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Greetings, as a personal contest between 2 mates and I at a FLGS, we are each going to create a homebrewed faction of our favorite race. We each had a gentleman's agreement to review each others ideas, special rules, and custom units before we put them to the table, checks and balances and all that. Two buddies are going to create A Space Marine chapter, and an Eldar Craftworld. . . with me making a Tyranid Hive fleet.

Don't have much fluff drafted for hive fleet Xion as of yet, i intended it to be a very, "cloak and dagger" version of tyranids, with many units sporting Infiltrate and having 'clandestine-like' abilities. Though the basic story is outlined bellow for my first Elite entry.

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Hive fleet Xion Genestealers

Compared to its brethren Behemoth and Leviathan, Xion's hive fleet was small and fleeting and perhaps the unluckiest Tyranid incursion the Galaxy had to face. The planets first attacked by Xion on the far rim possessed little to no biomatter for consumption, and many contained dormant tombs filled with Necrons. Desperate to survive, Xion had to 'force feed' itself the living metal that the Necron's governed. While this offered little to no sustenance for the Hive, it allowed Xion to press on to a few scattered Eldar enclaves where Xion began using tactics similar to those employed by traditional Genestealer broods, with a few modifications. Genestealer cults where made to be significantly more adaptive, more intelligent than that of other hive fleets. After several battles Eldar colonies, Xion's Genestealers were able to completely assume the form of basic Eldar infantry, turning the once-disciplined Eldar, into a mass orgy of confusion and errant shurikens. Eldar Guardians fired on Dire Avengers, Banshees were forced to cut down their own, Warlocks struggled to find the impostors with the Shadow of the Warp looming over them, and Exarchs slew their brethren out of paranoia. Within Hours, 50 well-placed genestealers, caused enough chaos to bring the Eldar to their ensure their fall, long before the Mycetic Spores fell upon their colonies.

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Elites
Xion Genestealer Brood

Cost: 35 + X pts
Composition: 5-20 Genestealer

WS BS S T W I A LD SV
--6---X--4-4--2-6-2-10-X

Weapons and biomorphs
Variable, see below

Special rules:
Brood Telepathy, Experimental Bioform, Fleet, Move through cover, Infiltrators, Doppelgangers, "What Are You Doing!?"

Experimental Bioform
Hivefleet Xion's reasources are still low compared to that of other hive-fleets. As such, Xion can only sustain a set number of Genestealers due to their demanding cost.

Only one unit of Xion Genestealers may be taken in any army. In addition, normal Genestealer broods may not be employed when


Doppelgangers
Xion's Genestealers have perfected the ability to pass among its prey without detection. While this takes an extensive amount of time to completely transform, they can make absolutely flawless copies of their targets.

Xion's Genestealers may be ANY Organic model (no necrons) model from ANY army with the "Infantry" rule. The cost for the normal model is added to the "base" cost of a Xion Genestealer. They can have all the options alloted to them by whatever model they are imitating, with the exception of dedicated transports. The Genestealers will also have the exact same Armor value and ballistics skill (to represent the knowledge the learned of their targets mannerisms) of whatever model they are copying. For example, Genestealers could choose to be Eldar Dire Avengers, They would posses the dire avenger's armor (which grants a 4+ save), they would be equipped with an Avenger Suriken Catapult, they could not take a wave serpent for transport (but may take a Mycetic Spore) and would cost 37 points a model (up to 20 models total) and could take an exarch with whatever powers and war-gear the player chooses. Genestealers can not imitate Tyranid from rival hivefleets, Psyckers, independent characters (such as Emporer's Champions, and Autarchs), or unique characters (such as Calgar or Eldrad), as having more than one of a Space marine chapter master, for example, would quickly lead to discovery.

"What Are You Doing!?"
At the start of the game, roll a D6 for every unit of infantry your opponent has. On a roll of 5 or 6 that unit was infiltrated by Xion Genestealers before the battle, and D3 of the models are Doppelgangers, your opponent will still play with them as normal, as neither side can be sure which is friend or foe at the last moment. During any Tyranid turn after the 1st the Tyranid player may elect to attack its own "unit". Roll a D6 for every attacking Doppelganger, on a roll of 1, the genestealer was discovered long before the troops marched on the feild (nothing happens). On a roll of 2, the model was killed before it could complete its task (opponent chooses which model to remove from the unit). On a 3, 4, or 5 the Genestealer was able to take down one other enemy before getting gunned down (opponent must remove two models of his/her choice for every 3, 4, or 5 rolled). On a Roll of 6 the Genestealer killed its intended target (but is also killed), the Tyranid player may select 1 model that was in the unit to be removed, this includes joined independent characters! Note that this isn't a Close Combat attack, it could have been carried out in any manner possible (be it somebody's power fist, an anointed weapon, or an improvised bomb) so invulnerable saves do not apply against it. Model's with the "Eternal Warrior" special rule instead would just take 1 wound with no saves possible.

