>a swarm of faceless monsters, each one designed specifically

>>51027798
Agreed. Good concept, but not a good tyranid unit concept at all.

>>51027839
There's nothing wrong with a badass super alien thats smart and scary as fuck.

But it should have been a super-kroot

>>51027798
I wonder what her dick smells like.

>>51027877
>>>/Hivemind/

>>51027798
You're not wrong OP.

There are so many retarded holes in the logic of the Swarmlords existence it makes my head hurt.

The only way they could salvage this shit now would be if the fluff was retconned to say the Swarmlord was a myth perpetuated by the Ultramarines to raise Imperial morale when Calgar defeated a Hive Tyrant on Ichar IV.

>>51027877
Hive tyrants are all male.

>>51027798
Quoted from an interview with Phil Kelly and Jes Goodwin after the release of the Tyranids 4th edition Codex:

>Q11. Are there any left-field ideas you can share with us that didn't make it into the revised Tyranids?
>Phil: Several ideas we talked about didn’t make it to the final cut, but nothing we do here is truly wasted – we may get them back into the process and refine them later down the line. I was keen to do a gravid Hive Tyrant that spews Rippers from its womb as a special character, but then I came to my senses – having individual characters for the Tyranids kind of defeats the point – they are characterized by their lack of individuality. I’ve always liked that angle that each Tyranid is but a single cell in a massive super-organism. Cells generally don’t have names.

If you guys want to check out the full interview it's archived here: http://tasty.warpshadow.com/piece.htm

So you're absolutely right. You can thank Cruddace for fucking it all up like an imbecile.

Here's a way to think about it that's less retarded. The Swarmlord is a constant by which the hivemind can measure itself.

>Fight race A
>Swarmlord wins
>Fight race B
>Swarmlord loses because of XYZ
>Reduce focus on CDE to focus on XYZ
>Swarmlord wins

>>51027918
Only the Norn Queens have a gender.

>>51028217
Nothing in that example has anything to do with the Swarmlord or justifies its existence in anyway.

It works like this.

>Fight race A using strains X126.b, X129.a, Y.6794.a, Z.932.c
>Race A is defeated, X129.a suffered the most casualties, Z.932.c suffered the least and had the highest kill ratio
>Attack race B using a higher ratio of strain Z.932.c and lower ratio of X129.a

And so on.

>>51028267
i think a lot of nids have genders actually, given Gaunts can breed

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>>51027798
>rerelease the codex
>make bonesabres a generic loadout
>call swarmlord any hive tyrant that has the highest synaptic priority on the invaded world
>each swarmlord has the memories of previous deployments of other swarmlords for better tactical development
>make the "individual swarmlord" more the way its enemies perceive it than what it actually is

I see a problem in presentation, not in content

>>51028267

Literally every tyranid is covered end to end in penises.

Even catachan women aren't as manly as your average tyranid.

>>51028282
Hormagaunts are born pregnant, so they're all technically female.

Termagants cannot breed on their own because they require Fleshborers that have to be bred and melded separately, that's why they have Tervigons to spawn them.

Genestealers are all male in a way because they invasively rape their genetic material into other races.

Hive Tyrants are all male because they are the counterparts to the all-female Dominatrixes.

Most other Tyranids are default female or genderless, or maybe hermaphroditic. However the race evolves so quickly any of these could stop being true and be replaced with another method at any time.

>>51027918
in old lore they were hermaphrodites

currently I don't think they are capable of breeding at all: the majority of creatures are spawned by the norn queens, only survivalist strains have reproductive adaptations.

who knows tho, maybe tyrants could stress-develop a gender away from battle.

>>51028295
This is a workable solution. The problem is the omniscient third party narrator in descriptions of Swarmlord in the Cruddexes that explicitly makes it out to be the horseshit mary sue garbage that OP called out.

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>>51028038
>I was keen to do a gravid Hive Tyrant that spews Rippers from its womb as a special character
Fuck yes, that's aweso...

>but then I came to my senses
... by making a special snowflake tyrant ? Even though there's no problem with Nid special characters, as long as they are specialized organisms ?

What the hell.

Also, I miss the parasite of mortrex. THAT was a good idea. Just bring it back.

>>51027798

Osmosis Jones?

>>51028328
Norn Queens don't physically give birth to every Tyranid - the Hive Ships themselves do that, and not every ship has a Norn Queen. The Norns are more the engineers that create the genetic blueprints for the strains and the Hive Ships are the factories that take that information and mass produce them.

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>>51028323
>they invasively rape
I find this description problematic and xenophobic: it's not rape if she gives consent to my charming eyes

>>51028351
Read the whole paragraph, dumbass. And Phil Kelly never made the Swarmlord, Cruddace did that. It's pretty clear that the Parasite of Mortrex was the thing based on Kelly's original throw-away idea of a Ripper-spawning Tyrant.

Reading comprehension.

>>51028295
except hive tyrants aren't even the most important synaptic creature in a fleet.

>>51028384
Refugees fleeing from Tyrannic-infested worlds welcome!

>>51028295
This.

>>51028418
Typically they are amongst the ground forces.

>>51028282
>>51028303
>>51028323
>>51028328
Let me rephrase >>51028267 by saying that only Norn Queens have gender because they are the only organisms that can accept / create / select for new DNA. With the possible exceptions of Genestealers, all of the other birthed nids are just straight clones in a similar way to stem cells undergoing fission. Yes they can reproduce, but they have no method for the exchange/incorporation of novel DNA.

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>>51027877
>her

>>51028401
You're right, thanks for correcting me.

Beyond the Mortrex, I also never understood why pic related couldn't spawn hormagaunts. Since I'm never using shooting gaunts, I would have bought one of those if only they were able to spawn the close-quarter variant. But as things are, I just don't see any appeal in them.

