet because then he wouldn't remain a threat). But yes, it does seem to change the power of Necron vessels. In regards to the incident at Mars, they could "pop up" at Mars because they can use the Webway to travel. While we don't know if it has entrances in or near the solar system of Terra, it still allows for the Mars incident to occur.

Furthermore, considering the Necrons waged a galaxy-wide war against the Old Ones and their creations and were winning before they breached the Webway with Dolmen Gates, it's logical to assume that they still have some sort of FTL.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:The tyranids so far have inflicted only the lightest damage on the Imperium, and have time and again collapsed in the face of all but the very lightest and haphazard defenses.

The Tyranids did manage to take Gryphonne IV though, supposedly the second greatest Forgeworld (coincidently just mentioned) in the Imperium. The text reads like a single Tyranid organism managed to take out a Titan Legion, unlikely though it is that the other Tyranids wouldn't engage at the same time. That one creature (a Tyrannofex maybe?) would be indestructible against most opposition.

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

It is never stated in the Necron Codex how slow Necron ships are or the time it would take them to travel without the Webway.

Wrong, Necron codex page 8, the entry for Dolmen Gates.

The size of the fleet Imotekh was using is unknown (it's unlikely it was his entire fleet because then he wouldn't remain a threat). But yes, it does seem to change the power of Necron vessels. In regards to the incident at Mars, they could "pop up" at Mars because they can use the Webway to travel. While we don't know if it has entrances in or near the solar system of Terra, it still allows for the Mars incident to occur.

It's is his persona battleship so he must had some serious fleet guarding him ( not his entire armada, but I would assume the fleet of large size giving his position as leader of his dynasty ), if Space Marine fleet can go trough that then Imperial Navy can win them every day of the week. The Mars incident happened when several Necron ship just appeared in front of Mars Fleet and ignore it while landing on the surface of the planet, with their present FTL that is not possible and giving into account the incident with BT fleet Mars fleet would vaporize them before they touch the planet.

Furthermore, considering the Necrons waged a galaxy-wide war against the Old Ones and their creations and were winning before they breached the Webway with Dolmen Gates, it's logical to assume that they still have some sort of FTL.

It's painfully slow, read the paragraph that I offered. The text says "slow-voyaging ships stasis ships, dooming them to isolation". That sounds like FTL more slower or as slow as Tau one.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
The Tyranids did manage to take Gryphonne IV though, supposedly the second greatest Forgeworld (coincidently just mentioned) in the Imperium. The text reads like a single Tyranid organism managed to take out a Titan Legion, unlikely though it is that the other Tyranids wouldn't engage at the same time. That one creature (a Tyrannofex maybe?) would be indestructible against most opposition.

I really hope we will get explanation for this in their new codex or anywhere in future. Cruddance wrote it so the man maybe get little ahead of himself ( like saying that the Leviathan is the last big Hive Fleet out there ).

You dont get your ''The emperor did it'' card against the tyranids. IF we are to assume that the tyrandis get to the terra in force then the shadow will be undennyable. Then at least a good half of all the psykers in the astra telepathica go insane, die or explode. Astropaths couldn't co-ordinate the defense, i wonder if the imperium still has cell phones??? And with most of the psykers dead, who feeds the emperor? No new psykers coming in system, all the tyranids need to do is keep the shadow goign untill they run out psykers to feed the big E, and as i understand it something bad happens. Not sure if he dies, but he will be in no conditition to blow the tyrandis away.

Defenses can be over-came. You say that lunar took out 1/3 of the traitor fleet? Now imagin a fleet probabilly a hundred times bigger, maybe more. Still confident that they can take them ALL out before they make planet fall? Tyranids do indeed have anti titian bio titians which by the writing took out titian legions on its own. Also presumably Zoanthropes are some of the most powerful psykers around (floating, forcefielded, warplancing MoFo's they are) and there would be thousands of them. What extra damage just they could do would be catastropic, even if they are delagated to just making sure no reinforcments come through. Tyranids havea counter to everything the imperium has to offer, or at least a way around it.

what's the possibility of the nids just sending a decoy at Terra drawing all the forces away, possibly something like what the Allies did on D-Day with a bunch of empty wooden boats, maybe a bunch of empty bio ships. I dunno

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

The Tyranids did manage to take Gryphonne IV though, supposedly the second greatest Forgeworld (coincidently just mentioned) in the Imperium. The text reads like a single Tyranid organism managed to take out a Titan Legion, unlikely though it is that the other Tyranids wouldn't engage at the same time. That one creature (a Tyrannofex maybe?) would be indestructible against most opposition.

I thought it said something about bio-titans, which would mean hierophants, which are/were ridiculously OP gargantuans (it costs less than a reaver, has ten wounds at t9, a 2+ armor save, and an invuln that is either 3++ or 5++ (I don't know if this was ever officially resolved, it stemmed from it having a power that, when its book was written, gave a 5++, but in the 5th ed tyranid codex that changed to a 3++), and two s10 assault 8 weapons with 48" ranges).

Of course, that particular bit is rather out of place with the tyranids' normal portrayal, since if they could just up and drop completely invincible super-weapons into the fray whenever they came up against something that could fight back, and could defeat near-space-marine-strength forces fielded in guard-like numbers, they wouldn't lose whenever the guard could show up in time to fight them...

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
You dont get your ''The emperor did it'' card against the tyranids. IF we are to assume that the tyrandis get to the terra in force then the shadow will be undennyable. Then at least a good half of all the psykers in the astra telepathica go insane, die or explode. Astropaths couldn't co-ordinate the defense, i wonder if the imperium still has cell phones??? And with most of the psykers dead, who feeds the emperor? No new psykers coming in system, all the tyranids need to do is keep the shadow goign untill they run out psykers to feed the big E, and as i understand it something bad happens. Not sure if he dies, but he will be in no conditition to blow the tyrandis away.

Defenses can be over-came. You say that lunar took out 1/3 of the traitor fleet? Now imagin a fleet probabilly a hundred times bigger, maybe more. Still confident that they can take them ALL out before they make planet fall? Tyranids do indeed have anti titian bio titians which by the writing took out titian legions on its own. Also presumably Zoanthropes are some of the most powerful psykers around (floating, forcefielded, warplancing MoFo's they are) and there would be thousands of them. What extra damage just they could do would be catastropic, even if they are delagated to just making sure no reinforcments come through. Tyranids havea counter to everything the imperium has to offer, or at least a way around it.

You likewise don't get your "The Shadow In the Warp stops all psykers!" card, because the Shadow has never tried to directly tangle with the God-Emperor. For all we know, all the brain-bugs explode into purple and green goo once they pass Pluto, leaving the fleet to turn on itself in a frenzied orgy of ravenous hunger.

A thousand psykers (the weakest of them) are fed to the God-Emperor a day in order to power the Astronomican. The Astronomican is not powered directly by Him, as it existed before He ascended to the Golden Throne. He simply points it, kinda like a lighthouse. Lacking the Astronomican does not make Warp travel impossible, just more difficult.

Cell phones? Cellphones exist, though its not possible to use one at inter-planetary distances at any sort of reasonable speed.

The defenses of the Sol system have increased exponentially since the time of the Heresy. Coupled with the relatively slow in-system speeds of the Tyranid, this means that the Hive Fleet can be effectively bottle-necked between the orbits of various planets, and thus taking fire from the Imperial fleets in space as well as the planetary defense stations around those planets (like, say, Saturn and Jupiter, not to mention the asteroid ring), long before any of its ground forces can be deployed.

 Shlazaor wrote:

1. The Emperor might not be able to stop the shadow in some other system but you can bet your ass he can stop that gak in the Sol system. The Emperor literally gaks psychic weapons. Come at Terra Hivemind.

I highly doubt the Emperor "gaks psychic weapons" unless the fluffs changed from the last time i read it, does the big E not need thousands upon thousands of psykers to be sacrificed a day just so he can wheeze a bit more.

If it was 4th gen tyranids with the 5gen creatures added in it would be highly in the favour for the nids, but i believe it was MGS that mentioned it earlier in the thread that with the nids 5th ed codex they did take some stupid nerf bat hits for their fluff so they have to many cons outweighing the pros in their favour.

In honesty i think the Emperium would win but at such a cost that it would not recover in time for somebody like the orks or chaos to wipe them out afterwards. And looking over some of the other people posting about the void dragon have raised some interesting points aswell.

