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Could triumphs just mean he survives long enough to escape?
That's a triumph.

The story spells out that he killed the Tyranids to a bug. He was last-man-standing on that planet.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kovnik Obama wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Actually, Tyranids can and do attack one another when they lose access to Synapse creatures. The instinctive need to feed overcomes almost all other concerns. It's kill or be killed at that point, so some 'Nids will flee, others will fall upon the closest thing there is to eat, which is always another Tyranid,

Reference, please? The fluff subtext for Feed only state that such organism will scramble to get to the nearest prey and devour it. Nids aren't prey to Nids. It's not even logical, otherwise all the Ripper Larvae each organism carries would immediatly set about eating their hosts.

1) Several points in fluff indicate that two Hive Fleets encountering one another causes a war between these two fleets, until one has devoured the other, assimilated its biomass, and then moves on.

2) Of course Tyranids eat other Tyranids. How do you think they get off a planet once they've devoured it? Ripper Swarms, Warriors and Biotitans can't fly. They gotta go to a Digestion Pool to get rendered down into paste to get sucked back up a capillary tower to the fleet overhead.

3)You think the fleet floats for a few centuries through deep-space with a billion Warriors sitting in the holds of the bio-ships? Nah. Waste of resources, when their biomass is required to fuel the bio-ships enroute to their next destination. Eat all the Rippers, Warriors, Gaunts, Gants, bio-titans and anything else that isn't required for defense of the Hive Fleet, or for moving the Hive Fleet onward, and then spawn them on an as-needed basis if things go awry in transit. Eat them up, yum.

3) When you're really, really, really hungry, anything can be food. Donner party? Your table is waiting... The Tyranids have no other goal other than sating their eternal hunger, their advantage is in numbers, not technology or psychic might. They consume their own dead (and that of the enemy) on the battlefield in order to create the successive waves of bugs that are used to take down a hardened target.

 Psienesis wrote:
1) Several points in fluff indicate that two Hive Fleets encountering one another causes a war between these two fleets, until one has devoured the other, assimilated its biomass, and then moves on.

Those fluff stories do not support your argument, however. Those wars are deliberate attempts by the Hive-Mind to determine which splinter has evolved the best biomorphs, or to consolidate strenght from one lesser splinter to a much more important one. They are fought in controlled situations with minimal biomass loss.

2) Of course Tyranids eat other Tyranids. How do you think they get off a planet once they've devoured it? Ripper Swarms, Warriors and Biotitans can't fly. They gotta go to a Digestion Pool to get rendered down into paste to get sucked back up a capillary tower to the fleet overhead.

That doesn't make Tyranids prey to Tyranids. A prey is a source of nourishment that you obtain through hunting. Nids won't fight one another unless they have a specific command to do so from the Hive Mind. There are several instances of lesser Nid organism being left unconnected to the Hive Mind, only to suddenly re-evolve a higher biomorph capable of such connection. That would be impossible if, as you say, Nids became prey to Nids once the connection is severed.

3)You think the fleet floats for a few centuries through deep-space with a billion Warriors sitting in the holds of the bio-ships? Nah. Waste of resources, when their biomass is required to fuel the bio-ships enroute to their next destination. Eat all the Rippers, Warriors, Gaunts, Gants, bio-titans and anything else that isn't required for defense of the Hive Fleet, or for moving the Hive Fleet onward, and then spawn them on an as-needed basis if things go awry in transit. Eat them up, yum.

As I said above, that doesn't mean that Nids prey on Nids. When Nids launches themselves in a reclamation pool, they do so under express command from the Hive-Mind. When a Nid attack another Nid to consume it, it does so under the express command of the Hive-Mind. It's part of a strategic play to consolidate forces. Nids cannibalizing themselves once the Hive Mind is unable to control them goes against every possible survival strategy. And against what we know of the instinctual behaviours of lesser nids, really. We only know two set of behaviour, both adapted for the purpose of the Hive Mind ; Hide & Harass, and Attack at all cost. Both are currently depicted to target only enemies.

3) When you're really, really, really hungry, anything can be food. Donner party? Your table is waiting... The Tyranids have no other goal other than sating their eternal hunger, their advantage is in numbers, not technology or psychic might. They consume their own dead (and that of the enemy) on the battlefield in order to create the successive waves of bugs that are used to take down a hardened target.

Hunger is an evolutive feature, not an end in itself. The goal of Nids is, like that of any living being, to reproduce and propagate. They just do it better than us. Their numbers is only a by-product of their incredible success until now (galaxies ; 0, nids ; 12). I'd argue their technology is, in fact, their greatest advantage. The fact that they consume their own dead is only more proof of that, since they have somehow found a way of recuperating enough biomass out of their own losses to make the process profitable (something which is, IRL, absolutely impossible).

Those wars are deliberate attempts by the Hive-Mind to determine which splinter has evolved the best biomorphs, or to consolidate strenght from one lesser splinter to a much more important one. They are fought in controlled situations with minimal biomass loss.

You're adding conditions to my argument that I didn't make. Whether it's a "controlled fight" (this is your conjecture) or not doesn't matter. Nids are fighting Nids in space. Nids are eating other Nids.

That doesn't make Tyranids prey to Tyranids. A prey is a source of nourishment that you obtain through hunting. Nids won't fight one another unless they have a specific command to do so from the Hive Mind. There are several instances of lesser Nid organism being left unconnected to the Hive Mind, only to suddenly re-evolve a higher biomorph capable of such connection. That would be impossible if, as you say, Nids became prey to Nids once the connection is severed.