What nids really lack right now is customisation, 3rd edition style. Just let me custom-tailor my bugs, dangit !

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>>51028556
>pic related, I said !

>>51028556
4th edition did the customization better

Yet when they did the same thing for Necrons you redditors loved it
>finally we can have soulless machines with PERSONALITY

>>51027798
Here is how I think of it. The Hive Mind is doing all the logistics and the grand strategy of the Hive Fleets, while Hive Tyrants handle tactics. As such, they need a higher cognitive power to make decisions.

Basically, the Hive Mind is playing Civilization, while the Tyrants are playing Starcraft, and the Swarmlord is Korean.

>>51028556
>>51028580
Yeah I agree, although personally I would like the ability to just spawn Hormagaunts all over the map as they erupt from their underground egg clusters. The fact that they're more self-sufficient because they don't carry ranged weapons is interesting and could be played with.

However what I think they definitely got wrong with the Tervigon was not giving it the Fleshborer Hive weapon that the Tyrannofex has. Since it's spawning Termagants with Fleshborers it should also have a ton of Fleshborers inside it as well. On top of that, the bit for them looks kinda like the arms on the old Malefactor slug tank, which the Tervigon is supposed to be the spiritual successor to as a "Tyranid not!Transport". Totally missed the mark on that one.

>>51028634
except thats not how it works.

>>51028464
>all of the other birthed nids are just straight clones in a similar way to stem cells undergoing fission.
except we know they can develop phenotypic alterations as shown by the anphelion incident.

even genotypic if we do assume different biomorphs have different genetic sequences.

>>51028634
The problem with that isn't the division of thought-labor between the higher Hive Mind and Hive Tyrants.

It's the speshul snowflakeness of the Swarmlord itself compared to other Hive Tyrants. All Tyranids are just mass-produced clones of genetic templates. If the Norn Queens can make one Swarmlord, they can make ten thousand of them.

The only time it makes sense for Tyranids to have a unique character is if it was a spontaneous mutation on the battlefield that was only around for that one historical battle and then either killed or reabsorbed into the swarm and its mutations spread to the rest of the creatures, like Red Terror getting turned into the entire strain of Mawlocs or Old One Eye getting turned into the Regeneration upgrade for MCs.

>>51028679
Or the Doom of Malan'tai getting turned into Neurothropes, that was one they actually did right, so good on them.

>>51028679
>It's the speshul snowflakeness of the Swarmlord itself compared to other Hive Tyrants.
but the swarmlord fluff does imply that the other tyrants work in a similar way
>The Swarmlord is essentially immortal, like a Hive Tyrant, as once killed it is reborn by the Hive Mind with the exact same experiences, character and knowledge, in essence becoming stronger than its predecessor every time because of its new experience. But unlike a Hive Tyrant, the reincarnation of the Swarmlord appears to be a stress-induced response that is triggered only when conventional strategies of the Hive Mind fail and greater resourcefulness and tactics are needed.

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>>51028636
>Yeah I agree, although personally I would like the ability to just spawn Hormagaunts all over the map as they erupt from their underground egg clusters.
it's not like you can't, it's that it has pyrovore-tier rules

>>51028714
Problem is though is why is the Swarmlord needed for it's tactics and resourcefulness? Those aspects of it should be absorbed in to the hivemind, and thus be available at any time. The physical form of the Swarmlord really should have no bearing on how well the hivemind is doing.

>>51028714
It still doesn't make sense that there is only one.

All memories are, are just patterns of neurons in the brain. If you clone the brain you clone the memories. Furthermore, if the Hive Mind as a whole has these memories stored somewhere else in the first place, why does it need to respawn the Swarmlord again to stick them back into? All Hive Tyrants should know everything it knows by definition of how they work.

Basically everything about the Swarmlord directly contradicts the entire point and concept of a gestalt Hive Mind. It's just bad fluff written by a stupid writer who doesn't understand what he's talking about.

>>51028714
Why wouldn't they spawn it every time ?

>>51028767
The question is more, why would they even need to? And why would they have to limit it to one even if they did?

But yeah EVEN IF they found some bullshit justification for both of those, then you have still poked yet another hole in it.

The Swarmlord fluff just DOES NOT WORK for Tyranids, period. Furthermore, the name is fucking stupid, and the creature itself has now come to represent the era of Cruddex-nids, which are the worst off they've ever been in terms of not only fluff but also crunch.

Everything about it and both the Codexes it was part of needs to be deleted and never spoken of again.

>>51028757
the hive mind is a psychic construct generated by physical minds.

the hive would still need to have a psychical processing entity that contributes to the psychic network and activating it only when needed and locally may be a way to enhance performance.

>>51028623
I never liked newcrons t.b.h., I think people who likes them mostly jumped into the necron wagon after the change or never cared much about fluff. They're like completely different factions.

>>51028623
It's almost like /tg/ isn't a single individual.

Also, Tyranids came first, so Necrons can fuck off with the soulless death machine posing - they needed a change to differentiate themselves.

>>51028808
The argument is that for them to reproduce that physical mind when it is destroyed, they have to have a back-up copy somewhere. Which precludes the need for giving it a body to walk around in when its memories can already be accessed by any Tyrant or other powerful psychic synapse organism.

>>51028804
>The question is more, why would they even need to? And why would they have to limit it to one even if they did?
Ok let's take it from another point of view that would solve both. For the hivemind, at a hive fleet level, having a swarmlord on the field feels like being on coke. The hive mind gets more reactive, more perceptive, her percieved hold on the swarm (the body) gets tighter. However, it requires a higher energy upkeep, and that is biomass lost forever. That or it gives the swarm slowly space cancer.

>>51027798
Isn't the Swarmlord just a really old Hive Tyrant and so is recognizable/assigned characteristics by the Imperials? I thought that was the lore behind the Tyranid special characters, they're only special to the Imperium, the Hive Mind doesn't really differentiate between them.

