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This thread wins one free internet.

Does that mean you will pay my internet bills for a month?

Solly wrote:

Emperors Faithful wrote:Right now I'm just imagining the GW writers smoking pot. Suddenly one stands up and says doppily: "Hey guys, you know what would be cool? If the nids ate like, I dunno, 600 defiliers in, like, 2 hours!"

Then the other guy suddenly wakes from his drug induced stipor and says:
"What!!!! That'd never happen, not to the IW, sure they're the best in the entire galaxy.."
The next day he got sacked and they printed the story anyway..

Yay, new sig.

Orkeosaurus wrote:
::EDIT:: OH GOD THE TEXT WALL

Well done good sir. The world of 40k summed up nicely.

To the OP, I have to agree. The IG and SW codex didn't have the same flavor of "we are the winner!" as the bugs did. Sure the SW focus on SW victories and awesomeness but there is a big difference between the level applies to those and the Tyranid codex.

If we are honest about it then GWs biggest demograph is boys aged 10-14 and these kids
suck all that crappy fluff up like it's a sugar flavored sugar based liquid..

Us more mature players have to contend with the crap they bring out purely because we know, IT DIDN'T HAPPEN!!
IW wouldn't get beat and the fluff in the codex is just the hive mind pretending that it's stronger than it really is!!

Don't believe it citizens of the warp.. It's is all lies, your Lord Khorne demands it or your skull..

MIKEtheMERCILESS wrote:Now, I really like the fluff of the codicies- I normally thoroughly enjoy reading through each one to really get a flavour for the character of the race, and just generally find it fasinating reading about them in the 40k universe. However, this codex, quite frankly, had me cringing. I'm not saying it wasn't well written, or didn't make sence - the best way to describe my thoughts on it would be to give the analogy of the kid on the playground who, when he gets "shot" by his friend during a game of Cowboys and Indians, informs everyone that he is impervious to bullets as he is "wearing Class IV Wizard Armour". Lets see what I mean...

Tyranid : Hey guys, did I mention how we're the best? I mean there's gazallions of us!!
Marine : Yeah, that's true - but common, we're Gods of War... we're really awesome at battlefield tactics, so at least we can outsmart you!
Tyranid : Oh yeah? Well... we have this dude which is a TACTICAL GENIOUS and is better than even your smartest man and I'll even write a story about how he outsmarted him and than kicked his ass!
Eldar : Right, but look at us, I mean, common - we're a race of ninjas!
Tyranid : Oh yeah? Well... we have this dude which eats your souls of your craftworld and then becomes a SUPER SAIN PSYCHIC NINJA and kills everyone in your craftworld and eats their souls so they're extra dead!
Orks : Whatever, we can handle you - we're pretty numerous too ya know, plus we have spores and stuff to multiply right then and there - you need to devour a plannet to get your numbers back!
Tyranid : Oh yeah? Well... we only need a few dudes on a planet and we make these secret spawning pool thingies so can multiply even FASTER, and we're smarter and have loads of assasins to take out your big bosses!
IG : Yeah yeah, I know, you're tougher than us, blah blah blah - but at least we have warp travel, you take AGES to go from plannet to planet, at least we have plenty of time to get our fleets ready and bolster our defenses...
Tyranid : Oh yeah? Well... we have this space pod dude which like uses gravity and magic and pulls our fleet towards your planet REALLY REALLY fast, and it also causes loads of earthquakes on the planet we're after!
Tau : What about us? Ok, we're small - but even our basic troops have awsome guns and we adapt really fast!
Tyranid : Oh yeah? Well... our dudes adapt even faster! And we can evolve magic armour that makes us invinsible to your awesome weapons, and can go invisible!
Dark Eldar What about us?
Tyranid : lol no.

I honestly believe the only reason there isn't anything in the fluff that mentions Tyranids eating Necron metal and the Shadow in the Warp blocking Chaos from their gods was because they ran out of room. Anyone else feel the same way?

You have an excellent point. I grow weary of the every race if gloom and doom uber killy. This codex reaches beyond even the Necron codex. In essence nothing can stop us, we have no weaknesses. Its like GW quit looking for rules weaknesses and focused on fluff weaknesses in the Nids.

^ - Secretly a Lictor?

