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Completely setting aside the issue of how good or bad the rules are, is there any new significant background or is it all rehashed from previous Codices and Epic: Hive War?

Iracundus wrote:
Completely setting aside the issue of how good or bad the rules are, is there any new significant background or is it all rehashed from previous Codices and Epic: Hive War?

Well, the previous Tyranid Codex changed the fluff considerably vis-a-vis Epic: Hive War (which was "how it was" up until and including the 5th Edition Space Marines Codex), mostly through the inclusion of the Swarmlord (which didn't exist in the Hive War fluff) and was introduced in the 5th Nid Edition Codex (and the entire Hive War fluff basically turned on its head to give the Swarmlord a place in the story, complete with "epic" end-duel with Calgar).

The new Nid Codex basically sticks with the 5th Edition Nid Codex version of Macragge and does not return to the 5th Edition Space Marines/Hive War version of it.

Obvious fluff changes in the 6th Edition book is that Malan'tai is gone (since the Doom of Malan'tai is gone).

I thought there was a side blurb about Malantai from one of the scans?

The reason I ask the fluff question at all is the apparent bad rules and lackluster Codex writing by an apparently unenthusiastic design team makes me have second thoughts about spending the $ and effort on acquiring the Codex at all.

It is pretty clear the GW team was cannibalizing Hive War from the revamping of the Exocrine, Haruspex, and even the introduction of the new variation of Instinctive Behavior, which is a revamp of the old Nest, Hunt, and Rampage instincts from Hive War. All told, I get the feel of a lack of creativity and simple rehashing of the past, except then making it worse. The Exocrine used to be a decent long ranged unit, and now its range is a joke for its supposed role of bio-artillery.

I've had the codex for five hours. Besides the new Units, their are no fluff changes. not a fething one. THEY KILLED OFF MY fething PARASITE, AND DIDN'T EVEN fething ADD ANYTHING TO THE STORY, feth!!!!!!!!!!!!
Edit: wow. Sorry . It's 3:00 am here, see.

This lack of new fluff makes me sad. I know that a lot of 40k is a setting, not a story, but copy and pasting old fluff without adding anything new is so boring and lazy. You can compare old editions to newer editions and it's clear there was at least SOME progression back then in an attempt to remind players that things are ALIVE. They just don't have the spirit anymore, I guess :|

So in the 6th ed SM codex Calgar kinda ties then pwns the Swarmy. How does it go down in Nid 6th ed.

 Lobukia wrote:
So in the 6th ed SM codex Calgar kinda ties then pwns the Swarmy. How does it go down in Nid 6th ed.

I heard the swammy gave calgar a run for his money.

They added a big fight between Nids and Daemons.

And, if memory serves, they changed the means by which the Inquisitor first found the fate of Tyran. Instead of going deep underground,t he data got shot into space.

 Zweischneid wrote:

Iracundus wrote:
Completely setting aside the issue of how good or bad the rules are, is there any new significant background or is it all rehashed from previous Codices and Epic: Hive War?

Obvious fluff changes in the 6th Edition book is that Malan'tai is gone (since the Doom of Malan'tai is gone).

The Doom of Malan'tai has a paragraph of fluff on the Zoanthrope page.

The Doom is in there, just not his rules. The best and most noteworthy part was a conflict between Nids and a full Daemonic invasion, which finally answers that question of "Does the Shadow affect Daemons?" Spoilers below...










Nids win, crush the Daemons, who can't corrupt them and lose power due to shadows and lack of fear. Ichor is a poor offer to Khorne and Nids can out-evolve Nurgles plagues, and Nids hate eating Daemons and don't see their corpses as biomass.

So the 3rd army to hard counter daemons, the 6th army to be hyper resistant to daemons (either eldar that rarely fall to gk and sob level to necron and nid level). I'll admit I find it a bit of a bummer. Woulda kinda found it fun to have some warped nids that have these crazy mutations before being crushed but an experiment blah what fun. Still though, heard it was 3 pages so hopefully it was kinda cool!

iirc nurgle once corrupted a hive ship. ok Ive had a proper read of the codex, a few changes include:
the daemon fight, which was lol worthy to say the least.
recording pod went into space.
malenthrope are mentioned, making them official.
the lyanden craftworld awoke the ghost warriors BEFORE the battle started.

lol worthy? Like good or bad? If that makes sense blaaargh. I actually kinda have hope that doom will be in some supplement or some digital copy maybe. It's honestly cheap but maybe it would even mean extra fluff?