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>>51028636
Good ideas as well. Also, nice call on the Malefactor inheritance.

>>51028616
I must say that I would have preferred the ability to stick almost any possible biomorph onto any bug for an hefty point-tax.

A Carnifex with a grasping tongue ? Sure. An armored Tyrant with a rupture cannon ? Go for it. A Lictor with motherfucking boneswords ? Can do !

Even if the end result of such a fully converted army would be a monstrously overpriced force, probably tabled by turn two by any space marine worth its salt, it would be nice to have all of the options needed to represent the Hive Mind's adaptability (and its evolutionary dead-ends).

>>51028893
Except it doesn't do any of those things. You're making up weird bullshit excuses that just create even more questions instead of accepting that the entire idea of the Swarmlord AND its execution are both awful and have no place in the Tyranids.

>>51028893
>Biomass lost forever
>Nids obeying laws of thermal dynamics
Oh you sweet child. If something that conventional was an issue the nids would not be the massive threat they are. Pretty sure they either in universe straight up break that laws of thermal dynamics, or out of universe they are just poorly written. And the former would be a result of the latter.

>>51028923
Nids do obey the laws of thermal dynamics.

Biomass =/= energy.

But the idea that they would somehow lose that biomass by shaping it as a Swarmlord is also stupid.

>>51028765
>that there is only one.
I don't think it is ever stated that there can only be one at a time, only anecdotal supposition because you only ever find one.

why do you download information on your computer when they are already somewhere else?
why don't all computer store all informations ever available?
efficiency and limitations.

we know that the tyrants know their direct previous selves, we technically don't have confirmation that the other tyrants also don't share all or part of that.

>>51028767
I believe it has to do with "psychic capability" being a precious resource or sonething, or we would have little reasons not to have each gaunt be a psychic beast.

>>51028875
I'm not talking about the memories, but the hardware necessary to process them.

you can have all the back ups of einstein works, but you still need a mind to comprehend them.

>>51028950
>or we would have little reasons not to have each gaunt be a psychic beast.
Psychic power requires large and fully developed brains, which take more biomass and, more importantly, longer time to gestate.

This would explain why highly psychic races like Eldar have low birthrates with long development time in the womb, while Tau have short rapid lifespans and almost no psychic presence.

Gaunts not being psychic means they can be churned out en masse in a couple hours. Tyrants and Zoanthropes probably take months - years to breed new ones.

>>51028996
Except in this case everything is wetware, and Norn Queens are biological supercomputers that can decompile an entire races genome in minutes.

>>51028999
except thats not true.

I'm suddenly curious if Tyranids ever considered making poisonous food-Nids.

>>51028999
>Psychic power requires large and fully developed brains
it is also something related to a connection to a "soul" in the warp; i.e. workings we really can't try to define or explain to a satisfactory degree and enable writers to make all the excuses they want.

we're in a corner

>>51029075
what do you think a 'death world' is anon?

>>51029043
What part is not true?

The Eldar and Tau birthrates are. The rest of it is not contradicted anywhere in the fluff.

>>51029088
Its worth noting that the nids seem to give not a single fuck about the chaos gods.

>>51029093
there's nothing to suggest that zoans ect take a long time to create, infact the story of the doom of malantai suggests the opposite, they were able to create it rapidly.

>>51028623
That's because Oldcrons were spoopy, robo-skelly reskins of Necrons, who's only noteworthy differentiation, was their Anti-Chaos Gods, the C'tans, who would only serve to add yet more "just as planned" bullshit into 40k.

>>51029017
>wetware
the difference is arbitral

We don't know how norn queens decompile genes, it may be an automatic mechanism like digestion; you don't need much conscious or subconscious thoughts processing to do it.

>>51029103
I don't think anything about that story indicated the Doom was bred during the conflict.

>>51029128
You mean Chaos Androids?

>>51029094
I don't see how that ties to the discussion.

souls are often talked about in qualitative terms on top of quantitative ones: as a soul more attuned to the concepts that spawned a specific god may he more relevant to it a soul, albeit enormous, swinging in a completely alien way in the warp may not cause interaction.

it's magic I don't want to explain shit.

>>51029146
I think he meant to say reskins of Tyranids.

>>51028941
no, they don't
Because there is fluff that when two hivefleets meet the weaker is eaten by the stronger.
so "all biomass is regained" and "nothing is lost".
So a massive battle happens, but nothing is expended. Ie, for GW, biomass=energy, or rather biomass=the only thing that matters.

That's why the nids only bother eating a planets biomass, which is tiny tiny portion of the total potential energy of the system.

>>51029144
>a special tyranid that was able to completely fuck over the eldar specifically because they didn't understand its power
>appeared during the conflict
>brought victory
>clearly wasn't bred specially for this purpose

ok retard

>>51029197
except nids seem not to have souls

>>51029212
>Because there is fluff that when two hivefleets meet the weaker is eaten by the stronger.
>so "all biomass is regained" and "nothing is lost".
Yes. And biomass isn't energy.

>So a massive battle happens, but nothing is expended. Ie, for GW, biomass=energy, or rather biomass=the only thing that matters.
Yes, because energy doesn't matter, they can always get more from the stars.

>That's why the nids only bother eating a planets biomass, which is tiny tiny portion of the total potential energy of the system.
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of why they go after biomass. It's not to digest it for energy like when you and I eat food. It's so they have more raw material to make more Tyranids.

>>51029212
>implying in circumstances where there're no subatomic reactions loss of energy means loss of mass
you STILL don't understand how this stuff works after all the threads?

>>51028845

2e crons were just raiders without fluff, Andy Chambers wanted killbots and ancient eeevil in 3e, this was not liked so Ward's revision into eccentric Necron Lords who had defeated the C'tan was approved by GW.