Needless to say if the nids do get to Terra it could pretty much end half the factions in the 40k universe just from the aftermath and i dont think GW would do that unless they wanted to make orks or daemons their new poster childs

I highly doubt the Emperor "gaks psychic weapons" unless the fluffs changed from the last time i read it, does the big E not need thousands upon thousands of psykers to be sacrificed a day just so he can wheeze a bit more.

He... kinda does. The payload for psybolt ammunition carried by the GK is made from biological effluviant from the Golden Throne. Make of that what you will.

Huh did not know that one....... The more you know eh

edit: and as a thought, I guess they just pump the big E full of laxatives and mexican food then

starchild... ynnead... Would the eldar not sacrifice themselves to stop chaos? assuming the emperors power comes from pyskers, the eldar races souls would "charge him", and so if he were to die, the resulting entiity would be a very powerful...

a b3ached whal3 wrote:
starchild... ynnead... Would the eldar not sacrifice themselves to stop chaos? assuming the emperors power comes from pyskers, the eldar races souls would "charge him", and so if he were to die, the resulting entiity would be a very powerful...

Or...... He would just be dead

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
Why wouldn't the shadow in the warp over come the astrominicion?

The answer is that it would block out the astronomicon, or at the very least severely distort it. Apparently a flicker in the astronomicon causes massive losses across the whole of the Imperium. A Tyranid attack would wreck the Imperium for good. The shadow in the warp shows up weeks before the Hive fleet even appears and this would in turn render all warp travel impossible.

The Tyranid attack on Terra would depend on the size of the Hive fleet. Behemoth was a small Hive fleet and the Ultra marines had weeks to prepare their defence. Macragge being one of the toughest nuts to crack in the whole galaxy. A large Hive fleet such as one of the tendrils of Leviathan would devaste Terra. The Tyranids would use up huge amounts of energy in their attack, however they would rapidly begin to replenish that lost energy as the feeding and reproduction stage of the infestation started.

The defenders of Terra would starve quickly. The Terran system produces nothing, all it's food and resources must be brought in, even Mars needs raw materials o brought in for any work to be done as all of Terra's resources were stripped long ago. A Tyranid attack would result in rapid mass starvation and a total collapse of order as no food or supplies could reach Terra due to the shadow in the warp.

The problem with debating anything about the Tyranids on a larger scale is we simply don't have much information about them, and the information we do have varies greatly from source to source (and even sometimes, like Cruddace, varies from the same source).

For example, when people picture a hive fleet, I get the impression they think of it as a few dozen bioships moving in regular fleet formation. Fluff in Battlefleet Gothic suggests an average fleet tendril numbers in the millions of hive ships, not counting the support and combat ships, and artwork supports this (it's more like a living wave in space). Not to mention Battlefleet Gothics fluff makes it literally impossible to beat them in a naval engagments (Imperial weapons stopped working after 3 engagments as the Tyranids developed resistances to Imperial technology), yet we have them being beaten in naval engagments.

We've got fluff concerning the Hive Mind sitting in the warp, and we've got fluff saying the Tyranids don't make use of the warp (thanks Cruddace). We've got fluff saying Tyranids, even leader beasts, are slaves to the Hive Mind, synapse creatures basically being like wireless routers with lesser creatures connected to it. We've got fluff saying the leader beasts actually have glimmers of self awareness and the ability to think for themselves (thanks Cruddace).

So you basically need to 'read between the lines' with Tyranid fluff.

We've got fluff that says they go after worlds their vanguards get established on enough to project a psychic beacon, and we also have fluff supporting the fact that they think strategically and don't simply go for the juicy worlds right away. Jormungandr awoke, saw a juicy target, but spent decades feeding on the outer system planets until it was strong enough to attack. Leviathan hit Gryphonne IV, a Forgeworld. As we well know, Forgeworlds aren't known to have very active biospheres, so a Tyranid Vanguard wouldn't really be able to establish itself. Which further points to why they would have attacked it - quite simple, they know the galaxies prime defenders success is in part due to the importance of these 'factory worlds', so taking one out would make it easier to attack other planets in the region.

Octarius is often brought up, but as it says in the fluff, neither side is losing, and both sides are getting stronger. Further fluff has the Swarmlord systematically killing Warlords and destabilising the defenses. Before the Swarmlord even showed up, they gained a foothold in the system by killing Skarfang, by luring him into a trap consisting of Venomthropes to cloud the area and Lictors to assassinate him and his bodyguard. Another sign of tactical thinking.

Even the spark that started this thread, the Tyranids being attracted to Terra by the Astronomican, makes sense given older fluff, but Cruddace simply didn't bother explaining why. Going by established fluff, Tyranids are attracted to worlds by the psychic beacon projected by their Vanguard (Genetsealers and Lictors), which is stronger depending on how well esteblished they are. The Astronomican is basically a huge buffet sign, so the Tyranids are seeing it, and want to go there.

Given the fact that they can think strategically, even if they reached it and found the ridiculously big defense fleet there, they'd lose a hive fleet, back off, and start thinking again. Is it worth even trying to attack? That's a mighty big sign, but it's also an even greater risk.

It's more likely that after an initial wholloping by Sols defenses, they'd go back to simply eating everything else. Those defenses are coming from somewhere, so destroy that first. Eventually, those defenders will be drawn out peicemeal to defend needed resources, where they can be taken down peicemeal.

Something to remember is that GW often forgets that Tyranids really don't make sense - the fact they eat so much means it's likely due to them needing to eat, but they have no problems making Tyranids great 'long game' thinkers.They're trillions of years old by now as a race, and the Hive Mind itself is as old as the race. It's intelligent, thinks strategically, and knows how to wait.

If the Tyranids ever got the strength to reach Terra-which they will not- then they would have the strength to take Terra.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
But like Loki said, the whole situation is very unlikely.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
Why wouldn't the shadow in the warp over come the astrominicion? Especially if there were enougth tyranids to feasibly be a threat to the terra. Neither of us have any sources to prove our claims, as i dont believe anyone has tryed to block the astromincion before. But we know that tyranids can block psycik powers and block out the astrominicion. So if we conclude that it is like throwing a blanket of a system, well you can throw a blanket over a light bulb to block out the light to the room, or you can put the blanket over an area of the room to blovk out the light to there. Does that make sense or am i crazy? Well im not, my mother had me tested

This means that a huge amount of imperial troops would be lost in the warp, any many of the chapters. Its quite possible that the entire grey knights chapter heads would explode because of the massive shadow, and even if they dont they're psykic powers would be both dangerous and dampened. Also the seer amount of Navhals arriving in system would create LOADS of natural destasters, earthquakes, volcanoes ( which mars is riddled with) and tsunami's across the system. The shadow also means effective communication between ships is impossible.

In other words the tyranids are bouncing on the shadow doing most of there work for them. Lazy tyranids

I don't know where you're getting your fluff from, but you've got the wrong end of the stick about most of this. For each point, I've included book sources - all of them well worth a read!

The natural disasters thing has no basis in anything, plus most of the planets and moons would be entirely unaffected as they're inert, gas giants or the only areas in use are orbital platforms. Martian volcanoes have been dead millions, possibly billions, of years. (See Horus Heresy books, plus The Emperor's Gift, Inquisiton War....)

The Shadow in the Warp doesn't affect psyker powers in the same way that pariahs or Eldar runes do, what it does do is block the Astronomicon and astropathic communications.

It doesn't do this by power or force, merely by being a conglomeration of so many voices and creatures that it drowns out others. It's not an explosion or wave, it's more like the phone lines are jammed... (See Warriors of Ultramar)

It also doesn't block in-system communication as this is technological, rather than psyker-based. Read the Word Bearers books for a fantastic illustration of exactly what happens when all warp and psker activity is shut down in an entire star system. It doesn't cripple anything, It slows things down, and psykers can't use their powers, but they don't die or explode. (See Dark Creed)

As for whether it would block out the Astronomicon signal, nobody can guess. The Shadow was blocked it out before, but only on the far sides of the galaxy. The Emperor is incredibly powerful, though, so it may not be enough. (See Thousand Sons)

And, of course, the Terran system is without any doubt the most heavily defended, armed and powerful region bar none. And there would be a lot of warning that the Tyranids were coming - as the shadow they cast can be detected in the Warp over many months and even years (see Caiphas Cain books)

Anyway, the Orks are totally gonna stomp 'em....

</controvercial>

Go orky waaagh . Stomp those bugs. Then die an explosive deaths.

 Brother Captain Alexander wrote:

BlaxicanX wrote:
The day the Tyranids get to Terra is the day the Tyranid species goes extinct.