 StarTrotter wrote:
lol worthy? Like good or bad? If that makes sense blaaargh. I actually kinda have hope that doom will be in some supplement or some digital copy maybe. It's honestly cheap but maybe it would even mean extra fluff?

Lol worthy in that me and my friend had a his chaos vs. My nids just before we read it. And I won.

 Truth118 wrote:


The Doom of Malan'tai has a paragraph of fluff on the Zoanthrope page.

True. I had just been reading the background section before the actual units. I stand corrected.

Hive Crones are space-borne, and guard the Hive Ships against enemy craft. This might actually be a little bit of fridge brilliance when it comes to their shape; the wings fold away (not much use in space) and the creatures look like chunky space-snakes.

It's pretty poor. Bear in mind I've not read 'Nid fluff since 2nd ed but :

The Tyran invasion is really sketchy and not nearly as good at conveying the sheer scale of a Nid invasion. Was much better in the older versions. Unsure why they changed putting the data codex into space too.

The Hivemind is now much more of a calculating, intelligent being, whereas before it was literally just a term for the Nid superconciousness, that didn't think about much other than eating.

The Swarmlord is a stupid piece of fluff, its meant to be a race of anonymous swarms, there should not be some character that magically gets "reuploaded" every time he died and spawned out again, its stupid. The Nid's don't have a supreme commander, thats the while point, its a hive.

They removed all mention of Nids adapting using DNA from our galaxy (Biovores being made from Orks, Zoanthropes being made from Eldar , Guard being made from Marines), none of these bio-forms are supposed to exist until after the Nids have had a chance to accrue biomass from our galaxy.

They removed the fluff about Genestealer cults emitting a psychic beacon which attracts the Nids. Now they lurk in the sewers and don't do very much. They also fail to mention that Genestealers were around way before the rest of the Nids showed up.

 Stormphoenix wrote:
They removed the fluff about Genestealer cults emitting a psychic beacon which attracts the Nids. Now they lurk in the sewers and don't do very much. They also fail to mention that Genestealers were around way before the rest of the Nids showed up.

I know this one at least isn't correct but it's not that easy to spot, I think. In the first Tyranid War timeline, the very first event, years before the Tyran invasion, is how the Blood Angels eliminated the Genestealer presence from a Space Hulk but no one figured out they were the Vanguard for a much bigger invasion from an unknown Xenos.

So if the Tyranids are quite resistant to Chaos then does it make sense that the Tyranids could have been "made" by someone or something that has a deep hatred for the Ruinous Powers?



C'tan?

Mellow wrote:
So if the Tyranids are quite resistant to Chaos then does it make sense that the Tyranids could have been "made" by someone or something that has a deep hatred for the Ruinous Powers?



C'tan?

From another galaxy.

Meh, I enjoyed reading through the fluff in the book. The major disappointment for me was that the Tyranids are always beaten in the stories. There's truly nothing that dark about the Tyranids because they always lose. I also didn't like that Calgar beats the Swarmlord on their 2nd encounter because despite what we've written in the rest of this book, the Tyranids just can't adapt to Calgar.

Anyone else think that the Parasite and the Doom are going to be getting their own data slates? My money is on Data Slates with more flushed out fluff for them. I've been thinking that the reason a lot of the units got removed was for Data Slates but we'll see... (I hope they get them anyway)

The only addition that I saw was actually a good fluff piece about demons and tyranids having an epic war on some saint world.

After the 5ed Necron codex I'm surprised nothing was added about the Necrons and Nids duking it out.

 Flinty wrote:

Mellow wrote:
So if the Tyranids are quite resistant to Chaos then does it make sense that the Tyranids could have been "made" by someone or something that has a deep hatred for the Ruinous Powers?



C'tan?

From another galaxy.

Has it been explicitly stated that C'tan are from the Milky Way?

