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yevix wrote:Guys which ever way you play it unless nids are getting some kind of personality for each fleet, they are a boring race, they have no great fluff, they seem like cannon fodder for all the other races, they have no goal or plan and their current plan is stupid (eat everything, how original), they have no heroes no special characters and this is just a small list of things.

Just think about it in long term, what happens if nids do win and eat everything what then? will the nids start fighting each other, unless they have some sorts of personality the nids wont ever fight each other (why would you attack yourself)

ps - when I say personality I don't mean each fleet is a different person its still the hive mind but more crazy, imagine the borg from star trek but they have no queen mind or head mind ,they are always fighting for the leaders spot so each fleet is like a different part of the hive mind.

For gods sake the original Nids had slaves in previous editions.

Even chaos has at least a goal, turn the material worlds into chaos worlds.....nids are just "yea lets just kill everything and see what happens" even typical locust swarms of earth don't do stupid stuff like that.

Locusts don't have the capacity to consume cities. As for the Tyranids, you're thinking too small-scale. The Local galactic cluster is composed of about 30 or so galactic bodies, and if the new codex is anything to go by, they've eaten about half of them.

Also, what other alien species in any work of fiction has had the overall goal be "eat everything"? Also, the Tyranids goal is not "eat everything and see what happens," it is perpetuating their species, which in turn means they need to eat more, and so on. It becomes a vicious cycle. What happens when the Tyranids consume the galaxy? They go to the next one and do the same thing. This isn't the first galaxy they've eaten, and unless the Emperor comes back from the dead, there's a fair chance it won't be the last.

I've always thought of the Tyranids as either a bio-weapon that got extremely out-of-control or an ancient alien menace that began as something else but over time, for some reason, changed into the tyranids. I like the first option more, and it's the one I'm rolling with.

yevix wrote:Guys which ever way you play it unless nids are getting some kind of personality for each fleet, they are a boring race, they have no great fluff, they seem like cannon fodder for all the other races, they have no goal or plan and their current plan is stupid (eat everything, how original), they have no heroes no special characters and this is just a small list of things.

Just think about it in long term, what happens if nids do win and eat everything what then? will the nids start fighting each other, unless they have some sorts of personality the nids wont ever fight each other (why would you attack yourself)

ps - when I say personality I don't mean each fleet is a different person its still the hive mind but more crazy, imagine the borg from star trek but they have no queen mind or head mind ,they are always fighting for the leaders spot so each fleet is like a different part of the hive mind.

Actually, what happens in the long term is that the Tyranid swarm moves on to another galaxy with life in it. The Milky Way isn't the first one they've been to, you know. As it takes them ages to move between galaxies as well, this means that eventually the galaxies they've been to already will recover, and so the cycle begins anew.
In addition, the Tyranids have been shown to attack each other in acts of cannibalism, in order for the strongest fleet to survive, so your point about them needing personality to do that is invalid.

For gods sake the original Nids had slaves in previous editions.

The Zoats sucked, and I'm glad they're gone. Also, it's been retconned that those were actually just another form of Tyranid.

Even chaos has at least a goal, turn the material worlds into chaos worlds.....nids are just "yea lets just kill everything and see what happens" even typical locust swarms of earth don't do stupid stuff like that.

That's not the Tyranid motive at all, and you clearly haven't been reading the previous posts. The goal of the Tyranids isn't even to eat so much as it is to evolve, to become even better than they already are.
You might argue "Oh, that's not a motive," but at the end of the day, that's the essence of what life is all about; the Tyranids pretty much embody this trait.
Also, if anything, Chaos is the faction with no goal, as if it were to ever complete it's ultimate aim it would cease to be Chaos and thus cease to exist.

yevix wrote:Guys which ever way you play it unless nids are getting some kind of personality for each fleet, they are a boring race, they have no great fluff, they seem like cannon fodder for all the other races, they have no goal or plan and their current plan is stupid (eat everything, how original), they have no heroes no special characters and this is just a small list of things.

So... you don't like the fluff.

That doesn't make it bad, it just means you don't like the fluff for them. Nothing wrong with that at all. But it doesn't mean the fluff needs to be changed.

yevix wrote:Just think about it in long term, what happens if nids do win and eat everything what then? will the nids start fighting each other, unless they have some sorts of personality the nids wont ever fight each other (why would you attack yourself)

'Winning' in 40k, it means devouring our galaxy. That means it's a bunch of barren rocks and they move on. That's utterly terrifying. And that's how Tyranid fluff is meant to be.

yevix wrote:ps - when I say personality I don't mean each fleet is a different person its still the hive mind but more crazy, imagine the borg from star trek but they have no queen mind or head mind ,they are always fighting for the leaders spot so each fleet is like a different part of the hive mind.