Again, you're adding qualifiers to my statement that I didn't establish. Nids eat Nids. Full stop. It happens. If they have no other source of biomass, and eating half the Hive Fleet will get them to a Feral World that has no real chance of surviving their onslaught, then they're going to eat half the Hive Fleet. The other option is to entirely starve in deep space.

Whether the Hive Mind commands it or not is irrelevant, and when we're talking about Instinctive Behavior, the Hive Mind is out of the picture, because the Synapse Creatures are dead.

Hunger is an evolutive feature, not an end in itself. The goal of Nids is, like that of any living being, to reproduce and propagate. They just do it better than us. Their numbers is only a by-product of their incredible success until now (galaxies ; 0, nids ; 12). I'd argue their technology is, in fact, their greatest advantage. The fact that they consume their own dead is only more proof of that, since they have somehow found a way of recuperating enough biomass out of their own losses to make the process profitable (something which is, IRL, absolutely impossible).

By that logic, if they didn't propagate so much, they wouldn't need to eat so much. I think you're putting the cart before the horse here, because we don't know what's going on with those other galaxies. If the Nids aren't settling there, then the hunger is driving their propagation and travel from one galaxy to the next. The hunger, then, *is* the end itself... more precisely, satiating that hunger is the end, not an evolution.

@Kovnik Obama I believe that in the DOW2 game, if you killed a synapse creature then all the lesser creatures would turn on each other, even other synapse creatures. now I know that is a little far fetched, but I do believe that it is said somewhere else that the nids will attack each other if the synapse link is broken and they are surrounded by nids.

Swarms can vary in size, could of been tens of thousands, could of been a hundred. Without synapse creatures, the tyranids revert to primal instincts, and burrow (hibernate?) to conserve there biomass. If he could take out the synapse creatures, the others would "retreat"...

A swarm is not the same thing as a hive fleet, which is a distinction some people seem to be missing here - In the codex, the words "swarm" and army are used interchangeably, so the "swarm" Maugan Ra faces could be the equivalent of only a thousand-points worth or so.

I expect, considering the "heroic" nature of the event, that Maugan Ra could have taken on more - but that doesn't mean he took out an entire hive fleet, including their spacecraft.
That would be silly :p

Xyptc wrote:
I would like to think that there's a whole novel waiting to happen here, with some sort of doomsday device going off that wipes out the swarm on that world. It doesn't have to be the silly image of Maugan Ra standing on a rock killing 10,000,000 creatures one by one with a gun.

But he couldn't have been alone then because imagery like that requires some kind of epic guitar solo going on in the background... unless MR can psychically play the guitar while shooting stuff

 Flinty wrote:

Xyptc wrote:
I would like to think that there's a whole novel waiting to happen here, with some sort of doomsday device going off that wipes out the swarm on that world. It doesn't have to be the silly image of Maugan Ra standing on a rock killing 10,000,000 creatures one by one with a gun.

But he couldn't have been alone then because imagery like that requires some kind of epic guitar solo going on in the background... unless MR can psychically play the guitar while shooting stuff

He plays the guitar with ricocheting shots from his gun, duh!

MR is a ninja. He is a mammal. He flips out and kills people all the time. And then he wails hard on the guitar.

A few thousand bugs (the book does specify it's a tendril of a Hive Fleet, not a whole Hive Fleet) simply can't repel awesome firepower of that magnitude. They tried the last line of anti-ninja defense (setting themselves on fire) but that had the predictable results (crispy bugs).

In the BL book Black Tide there were Nids on a planet without synapes and they had started to create a kinda of mini food chain of their own in the oceans. Staying out of site and slowly building up numbers. So the nids will definately revert to a more animalistic mode of survival when they have to.

So Maugan Ra could likely have just blown away the synapse creatures and then let nature take its course.

Or used some Eldar superweapon to wipe out the planet. Does the entry specify whether the planet was still there after he won?

Upon the world of Stormvald, the Phoenix Lord Maugan Ra single-handedly scattered a Tyranid swarm by systematically destroying every one of its synapse leader-beasts.

p. 26, 6th edition 40K Apocalypse rulebook

Iracundus wrote:

Upon the world of Stormvald, the Phoenix Lord Maugan Ra single-handedly scattered a Tyranid swarm by systematically destroying every one of its synapse leader-beasts.

p. 26, 6th edition 40K Apocalypse rulebook

Thanks for the quote Iracundus. A single sentence that makes the footnote acceptable / probable / not suck. It's good to know they went with more finesse approach, suitable for Eldar and not the Orky / IoM way of "apply moar dakka".

Now we need some additional sentences for Draigo story to know exactly how / what happened .

 Macok wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

Upon the world of Stormvald, the Phoenix Lord Maugan Ra single-handedly scattered a Tyranid swarm by systematically destroying every one of its synapse leader-beasts.

p. 26, 6th edition 40K Apocalypse rulebook

Thanks for the quote Iracundus. A single sentence that makes the footnote acceptable / probable / not suck. It's good to know they went with more finesse approach, suitable for Eldar and not the Orky / IoM way of "apply moar dakka".

Now we need some additional sentences for Draigo story to know exactly how / what happened .

Agreed. That line alone in the Tyranid codex was 'huh, Cruddace fluff is pretty terrible'. The expansion on it in Apocalypse makes it sound far better, with the triumph not being 'lol he wiped out a tendril' but 'he beat a ground force by removing their control nodes'. Which actually makes in-universe sense.