This.

Terra is the most heavily defended planet in the Imperium. Not just Terra - entire Sol System is fortress that makes Cadia look like a little baby in comparison.

...so seure that entire Necron fleets manage to get down to Mars without humans even noticing. Ehem.

 Sigvatr wrote:

...so seure that entire Necron fleets manage to get down to Mars without humans even noticing. Ehem.

That was retconed, Ward write off 'magic FTL' and Necron fleet strenght. Without those two elements Mars raid is impossible to happen.

It's one of those unfortunate situations where he didn't retcon the event, just the technology used to make it happen. So it's left in a weird state of having happened, but the only way for it to have happened is the Imperium was completely stupid and let it happen, rather than the Necrons being so technologically advanced they managed to break the blockade.

I'm fine with the new explaination.

 -Loki- wrote:
It's one of those unfortunate situations where he didn't retcon the event, just the technology used to make it happen. So it's left in a weird state of having happened, but the only way for it to have happened is the Imperium was completely stupid and let it happen, rather than the Necrons being so technologically advanced they managed to break the blockade.

I'm fine with the new explaination.

This is one of those situations where we can use logic. I completely agree that a lot of this is subjective but there is a point where can reach conclusions as rational individuals without having GW spell it out for us.

 Shlazaor wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
It's one of those unfortunate situations where he didn't retcon the event, just the technology used to make it happen. So it's left in a weird state of having happened, but the only way for it to have happened is the Imperium was completely stupid and let it happen, rather than the Necrons being so technologically advanced they managed to break the blockade.

I'm fine with the new explaination.

This is one of those situations where we can use logic. I completely agree that a lot of this is subjective but there is a point where can reach conclusions as rational individuals without having GW spell it out for us.

Rational decisions about 40k fluff doesn't work, because a lot of decisions they make themselves concerning it are not rational (like claiming an entire race was destroyed because one of their planets was eaten by Hive Fleet Kraken - real rational).

The general rule with 40k fluff is, unless outright refuted with new fluff, it still happened. They changed Necron drive technology, but they could have still landed on Mars another way. Since Ward didn't bother correcting that bit of fluff, like all 40k fluff, it's assumed it still happened.

Even if they don't have super-FTL drives, there's nothing saying that a ship cannot carry a previously-unrevealed Dolmen Gate-creating device that allows them to pop up in various places in the galaxy, even if said device does not permit unlimited travel, or has to "lock in" on pre-set frequencies, co-ordinates or whatever.

That the Necrons have some means of detecting a C'Tan Shard that "goes active" in some way is not really too far-fetched a concept.

 -Loki- wrote:

 Shlazaor wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
It's one of those unfortunate situations where he didn't retcon the event, just the technology used to make it happen. So it's left in a weird state of having happened, but the only way for it to have happened is the Imperium was completely stupid and let it happen, rather than the Necrons being so technologically advanced they managed to break the blockade.

I'm fine with the new explaination.

This is one of those situations where we can use logic. I completely agree that a lot of this is subjective but there is a point where can reach conclusions as rational individuals without having GW spell it out for us.

Rational decisions about 40k fluff doesn't work, because a lot of decisions they make themselves concerning it are not rational (like claiming an entire race was destroyed because one of their planets was eaten by Hive Fleet Kraken - real rational).

The general rule with 40k fluff is, unless outright refuted with new fluff, it still happened. They changed Necron drive technology, but they could have still landed on Mars another way. Since Ward didn't bother correcting that bit of fluff, like all 40k fluff, it's assumed it still happened.

Unless it contradicts related fluff. The Necron fleet was assbeat by a Space Marine fleet. The defenses of Mars would be a thousandfold stronger. I reject your base assumption that we cannot rule something out even if it is not straight out retconned.

Can we claim the event still happened via Dolmen Gate? Sure. It's subjective. But we can confidently say that a few Necron ships did not circumvent the entire Mars orbital defense and land on the planet.

clively wrote:

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
In one fo the caphias Cain novels when Jurgen - a blank- (I think that's the adjutant's name) approaches a synapse Tyranid it inflicts pain on the bug.

it could be that the Hive Mind uses the warp to communicate (Like subspace is used in B5) and a blank cuts them off from that connection

Actually, Jurgen disrupted Tyranid synapse in several of the Cain books. Not sure if this was because the author had started down a path with that over 10 years ago or if there is simply a difference between BL and the codex fluff dealing with the warp and nids.

Just for clarity here, in Amberly's notes in Duty Calls, she states outright that neither she, nor anyone else, was ever able to say with certainty that Jurgen was able to actually block out the Tyranid Hive Mind. The instance you mention shows a blank at least makes psychic communication between the Tyranids difficult, but it certainly didn't "cut them off". There are also plenty of instances of Jurgen standing right next to different Synapse Tyranids (two Hive Tyrants, one after the other) and he had no noticeable effect. Perhaps because a Tyrant has a more powerful mind that a Warrior? Who knows.

The only thing I can say about this is:

'NIDS+SOL SECTOR= find a chair, sit, grab the popcorn and get ready for Epic.

Tyranids attacking the Terran system could have a much wider effect.

Chao's will see an opening and launch another Crusade at Cadia, weakening the Imperium.
Eldar and possibly even Dark Eldar will recognise that if the Imperium falls then they are next, and so will probably give their help.
Who knows what the Tau will do? Offer their help if the Imperium see's the Greater Good?
Necron's may even aid the Imperium.

 phantommaster wrote:
Tyranids attacking the Terran system could have a much wider effect.

Chao's will see an opening and launch another Crusade at Cadia, weakening the Imperium.
Eldar and possibly even Dark Eldar will recognise that if the Imperium falls then they are next, and so will probably give their help.
Who knows what the Tau will do? Offer their help if the Imperium see's the Greater Good?
Necron's may even aid the Imperium.

The Tau would be too far away from the Sol system with their non existent FTL

Orks would also join in fur da crumpin' da bugs and oomies

Everybody in this discussion go to page 409 of your basic rule book and look at the bottom right hand corner of how big the Tyranid fleets compared to the milky way galaxy. Do you even realize the distances involved from one star system to the next?

The artwork for the Tyranids has them being so massive that thier beginning fleets cover massive distances with nothing but ships full of tyranids. Their numbers are super massive. The Imperium in one system does not have enough firepower to stop all of that. Remember, it only takes one tyranid ship crash landing on planet earth to start consuming it, So as it gets blown away, as happened in the Battle for Macragge, it crashes on the planet and the tyranid creatures on board survive and start to eat the inhabitants of the planet.

It is known fluff that the Shadow in the Warp directly blocks the Astronomicon, causing psykers of all levels to go insane and commit suicide or die or any number of other things.

It was so powerful that it blocked Iyanden from recieving much help at all from other Eldar and blocked astropathic transmissions completely from Macragge. If the entirety of what you see on page 409 worked its way to Terra there would be nothing stopping them. Not the terran defenses, not the Eldar, not the orks, nothing. There are just too many of them.

 Brother Captain Alexander wrote:

Wrong, Necron codex page 8, the entry for Dolmen Gates.

Which doesn't state the speed, only that they'd be "doomed to isolation". You're talking a number of small empires spread out across the galaxy. Yes, without the Dolmen Gates they'd be isolated. At the same time, they had waged a galaxy spanning war against a faction which commanded unequalled maneuverability. There's no way they could have remotedly waged that war without faster-than-light travel.

It's is his persona battleship so he must had some serious fleet guarding him ( not his entire armada, but I would assume the fleet of large size giving his position as leader of his dynasty ), if Space Marine fleet can go trough that then Imperial Navy can win them every day of the week. The Mars incident happened when several Necron ship just appeared in front of Mars Fleet and ignore it while landing on the surface of the planet, with their present FTL that is not possible and giving into account the incident with BT fleet Mars fleet would vaporize them before they touch the planet.

Maybe, maybe not. Depends where he was heading, depends on what he was expecting. How'd he escape, anyway? I'm also don't recall the flagship being called a battleship, so it could well have been a lighter class of Necron ship. Yeah, I know. We don't know what their present faster-than-light is. They could have dodged most of the firepower aimed at them. We don't know the different classes of ships the Necrons now have (they may have changed, or have new ones). Sure, judging by the passage with Helbrechts fleet the Necron ships seem less impressive. However, we don't know what ships the Black Templar possess, or how many of them. They already disregard the Codex Astartes in terms of size, so they may well have ships of a class they are not technically supposed to have. Could even have ancient technology on board. Either way, assuming that from one battle the Necrons are a non-threat against the Imperial Navy is a mistake.