So, how would a disparate bunch of random bug fleets chew their way through 12 galaxies before hitting ours, if they were always at each others throats? The key idea behind the fluff goes against them all being separate. The only way they could have accomplished what they're doing is if they're a unified race driven by a single, willful entitiy.

yevix wrote:For gods sake the original Nids had slaves in previous editions.

And they were pretty useless. It basically boiled down to Zoats talking to other races saying 'hey, surrender or they'll kill you. Or don't surrender, and they'll kill you'. Tyranids are better off without the slave race idea.

yevix wrote:Even chaos has at least a goal, turn the material worlds into chaos worlds.....nids are just "yea lets just kill everything and see what happens" even typical locust swarms of earth don't do stupid stuff like that.

And Tyranids have a goal beyond being hungry. Becoming the ultimate predator. They do this by eeating, but to do the eating, they need to continually evolve and get better at killing things. So their goal is twofold, eat and evolve.

Your arguments really just boil down to 'I don't like the fluff'. Not everyone will.

I don't really like the fluff for Tau. That doesn't make me want them to change the fluff for them. I realize there's people that like them, and I personally enjoy fighting them. Reading their fluff is mind numbing, however. But I don't want it changed to suit me, because there's people that do like it. I don't like how they changed the fluff for Necrons either. While I didn't like that Necrons were, essentially, metal Tyranids at the basest level (arrive, wipe out all life, go home, no emotion, no goal) I don't like how it was done, and I feel for Necron players that enjoyed the old fluff.

That said, if GW are going to change the fluff, then they will. No one can say or do much about it. Maybe the Necron backlash gave them pause for thought, maybe it didn't. If they hcange the Tyranid fluff, I'll give it a read and still play the game. But, when you look at Necrons, they had a single codex. GW oviously thought they needed to drastically alter the fluff. Tyranids have been in the game since Rogue Trader, and aside from refining their fluff (like removing slave races), have basically stayed the same. There's a lot of history there, and massive change would be far bigger than the backlash from Necron players was.

Not at all

If the Tyranid got necron'd I would lose all interest in them. The way they are now got me interested In 40k. I love the 'nids. I love how the fluff is written from the beleaguered troops they devour. Knowing they can't surrender and can only fight for so long. Either point ur lasgun down range or into your mouth is as 40k as it gets in my opinion.

Surfers have the traveling quest for the endless summer. Tyranids have the endless buffet.
Tyranids favorite show, Food vs Tyranids

Tyranids theme song. "Nom nom nom nom nom nom.....( goes on endlessly)".

The greatest sin of Tyranid fluff isn't that its incredibly one-dimensional ( a lot of the factions are pretty one-dimensional), but, rather, that the fluff confines you to going down that one-dimensional road.

The beauty of the Newcrons is that the fluff was designed in such a way that you can make your own Necron fluff that basically does whatever it wants. It can be similar to the Newcrons, or ignore the new fluff and be like the old Necrons, for example. All of the factions are flexible like that, except for the Tyranids.

That's a problem, imo. Everyone should be able to have their cake and eat it too.

BlaxicanX wrote:The greatest sin of Tyranid fluff isn't that its incredibly one-dimensional ( a lot of the factions are pretty one-dimensional), but, rather, that the fluff confines you to going down that one-dimensional road.

The beauty of the Newcrons is that the fluff was designed in such a way that you can make your own Necron fluff that basically does whatever it wants. It can be similar to the Newcrons, or ignore the new fluff and be like the old Necrons, for example. All of the factions are flexible like that, except for the Tyranids.

That's a problem, imo. Everyone should be able to have their cake and eat it too.

Well, Tyranids were like the old Necrons before the old Necrons existed.

However, this attitude is pretty selfish. It's basically saying 'I don't like the fluff, it confines me. You people that like the fluff suck, the fluff needs to be how I want it for them to be interesting'.

Tyranid fluff has been roughly the same for over 20 years. Considering they were one of the best selling xeno armies right up until 5th editions abortion of a codex, I'd say a fair amount of people are quite happy with the fluff.

What makes Tyranids unique is they're not like other races. Imagine that? They're unique because they're actually unique? If you don't like it, no one is asking you to. If you want to play them but don't like the fluff, that shouldn't stop you playing them at all.

No, selfish is saying "if you dont like the fluff dont play tyranids", which is my entire point.