 Matt1785 wrote:
Meh, I enjoyed reading through the fluff in the book. The major disappointment for me was that the Tyranids are always beaten in the stories. There's truly nothing that dark about the Tyranids because they always lose. I also didn't like that Calgar beats the Swarmlord on their 2nd encounter because despite what we've written in the rest of this book, the Tyranids just can't adapt to Calgar.

Anyone else think that the Parasite and the Doom are going to be getting their own data slates? My money is on Data Slates with more flushed out fluff for them. I've been thinking that the reason a lot of the units got removed was for Data Slates but we'll see... (I hope they get them anyway)

Parasite maybe, because it did not have much of a third party presence. Doom for get it, Chapterhouse pretty much insured that it was gone from the codex. Spores and Doom were the 2 biggest thrid pary models. Something to beef up stealers, Lictors and maybe one around Old One Eye I can see....


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The Ocatavius Sector war with the Orks got some beefing up.

I never got that bit about Chaos only being in this galaxy. The Warp doesn't just exist in the galaxy alone, so surely sentient life in other galaxies must generate their own Chaos Gods...

 Stormphoenix wrote:
I never got that bit about Chaos only being in this galaxy. The Warp doesn't just exist in the galaxy alone, so surely sentient life in other galaxies must generate their own Chaos Gods...

Maybe, maybe not. The Chaos gods are very "human", in a sense. They embody humanoid emotions and concepts, and draw their power from humans (and other humanoids, see the Orks and Gork/Mork). Other life may not function as we do, and as the Tyranids clearly show it is quite possible to be alive, incredibly complex and also have a completely different effect on the Warp.

Also, who's to say that although the Warp is a parallel dimension of sorts, that its scale is the same as our universe? Perhaps the Warp is like a blister on the skin of reality, and the blister only covers our galaxy? It's never been stated one way or another.

Tyranids created My Little Pony and they don't eat people any more, they just force them to watch episodes of Friendship is Magic.

Truly, this new lore makes them more grimdark.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Xyptc wrote:
They embody humanoid emotions and concepts, and draw their power from humans (and other humanoids, see the Orks and Gork/Mork)

Orks don't feed Chaos, and are, in fact, quite resistant to it due to their psychology.

Anything with the second bestest fight in da ooniverse?(octavius/octarius.)

 Stormphoenix wrote:
It's pretty poor. Bear in mind I've not read 'Nid fluff since 2nd ed but :

They removed all mention of Nids adapting using DNA from our galaxy (Biovores being made from Orks, Zoanthropes being made from Eldar , Guard being made from Marines), none of these bio-forms are supposed to exist until after the Nids have had a chance to accrue biomass from our galaxy.

They removed the fluff about Genestealer cults emitting a psychic beacon which attracts the Nids. Now they lurk in the sewers and don't do very much. They also fail to mention that Genestealers were around way before the rest of the Nids showed up.

I can tell.

The DNA-stealing thing has been gone since the 4th edition book was released. The Genestealer Cult references are actually a slight increase from the 5th edition book, which IIRC only has a single mention of a Genestealer infestation on Ichar IV. The GCult mentions in the 6th ed rulebook, etc. actually represent an upswing of sorts for Cults, which had basically disappeared from all fluff during 5th edition.

 Matt1785 wrote:
Meh, I enjoyed reading through the fluff in the book. The major disappointment for me was that the Tyranids are always beaten in the stories. There's truly nothing that dark about the Tyranids because they always lose.

I talked about this in the rumor thread. IMO, the studio doesn't see Tyranids as a proper hero or villain, but something more like a natural disaster to be overcome. That viewpoint then makes its way into all their writing, from fluff to rules.

Why does every SM chapter master get access to Eternal Warrior, while monstrous Tyranid creatures don't? Because it's heroic to have a SM character shrug off wounds that should have easily killed him. It's heroic to have some lowly psyker get lucky with a force toothpick and drop a Tyrannofex or Trygon in one blow. What isn't particularly cinematic or heroic is "Tyrannofex steps on SM officer."

*shrug* It's just the nature of the army.

The Chaos Gods are only very Human from a Human perspective. But from a Xeno race from another Galaxy they may also be relevant.