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Hi Dakka,
I remember times when tyranids used the warp to travel and for the powers of the zoanthropes. I remember when tau ethereals didn't have strange powers too.
This good old time when THE WARP was THE surnatural element of 40k, explaining powers, etc...
When the universe was consistent (except for the C'tan, who are still not really explained).
Don't you miss that ?
Are you annoyed too by these new explanations (or, rather, lack of explanations) ?

Not in the slightest. Having the warp be the answer for everything makes the galaxy feel small and one-note. I like my warp effects interacting with Golden Age of Technology exotic particles, with one in a billion xenos geological formations, and with trans-galactic evolutionary principles. I like that there can be many different explanations and possibilities and alternate and unknown forces at work and that it's not always the extremely lazy, "The Warp Did It" answer.

Take the Legion of the Damned for instance. The old lore said exactly what they were and that it was the warp doing it. The new dataslate introduced six different possible origins, including the original origin and allowed readers to use them as tools for what they wanted to use the LotD for in their army.

The "reason for everything"? I think that's simplifying things down too much, but never mind.

However, on the particular point of the Tyranids, I think the new explanation is worthless - in that it doesn't add anything interesting. Originally, Tyranids travelled in the Warp and channeled it for psychic powers like everyone else. They also had a warp presence, or "soul" like everyone else too - it's just that that presence was the sum total of uncounted trillions of lifeforms, and was so massive it caused the "Shadow In The Warp" as a side effect. That all works, keeps the cosmology reasonably consistent and tells us a couple of things about the nature of the Warp too (primarily that it's universal rather than strictly related to this galaxy).

Now? The special gimmicks they use just introduce more bad cod-science and don't actually change how anything occurs in-story or in-game.

I'm pretty sure Ethereals had strange powers right from the beginning, though.

I agree with jareddm about the Legion of the Damned, though. That adds something to their story, without adding needless extra bits of cosmology (all the various theories boil down to "the Warp did it", but disagree on the details).

Popper would have loved your idea of the warp explaining it all ;_)

I pretty much universally prefer most fluff written before 5th edition. Most 5E and later stuff is either just not interesting, poorly written, or both.

 Vaktathi wrote:
I pretty much universally prefer most fluff written before 5th edition. Most 5E and later stuff is either just not interesting, poorly written, or both.

I agree, however in this instance I don't mind that they changed explanations for certain things so that the warp doesn't explain everything, it's just (as usual) the execution leaves something to be desired.

When I say "everything", I meant every "strange/psychic" stuff, like how the tyranids travelled, how they made their psychics attacks, etc...
Now, the warp, this MAIN element of the background, is just one more thing, and the background lost coherency, I think.
We even have necrons who hide in "pockets dimensions"...

I prefer how the Tyranids work now, having their own sort of Psychic wavelength, since they're from another Galaxy entirely...
It simply conflicts with the warp, creating a shadowing effect that prevents it from being seen/felt easily like an eclipse.

As for Tyranid travelling through the warp, Nah. Slow and purposeful is fine. I mean, it would be amusing to have a whole Hive Fleet suddenly appear on a sector's doorstep and blot out the whole system, but that's just counter to the current fluff. There are usually tons of signs that a Hive Fleet is approaching, growing closer and closer.

For almost everything else, I agree the Warp was a fine source.