The tyranid fluff can be written in such a way that you can do whatever you want with them without blatantly raping the fluff, like with what's been done with the Newcrons. It's not a selfish concept because it benefits EVERYONE, and burdens no one.

BlaxicanX wrote:No, selfish is saying "if you dont like the fluff dont play tyranids", which is my entire point.

No, it's just saying 'it is what it is, accept it or don't'. Selfish is saying 'Hey, all you people who have liked the fluff for 20 years? I don't, it needs to change'.

BlaxicanX wrote:The tyranid fluff can be written in such a way that you can do whatever you want with them without blatantly raping the fluff, like with what's been done with the Newcrons. It's not a selfish concept because it benefits EVERYONE, and burdens no one.

That bolded part? Contradictory. The new Necron codex did in fact destroy the existing fluff for Necrons. It didn't expand it, it rewrote it. And it didn't benefit everyone - there's plenty of hate for that books fluff.

What it did was basically be a book for people who didn't like Necrons. If you want them to keep making books for people who aren't fans of the army, simply because you want it changed, thats selfish.

That said, this tangent is already annoying. I'm going to go paint a Carnifex.

BlaxicanX wrote:No, selfish is saying "if you dont like the fluff dont play tyranids", which is my entire point.

The tyranid fluff can be written in such a way that you can do whatever you want with them without blatantly raping the fluff, like with what's been done with the Newcrons. It's not a selfish concept because it benefits EVERYONE, and burdens no one.

You can have fluff with Tyranids as they are.

Or you can have fluff where the Tyranids have their own personalities, and you can build and individualised army.

But you can't have both. They are, unfortunately, mutually exclusive.

Blax, you're not getting any sex tonight.

The Newcron codex wasn't an expansion of the old codex to allow more variety, it rewrote the old fluff, and basically told all Necrons fans "Yo guys guess what? All that fluff you like? It didn't happen. Deal with it." That isn't to say that the new Necron fluff is necessarily "bad" (Though frankly I believe a lot of it is stupid as feth), but it made them less unique, before the Tyranids and the Necrons were the only truly alien factions in the game, now it is just the Tyranids.

You can say that the Tyranids as a faction need to be "expanded", but frankly, I don't trust Games Workshop to try that without butchering what is there. And this is coming from someone who isn't even really a Tyranid fan.

This "I don't like this army change their fluff" mindset is bs, honestly.

BlaxicanX wrote:The tyranid fluff can be written in such a way that you can do whatever you want with them without blatantly raping the fluff,

How do you do that without changing a core principle of the Tyranid race though; that their entire race creates and is governed by a single Hive Mind?

As was said earlier, what would people think if a bunch of Hive Tyrants all rebelled against the HIve Mind and broke the Tyranids up into mini-empires. One still tries to eat everything, another collects things, another acts as mercenaries, another is "defective" in its psychic control and eats other Tyranids, another is known to be dishonorable and does not keep his word.

Yeah, that'd be great....And it demonstrates what went wrong with the Necrons. This argument that "your Tomb World could still be threatening and like the Oldcrons" is silly as from a fluff perspective it isn't the same. It's just a localized threat in that case, not a galactic one. The equivalent of an Ork Waaagh! or CSM warband. It is too orientated to army design, not the universe and setting as a whole (which fluff should be focused on).

Interesting. I really don't see that, but, eh. To each their own.

McNinja wrote:I've always thought of the Tyranids as either a bio-weapon that got extremely out-of-control or an ancient alien menace that began as something else but over time, for some reason, changed into the tyranids. I like the first option more, and it's the one I'm rolling with.

Considering they might come, if I'm not mistaken, from so far as another galactic cluster, we will never get to know... But I love the idea of them being a bio-weapon that's Gone Horribly Wrong. Or has it Gone Horribly Right ?

BlaxicanX wrote:Interesting. I really don't see that, but, eh. To each their own.

Which brings us right back to the question "How do you make Tyranids individuallly motivated, or even split them into truly independent factions, without conflicting completely with the single guiding Hive Mind concept?"...

Xyptc wrote:

BlaxicanX wrote:Interesting. I really don't see that, but, eh. To each their own.

Which brings us right back to the question "How do you make Tyranids individuallly motivated, or even split them into truly independent factions, without conflicting completely with the single guiding Hive Mind concept?"...

One word: Ward

If they let Ward write the book, at least they might have a powerful list.

Fluff is pretty much a write off these days anyway unless Kelly is writing the book.

Even Kelly really only writes good fluff if he gives a gak about the army.

Compare Dark Eldar to Space Wolves, for example.

