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I have a question, what would happen is a genestealer implanted other, reproducing, tyranids like horms, tervigons, the parasite of mortrex, etc?

I don't think other tyranid beasties actually reproduce. they are spawned at the will of the Hive Mind, so even if a genestealer tried to implant them nothing much would happen.

Flinty wrote:I don't think other tyranid beasties actually reproduce. they are spawned at the will of the Hive Mind, so even if a genestealer tried to implant them nothing much would happen.

What about hormagaunts, who lay eggs. Tervigons, who spawn termagants. The parasite who spews out rippers?
what about them?

Nothing of the sort has ever been written. You'll have to make it up yourself. It's kind of a dumb idea, though.

Absolutely nothing, I would think.
The genestealer ability works because it implants the host's body with tyranid DNA, which gradually turns them into a nid over several generations.
As the hormagants, tervigons and parasites already have nid DNA, there should be no effect.

Also, hormagants lay eggs? Why?

CthuluIsSpy wrote:Also, hormagants lay eggs? Why?

Recent addition with the 5th edition codex. They land, break out of their mycetic spore, lay eggs, and attack. Theoretically, by the time the first wave is dead, the second wave has hatched, laid eggs, and attacked. it creates recycling attack waves of Hormagaunts that the Hive Mind doesn't have to keep reinforcing.

It's actually not a bad decision, and helps some past fluff that didn't work without it (like the Anphelion Project).

-Loki- wrote:

CthuluIsSpy wrote:Also, hormagants lay eggs? Why?

Recent addition with the 5th edition codex. They land, break out of their mycetic spore, lay eggs, and attack. Theoretically, by the time the first wave is dead, the second wave has hatched, laid eggs, and attacked. it creates recycling attack waves of Hormagaunts that the Hive Mind doesn't have to keep reinforcing.

It's actually not a bad decision, and helps some past fluff that didn't work without it (like the Anphelion Project).

That's actually really clever. How long does it take for the 2nd wave to mature and be in fighting condition?

CthuluIsSpy wrote:

-Loki- wrote:

CthuluIsSpy wrote:Also, hormagants lay eggs? Why?

Recent addition with the 5th edition codex. They land, break out of their mycetic spore, lay eggs, and attack. Theoretically, by the time the first wave is dead, the second wave has hatched, laid eggs, and attacked. it creates recycling attack waves of Hormagaunts that the Hive Mind doesn't have to keep reinforcing.

It's actually not a bad decision, and helps some past fluff that didn't work without it (like the Anphelion Project).

That's actually really clever. How long does it take for the 2nd wave to mature and be in fighting condition?

It's not specific. IIRC, it basically just says that by the time the first wave is dead, the second wave is attacking.

The only thing that really irks me is this is the kind of thing that Without Number would have been perfect to represent, but isn't represented at all in the rules. Simply adding that back to Hormagaunts but not Termagants (since they have their reinforcing covered with the clown car) would have been pretty awesome.

Something they don't specify is if they individually lay more than one egg. If they do, it means attack waves get exponentially bigger. 20 break out of a mycetic spore and lay 2 eggs each. Next attack wave is 40. Next is 80. More than 2, and it starts getting ridiculous That would cause all kinds of hell with ammunition levels when trying to deal with Hormagaunt waves.

The problem with the whole egg laying thing is that the organism inside the egg needs to eat something in order to grow big enough to be effective.

Which would mean that something needs to be bringing the new hatchlings a bit of food to munch on.

That said, I find it believable that a group of eggs hatches, eats whatever is lying around and then grows to "adult" size within a day or two...

Although, I'm not entirely sure how this could possibly be better than the fleet just constantly raining the little buggers down.

A wizard did it.

Basically the key to all of 40k fluff.

clively wrote:The problem with the whole egg laying thing is that the organism inside the egg needs to eat something in order to grow big enough to be effective.

Which would mean that something needs to be bringing the new hatchlings a bit of food to munch on.

That said, I find it believable that a group of eggs hatches, eats whatever is lying around and then grows to "adult" size within a day or two...

Although, I'm not entirely sure how this could possibly be better than the fleet just constantly raining the little buggers down.

I thought up a couple of reasonable solutions for this:
Large amounts of in-egg nutrition (Gaunts hit maturity before hatching)
The eggs are layed in clusters, the baby 'nids eat their siblings (not unlike Mantids)
The nids consume surrounding biomass and grow up "big an' strong"

Or they could just eat the egg, you know.
I believe several species of terrestial reptiles already do that.

TheRobotLol wrote:I have a question, what would happen is a genestealer implanted other, reproducing, tyranids like horms, tervigons, the parasite of mortrex, etc?

It would most likely cause the genes of the species to collpase into conflict as you have two versions of tyranids DNA. In laymans terms you get THE THING monster.

Not a clue, I would assume that it wouldn't work, even if two hive fleets were at war and the genestealers implanted restrained gaunts its difficult to see what they would gain. But if they did it, it would create a stealer hybird and eventually more steealers just as if it were a human. But, they only do that to assist them in infiltrating and to produce more tyranids far from the hive fleets. With them, they could simply dissolve all bio-matter as fuel to 'build' more tyranids. Not sure why they would want to 'infiltrate' a hive world. But thats what would happen.

Totalwar1402 wrote:Not sure why they would want to 'infiltrate' a hive world. But thats what would happen.

By hive world you mean a Tyranid world? They don't do that. They eat everything down to the bedrock and move on.

If by hive world you mean an Imperial Hive World, they'd do it to gain a foothold on infiltrating the government in order to, by the time a hive fleet reacts to their psychic beacon, bring down planetary defenses.

I assume he meant a hive fleet. Why genestealers from one fleet would try to infiltrate a second fleet is beyond me.

As for the hormogaunt egg-laying and maturation time, I assume the codex is exaggerating slightly about the second wave being ready by the time the first wave is dead. That's a highly variable amount of time anyway, depending on what the first wave was up against and how far they had to scuttle along to get there. Just for the sake of sanity I'd figure on at least a few days to mature, if not a week.

Biomass wouldn't be a problem though, I would think. They'll eat anything, and there's probably no shortage of topped-off ripper swarms attempting to return to the landing site for processing by the fleet. Just eat the rippers as they come back, that's what they're there for.

I didn't mean this in a particuly realistic or likely sense, just what the hybrids would be and what it would create.

Nobody really knows at all. For all we know, the inbreeding would create some kind of Tyranid Downs Syndrome.

Hormonealers, Geniegons, The Parachute of Perspex, Garnigene etc etc

Pilau Rice wrote:The Parachute of Perspex

You, my friend, win the internet.

I'd guess that it would be the same thing that would happen if you get blood. Nothing would really change, but it might make you better