MIKEtheMERCILESS wrote:
Tyranid : Oh yeah? Well... we have this dude which eats your souls of your craftworld and then becomes a SUPER SAIN PSYCHIC NINJA and kills everyone in your craftworld and eats their souls so they're extra dead!

This is a little OT, but I just got a very disturbing image of an anime Zoanthrope with grossly disproportionate body parts in mid jump wearing a bandana and Gundam stye armour, with white cartoony stars, and the words "Mega Super Sian Battle nid power up" being said alongside it.

I'm not mad in the slightest *Twitches*....

Little lord Fauntleroy wrote:I'm not mad in the slightest *Twitches*....

There are two gentlemen in white coats at the door asking for you. Two very BIG gentlemen...

To be fair, the nid beats Marneus story is a hold over from the days of RT, back when Ultrasmurfs had a flaw. This flaw was hubris. MC basically ran up to hive fleet behemoth and said "We're the Ultra Marines biznich! Prepare to die! LEEROY JENKINS!!!" and chages the hive fleet by himself. The galaxy facepalmed and the smurfs were decimated.

sniperjolly wrote:To be fair, the nid beats Marneus story is a hold over from the days of RT, back when Ultrasmurfs had a flaw. This flaw was hubris. MC basically ran up to hive fleet behemoth and said "We're the Ultra Marines biznich! Prepare to die! LEEROY JENKINS!!!" and chages the hive fleet by himself. The galaxy facepalmed and the smurfs were decimated.

Godammit. God damn you Leroy.

@op: So very true!

The Tyranid codex seems to lose it in the final stages of unit description. A Mawloc can "feel" the heartbeat of a man on the surface. Suuuure. And if a tank happens to drive by, the little ears of the mawloc sadly fall off... Zoanthropes combining their brainpower (cue image of a group of zoanthropes in suits with wine and cigars in chairs around a fireplace) would come up with terrible, terrible ideas. Suuuure, the Hive mind itself is too dumb for that.

Greets
Schepp himself

Schepp himself wrote:Zoanthropes combining their brainpower (cue image of a group of zoanthropes in suits with wine and cigars in chairs around a fireplace) would come up with terrible, terrible ideas.

So they're the ones that came up with Pyrovores?

ph34r wrote:
Lexicanum describes it as:

Forgefane boasted some of the most formidable defenses ever seen; massive citadels and bastions covered the landscape; each protected by miles of trenches, mine fields and razorwire as well as void shields and vast quantities of ordinance. The planet also garrisoned an entire Grand Company of Iron Warriors; titans and Defilers.

The Fall of Forgefane

Forgefane's defenses were more than adequate to stop the initial Tyranid landings, with the defenses even stopping multiple assaults by Bio-Titans; Gargoyles and Harridans. It wasn't until the Hive Fleet launched attacks from beneath the fortress, using Trygons to tunnel into the fortresses that the fall truly began. These underground assaults broke supply lines and isolated defenses, even managing to annihilate over 600 Defilers in a couple of hours. Shortly after, the fortress World fell.

Is the entire fluff writing and editorial staff at GW high?

A couple of borrowing Trygons destroyed 600 Defilers in a couple of hours?! They disrupted and isolated a Great Company of the most single most experienced, disciplined, cohesive Chaos Legion, FAMED for their speciality at siege warfare, by BURROWING A COUPLE OF TRYGONS INTO THEIR FORTRESSES?! WHICH DIDN'T THEN IMMEDIATELY DIE FROM BEING CHARGED BY 600 DEFILERS WHO GET 3200 ATTACKS ON THE CHARGE?!?!?!

Are you insanne?

I can't believe the GW writing staff managed to produce something more nerdrage inducing than Calgar one-punching an Avatar...

MIKEtheMERCILESS wrote:40k has always had a delicate balance between the races where each one had strengths and weaknesses

It the what now?

The 40K codex fluff I've read has been about the completely, ridiculously awesome army in this codex trashing whoever is unfortunate enough to not be the star of this codex. 40K as a whole is really just about who's more awesome than everyone else, and with each new codex the answer flips to the new guy.

I would put to you that the Orks only THOUGHT that they were more awesome...

@Amplified: Not a "couple" Trygons. loads of Trygons. They just kept pumping 'em out, as long as they needed to, because they can do that. The actual article says "thousands and thousands".