Well yeah, but that goes for anyone. Look what Cruddace did to Tyranids.

Phil co-wrote the 4th edition book. I'd be quite happy if they gave him the 6th edition book.

The funny thing is, if a person is really hellbent on an "individual" Hive Fleet, it's not too hard to rationalise it without asking for the whole race to be overhauled.

Ideas off the top of my head:

- Exposure to a particularly brutal Warp Storm and Daemonic incursion have somehow broken the Hive Fleet's ability to communicate with other Tyranid organisms. In essence, they now transmit on another frequency and cannot communicate with other Tyranids easily.

- The Hive Fleet absorbed a large number of Ymgarl Genestealers and, while the mutation is not severe, it is present and for the time being the Hive Mind refuses to allow the fleet to rejoin the main body of the race until the mutation is properly understood. This fleet is able to communicate with other Tyranids and the Hive Mind, but the Hive Mind's over-arching instruction to them is "don't touch anyone else".

- The Hive Fleet is a remnant of the Colossus "Zoat" fleet, and is led by the Zoats. The Zoats use their understanding of Tyranid structures to grow and use lesser organisms, but prevent a significant number of advanced Synapse creatures develop so that a major connection to the Hive Mind is not established. This fleet would be able to communicate with other Tyranids, but works hard to avoid contact for fear of being dominated.

It's the lack of codex writers that makes me feel that maybe, we'd be a bit better off if fluff was more... fan based. I don't like it so much either, but hell.

-Loki- wrote:Well yeah, but that goes for anyone. Look what Cruddace did to Tyranids.

Phil co-wrote the 4th edition book. I'd be quite happy if they gave him the 6th edition book.

Has Cruddace done anything to prove that he actually can write good fluff though?

Void__Dragon wrote:Compare Dark Eldar to Space Wolves, for example.

If memory serves, he has a thing for the Dark Eldar... What's so terrible in the Space Wolves codex ?

I guess they can be boring, but if you don't like em', just use orks.

A thing i haven't quite grasped just yet, is why everything that is being written these days, has to be shaped (or reshaped) to fit certain frames. The fluff in 40k becomes more and more stereotypical, as we have to see heroic individuals on each new page we turn. The whole concept of the alien races, such as we see it with the Necrons and the Tyranids, is that they're ALIEN. We're not MEANT to fully understand them. That's what makes them interesting.

It's too simple and too human to have to make sense of everything. On a pure psychological level, we're frightened by the unknown. By that which we cannot understand or make logic of. That can be said about the Tyranids (and the old Necrons to a certain degree). It's the whole concept of facing something, that cannot be argued with, that you just cannot ignore.

Honestly, i'm getting fed up with countless heroic fluff about how this one Space Marine saved the Imperium and hence the whole universe and on the next page, how this other Space Marine also saved the Imperium and hence the whole universe.
- Fine! We get it. He's a Space Marine. He saves the day. Can we move on now?

Billinator wrote:A thing i haven't quite grasped just yet, is why everything that is being written these days, has to be shaped (or reshaped) to fit certain frames.

Because the current crop of 40k codex writers are terrible. kelly is okay, but Ward and Cruddace are just bad at writing fluff.

Surtur wrote:So all the Hive tyrants up and killed the Hive Mind. Now there's one that likes to collect things, this one's a brony, that one wants to rebuild his empire, this one likes to wear women's clothes...etc

I think I will have to put that in my sig, exactly why I hate the "newcron fluff" More personality isn't better if it makes the army completely rediculous

I love the Tyranid fluff when I first started getting into WH40K. They are the entire reason i bought DOW2, and the reason therefore i got into table top play, despite the fact that I later discovered the Necrons, whom i wished to play.

My take on the Swarmlord/Hive Mind, is one of a Strategic Command, and a Tactical Command. The Hive mind being more responsible for direction the movements of the swarms, whereas the Swarmlord is deployed when general, blanket tactics are not enough, and actual creativity is needed. I always was under the impression that the hive mind didn't "learn" from the experiences of it's swarms until they've been killed/consumed in biomass pools for reclamation. If an invasion against a difficult opponent is making this process impossible, having a general on the ground, able to think on it's own, would be invaluable, along with its extreme psychic abilities/combat prowess/ synaptic domination of all 'nids around it.

That being said, they need to REMAIN the mindless, numberless, largely faceless swarm they are. They DO NOT need to be Zerg-ified (Who were originally BASED on tyranids) They do not need to be given further motivations. In my opinion at least.
(Also lets face the fact that the Zerg would be absolutely WRECKED by Tyranids)
Cheers!