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Made in us
Fresh-Faced New User




I've been considering starting a Tyranid army, now that I've finished my orks. I'm also a bit hesitant about starting up ANOTHER horde army but they look like fun. That said, the main opponent I go against at the FLGS is a Tyranid player as well. Fluffwise, is there actually anything that would make Tyranid fleets fight one another for the campaign that I will be starting up?

I can't really think of one, and that is making me consider other army options: Eldar and Tau..possibly IG. It would definitely be easier to think of fluffy reasons why they'd be fighting Tyranids.
   
Made in us
Storm Trooper with Maglight





Denver

The Imperium has been known to be successful from time to time in employing biological weapons against the Hive Mind. Usually these seem to focus around killing them.

Of course, there is no reason why some enterprising xenobiology Magos/Kryptman couldn't think of something capable of propelling a Norn Queen & friends to develop an appetite for tasty, tasty Tyranid sweetmeats.

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Made in de
Wrathful Warlord Titan Commander






germany,bavaria

Nids may fall back to a feral state when they couldn't reach their hive mind.Perhaps some splinter fleets just ventured to far and
now act like predators,attacking every eatable bio-ressource.

Target locked,ready to fire



In dedicatio imperatum ultra articulo mortis.

H.B.M.C :
We were wrong. It's not the 40k End Times. It's the Trademarkening.
 
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran







Or the hive mind could be practicing survival of the fittest. Pitting two hive fleets with divergent evolutionary paths against each other to see which one is superior.

Winner gets massed produced, loser is fuel.


   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran







Thought of three more reasons:

First: The hive mind is playing war games to field test its arsenal. Except that the hive mind is indifferent to casualties as it can always scrap up the goo and make them over again.

Second: The tyranids function like cells to the hive mind. In a living body cells that become damaged, deformed, cancerous, and etc are often attacked and destroyed by the body’s immune system. This system has situations where false positives occur and healthy cells are attack. It’s reasonable to speculate that tyranids use similar methods and might possess similar faults as our immune system (allegories, rejecting transplanted organs, destroying healthy cells).

Perhaps the one army ate a chaos planet and it corrupted them, or it incorporated some genes that might cause defects to the tyranid organism (sickle cell), or the sides no longer recognize each other as tyranid. If you’re really want to create a full and dynamic storyline using this method try looking up immunity deficiencies and cellular recognition and translate that over to tyranids.

Third: What if a tyranid fleet ingested genes from lifeforms that had unique psychic abilities. Ingesting the genes would cause a change in the way the tyranids psychically operated (frequency change?). They would effectively have a schism with the hive mind and form their own little hive mind. This scenario mirrors that of the Alien: Genesis comic. For the campaign you could have the Hive Mind (If it is as sentient as suspected) trying desperately to wipe out the upstart Hive Mind before it emerges as a serous threat.

If you are using a different paint scheme my pervious statement about different fleets fighting to determine superiority works fine. If they are painted similarly the first two suggestions of this post works, as they provide a reasonable justification for tyranids from the same fleet to engage in warfare.

The third reason is my favorite for an ongoing campaign. As it creates an opportunity for advancement in story line for two tyranid players and meaningful reason to engage in a war spanning multiple star systems. Imagine tyranids interrupting a planetary digestion performed by another hive and fighting over the spoils like different species of ants fighting over a food source.

Hope this was helpful,
Grunt13


   
Made in us
Monstrous Master Moulder




Sacramento, CA

I'm sure I've read somewhere in the fluff that the different hive fleets are not perfectly compatible. Specifically, surviving elements of Hive Fleet Kraken have been spotted fighting against Hive Fleet Leviathan.

Agitator noster fulminis percussus est 
   
Made in us
Oozing Spawning Vat




US

I think in a white dwarf they addressed the diffrent hive fleets and those variants of hive fleets. Basically it boiled down to a survival of the fittest , the most "impressive" mutations were kept by the hive mind and the weaker mutations were dropped.

I've also played a close friend a few times in a 'nid V 'nid battle and another rules option we adopted was total synapse. If the hive mind is pitting two types of tyranids against one another from high orbit the whole planet was assumed to be under synapse. Made for a really fun game and really changed how units were played.

What I play and have played  
   
Made in us
Uhlan




Meh. A mutant norn-queen in a desperate situation leads to a new sub race of tyrranid cannibals who prefer to attack their own instead of taking on defended worlds. Easy meat n' all.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2008/08/23 08:18:24


 
   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




Swindon, Wiltshire, UK

Ahem page 16 of the tyranid codex

recent reports of the splinterfleets of the known hive fleets turning on eachother in a full-scale cannibalistic war have only been greeted with elation by the short sighted.


i think that answers the question
   
Made in ca
Dakka Veteran




The Hammer

I've busted this analogy out before and had it shouted down before, but just think of the Terran campaign in the original StarCraft expansion set: some scientist (maybe more plausibly Ork or Tau than Imperial) builds a device that casts an EVEN deeper shadow than usual in the warp. The resulting scenario I fear would be just a leelte bit like a Tool video...

When soldiers think, it's called routing. 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut






Scyzantine Empire

What if there's more than one Hive Mind? Splinter hive minds could operate on different "frequencies" so to speak... If you follow the bugs analogy, different communities of insects of the same species frequently attack and canabalize one another. The supporting fluff lays that out pretty well.

What harm can it do to find out? It's a question that left bruises down the centuries, even more than "It can't hurt if I only take one" and "It's all right if you only do it standing up." Terry Pratchett, Making Money

"Can a magician kill a man by magic?" Lord Wellington asked Strange. Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. "I suppose a magician might," he admitted, "but a gentleman never could." Susanna Clarke Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

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Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut







I think it's already been established in the background material that the simplest way for two fragments of a hive fleet to combine is through cannibalism. It's a nice direct version of merger talks and ensures that the most useful genelines are preserved.

I just don't remember if it was a White Dwarf issue, like Blue said, or in one of the books.
   
Made in au
Adolescent Youth with Potential




It's been established in the Tyranid fluff (I believe in the codex itself) that a rogue trader explorer fleet stumbled into a small system with habitable planetoids. Upon investigating, they discovered each planet was infested with aliens who seemed to be warring with each other.
When they've set down to further study the hives, the aliens stopped fighting amongst themselves and turned on the explorers. After relaying their findings to the Imperium, they stranded themselves there (or were forced to) for fear of contamination. They continued to report back their findings at the time until either the batteries in their ship were utterly depleted or they finally succumbed to infestation.

Upon further investigation later on by Bio-Magi of Mars, they determined that this infestation was that of Tyranid vanguard organisms.
So yes - Hive Fleets will war with each other, especially if two different branches descend on the same planet - only the fittest survive, any loses get reabsorbed into the Hive and that strain which is now obviously inferior, is removed.

Remember, the Hive Mind isn't so much of a massive brain controlling the hives like puppets; it's more of a gestalt subconscious of a single colony. It knows what it needs to do, and all members of the colony work together to further and protect the Hive.
   
 
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