As for the IW not covering their bottom...
Who in their right mind digs into a fortress full of Chaos Space Marines? Heck, most the time it wasn't effective even in the real world.

nintendoeats wrote:I would put to you that the Orks only THOUGHT that they were more awesome...

But that codex still contained stories full of characters who were so totally awesome they totally killed this massive big bad guy in a totally awesome way. I can't remember a codex that didn't include the same.

First, @ MiketheMerciless: Sir, I salute you! I shed tears laughing Great idea, could you do more of that?

Second: I think, and it might just be me here but, about the only army that doesn't get all the ub4r fluff crimes is the Imperial Guard.
These are basically the princess in distress, ready to be saved by the SpezzMarinnzzzz from whatever the lazy minds of GW came up with. On one hand, every army deserves some story showing they're not completely garbagge. On the other hand: GW please, please pretty please with sprinkles, don't write stuff like little Timmy would after hearing his army was good and has some named characters... Really, it's like bad fanfiction (redundant, I know).

Amplified wrote:

ph34r wrote:
Lexicanum describes it as:

Forgefane boasted some of the most formidable defenses ever seen; massive citadels and bastions covered the landscape; each protected by miles of trenches, mine fields and razorwire as well as void shields and vast quantities of ordinance. The planet also garrisoned an entire Grand Company of Iron Warriors; titans and Defilers.

The Fall of Forgefane

Forgefane's defenses were more than adequate to stop the initial Tyranid landings, with the defenses even stopping multiple assaults by Bio-Titans; Gargoyles and Harridans. It wasn't until the Hive Fleet launched attacks from beneath the fortress, using Trygons to tunnel into the fortresses that the fall truly began. These underground assaults broke supply lines and isolated defenses, even managing to annihilate over 600 Defilers in a couple of hours. Shortly after, the fortress World fell.

Is the entire fluff writing and editorial staff at GW high?

A couple of borrowing Trygons destroyed 600 Defilers in a couple of hours?! They disrupted and isolated a Great Company of the most single most experienced, disciplined, cohesive Chaos Legion, FAMED for their speciality at siege warfare, by BURROWING A COUPLE OF TRYGONS INTO THEIR FORTRESSES?! WHICH DIDN'T THEN IMMEDIATELY DIE FROM BEING CHARGED BY 600 DEFILERS WHO GET 3200 ATTACKS ON THE CHARGE?!?!?!

Are you insanne?

I can't believe the GW writing staff managed to produce something more nerdrage inducing than Calgar one-punching an Avatar...

I really don't mean to step on anyone's toes, but I feel this has gotten a little out of focus. What I mean is a Trygon if it were able to be played like a Mawloc like the fluff suggests, it can emerge and submerge at will. And considering they're a massive monstrous creature, wouldn't you think that the tunnels they make would be just as large? And if they're Trygon Primes, being able to act outside of the Hive Mind's will with sentient thought, then why wouldn't they tunnel under-neathe the unsuspecting battalions of tanks and marines and sink them into massive sink holes? And if during the confusion of watching other marines and tanks just sink into pits could they not pop up and start finishing the rest of the legions? Doing hit and run style tactics, popping up taking a few out and then submerging again. Not to mention if they co-ordinated their attacks together so that they all came out at once and not one at a time, wouldn't that just be devastating.? Granted the recounting of the story in the Codex isn't really clear nor detailed in how they were destroyed. But honestly, if they were primes and used the slightest amount of tactics and can actually do what the fluff says they can, I don't doubt a night raid of trygons taking out a bastion of troops isn't out of the question. Not to mention, you're assuming the Hive Mind would stop dropping other stuff on planet for the defenders to deal with, you think they just dropped the trygons and stopped? How, un-Tyranid way to think, imo. But like I said the text isn't all furth coming with all information or detail.

So if they're only up for a mere matter of seconds how do you charge that? Can't charge a submerged target.

Yes, I know there aren't rules for the game that say a they (Tyranids) can entrench a tank or unit in a tunnel made by the Trygon/Mawloc. But that would be quite hard to rule write without something getting complicated/convoluded. But if you take it in a fluff stand point, I could totally see them using that as a tactic.

What I'm trying to point out is there are alot of tactics/ideas/strategies that can be done in fluff that just doesn't transfer to the table top game either very well or at all. Entrenching troops/vehicles in underground tunnels is one of them, I'm sure there are countless others that many could point out.