It's painfully slow, read the paragraph that I offered. The text says "slow-voyaging ships stasis ships, dooming them to isolation". That sounds like FTL more slower or as slow as Tau one.

Doesn't matter, they could still apparently fight a galactic war. They can move fast enough (unless the communication network was more than just for communications, but that seems like a stretch as well).

I really hope we will get explanation for this in their new codex or anywhere in future. Cruddance wrote it so the man maybe get little ahead of himself ( like saying that the Leviathan is the last big Hive Fleet out there ).

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Of course, that particular bit is rather out of place with the tyranids' normal portrayal, since if they could just up and drop completely invincible super-weapons into the fray whenever they came up against something that could fight back, and could defeat near-space-marine-strength forces fielded in guard-like numbers, they wouldn't lose whenever the guard could show up in time to fight them...

Yeah, it's a bad piece of background. But not as bad as the Doom of Malan'tai. The Deathleaper is pretty bad too. It's weird how the Tyranids alternate between have ludicrously powerful creatures and intelligence to rival the greatest Space Marine commanders to relying purely on superior numbers.

phantommaster wrote:Who knows what the Tau will do? Offer their help if the Imperium see's the Greater Good?

How would the Tau even find out? They're on the other side of the galaxy with limited mobility with negligible forces. They couldn't help.

Roadkill Zombie wrote:Everybody in this discussion go to page 409 of your basic rule book and look at the bottom right hand corner of how big the Tyranid fleets compared to the milky way galaxy. Do you even realize the distances involved from one star system to the next?

Yeah but they really don't actually do much with those numbers. Any other united faction with those numbers of ships would quickly dominate the galaxy, the Tyranids are struggling.

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

 Brother Captain Alexander wrote:

Wrong, Necron codex page 8, the entry for Dolmen Gates.

Which doesn't state the speed, only that they'd be "doomed to isolation". You're talking a number of small empires spread out across the galaxy. Yes, without the Dolmen Gates they'd be isolated. At the same time, they had waged a galaxy spanning war against a faction which commanded unequalled maneuverability. There's no way they could have remotedly waged that war without faster-than-light travel.

It's is his persona battleship so he must had some serious fleet guarding him ( not his entire armada, but I would assume the fleet of large size giving his position as leader of his dynasty ), if Space Marine fleet can go trough that then Imperial Navy can win them every day of the week. The Mars incident happened when several Necron ship just appeared in front of Mars Fleet and ignore it while landing on the surface of the planet, with their present FTL that is not possible and giving into account the incident with BT fleet Mars fleet would vaporize them before they touch the planet.

Maybe, maybe not. Depends where he was heading, depends on what he was expecting. How'd he escape, anyway? I'm also don't recall the flagship being called a battleship, so it could well have been a lighter class of Necron ship. Yeah, I know. We don't know what their present faster-than-light is. They could have dodged most of the firepower aimed at them. We don't know the different classes of ships the Necrons now have (they may have changed, or have new ones). Sure, judging by the passage with Helbrechts fleet the Necron ships seem less impressive. However, we don't know what ships the Black Templar possess, or how many of them. They already disregard the Codex Astartes in terms of size, so they may well have ships of a class they are not technically supposed to have. Could even have ancient technology on board. Either way, assuming that from one battle the Necrons are a non-threat against the Imperial Navy is a mistake.

It's painfully slow, read the paragraph that I offered. The text says "slow-voyaging ships stasis ships, dooming them to isolation". That sounds like FTL more slower or as slow as Tau one.

Doesn't matter, they could still apparently fight a galactic war. They can move fast enough (unless the communication network was more than just for communications, but that seems like a stretch as well).

I really hope we will get explanation for this in their new codex or anywhere in future. Cruddance wrote it so the man maybe get little ahead of himself ( like saying that the Leviathan is the last big Hive Fleet out there ).

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Of course, that particular bit is rather out of place with the tyranids' normal portrayal, since if they could just up and drop completely invincible super-weapons into the fray whenever they came up against something that could fight back, and could defeat near-space-marine-strength forces fielded in guard-like numbers, they wouldn't lose whenever the guard could show up in time to fight them...

Yeah, it's a bad piece of background. But not as bad as the Doom of Malan'tai. The Deathleaper is pretty bad too. It's weird how the Tyranids alternate between have ludicrously powerful creatures and intelligence to rival the greatest Space Marine commanders to relying purely on superior numbers.

phantommaster wrote:Who knows what the Tau will do? Offer their help if the Imperium see's the Greater Good?

How would the Tau even find out? They're on the other side of the galaxy with limited mobility with negligible forces. They couldn't help.

Roadkill Zombie wrote:Everybody in this discussion go to page 409 of your basic rule book and look at the bottom right hand corner of how big the Tyranid fleets compared to the milky way galaxy. Do you even realize the distances involved from one star system to the next?

Yeah but they really don't actually do much with those numbers. Any other united faction with those numbers of ships would quickly dominate the galaxy, the Tyranids are struggling.

Struggling? What makes you think they are struggling? Because a few scouts got killed you think they are struggling? The ONLY thing holding them back is that they don't have super fast ways to travel. That is it. The distances that are shown on that map are incredibly unimaginably huge. And they are covering every square inch of it with Tyranid ships! One tyranid ship holds billions of organisms both large and small. All of them bent on eating everything they find.

The hive fleet that attacked Macragge was nothing more than a scout fleet. The same with the one that attacked Iyanden. Those fleets are so small that they aren't even represented on the big map on page 409. What is represented is the amount of tyranids entering the galaxy at an alarming rate. Anyone that thinks the Imperium is winning a war against them are deluding themselves. The Imperium is winning battles against scout fleets, nothing more. The main bulk of the Tyranids are still out there. and they are unimaginably vast. they outnumber every living thing in the galaxy by billions to one if not more. That is evident simply by how much space they take up on that map.

 Miraclefish wrote:
I don't know where you're getting your fluff from, but you've got the wrong end of the stick about most of this. For each point, I've included book sources - all of them well worth a read!

The natural disasters thing has no basis in anything, plus most of the planets and moons would be entirely unaffected as they're inert, gas giants or the only areas in use are orbital platforms. Martian volcanoes have been dead millions, possibly billions, of years. (See Horus Heresy books, plus The Emperor's Gift, Inquisiton War....)

5th edition Tyranid codex, Narvhal entry. It specifically states due to the gravatic nature of the Narvhals travel, target planets are generally grappling with seismic upheaval when Tyranids arrive.

That said, this is not ideal - it ruins the biosphere, the thing the Tyranids are going there for in the first place.

Grade A terrible fluff from Cruddace. but it's now official, more official than Black Library books, being a studio source.

 Miraclefish wrote:
The Shadow in the Warp doesn't affect psyker powers in the same way that pariahs or Eldar runes do, what it does do is block the Astronomicon and astropathic communications.

It doesn't do this by power or force, merely by being a conglomeration of so many voices and creatures that it drowns out others. It's not an explosion or wave, it's more like the phone lines are jammed... (See Warriors of Ultramar)

You are part right. Yes, it's drowning out communication via psychic means, causing any psyker who listens to it to go insane or die (official fluff, numerous codex entries about the Shadow in the Warp over the editions). The only psyker who has been able to even listen to it has been Tigerius (official fluff, a few Codex Space Marines entires over the editions). So yes, his theory about the majority of the psykers in the Sol system dying is accurate - though maybe not with exploding heads.

 Miraclefish wrote:
It also doesn't block in-system communication as this is technological, rather than psyker-based. Read the Word Bearers books for a fantastic illustration of exactly what happens when all warp and psker activity is shut down in an entire star system. It doesn't cripple anything, It slows things down, and psykers can't use their powers, but they don't die or explode. (See Dark Creed)

Again, psykers do die - see studio material, not Black Library material.

 Miraclefish wrote:
As for whether it would block out the Astronomicon signal, nobody can guess. The Shadow was blocked it out before, but only on the far sides of the galaxy. The Emperor is incredibly powerful, though, so it may not be enough. (See Thousand Sons)

The problem with this, again, is inconsistent Tyranid fluff. We have fluff describing systems 'going dark' from Tyranids arriving, with ships unable to leave due to the astronomican being blocked. We also have fluff with Space Marines doing 'fighting retreats', fighting Tyranids on a planet and leaving. They couldn't do this if the astronomican was blocked.