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Even for its cost, i'm stongly leaning towards taking the Doppelganger ability down to just Troop Choices

Fluff is so off so I stopped reading after this

The planets first attacked by Xion on the far rim possessed little to no biomatter for consumption, and many contained dormant tombs filled with Necrons. Desperate to survive, Xion had to 'force feed' itself the living metal that the Necron's governed.

Tyranids have always stayed far away from tomb worlds; the hivemind is messed up near them
and as such they have never obtained any necron living metal + the 'cron's would just phase out.

Yeah Necrons part really stopped me.

I skipped the fluff and noticed the paragraphs for individual rules and that is where I stopped. Being simple, I love things to be similarly so...

The whole "Tyranids avoid Necron worlds" thing has really been blown out of proportion and a whole host of extra 'facts' have been added by people over the years, and are now taken as gospel.

The Tyranids avoided an area of space containing the Necron "dyson sphere" (likely to contain the Outsider). That is pretty much it.

All of this "Necron Tomb Worlds mess up the Hive Mind" is infectious fan-fiction.



Indeed, Tyranids do consume more of worlds than just organic matter (the take the oceans, the atmosphere, huge quantities of minerals etc), and in theory they could take the Necrons' Living Metal. That said, as stated above the Necrons tend to phase their technology out and, in all likelihood the "living" aspects of their technology would be undone if any of it did somehow end up in a Reclamation Pool.

Necron worlds are also generally speaking not very appealing in terms of reward for effort, and the homing beacons sent out by vanguard forces of Lictors, Genestealers etc are not going to be as strong as the ones coming from well-populated worlds.

On the whole, Tyranid vs Necron is not well documented by GW fluff, so there is a) room for your own ideas but b) a strong argument for restraint on this front. Still, outright atttacking someone for daring to push the borders a little is a bit far... especially when the counter-facts are empty.


You know, unless someone can cite a reference for Tyranids generally and consciously avoiding Tomb Worlds... anyone?

Xyptc wrote:The whole "Tyranids avoid Necron worlds" thing has really been blown out of proportion and a whole host of extra 'facts' have been added by people over the years, and are now taken as gospel.

The Tyranids avoided an area of space containing the Necron "dyson sphere" (likely to contain the Outsider). That is pretty much it.

All of this "Necron Tomb Worlds mess up the Hive Mind" is infectious fan-fiction.



Indeed, Tyranids do consume more of worlds than just organic matter (the take the oceans, the atmosphere, huge quantities of minerals etc), and in theory they could take the Necrons' Living Metal. That said, as stated above the Necrons tend to phase their technology out and, in all likelihood the "living" aspects of their technology would be undone if any of it did somehow end up in a Reclamation Pool.

Necron worlds are also generally speaking not very appealing in terms of reward for effort, and the homing beacons sent out by vanguard forces of Lictors, Genestealers etc are not going to be as strong as the ones coming from well-populated worlds.

On the whole, Tyranid vs Necron is not well documented by GW fluff, so there is a) room for your own ideas but b) a strong argument for restraint on this front. Still, outright atttacking someone for daring to push the borders a little is a bit far... especially when the counter-facts are empty.


You know, unless someone can cite a reference for Tyranids generally and consciously avoiding Tomb Worlds... anyone?

There is a map in (either the Necron codex or old or new Tyranid codex) showing the path of numerous Tyranid fleets and how they avoided Necron tomb worlds going round them instead of thorugh them.

purplefood wrote:

Xyptc wrote:The whole "Tyranids avoid Necron worlds" thing has really been blown out of proportion and a whole host of extra 'facts' have been added by people over the years, and are now taken as gospel.

The Tyranids avoided an area of space containing the Necron "dyson sphere" (likely to contain the Outsider). That is pretty much it.