The move was planned long before the 5e Necron codex too, even in 5e rulebook's Necron blurb (2008, Ward was one of the authors) it was mentioned that Necron Lords were the faction's driving force, while 4e book (2004) said it was the C'tan.

>>51029226
Everything about the Doom suggested that it was an aberration which happened to get into the World Circuit. It was just a mutant Zoanthrope that got superpowered by eating a Craftworld full of souls.

>>51029249
biomass is made from carbon, using energy.
You realize this right?
Energy is what makes matter into the form we call biomass. It's solar energy used to create potential energy in the form of chemical energy.

If you have the energy, and rocks, you can make biomass.

You fail at biology

>>51029270
Well if Chambers was behind it that explains why Oldcrons and Tyranids were so similar.

>>51028351
Mainly I don't get why it wasn't an upgrade for MCs back then. They still believed in upgrades and wargear back then.

>>51029242
they don't have conventional souls, but they do have one: the hive mind.

it looks like a soul, behaves like a soul and quaks as a soul.

>>51028915

The original special characters were one off creatures. Random very powerful mutations. These creatures, because tyranid fleets don't carry whole creatures off planet, were simply reabsorbed, and parts of them became wargear or troop choices in later codexes.

Swarmlord, by comparison, is like a super hero being reborn "when he's needed most" or something. Its been seen as a specific entity on multiple separate planets and engagements. Which doesn't make any real sense with tyranid fluff.

The only way to reconcile it is >>51028295
and even then it touches the edges of making sense within given fluff.

>>51029261
mass is unimportant, increase in enthropy, that is decrease in energy in a usable form, through repeated enegry transfers is the problem.

Mass is the easy thing to get. Getting more carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, is easy. Getting the energy concentrated in the right way to have those atoms be in a useful form is the hard bit.

>>51029283
Yes. And Tyranids do this.

They also seek out genetic material, because they want more to assimilate into their genepool, which explains why they don't just go after rocky planets.

>>51029327
It's possible the Tyranids don't understand the concept of entropy or eventual heat death, so they don't care. They're just functioning off of a very high instinct.

They seek biomass because they want genetics and mass to convert into more Tyranids. They can get more energy from solar sources than they will ever need so aren't concerned about its expenditure.

>>51029327
they can harness pretty much all the energy they want from solar radiations and possibly from psychic reactions.

what they can't obtain by standing still is mass, that's the important bit.

like many other factions they are on the brink of energetic post-scarcity.

>>51029328
but that's not what they say in the fluff.
They don't do the nerg fluff of saying that they want new genetic material for more information, treating genes and biochems like technical information (Which btw humans do, it's why people gather rare organsims for science).
They talk about gathering lots of biomass as gathering raw physical material to build things with. But thats dumb, because the raw physical material comes from rocks.
Biomass is just the easier way of getting that energy into the rocks, but if you have to spend a shit load of energy taking out the defenders, you've lost that advantage.

But 40k, basically across the damn board, doesn't care bout the laws of thermodynamics. Nids are just one of the more obvious examples.

>>51029410
>but that's not what they say in the fluff.
an old piece of fluff supposedly says otherwise.

the predatory nature of the fleets has likely been developed from a time they didn't decide on it consciously but on instics and limited capabilities and stuck with it later because it still works well.

>>51029405
>>51029360
The mass is rocks.
Life makes biomass from combining solar radiation with rocks.
If they have all the energy from solar radiation they could need, then they have all the mass they could need from rocks.
But they never bother with the damn rocks.
And they also never bother talking about energy.

It's all biomass. 40k is laughing at science levels of soft scifi. Actual, it's just pure space fantasy. Tyranids are a clear example of this.

Biomass is magic life stuff used to make magic bioweapons. Just like psykics, the warp, Dark Eldar powering everything by pain, Orks doing things by thinking it's true, etc.
It fits the setting, because it's pure nonsense.

>>51029410
>But thats dumb, because the raw physical material comes from rocks.
I'm not a geologist, but I don't think rocks actually have that much carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, anon, or at least not much of the last two.

But fine, let's just say it's another sci-fi writers not doing their research and move on.

>>51029466
rocks get made into soil. I used rocks not soil, because soil is created primarily form decomposed biomass.
You start with rocks and air, then you get soil later.

Even if I'd said soil and air, my point would stand, the matter used to make biomass exists on the planets. biomass is the result of using the solar energy combined with non-biological mater.

Biomass only matters as a matter of convinence and energy concentration. So if you expend a lot of energy getting biomass, that energy matters. It not just an issue of getting the biomass.

>>51029464
>But they never bother with the damn rocks.
they do, in the reports about the tyranids invasion there's a statement that they bring away large quantities of inorganic resources.

why would they go for lifeless worlds when they can invade ones full of life and get both easily accessible biomass, raw mass and genetic samples all in one interstellar voyage?


it's also worth noting that the fleets may go after life because it is easier to spot from large distances than gravitational pulls thanks to the psychic nature of it, maybe.

>>51029295

Then Chambers went to Blizzard and worked on SC2 story, helping develop an ancient evil entity as the ultimate opponent.

But if he had stayed on GW, who would have merged with the Phoenix Force to defeat the C'tan?

>>51029577
They do leech all of the useful minerals and elements out of the soil, though.

>>51029605
That was primarily Metzen who did the whole overarching SC2 plot, if I'm not mistaken.

>>51028623
That's because Oldcrons have absolutely zero personality with virtually no room for personalization or logical reasoning for differentiation between different sects/army styles.

Also, C'tan were too OP in the fluff, and directly competed with Warp/Psychic Gods (like every other god in the game) despite being something completely and totally different. They also somehow were responsible for Humanity becoming uplifted, which made like zero sense.

>>51029628
Warcraft 3, starcraft 2, same tihng.