The best you can glean from this contradictory fluff is would at least make warp travel extremely unreliable, trying to find bursts of the astronomican through the shadow like a ship trying to find signs of a lighthouse in a storm.

 Miraclefish wrote:
And, of course, the Terran system is without any doubt the most heavily defended, armed and powerful region bar none. And there would be a lot of warning that the Tyranids were coming - as the shadow they cast can be detected in the Warp over many months and even years (see Caiphas Cain books)

Anyway, the Orks are totally gonna stomp 'em....

</controvercial>

And that is why the Tyranids probably won't attack it directly. While there's fluff about them being drawn to it, only two hive fleets, both minor, are making their way directly there. Once they get their gak pushed in by the defenses at Sol, the Hive Mind will likely look at ways to bleed the defences. Hitting support worlds like Forgeworlds and Agri worlds, for example.

As for the Orks, one of the biggest waaghs in modern Ork fluff is in a stalemate with a single tendril of Leviathan. Not only that, new official fluff has Leviathan winning, having taken numerous continents from the Orks and systematically slaying new Warlords that pop up with the Swarmlord, which in turn destabilises them as they fight it out for a new Warlord.

it's best to go with studio material than Black Library material when discussing fluff. Every BL author likes to put his own spin on things. Studio material, while still inconsistent, is 'from the horses mouth', so to speak.

Roadkill Zombie wrote:

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

 Brother Captain Alexander wrote:

Wrong, Necron codex page 8, the entry for Dolmen Gates.

Which doesn't state the speed, only that they'd be "doomed to isolation". You're talking a number of small empires spread out across the galaxy. Yes, without the Dolmen Gates they'd be isolated. At the same time, they had waged a galaxy spanning war against a faction which commanded unequalled maneuverability. There's no way they could have remotedly waged that war without faster-than-light travel.

It's is his persona battleship so he must had some serious fleet guarding him ( not his entire armada, but I would assume the fleet of large size giving his position as leader of his dynasty ), if Space Marine fleet can go trough that then Imperial Navy can win them every day of the week. The Mars incident happened when several Necron ship just appeared in front of Mars Fleet and ignore it while landing on the surface of the planet, with their present FTL that is not possible and giving into account the incident with BT fleet Mars fleet would vaporize them before they touch the planet.

Maybe, maybe not. Depends where he was heading, depends on what he was expecting. How'd he escape, anyway? I'm also don't recall the flagship being called a battleship, so it could well have been a lighter class of Necron ship. Yeah, I know. We don't know what their present faster-than-light is. They could have dodged most of the firepower aimed at them. We don't know the different classes of ships the Necrons now have (they may have changed, or have new ones). Sure, judging by the passage with Helbrechts fleet the Necron ships seem less impressive. However, we don't know what ships the Black Templar possess, or how many of them. They already disregard the Codex Astartes in terms of size, so they may well have ships of a class they are not technically supposed to have. Could even have ancient technology on board. Either way, assuming that from one battle the Necrons are a non-threat against the Imperial Navy is a mistake.

It's painfully slow, read the paragraph that I offered. The text says "slow-voyaging ships stasis ships, dooming them to isolation". That sounds like FTL more slower or as slow as Tau one.

Doesn't matter, they could still apparently fight a galactic war. They can move fast enough (unless the communication network was more than just for communications, but that seems like a stretch as well).

I really hope we will get explanation for this in their new codex or anywhere in future. Cruddance wrote it so the man maybe get little ahead of himself ( like saying that the Leviathan is the last big Hive Fleet out there ).

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Of course, that particular bit is rather out of place with the tyranids' normal portrayal, since if they could just up and drop completely invincible super-weapons into the fray whenever they came up against something that could fight back, and could defeat near-space-marine-strength forces fielded in guard-like numbers, they wouldn't lose whenever the guard could show up in time to fight them...

Yeah, it's a bad piece of background. But not as bad as the Doom of Malan'tai. The Deathleaper is pretty bad too. It's weird how the Tyranids alternate between have ludicrously powerful creatures and intelligence to rival the greatest Space Marine commanders to relying purely on superior numbers.

phantommaster wrote:Who knows what the Tau will do? Offer their help if the Imperium see's the Greater Good?

How would the Tau even find out? They're on the other side of the galaxy with limited mobility with negligible forces. They couldn't help.

Roadkill Zombie wrote:Everybody in this discussion go to page 409 of your basic rule book and look at the bottom right hand corner of how big the Tyranid fleets compared to the milky way galaxy. Do you even realize the distances involved from one star system to the next?

Yeah but they really don't actually do much with those numbers. Any other united faction with those numbers of ships would quickly dominate the galaxy, the Tyranids are struggling.

Struggling? What makes you think they are struggling? Because a few scouts got killed you think they are struggling? The ONLY thing holding them back is that they don't have super fast ways to travel. That is it. The distances that are shown on that map are incredibly unimaginably huge. And they are covering every square inch of it with Tyranid ships! One tyranid ship holds billions of organisms both large and small. All of them bent on eating everything they find.

The hive fleet that attacked Macragge was nothing more than a scout fleet. The same with the one that attacked Iyanden. Those fleets are so small that they aren't even represented on the big map on page 409. What is represented is the amount of tyranids entering the galaxy at an alarming rate. Anyone that thinks the Imperium is winning a war against them are deluding themselves. The Imperium is winning battles against scout fleets, nothing more. The main bulk of the Tyranids are still out there. and they are unimaginably vast. they outnumber every living thing in the galaxy by billions to one if not more. That is evident simply by how much space they take up on that map.

I'm calling bs. It's already been referenced that if Tyranid fleet sizes hold true the IoM would need to increase subscription levels by 500 percent to survive. They are not outnumbered billions to one. You want to say the IoM will lose? Sure. But don't exaggerate the disparity of forces.

 Shlazaor wrote:
I'm calling bs. It's already been referenced that if Tyranid fleet sizes hold true the IoM would need to increase subscription levels by 500 percent to survive. They are not outnumbered billions to one. You want to say the IoM will lose? Sure. But don't exaggerate the disparity of forces.

You assume that 500% increase would bring them to a 1:1 comparison of ground forces or even naval forces. Incorrect.

500% increase to be able to statistically hold their ground. After that 500% increase, they'd still be outnumbered, just have sufficient numbers to hold on. Not billions to one, no, but still significantly outnumbered.

When new fluff in the rulebook puts hundreds of thousands of hive ships to a hive fleet fleet, and millions of various Tyranid creatures to a hive ship, yeah, humanity is pretty outnumbered. Tyranids rely on numbers, and numbers they do have. In ample supply.

Call bs all you want. Look at the map. That should tell you all you need to know. The Tyranid fleets on that map are light years across. And the spaces filled by it are completely filled with tyranid ships. Each tyranid ship holds billions of organisms. No fleet in the entire imperium is large enough to cover light years of space. Neither are the orks, or Eldar or Necrons or any other race. The only ones who do have that kind of numbers are the Tyranids.

I'm not exagerrating at all. It's simply by looking at what space in the galaxy the hive fleet covers that you can tell how truely massive they are. Do you think that map has the tyranid fleets as being just a few hundred feet away from planets? Those stars you see in the galaxy picture are light years across from each other. And the fleets are going from one star to the next with no spaces in between unfilled by tryanid ships. How can you possibly say I'm exagerrating when the picture tells the whole story?

 -Loki- wrote:

 Shlazaor wrote:
I'm calling bs. It's already been referenced that if Tyranid fleet sizes hold true the IoM would need to increase subscription levels by 500 percent to survive. They are not outnumbered billions to one. You want to say the IoM will lose? Sure. But don't exaggerate the disparity of forces.

You assume that 500% increase would bring them to a 1:1 comparison of ground forces or even naval forces. Incorrect.

500% increase to be able to statistically hold their ground. After that 500% increase, they'd still be outnumbered, just have sufficient numbers to hold on. Not billions to one, no, but still significantly outnumbered.

When new fluff in the rulebook puts hundreds of thousands of hive ships to a hive fleet fleet, and millions of various Tyranid creatures to a hive ship, yeah, humanity is pretty outnumbered. Tyranids rely on numbers, and numbers they do have. In ample supply.

You just put words in my mouth. Not to be rude but I challenge you to find anywhere in my post where I say or even hint that the Imperium would have a 1:1 advantage. As it stands you agreed to the only statement I did make which is that billions to one was a bs satistic. So I'm not really sure why your post was written to imply a contradiction to my own.


