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Now I know this discussion has already been done, but I wanted to bring up some points that I think weren't mentioned in the other debate an probably won't even get noticed. The thing with Tyranid vs Ork pairings is that you always have to consider the fact that A. if your including all species against all species, not an equal amount of species vs species, then B. you have to consider the traits that have helped these races survive for so long. Tyranids are the perfect hunters because they leech DNA and store them to be used by the Hive Mind appropriately, acting as one single force rather then a billion individual feral bugs. Also, their repopulation makes it near impossible to defeat Hive Fleets after Hive Fleets simply because even at even numbers, rated based on troop pop, technology, morale, biological advantages, magic, psionic energies, etc, the Fleet reproduces immediately after their former troops have bombarded the region meaning they can benifit severly off of the enemy's loses caused by the previous invasion. C. Now I think this was all mentioned in the previous thread, but here was something I didn't hear or didn't hear much of from the Orks. Basically, a race entirely devouted to war, it's a species made out of fungus and primal animal instincts that compliment eachother. Their primary strength is outnumbering troops aswell, although their regeneration is slower and many tribes are completely divided. As a way to make up for the lack of organization, Ork's have special latent psychic fields that can be accelerated when Orks crowd up together under the warcry "Waagh!". This is where I started seeing what people didn't mention. It was the fact that Orks have become the single most successful species in the main universe of 40k simply because they have had more time to spread their spores, though slower then the Tyranid recooperation, have taken footholds of many worlds because of it. Now back to the question at hand: "which creature, if you could put them all in one planet or one battle field, every last one of them, could win?" Wouldn't all the Tyranids then recooperate much faster to match or surpass the number of Orks then? But then again, it seems that if an Ork Waagh can annihilate entire planets when organized together, then wouldn't a civilization, organized, that is over the sum total of all of the billions of humans in the universe, be able to infuse a much more powerful Waagh?

I'm kind of in favor of the Orkish forces in this department since the Orks would have the most powerful snowball effect of unknown powerlevels ever to be witnessed, which seems that it can fairly easily rip normal Tyranids that only have the advantage of fast births and not the overall advantage of in-field potential energy that the fully matured Orks do if their all crowded together, marching as one. Allow me to explain. The average Tyranid, regardless of it's genetic structure to suit the needs of the Hive Mind will evolve to the situation if need be; some like the 20 foot huge leaders of these swarms have probably reached their evolutionary point and overall peak of their usefulness to the Hive Mind. While these mutations can easily overpower races that cannot compete with any attribute or skill of it's own society or race, the Orks are the only races that have the ability to become massively imbalanced as their troops grow making even the evolutionary scale of the Tyranids almost obsolete if it's based on this scenario. It simply boils down to the fact that Tyranids evolutionary skills falling below the scale of power the Orks have eventually because they have (be it if all the Orks and all the Tyranids were to clash) no ability that allows them to infuse constant psionic energies at a near infinite rate (seeing how the Orks number cannot ever be calculated). Well respectively, the Tyranids cannot be calculated either, but this rating on population is based on how many galaxies each race has gained foothold over. Yes, while I do know the Orks gaining "foothold" doesn't neccessarily mean they overpopulate an entire world given their are entire factions of the Imperium that live on that planet itself, but it is safe to say that their are a suffiecent if not more number of Orks due to the fact they're the most in quantity in the universe then compared to the tendrils of Tyranids inside the universe aswell as the several galaxies already conquered. I think at a certian time even numbers won't count anymore once the Orks have reached the maximum amount of Waagh power needed to make event he Tyranids that have grown hunormously from Ork DNA (Aka Octavious Orks vs Leviathan Fleet encounter) simply because of the powerball method. It won't exactly be like smashing flies on a windshield wiper, but it will be hard for the same production methods of the Tyranids take on a crude, brutish, but constant rate of power that was never meant to be combined altogether with every Ork apart of an organized intergalactic clusterf*ck.

Impossible to read.

Just a quick question - do orks eat?

I know they reproduce during spores & stuff, but I think I've once read a piece of fluff (maybe outdated) that stated that orks need to battle in the same way as humans need water!


I don't know about cannibal orks, but I doubt that.


I think Tyranids would dominate, as they mature way way faster than orks, even if there are more ork "plants" who are independent of external food delivery.

Orks do need to eat, they just eat meat squigs which are born from the same spores.

I can't read this at all. Your paragraphs are far to long.

Also the spores do count as biomass which the nids would eat while they're still growing. However Orks will grow larger the more they fight. So you will see a boom in nobs and warbosses.

FlammingGaunt wrote:Also the spores do count as biomass which the nids would eat while they're still growing. However Orks will grow larger the more they fight. So you will see a boom in nobs and warbosses.

Ah, but the Tyranid gain this DNA trait. There have been much more massive Tyranid noticed by Imperial scouts already.