>>51029466
I'm no geologist either, but think of this way, to start off with every planet is just a big ball of molten rock, all thats there is rock. Over time some of the rock goes solid, but its just a big chunk of rock, nothing else. Then through volcanic activity gases are released from the rock, and start forming an atmosphere, water condensates out of those gases, then through some bizarre coincidence carbon from the gases falls together into a way that makes life, evolution happens, and then you have a nice planet teaming with all sorts of organisms. But ultimately, it all came from the rock.

>>51029586
It's time like these I really miss the days GWs website wasn't just a glorified shop and had a variety of lore articles as well, I remember them having one that went into a lot of detail of what happened when the Nids were eating a world, they take literally everything from the surface down to the tough bedrock, and even sent specialised creatures burrowing through the crust so they could get at the useful minerals from the mantle.

>>51029628

Nah, Chambers was the creative director of SC2, he definitely had a hand in the fluff. There are interviews out where he discusses it. Basically he and Metzen chilled out eating pizza and smoking pot while they came up with the story.

>>51029763
>Basically he and Metzen chilled out eating pizza and smoking pot while they came up with the story.
>ywn be part of this inner circle of chill nerds who write famous game lore even if it's kind of bad

>>51029586
>why would they go after lifeless worlds
why would they go after worlds that are well defended, where massive amounts of energy must be expended to take out the defenders, when you could go to a world without defenders and use the nature of being biological to transform the solar energy and matter into biomass?

>psychic nature
so space magic. IE my point.
40k runs on space magic, and nids are a form of space magic. Biomass is treated as another form of life magic, just like the warp, not as a form of energy containment.
biomass does equal energy. It's chemical energy created by using solar energy to create more energy dense arrangments of carbond, hydrogen, oxygen, and other atoms.

Biomass is two things, energy storage and information. Nids fluff, stupidily, underemphasizes the information bit and treats the energy as basically magic in nature and not subject to the laws of thermodynamics.
IE if you use a shit ton of energy fighting another hive fleet, the energy contained in the total biomass after the fight is signifincantly less than before the fight. except 40k runs on space magic.

>>51029839
>why would they go after worlds that are well defended, where massive amounts of energy must be expended to take out the defenders, when you could go to a world without defenders and use the nature of being biological to transform the solar energy and matter into biomass?
Because they don't value energy and they do value potential genetic material.

This may not be the most logically sound argument to you but it's 20x better than most of the justifications in the setting for why shit does what it does.

>>51029831
it was kinda bad, but pretty fun, and had fun characters.
Not all sci-fi needs to be hard sci-fi or deal with serious questions.
Sometimes it can be Flash Gordon, John Carter, Luke Skywalker, Caiphas Caine, John Rayner.

>>51029839
Again with this "energy energy energy" crap. It's already been stated that 'nids are post-scarcity in terms of energy. Yes, biomass is storage for that - no, it's not the energy inside the storage they're after, since they can get more of it from the same solar source it originally came from. They want the increased mass so they can multiply.

>>51029858
>better than most of justifications in the setting.
I'd say on par with.
Which I've said many times, including in that post.
It's utter nonsense, therefore it fits perfectly in 40k.

My problem was in people trying to say it wasn't utter nonsense that laughs at science. Because like most everything else in 40k, it's utter nonsense that laughs at science. And that's okay.

>>51029870
I love Starcraft but honestly I wasn't a big fan of the campaign in the sequel. SC1 and Brood War had much better story. But yeah it was decent enough, I suppose.

>>51029870
>kinda bad

>its literally the plot of WC3 recycled

yeah

>>51029932
where were the necromancers in SC2, because I do not remember them.
They both came from the same fairly generic story, but the recycling came from general storyline that's everywhere.

Your like the assholes who say that TFA is a shot for shot remake of ANH, convieniantly forgetting that this is only true if you treat the ANH's plot so generally that it is clearly not a very original story. Which it wasn't and never needed to be.

If you want a shot for shot remake you need Fist Full of Dollars being a remake of Yojimbo.

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>>51029870
>it was kinda bad, but pretty fun, and had fun characters.

The was absolutely nothing fun about the total rape of SC1's lore and characters.

SC 2's story is SHIT, and has no redeeming qualities.
Hell, SC2 in general, has no redeeming qualities.
They fucked up everything, ranging from sound design to aesthetics of the races.

>>51030043
Diablo 3

>>51029650

Yeah but lets consider that Earth in fact has an extremely low amount of carbon compared to the solar system average. Someone who wants to harvest carbon from planets and can into intergalactic travel would take Earth last, yet AFAIK Tyranids don't harvest lifeless worlds, never mind gas giants or Oort clouds.

>>51027798
Yes, the tyranid lore grows increasingly retarded with every new iteration, just like everything else in 40k.

>>51028654
But those phenotypes are previously known or programmed though, not new. If a hormagaunt runs into something that says "we should add toxin sacs on the next iteration" it doesn't create a new sequence for toxin sacs it simply turns on the toxin sac genes for its clutch.

Ya feel me?

>>51030280
This, good explanation. I forgot about that comment chain in all the arguing over why the Swarmlord is retarded.

>>51029882
this guy gets it

holy fuck

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>>51028679
Only one Swarmlord can exist at one time because it has a soul

>>51029410
>They don't do the nerg fluff of saying that they want new genetic material for more information, treating genes and biochems like technical information
What are Malanthropes? What about Biovores or Tyrant Guard that have been created by using the genetics of the other 40k factions?

>>51032128
Heck, its implied that death worlds, and things like the Catachan Devil and the Krakens of Fenris? Those are far-flung tyranid experiments. For the lulz.

>>51027798
Y'all niggas are autistic.

The Swarm Lord is given a DEGREE of autonomy to benefit the hivemind. It's not a fully seperate entity still, it exists as a puppet of the Hive Mind - just one that functions independently. Do you tell your heart to beat? Do you tell your eyes to blink? Do you tell your mitochondria to be the power house of the cell? Of course not, because it's waiting for it's chance to overthrow the human race. But that's besides the point.