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Roadkill Zombie wrote:
Call bs all you want. Look at the map. That should tell you all you need to know. The Tyranid fleets on that map are light years across. And the spaces filled by it are completely filled with tyranid ships. Each tyranid ship holds billions of organisms. No fleet in the entire imperium is large enough to cover light years of space. Neither are the orks, or Eldar or Necrons or any other race. The only ones who do have that kind of numbers are the Tyranids.

I'm not exagerrating at all. It's simply by looking at what space in the galaxy the hive fleet covers that you can tell how truely massive they are. Do you think that map has the tyranid fleets as being just a few hundred feet away from planets? Those stars you see in the galaxy picture are light years across from each other. And the fleets are going from one star to the next with no spaces in between unfilled by tryanid ships. How can you possibly say I'm exagerrating when the picture tells the whole story?

Because I have stated fluff that contradicts you as opposed to conjecture derived from a picture.

Being a bit more serious, if the Tyranids got to the Sol System, the Imperium would die. That's more or less the final word on it, considering knock-on effects of such an invasion. Not only would the Imperium die, but probably the Eldar, Tau, Dark Eldar, Necrons...
Chaos would be the only force left standing, and even they would have to retreat back into the Warp to survive. The sheer numbers are against everything.

Like Roadkill said, the Tyranid Hive Fleets are massive. Stupidly, stupidly massive. Hive Fleet Leviathan has already wreaked some serious damage and that's only a tiny part of it. And they're coming from 3 angles at once. If they were to reach the Sol System, the Milky Way would die. Not in a mad rush, but in a long, drawn out whimper. Tyranids are oversized, carnivorous locusts. And we all know what locusts can do.

[sarcasm]Yay for Grimdark.[/sarcasm]

And we all know what locusts can do.

Die in massive numbers to deployed insecticides? They're bad in places that lack access to such things. The Deathwatch, however, has proven itself rather adept at deploying such things.

Epic battle ensues is what happens

The might of the God-Emporer overwhelms their pathetic hive-mind and they literally just die.

 Psienesis wrote:

And we all know what locusts can do.

Die in massive numbers to deployed insecticides? They're bad in places that lack access to such things. The Deathwatch, however, has proven itself rather adept at deploying such things.

Which, in any given fluff, only work once and then they adapt to it. Unlike locusts.

Call the exterminator...er nurgle?

Actually having that space filled every inch with ships would have a gravitic force that would draw the entire galaxy toward it. The entire fleet would probably collapse into several stars or the fleet would have to use so much energy opposing its own gravity that it would burn through itself in no time at all. For an example the average denisty of the milky way galaxy is ~10^-23 gram cm^-3 your proposed density is on the order of ~0.5 to 0.005 gram cm^-3 (BTW this density is pretty close to that of a planet and is even larger than an asteroid belt) assuming tyranids are more dense than water, a single light year would be 5.0e50 kilograms or ~2 Solar mass or two of our own suns in a single light year cube. The mass of the fleet at the density you propose would be a super dense galaxy which would collapse into its own center as it creates one heck of a super black hole.

Where is this every inch is covered with ships coming from? If that is right then it is one of the worst thought out fluff pieces in the game when taken in any scientific context.

 ansacs wrote:
Call the exterminator...er nurgle?

Actually having that space filled every inch with ships would have a gravitic force that would draw the entire galaxy toward it. The entire fleet would probably collapse into several stars or the fleet would have to use so much energy opposing its own gravity that it would burn through itself in no time at all. For an example the average denisty of the milky way galaxy is ~10^-23 gram cm^-3 your proposed density is on the order of ~0.5 to 0.005 gram cm^-3 (BTW this density is pretty close to that of a planet and is even larger than an asteroid belt) assuming tyranids are more dense than water, a single light year would be 5.0e50 kilograms or ~2 Solar mass or two of our own suns in a single light year cube. The mass of the fleet at the density you propose would be a super dense galaxy which would collapse into its own center as it creates one heck of a super black hole.

Where is this every inch is covered with ships coming from? If that is right then it is one of the worst thought out fluff pieces in the game when taken in any scientific context.

Grimdark

People see maps of the 40K galaxy and think that is how the galaxy actually looks.

It doesn't. The image of the galaxy is even captured from an extra-galactic view, which the Imperium is not capable of. They might as well have drawn it on paper, and scribbled "Here be Bugs" at the edges where they think the Tyranids are coming from. The maps we have of people's sketches of Europe in the Dark Ages has more in common with maps of the Imperium in the 41st Millennia than actual stellar spectrographs and star-charts.

What makes you say that Psienesis? We have telescopes now that can see our entire Galaxy. They can see Nebula in space, I've seen pictures from our telescopes that can see an entire universe filled with galaxies. What makes you think they don't have that capability 40,000 years from now if we have it today?

That picture in the book is supposed to represent our galaxy. And that picture is supposed to be accurate of where the tyranids are circa 998.M41. It's not some stupid fantasy map with here be dragons. Its from stellar reports in the area. It's from many ships personally observing them and it is from scans taken from Imperial Fleets in the area sent to try to slow them down and stop them.

Modern day fluff does not contradict old fluff about the size of the Tyranid fleets. Nothing has changed from the old Epic Space Marine supplement Epic Hive War. Those fleets are described in the 6th edition rule book as "immeasurably large". On a galactic scale that is pretty big by anyone's standard. The bulk of the Tyranids fleets aren't even represented on the map as they are described as strewn out across the void.

They've already eaten other galaxies, in what way is that small? you guys are deluding yourselves if you think that the tyranids as a whole are small. They aren't. they are incredibly, unimaginatively massive.


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 ansacs wrote:
Call the exterminator...er nurgle?

Actually having that space filled every inch with ships would have a gravitic force that would draw the entire galaxy toward it. The entire fleet would probably collapse into several stars or the fleet would have to use so much energy opposing its own gravity that it would burn through itself in no time at all. For an example the average denisty of the milky way galaxy is ~10^-23 gram cm^-3 your proposed density is on the order of ~0.5 to 0.005 gram cm^-3 (BTW this density is pretty close to that of a planet and is even larger than an asteroid belt) assuming tyranids are more dense than water, a single light year would be 5.0e50 kilograms or ~2 Solar mass or two of our own suns in a single light year cube. The mass of the fleet at the density you propose would be a super dense galaxy which would collapse into its own center as it creates one heck of a super black hole.

Where is this every inch is covered with ships coming from? If that is right then it is one of the worst thought out fluff pieces in the game when taken in any scientific context.

Of course it's not very well thought out. Gw likes to pick and choose what science they like in their game and ignore the real life references that would thwart their nefarious plans for the galaxy with real science. Why would they care about real science with things like fungus men and magic?

Uh, no, just no. We have not even seen all of the milky way. We most definitely cannot "see" even half of the universe not to mention large patches in the half we can see. Heck we just figure out how to detect earth sized planets near a sun a few years ago. You sire vastly over estimate our species current technological abilities. I wish we were there, man my life would be easier.

Immeasurably vast could mean 10x the IoM or IoM^1000 either would be "immeasurably" vast as the IoM itself is supposed to be "immeasurably" vast in this fluff. With worlds thousands of years out of sync due to warp storms I guess measurement would be tough.

Unless there is something specific saying every inch then the base assumption should not be something that makes no sense in the fluff as gravity was never repealed in the setting. That be why the eldar use anti-gravitic drives.

Fungi-men is actually not as ridiculous as you might believe, fungi are the actual pinnacle of the evolutionary tree on earth. They can survive being launched to the moon and then coming back through the atmosphere, then taken off and grown in a petri dish (which I cannot). They are also sometimes even more complex biochemically and genetically than humans...perhaps the ork invasion is upon us?

The warp and psychic powers seems ridiculous to me but it is fantasy (Needs magic, say psychic) and there are people who believe in psychic powers in real life, so yeah make of that what you will.

So the large pictures NASA has shown on exhibit in my city of galaxies beyond count is false? Are you telling me the space agency is lying to all of us?

I don't know what you do for a living, by your posts I would say some sort of space scientist or something, thats cool if you are, but I have been to the space exhibits from NASA and seen those giant pictures they have of real galaxies. I've also seen the pictures they have of our entire galaxy looking from the hubble space telescope. As far as I've been lead to believe and as far as I can tell those are real. So unless you know something about it that NASA hasn't been telling us I stick to my origional story.