All of this "Necron Tomb Worlds mess up the Hive Mind" is infectious fan-fiction.



Indeed, Tyranids do consume more of worlds than just organic matter (the take the oceans, the atmosphere, huge quantities of minerals etc), and in theory they could take the Necrons' Living Metal. That said, as stated above the Necrons tend to phase their technology out and, in all likelihood the "living" aspects of their technology would be undone if any of it did somehow end up in a Reclamation Pool.

Necron worlds are also generally speaking not very appealing in terms of reward for effort, and the homing beacons sent out by vanguard forces of Lictors, Genestealers etc are not going to be as strong as the ones coming from well-populated worlds.

On the whole, Tyranid vs Necron is not well documented by GW fluff, so there is a) room for your own ideas but b) a strong argument for restraint on this front. Still, outright atttacking someone for daring to push the borders a little is a bit far... especially when the counter-facts are empty.


You know, unless someone can cite a reference for Tyranids generally and consciously avoiding Tomb Worlds... anyone?

There is a map in (either the Necron codex or old or new Tyranid codex) showing the path of numerous Tyranid fleets and how they avoided Necron tomb worlds going round them instead of thorugh them.

\

QFT

The map is in the New Tyranid codex I believe, as I do remember what you're referring too, and after checking my Necron codex it did not appear to be in there.

There are a few more problems with the fluff I might point out.

Only Rippers and Carnifexs and the such ever eat metal.

Necron metal is called living metal for it is decidedly so...

Genestealers would only survive if they had bodies to assimilate, by injecting them with the genestealer egg, I'm not sure if I have the PDF of this on my computer anymore, but Genestealer Cults are the aftermath of these eggs and the later generations of the genestealer/human hybrids. Therefore, if the planets you are referring to are so barren, then they would have died, as Genestealers need food to survive. Plus with your idea of them mutating... only the Hive Ships can create new lifeforms, they don't suddenly change aside from the Ymgarl, and the fluff behind that is that they are still part Human, and that they avoid and do not travel with the Hive Fleets anyway, rendering an argument for a Ygmarl - "Xion" generstealer crossover impossible.

Nice ideas, and very creative.

Personally though the Necron part didn't sit well with me either.

At the end of the Dawn of War: Dark Crusade game, if you beat it as the Necron, you see them walking around and shooting the ground to destroy all aspects of life and Ork spore. So a Tomb World would be of no use to Tyranids, and therefore, more than likely avoided all together. If you wanted to combine Tyranids and Necrons, maybe try and write it as evil mad scientist experiments done by heretic Space Marines or even DE Homunculi.

I do like the Eldar part and the idea of special genestealers that can morph like a Doppelganger once they sample the host's DNA.

purplefood wrote:
There is a map in (either the Necron codex or old or new Tyranid codex) showing the path of numerous Tyranid fleets and how they avoided Necron tomb worlds going round them instead of thorugh them.

The map you are referring to is on what would be pages 64 and 65 (the last page and back inside cover) of the Necron Codex. They show deep-scan imaging of an indientified metal object hanging in deep space, and note that a Tendril of Leviathan is moving around this region, rather than through it. It is not a Tomb World - it is the size of a medium-class star, not a planet. It fits in much closely with the descriptions of the structure that the Outsider is currently lurking inside (an enclosed, bloated star - look up Dyson Sphere on wikipedia). These pages also note that there is strong psychic interference around that region, but do not attribute it to the Shadow in the Warp generated by the Tyranids. It is quite possible that it is an expanded Pariah-effect, which as we know is the C'tan's ultimate goal for 'winning' the war against the Warp, and that the Tyranid concentration in the region is not strong enough to over-power it, so the Tendril is circumventing it.

None of this can be taken as evidence that Tyranids avoid Necron Tomb Worlds in general. The Pariah-effect is not a common feature on all Necron Tomb Worlds, and the C'tan certainly haven't perfected their technology yet (consider the moderate effect of the Cadian Pylons).



Psyker_9er hits upon a much more likely explanation for Tyranids not being all that interested in Necron Tomb Worlds - there is simply not very much biomass there, and so the homing beacons that vanguard organisms such as Lictors generate is going to seem insignificant next to the one coming from the successful Genestealer Cult on a Hive World a couple of systems away.

hmm didnt realize the bit about crons, thank you for the imput everyone, ill need to re-think things now