The Swarm Lord is a sub intelligence. A compartmentalized brain. It's the hive minds tulpa, if you will.

>>51027798

If your pinky finger had free will, would you feel worse than you already do about constantly shoving it up your own ass, OP?

>>51032658
Thats fucking retarded. Its an independent will and personality within the hive mind

Yeah I don't tell my heart to beat, but at the same time, my heart isn't a unique identity and personality within me, fucktard

>>51032658
>The Swarm Lord is given a DEGREE of autonomy to benefit the hivemind
Which still makes no sense and isn't actually in any way beneficial.

If you think it is, you don't understand what a Hive Mind is.

>>51032775

Not that anon, but: you do know that Lictors exist, right?

They're the also organisms designed to operate alone - even though they're made in bulk - as scouts for the main force.

There are times when a job needs to be done, and it can only be done by ONE organism using the whole smarts & cunning of the tyranid race, but operating solo.

And being an awesome general is a solo job ...

>>51032658
>>Do you tell your mitochondria to be the powerhouse of the cell

I laughed way harder than I should have

>>51032848
No, being a general is the opposite of a solo job

And Lictors maintain a link to the hive mind. They're specially designed to, like Genestealers.

>>51032712
>>51032775
It's a matter of scale

You don't consider your heart to be an individual because it's so beneath you
Just a wad of tissues following it's preprogrammed genetic mechanics.

That's what the swarm Lord, what you and me, what all individual minds are to the hive mind. We're so far beneath it it couldn't even consider us to have minds.

For all we know, we're just cells in a larger organ that is the universe. An ant cannot fathom man, man cannot fathom God. That is what makes the Tyranids so ironic. A collection of bugs, but to it, we are the ants

In the old lore, hive tyrants were given a degree of intelligence and identity somewhat separate from that of the greater hive mind. I like to retcon the Swarmlord as a hive tyrant that has simply become more (in)famous than it is other brethren, kinda like the difference between named space marine captains and unnamed ones. Not too sure about current lore though

>>51032894

Being a General is a solo job because an army has to be guided by one, single intelligence.
This is why we have discipline, and this is why any attempt at democracy in the army has failed.
One mind, guiding untold billions of troops into battle. You'd, naturally, want to have the best mind, there, right?

And, yes, Lictors do retain their link - so they can relay info better - but are still operating on their own, using their smarts & cunning to obtain as much data as possible.

>>51032932
... Are you fucking retarded?

>>51032954
You know whats better than the swarmlord, a unified consciousness of an entire race who can share information at the speed of thought

Some sort of.. .Hive mind if you will.

>>51032991
Maybe.

Or maybe I'm just hip to the code of the universe man. You gotta open up your mind and let the geometry in so you can shake it apart and pick through the peices. Tune in and turn off man

>>51033013
Ah.

Retarded then.

Shame.

>>51032999
>share information at the speed of thought

Excellent, now we're getting somewhere.
Yes, they share information - but you still need brains to process that information and send it out over the 'network' to the muscle doing all the work.
Ever heard of a term 'guiding intelligence'?
Attached to tyranids, perhaps?

>>51033110
Gee if only there was some sort of creature that was in the hive ships, able to process vast amounts of information, like an entire genome in seconds, and utilize it

Alas, there is no such beast. At least to my knowledge.

>>51033121

>able to process vast amounts of information

Vast =/= infinite.
And Her time (and mind) is, usually, already taken by the same scanning of the genome, as well as coordination of various detachments in space & on the ground.
Division of responsibilities is a thing, you know.
Hive Mind is still a collection of minds - and the more, the better.

>>51033362
ok, but the point is that a Hive Tyrant isn't a general

Its at best, a glorified squad sergeant in the horde that is the tyranid will.

Why the fuck should i care about a particularly mean faceless alien?

>>51033381

Look:
more mind = more information processing power = better Hive Mind, right?
So, more Hive Tyrants = more information processing power = better Hive Mind.
BUT
There can be only one Swarm Lord.
So: more mind in a single Hive Tyrant (as per requirements) = more information processing power = better Hive Mind.

>>51033427
... but why can there only be one swarm lord

Why not make more swarm lords

whats stopping the hive mind

answer nothing is stopping the hive mind. It doesn't have one offs, it makes whatever the fuck it wants.

>>51033432

Why make more when one is enough?
Better make 1000 Gaunts instead - might even get that breakthrough.

>>51033490
How can one be enough for a galaxy spanning species, you absolute chucklehead.

ITT: Newfags that have never read Tyranid fluff untainted by the retarded hamfist of Cruddace try to justify the existence of his fluffrape snowflake Tyranid that he only even made in the first place so it could job to Ultramarines and make them look even snowflakier.

Fuck off back to /v/ you swarmlord-loving faggots.

>>51033549
hey, to be fair, the Swarmlord did get to hilariously make Girlyman into a quadrapelegic, even Abbadon wasn't disarmed so fiercely.

the Swarmlord's achievements are actually all cooler if it was just a normal hive tyrant

Ruining Calgar and turning him into a fucknugget, getting an avatar to challenge it to single combat and then throwing 12 carnifexes at it and laughing, smashing fucking everything else

All cooler if its just ALL HIVE TYRANTS ARE THIS BADASS AND SMART

>>51033749
>getting an avatar to challenge it to single combat and then throwing 12 carnifexes at it and laughing
God this retcon is one of the most annoying. That used to be a totally different Tyrant called the Devourer of Hope, but nu-GW had to go and make it the swurrmlurrd to appeal to fucking 12 year olds.