Look, people often overlook the fluff as being exagerrated. I get that, because of things like Matt Wards little love affair with Ultramarines. People used to say I took it too literally when I would talk about the ancient Eldar being able to snuff out the stars using only their dreams. Then I proved it wasn't just me taking it too literal, the Dark Eldar codex and the 6th edition rulebook backed it up. The fluff behind the tyranids fleets stretching from whatever galaxy they are coming from all the way to the milky way comes from established fluff and has for over 16 years that I know of.

Just based off of the volume of space that would take up leads me to believe the Tyranid fleets are bigger than anything anyone can imagine (this is also backed up by fluff) and nothing has changed that. They are still described in the 6th edition as "their masses strewn out across the void".

Notice the word "across" in that sentence. It doesn't say "out into" or anything that suggests they are just floating around in no mans land between galaxies. It says "across". To me, that means from whatever galaxy they are coming from to ours. That is a huge amount of space to take up. And fluff backs me up on my belief. The only part of the fluff that doesn't suffers from the same stupidity that all of GW fluff does, the fact that the GW game designers can't seem to get their numbers right. Everybody knows 1000 space marines per chapter would have the marines killed off long ago with weapons like D weapons from Apocalypse if they fought in any sort of battle. Same goes for Epic Space Marine. I personally have killed off an entire chapter of Space Marines many times over in Epic scale. And that is just from one battle. With weapons as fierce as that, Space Marine chapters HAVE to be massively larger than GW represents them. The same goes for how many Tyranids are in the fleets based off of that stupid picture they have on page 409 of the main rule book.

If you are a scientist, look at that picture and tell me if fleets the size of what they have pictured there is even feasable? In real life I doubt it. That would be rediculous. Look at how much of our galaxy those fleets are already covering. Do you really think something that big is only a few million ships?

Roadkill Zombie wrote:
Call bs all you want. Look at the map. That should tell you all you need to know. The Tyranid fleets on that map are light years across. And the spaces filled by it are completely filled with tyranid ships. Each tyranid ship holds billions of organisms. No fleet in the entire imperium is large enough to cover light years of space. Neither are the orks, or Eldar or Necrons or any other race. The only ones who do have that kind of numbers are the Tyranids.

I'm not exagerrating at all. It's simply by looking at what space in the galaxy the hive fleet covers that you can tell how truely massive they are. Do you think that map has the tyranid fleets as being just a few hundred feet away from planets? Those stars you see in the galaxy picture are light years across from each other. And the fleets are going from one star to the next with no spaces in between unfilled by tryanid ships. How can you possibly say I'm exagerrating when the picture tells the whole story?

You're reading maps wrong.

When they show fuzzy clouds on the galatic map, it's doesn't mean that that entire area is hive fleet and tyranid organisms, it shows where they have passes and their range.

When you look at old maps of WW2 german advances across Europe, it doesn't mean the German army filled a neat giant arrow formation capable of traversing all terrain, it shows the general movements and indicates their range of operable offensive capability.

The arrows shown here are not entirely laying over german forces... They give an indication of the general movement sweeps of various military formations.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

Roadkill Zombie wrote:
Call bs all you want. Look at the map. That should tell you all you need to know. The Tyranid fleets on that map are light years across. And the spaces filled by it are completely filled with tyranid ships. Each tyranid ship holds billions of organisms. No fleet in the entire imperium is large enough to cover light years of space. Neither are the orks, or Eldar or Necrons or any other race. The only ones who do have that kind of numbers are the Tyranids.

I'm not exagerrating at all. It's simply by looking at what space in the galaxy the hive fleet covers that you can tell how truely massive they are. Do you think that map has the tyranid fleets as being just a few hundred feet away from planets? Those stars you see in the galaxy picture are light years across from each other. And the fleets are going from one star to the next with no spaces in between unfilled by tryanid ships. How can you possibly say I'm exagerrating when the picture tells the whole story?

You're reading maps wrong.

When they show fuzzy clouds on the galatic map, it's doesn't mean that that entire area is hive fleet and tyranid organisms, it shows where they have passes and their range.

When you look at old maps of WW2 german advances across Europe, it doesn't mean the German army filled a neat giant arrow formation capable of traversing all terrain, it shows the general movements and indicates their range of operable offensive capability.

The arrows shown here are not entirely laying over german forces... They give an indication of the general movement sweeps of various military formations.

Beat me to it MeanGreen ...I give you a Harumph sir..HARUMPH

If the full force of a mega-Hive Fleet hit Terra I think there'd be a decent chance of them overunning the planet. I imagine the Astromonican falling prey to the Shadow of the Warp would create all kinds of havoc with the ability of reinforcements to get there.

Also, poor Poland

I agree that it should be a huge number of ships like 10^100 or something ridiculous like that. However this is more like 1 ship every hundred lightyears or so not every inch. In fact this is stretching across the void more than even a galaxy does so this would already be massive.

I am not part of NASA, I am a final year ipHD candidate microwave, Raman, and Infrared spectroscopist (chemist) with an interdisciplinary in geology. NASA is not lying they just are not bogging their display down with alot of frankly necessary explanation that would only be of real interest to specialists. The "pictures" they have are from our probs which have a orion spear-our solar system-earth(hubble telescope) perspective which means as we are near the outer edge we cannot see roughly half of the galaxy and we cannot see anything from the outer perspective like the map we are talking about. Compound this with the fact that we cannot see past the middle of the universe and cannot see small objects (I mean in many cases smaller than stars) in other galaxies. Much of the pictures you see are actually microwave spectra extropolated into an image in the visible light spectra so the "colors" shown are pure imagination (not to mention the keplar effect that changes the colors anyway).

Anyways the take home message is that the NASA displays are simplified images taken from a huge amount of work to show people who do not necessarily want to study the years worth of study that it would take to completely understand them (heck, even with my specialties I couldn't have even begun to do some of the stuff NASA does).

Anyways the hive fleets will most likely come in as huge clumps smaller than a small solar system and will have to be separated by rather large distance to avoid to much mass in the region.

I agree the space marines chapters are too small for what happens on the game table however they are not supposed to be fielded like that post heresy where they are extremely limited in numbers.They should drop down to take out the enemy commander and perhaps the titan while the IG dies in droves to the D-weapons, as the GOD EMPEROR wills!

This is why I love the allies rules. The new IG/SW(etc.) armies are much more realistic for a what a normal battle in the 40K universe would have to look like.

Poor Poland indeed, I hear they still are not completely over it.

Roadkill Zombie wrote:
What makes you say that Psienesis? We have telescopes now that can see our entire Galaxy. They can see Nebula in space, I've seen pictures from our telescopes that can see an entire universe filled with galaxies. What makes you think they don't have that capability 40,000 years from now if we have it today?

That picture in the book is supposed to represent our galaxy. And that picture is supposed to be accurate of where the tyranids are circa 998.M41. It's not some stupid fantasy map with here be dragons. Its from stellar reports in the area. It's from many ships personally observing them and it is from scans taken from Imperial Fleets in the area sent to try to slow them down and stop them.

Every map in the Imperium is a "stupid fantasy map", because they *do* say "Here be dragons". Remember that the bulk of every Segmentum is entirely unexplored space, as no stable Warp-routes exist to those regions. The Imperium is not a continuous mass of human worlds from Sol to the Eastern Fringe, to the Halo Stars, to the Rifts of Hecaton, etc. The Imperium, instead, is an empire made up of islands, each a small speck of Human presence in the darkness of space, relying on its immediate neighbors and other, more distant worlds, for survival. All around them is the Void, which may be home to entire Xeno empires that the Imperium is entirely ignorant of, because they've never flown over there to look, and their non-Warp-capable auger-ships won't arrive there for another 14,000 Terran years.

The Imperium, relying on the Warp as it does for FTL travel, simply cannot cover that much space. Without a known, stable Warp Route between Points A and B, you can't just Warp-Jump to Point B with accuracy.

Modern day fluff does not contradict old fluff about the size of the Tyranid fleets. Nothing has changed from the old Epic Space Marine supplement Epic Hive War. Those fleets are described in the 6th edition rule book as "immeasurably large". On a galactic scale that is pretty big by anyone's standard. The bulk of the Tyranids fleets aren't even represented on the map as they are described as strewn out across the void.

100,000 ships would still be "immeasurably huge" when the average Segmentum fleet is just a couple thousand ships, if that many.

They've already eaten other galaxies, in what way is that small? you guys are deluding yourselves if you think that the tyranids as a whole are small. They aren't. they are incredibly, unimaginatively massive.