Anyways, just my thoughts.

Peace~

So baisically the 'nids won by outnumbering the IWs 4-1with trygons. I'll buy that.

Orkeosaurus wrote:So they're the ones that came up with Pyrovores?

That explains it! Robbin Cruddance is a Zoanthrope!

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Orkeosaurus wrote:So they're the ones that came up with Pyrovores?

That explains it! Robbin Cruddance is a Zoanthrope!

Maybe. That at least explains how he is able to design a more or less balanced codex without any playtesting (let's be honest here, Gw don't), what would then make pyrovores some kind of perils of the warp attack...

Greets
Schepp himself

Thats funy. Everyone seem impressed by the Tyrranids potential revealed in the new codex, but i got the exact opposite feeling. I found the new codex revealing a lot of Tyrranids weaknesses, and how they are incredibly inneficient.

See, im a biochemist, and i am taken deeply by WH40K fluff. I spent a lot of time thinking about how the Tyrranids could potentially work. And as long as you are willing to get over a few rules of biology and accept a bit of the fluff, allright, it could make sece. I am fighting very hard against myself right now not to post a wall of text on Tyrranids Biomass economy

But even tho GW DOES tend to give that ''we are the best'' feeling in every Codex, the defeat of an entire company of Iron Warriors and 600 defilers make complete sence to me. It is an unsung battle, that was described pretty poorly in the Codex, but no doubt the result could not have been different. I think you are takingthings out of perspective:

1- Tyrranids have NEVER been beaten on the ground. Not with their fleet orbiting the planet. Nobody even came CLOSE. Usually, the invasion escalate from little soft things (like gaunts) to big things (like Carifexes and Titans) relativly slowly, so it always go well at first. I explain this by the principle that big Tyrranids creatures must be made of extremly dense armor and living structure. Those are not only extremly expansive to create (in wasted energy), but they are so stable that an even greater amount of energy must be spent to break it apart and reabsorb them. Basically, a gaunt corpse or a living gaunt get reabsorbed the same way at the end of an invasion, so they are completly expandable. A BioTitan is pretty much a lost expense, even if it survive. From memory, the only other time that a planet was able to hold out untill the bio titans came out en masse was Gryfonne IV, and they swiflty got overrun at that point. In comparison, the Iron Warriors held not only up to the escalation to Bio-Titans, but got past that without breaking a sweat. And even with their forteresses lost, they werent overrun untill they ran out of supplies. That seem pretty impressive to me.

2- Ultramarines did NOT beat the ground Tyrranids invasion. They didnt even FACE a full scale Tyrranids invasion.

First of, Calgar was warned months, perhaps even YEARS of the impending tyrranid attack by inquisitor Kryptman. And he used that time to assemble the biggest defensive force possible. You dont hear much about their role as Adeptus Astartes are as skilled in grabbing credit as in fighting, but there was most of Ultima Segmentum Fleet defending the planet, AND all of the ultramarines battle barges and cruisers, as well as the planetary defence force fleet, the space battle stations, every merchant ship that could be fitted with a weapon and no doubt (judging from the time he had to pepare), other space marines chapters. On top of that, he also requisitionned the help of Segmentum Tempestus Battlefleet! Judging from the distance that sepparate Maccrage from Bakka, it must have taken them 3 month just to make the trip. Thats almost 30% of the complete imperial fleet right there, its probably as much as what was sent to Cadia to counter Abbadon and the chaos from ALL origins.

The battle for Maccrage was in space, and it is in space that they were defeated. Landing on the planet were only the spores that got past the friendly fleet in orbit, wich is not most of them, and they were unsupported as the Tyrranid fleet was in combat. To face them was not ''100 Ultramarines in a cave'', it was the whole chapter and, judging from the ''but not eough to support the auxilliairies wich made up most of his force'' passage, i'd say it mean that there was a trashload of imperial guards defending the place, with superheavies and everything. Even then, they lost. They only had to fight off the scraps that fell from the space battle waves and they had months of warning, the full chapters and a trashload of IG to support and not only did they fail to repel the invaders but they didnt even hold out long enough for the space battle to conclude, exeption made of a handfull of survivors in the south pole.

No doubt that the Iron Warriors, full company or not, could not hope to win against the same odds taken by surprise, with no space support whatsoever and no renforcements. Even then, they fared better.