>>51033787
I mean its retarded, it'd just be way more fitting for the nids for every tyrant to be these canny, absolute monsters that will do shit like that

There is no real 'devourer of hope' in that setup, just a Tyrant that is dubbed that as it fucking obliterates the Eldar

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>>51033749
I wish I could throw 12 fexes at other units and laugh instead of crying...

>>51033822
That's the point. It was a one-off Tyrant for that battle, and that's what it was named.

Swarmlord should have been just a random Tyrant at the Battle for Macragge and never seen again.

Basically Tyranids should never have recurring special characters.

>>51027798
>This shit would be like if my pinky finger had its own free will
That's a real thing, you know. It's quite spooky.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_hand_syndrome

Rogue tyranid splinters acting against the greater hivemind's intentions would probably be the Tyranid equivalent.

>>51033853
agreed

>>51033841
rip Carnifex, 4th edition was the last time you got to be good

>>51033873
>Rogue tyranid splinters acting against the greater hivemind's intentions would probably be the Tyranid equivalent.
The greater Hive Mind's intentions are the survival of the Tyranid race and assimilation of all other life.

So there's really almost no way for a rogue tendril to "rebel" against that. What is it going to do, attack other Tyranids? You mean like how every Hive Fleet does when it encounters another Hive Fleet, because that strengthens the race as a whole when the weaker one is defeated and subsumed?

>>51033545

And how do we know it's just one?

Isn't adaptability a major strength of the Tyranids?

Are there any reasons why one Hive Fleet couldn't go: 'oh, hey, we need a super-Tyrant here' totally independently of another?

Would be a totally logical progression, IMHO.
Or just a normal modus operandi totally consistent with their lore: if faced with a badass, keep throwing a bigger badass at it 'till it breaks.

>>51030280
>Ya feel me?
yes, but by biomorphs I was also including having gaunts spawning carnifices and hierophants.

>>51033935
Because they literally say that the swarmlord is an individual and there is only one

Ecks Dee.

>>51033935
The original Tyranid lore is that a Hive Fleet is a single organism in uncountable bodies, each of which are simply cells in the whole. A few of them might be slightly more important than others, like our brain cells are more important than our outer skin cells, but there are no recurring individuals within the Fleet, no special important dudes that run things, no organism is ever bred one at a time because they simply don't work at that scale.

A Hive Tyrant is a synaptic lynchpin of the overall network, it's a hub, a nexus. It's larger than a Warrior because it's a more powerful psyker and so needs to be better protected with thicker armor. But it does not, itself, have any real value as an individual. It's just a walking telepathic nerve connector.

>>51033993

Since it's an ace up the 'nids sleeve - yeah, I can see why they'd rarely bring it out.

>>51034017
but it literally doesn't matter they can make it a new body if it dies

Its fucking stupid.

>>51034017
>4 boneswords on legs
>an ace up the sleeve of a force of trillions of organisms
Wow. So speshul and badass.

>>51028038

Depending on how the Swarmlord came about, it might not have been Cruddace's fault.

>>51028623

Because Oldcrons were just plain bad, no matter how much bullshit people spew about them being scary. They arguably never should have been an army and just remained another thing that is out there in the galaxy.

Newcrons are only kind of redeemed by being inspired by Tomb Kings and having characters with personality. They step all over the toes of the Eldar being the empire past its prime.

>>51029146

Chaos Androids would actually offer something since they'd presumably be the creation of humanity and show both partly why AI is viewed so badly by the Imperium and how Chaos can manage to even over take technology. Even them being created by another species and having outlived them or not being primarily associated with Chaos could work because it'd still play to the trope of evil AI which doesn't really have a presence in any of the armies. The only thing you'd have to work out for them to be an army is how they're managing to not out expand everybody else or mostly everybody else both numerically and technologically.

>>51033922
The Tyranid "Hive Mind" is actually a psychic/biological multi-stage bot network (or possibly multiple networks if Norn Queens are the highest synapse level). Killing the appropriate Synapse creatures will isolate lower level sections unless they can reestablish connections with an alternate for the lost synapse level.

In theory if an error occurred in reconnection, a low level simple "mini" hive mind could form and develop an independent intelligence that registers to the network as part of it but does its own thing.

>>51029212

>That's why the nids only bother eating a planets biomass, which is tiny tiny portion of the total potential energy of the system.

Reread Tyranid invasion stages. They force-grow the planet's native floral to drain the soil of nutrients, and thoroughly tunnel and churn the soil to get metals and minerals from it. They drain the seas, and the last step involves somehow folding and compressing the atmosphere, which they take with them as more food and fuel.

Nids leave planets airless, uninhabitable hellscapes stripped of everything from water to metal to soil and even the air. Anything left over would be too deep to dig conventionally, leaving a planet dead and fairly useless to anyone.

>>51034239
>Depending on how the Swarmlord came about, it might not have been Cruddace's fault.
Well it was in his Codex and its entire existence goes against Phil Kelly's interpretation of Tyranids who afaik was the only other person to have input on that Codex.

At best you could argue it was executive meddling and they wanted Tyranid special characters again, but it could have been written in the same manner as Old One Eye and The Red Terror as a one-off historical mutation that appeared at a specific battle instead of the complete nonsense garbage that was actually printed.

>Because Oldcrons were just plain bad, no matter how much bullshit people spew about them being scary. They arguably never should have been an army and just remained another thing that is out there in the galaxy.

>Newcrons are only kind of redeemed by being inspired by Tomb Kings and having characters with personality. They step all over the toes of the Eldar being the empire past its prime.
I honestly agree with this. If it weren't for the fact that they already have a model range I think the setting would benefit from squatting 'crons.

>>51034271
I agree with this theory, and personally I think that different Hive Fleets should be considered the "individuals" of the Tyranid race in the sense of having their own Hive Minds that have diverged too much from the common ""language"" (if you can call it that) to function together, but that's another thing that was ruined by the total omniscient bland boring narration of the 5e and onward Codices compared to the mysterious immersive unreliable narrator stuff we got back in 4th.