So is space. A galaxy of 100,000 worlds with life no more complex than a sand-flea is not much of a challenge to the Tyranid. It might also have taken them 20 million years to do it and then drift off to another galaxy to do it again. Space is really, really big.

 Psienesis wrote:
So is space. A galaxy of 100,000 worlds with life no more complex than a sand-flea is not much of a challenge to the Tyranid. It might also have taken them 20 million years to do it and then drift off to another galaxy to do it again. Space is really, really big.

The problem with the theory that previous galaxies might not have had complex organisms is - going by new fluff, Tyranids had all of their current bioforms, aside from specilised forms like the Doom, before Tyran. Which means they had them before reaching our galaxy.

If previously devoured galaxies were a bunch of worlds populated by nothing more than local fauna, the Tyranids wouldn't have needed more than Rippers to devour them. The fact they bred combat capable bioforms like the Carnifex, Trygon and Heirophant means they came across some pretty heavy defenses on their way to the Milky Way. If there were no heavy defenses to overcome, breeding those bioforms would have been pointless, thus not done. Tyranids only breed bioforms when there's an obstacle they can't beat, and only after beating themselves against said obstacle numerous times.

Galaxies 1 through 11 might have been the space-empire of Sandfleaistan. Galaxy 12 might have been the space-empire of Kickassika.

No that was definitely galaxy 15 with 12-14 being Iwantmymomma and the mighty midnightsnackians federation.

All they need is one galaxy, with defenses needing the likes of Heirophants to overcome, to show they can tackle something like the Milky Way,

Since humans have killed Heirophants, I'm not exactly sure that's true. It's the equivalent of a Warlord Titan. Big, sure, but not indestructible.

 Psienesis wrote:
Since humans have killed Heirophants, I'm not exactly sure that's true. It's the equivalent of a Warlord Titan. Big, sure, but not indestructible.

An Emperor Titan has been killed by Heirophants (to be fair, it took 3). Do Tyranids win on the 'killed the bigger thing' now? That's not a very relevant argument.

The fact Tyranids needed, before they got to the Milky Way, creatures like Heirophants, Heirodules, Harridans, Carnifexes and Trygons means that they would have come across some incredibly tough defenses in previous galaxies. Even if it was just one galaxy, the fact they needed creatures like that means very tough defenses are not foreign to them, since they wouldn't have bred them if there weren't enemies tough enough to need them.

Since we lack any particular details, it's really just a matter of guess-work. Maybe the reason that these were created was because the Gene-Stealer Cults became aware of Titans, and so the inbound Hive Fleets prepared some Titan-killers ahead of time?

We also know that Orks are extra-galactic. Maybe they ran into some Gargants out there?

Point is, we don't really know what triggered the creation of these creatures, so whether or not it makes the Hive Fleets more than capable of taking on the Milky Way... we really don't know.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

Roadkill Zombie wrote:
Call bs all you want. Look at the map. That should tell you all you need to know. The Tyranid fleets on that map are light years across. And the spaces filled by it are completely filled with tyranid ships. Each tyranid ship holds billions of organisms. No fleet in the entire imperium is large enough to cover light years of space. Neither are the orks, or Eldar or Necrons or any other race. The only ones who do have that kind of numbers are the Tyranids.

I'm not exagerrating at all. It's simply by looking at what space in the galaxy the hive fleet covers that you can tell how truely massive they are. Do you think that map has the tyranid fleets as being just a few hundred feet away from planets? Those stars you see in the galaxy picture are light years across from each other. And the fleets are going from one star to the next with no spaces in between unfilled by tryanid ships. How can you possibly say I'm exagerrating when the picture tells the whole story?

You're reading maps wrong.

When they show fuzzy clouds on the galatic map, it's doesn't mean that that entire area is hive fleet and tyranid organisms, it shows where they have passes and their range.

When you look at old maps of WW2 german advances across Europe, it doesn't mean the German army filled a neat giant arrow formation capable of traversing all terrain, it shows the general movements and indicates their range of operable offensive capability.

The arrows shown here are not entirely laying over german forces... They give an indication of the general movement sweeps of various military formations.

I'm not reading the maps wrong, I do know how to do that. Yes, I understand that the armies in those pics you posted aren't arrow shaped and that the arrow just shows the general direction they came from. But that is not what the maps of the Tyranids are doing. That little map section shows the beginnings of the tyranid fleets and the direction they have gone, And the fluff for them in the 6th edition book says the bulk of the fleet is still outside our galaxy. That means it is stretching back along that line and spreading out as it shows in the picture. And as it says in the fluff. In the case of the tyranids It IS in the shape of those "arrows". That's the whole point. It is supposed to represent the enormity of the fleets. Otherwise they would have just drawn them as arrows like they do every other fleet in the game when they move across the space map.

You're still reading the maps wrong. The arrows on the map representing the Tyranids are saying "the Tyranids' fleet is big enough that the end of the arrow is off the map," not "this is all solid Tyranid stuff.

Course, even then it's an enormous amount of ships, but it is definitely not how you are envisioning it. As said before, the Tyranids would collapse into a black hole if you put that much mass together.

Only if the tyranids follow the normal laws of physics, which we don't know if they do. For all we know they may be able to change the laws of physics to suit their needs as well. They are a super race with incredibly far reaching psychic powers.

Either way, this entire thread is just conjecture anyway and the fluff is one of those things they leave up to us to make up our own minds about. So since I have nothing more to add I will just bow out and say in my version of the fluff the Tyranid fleets are much larger than what you guys are thinking

The Imperium has demonstrated that they follow the natural laws of physics in most cases where such things matter.

Siding with pretty much all of what Loki has said in here, had a huge quote for quote spiel copy/pasted but....well thanks Loki.

However, I also agree that a lot of the Nid fluff whilst intriguing, is still not complete and "teases" in a way of what is to come (or not perhaps).

My view for years though, is still that, what Nids have been seen thusfar are but a shadow - pardon the pun - of things to come.

And no, they are not running from something even nastier imho.

I want GW to release the something nastier race. Would they be giant ant eaters? Or perhaps it is that time is circular killed the god emperor and he went to the warp becoming a chaos go and are running away from him and his fanatical chaos cult; the IoM...actually that should be WH50K.

 Psienesis wrote:
Point is, we don't really know what triggered the creation of these creatures, so whether or not it makes the Hive Fleets more than capable of taking on the Milky Way... we really don't know.

We don't know exactly, but using 40k logic we can guess. Tyranids breed creatures when they need to overcome something. A creature like the Carnifex has a single purpose - break a defense line, whether it's with guns or claws. A creature like the Hairophant is the same thing, just using 40k logic - bigger monsters are needed for tougher opponents. Same logic behind Titans. Make it huge, it must be awesomely powerful. They don't use beasts like this for consuming a planet, that's solely down to rippers, and ripper carpets could definitely take care of local fauna.

Using qhat we know of Tyranids - they breed creatures to overcome obstacles, and what we know of how size ties into power in 40k, it's a logical assumption that, having the heirophant before reaching the Milky Way means they needed Heirophants, Carnifexes, and all of their other heavy assault creatures to overcome some seriously beefy defences. There's little chance they needed them to overcome disorganised local planetary fauna.

I wasn't saying having these beasts means they can just waltz through the galaxy. They're meeting tough defenses, and slowing down. What I'm saying is the Tyranids have definitely faced very, very tough defences and overcome them - if they didn't face such defences, they wouldn't have the likes of their heavy assault beasts, and if they didn't overcome them, they wouldn't be here, because they would have been stopped.

So, again, while it doesn't mean they will just walk on through the Milky Way, it does mean they've come across very, very tough defences, and overcome them. The fight the Imperium is putting up is not foreign to them, and they've overcome such a defense in at least one other galaxy.

 FinalAnswer wrote:

a b3ached whal3 wrote:
No, as in orchestrating the fall of the imperium.

Terra falls, the Emperor does as well. Without the Emperor, Chaos and Daemons are free to spill into real space, ensuring the galaxy is fethed, not to mention the defences at Cadia fail, meaning Abaddon can run rampant from the Eye of Terror.

So if the Eldar want to commit suicide by killing the Imperium, sure.

this
if the emperor should die, daemons will spill into realspace and destroy everything, all the factions will eventrually either fall or be driven into hiding, except for the nids, who are no longer drawn to the emperor, the daemons, and maybe the orks if ghazkull is strong enough to unite the ork kind

Welcome to Dakka, Harry, but I'm afraid this thread is a bit old...