You make a good point, and it WOULD be ridiculous to claim to defeat an entire hive fleet on the ground, but even you have to admit this was a shameless use of fluff to promote Trygons in an attempt to sell more. If it wasn't written so flippantly, then I might not be so ready to regard it as the equivalent of bad fan-fiction.

All that aside...600 defilers? 600?!? C'mon, the logistics of that alone are non-sensical. This warmachines are supposed to be at least relatively rare. But in this case we have more than 1 for every 2 IW foot soldiers.

The whole concept of the Tyranids makes no logical sense unless they are a deliberately engineered bio terror weapon for use against interstellar empires and they have gone out of control.

Acquiring biomass is easy. Space is full of organic compounds which can be scooped up for free and reprocessed into any conceivable biologically necessary molecule. It's much easier to do this than land on planets, convert biomass to gruel and shoot it back up into orbit.

Tyranids don't need to harvest genes from target species. It's a stupid idea for two reasons: (1) it wouldn't work as the genes would usually be incompatible with Tyranid genes, (2) they are masters of genetic engineering and can design their own new genes easily enough.

If you want to eliminate an enemy planet, and you are in space and have a fantastic command of genetic engineering, you would simply engineer a virus which turns all life on the planet into slurry, and drop it into the atmosphere.

As you can see, the whole idea of invading a planet and eating its inhabitants with horrific monsters only makes any sense if you want to spread terror among an interstellar population.

Since the Tyranids came from a different galaxy, the obvious conclusion is that someone in the other galaxy created them as a weapon, they got out of control and eliminated all life in the first galaxy then emigrated to ours.

Ah...this was a fun thread to read.

@Kilkrazy: Presumeably the ability to fly through space came late in the Nids evolution. This means that for billions of years they had to feed their cycle through eating everything they encountered. They simply lucked out and developed space flight before they consumed all of the resources on their planet.

So eating everything is their natural way of consuming biomass, and their current strategy could be a hangover fromt hat.

Now how the Nids could have evolved at first is another story...I mean, they do seem specificly designed for weaponisation. Hmm, I would be more intrigued if it weren't fiction.

The thing is, the Nids behave pretty much like a crack addict in search of his next fix. In doing so, they ignore the most stable and efficient energy source around, in favor of a ridiculously agressive and non-sustainable approach that rely solely on their capacity to find and conquer new planets. They would probably have gone extinct, would it not be for their great abilities to conquer said planets. Wich make me think also that there is some bio engineering behind that, but it COULD have evolved naturally, its not impossible. :(

There is two things Nids need to live. And they both get it trough Biomass. First is Biomaterials. Carbon, Water, Calcium, basic building bricks. This is easy to obtain, and it can be recycled, but still they limit themselves by ignoring metal and dense materials.

The second is energy, and that one is much harder to get. Normally, the biggest sustainable source of energy for everyone is the sun. Fields of Crops and Plankton act pretty much as solar pannels, gathering the sun energy and storing it under a form that herbivores and carnivores can consume. But even if we eat them, the seeds remain so they can grow back. Even the Orks use the sun energy, they can do photosynthesis. The Nids, however, dont do any of that. They dont even create biomass themselves. They just arrive, eat the crops, eat the seeds, take the earth and the water needed for them to grow again and transform the planet in a barren rock.

That may give them a big boost of energy, but its a non sustainable, one shot thing.

And then, they have to spend a lot of that energy to move those trillions of tons of materials across space. Their interstellar travel may be efficient-ish, but regular propulsion cost a lot, based on weight. And carrying all your building materials, your factories, your ground troops, pretty much your whole race in space is costly.

Eventually, the size of the Tyrranid race is going to ''cap''. This will happen when the combined cost of moving your mass (of the whole specie) to a new galaxy, moving trough it and conquering it eguals the energy you collect from eating all the biomass of said galaxy. This may aldredy have happened, who knows how many Galaxies were attacked by the Tyrannids before. I did the calculation for fun (with a large bonus to the Tyranids for their supernatural efficient abilities found in the fluff), and i got to (very approximatly) between 1 000 000 (at best) and 1000 (at worst) Hive Fleets the size of Hive Fleet Behemoth.

So eventually we will wind up with a massive fleet of Nids just kind of floating in space, trapped by a completely foreseeable flaw in their very method of existence?

ORK ROK STRIKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!