>>51029466
>but I don't think rocks actually have that much carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, anon, or at least not much of the last two
it is worth noting than a shitload of rocks are made from SiO2

>>51034371

>Well it was in his Codex and its entire existence goes against Phil Kelly's interpretation of Tyranids who afaik was the only other person to have input on that Codex.

Still may not have been responsible if the current practice of the models getting made and then lore and rules being created for them was the way things were done. However if the codex came first and there wasn't a model or conversion parts along side it then it could have been Cruddace's creation.

>>51034371
>If it weren't for the fact that they already have a model range I think the setting would benefit from squatting 'crons.

Yeah. fuck you too. The world would benefit of you kys.

All this heacanon being thrown around.

It has been confirmed that the Tyranid Hivemind cannot store and pass tactical and genetic information across hive fleets. Heck, It cannot do even with the tendrils of the same fleet.

The Hivemind cannot store information so here comes in the Swarmlord. The Swarmlord can store vast amounts of tactical information and can process them as needed. This is what makes him vital to the Tyranid race.

>>51034371
> If it weren't for the fact that they already have a model range I think the setting would benefit from squatting 'crons.

Yeah go fuck yourself

Necrons fulfill a unique aesthetic niche in 40k, specifically being B-movie ayylmaos. Flying saucers, heat-ray firing walkers, and hilariously vague super-science and technobabble are all great things that Newcrons bring to the table. Their fluff would be greatly improved if there was more focus on their named characters being incomprehensible and egotistical alien overlords, but the current "comic book villain" mentality kind of works.

>>51033922
>So there's really almost no way for a rogue tendril to "rebel" against that.

A death world fungus took over genestealers, Nurgle kidnapped and corrupted a genestealer cult, a Slaaneshi warband has Tyranid slave-beasts, a rogue admech put a captured hive tyrant in a machine and used it to control a tyranid swarm, and the Iron Warriors corrupted a hiveship and cut it off from the Hivemind and turned it into a titan lander.

>>51035511
>The Hivemind cannot store information so here comes in the Swarmlord. The Swarmlord can store vast amounts of tactical information and can process them as needed. This is what makes him vital to the Tyranid race.
Lol. If the Hive Mind cannot store that information then how can it store the memories of the Swarmlord who apparently has that information? Your own argument defeats itself.

>>51035545
Yes, all of these things can be done when isolated Tyranids are separated from synapse, what is your point?

>>51035518

>Flying saucers, heat-ray firing walkers

Neither of which were originally part of them.

>hilariously vague super-science and technobabble

The Mechanicus and Dark Eldar also have this.

>>51035545
Oh look it's Carnac.

Thread over guys, unless you want to rail against maximum level autism. It was fun while it lasted.

>>51035551
The Swarmlord is a unique entity within the hivemind. Like a sub-program within a bigger program. He stands apart but at the same time not.

Alternatively, what you saying is how come this daemon has its own memories and agency when it comes from the Warp?

>>51035559
Can be potentially done to hive fleets easily.

Slaanesh grabbed a splinter fleet of Ktaken for his purposes in Valedor. It could have been written that he corrupted the splinter fleet and made them Slaaneshi.

The point is that there is precedence of Tyranids being taken in by other factions and "rebelling" against the Hivemind. This can be expanded much more.

>>51035578
This argument is bad, you know it's bad, and you should feel bad.

>He stands apart but at the same time not.
Literally l o fucking l.

>>51035608
It's not. If a daemon can have agency and its own memories within the Warp, then so can the Swarmlord within the Hivemind.

Regardless of your opinion what I am telling you is the fluff. The Hivemind cannot store data on its own.

>>51035607
>Carnac has ascended from citing shitty fanfic tier writing to citing literal fantasies of non-existent fanfic tier writing that COULD exist in a theoretical alternate reality
WEW

Case in point, Shadowbrink.

Leviathan, prior to Shadowbrink, have had several massive spaceborn and ground wars against the daemonic legions of Chaos. And yet in Shadowbrink when Leviathan , the Hivemind could not regoinze what the daemons were, could not recall any tactics to combat them from previous encounters, and didn't realize that eating them was bad, etc. It was as if the Tyranids have met the daemons for the first time which ridiculous because since the Tyranids invaded in 700+ 41K, the Tyranids had MANY full scale battles with daemonic legions. Shadowbrink happened in 999 41K.

This proves without a doubt that the Hivemind cannot store information

>>51035640
Regardless of your opinion, Canon is canon, and precedence is precedence. You can build on that to create unique hive fleets.

I personally have no problem with the Swarmlord. He' jus t a specialized strain of the Tyrant that is rarely used, because regular Tyrants are most times enough and making the Swarmlord takes more time and resources to both grow his enhanced body and load all the memories of the previous Swarmlords into it. It does not have a name aside from the one humans gave it, and does not have more personality then other Tyrants.

>>51035669
>This proves without a doubt that the Hivemind cannot store information
This proves without a doubt that GW cannot write consistent fluff

>>51035677
Another example of is Tyranids vs Necrons. Necrons were the first enemies encountered by the Tyranids, with the Silent King ravaging their fleets in the void between the galaxies.

Yet Tyranids have shown zero adaptability or foreknowledge when fighting the Necrons in Shield of Baal. The hyper adaptation that helped the nids squash the Astra-M and Sister forces in the first book of the series was nowhere seen in the second book. The Tyranids just stood there and took it like they were unable to comprehend the Necron enemies due to lack of data.

>>51035695
The same writers who wrote this, wrote the lore about the Tyranids fighting daemons before Shadowbrink. It's impossible for them to forget like dozens of examples of daemon vs nid in the lore.

No, no, they are telling us here that the Hivemind has memory issues and needs the Hive Tyrants and Swarmlord to be its memory banks.

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>>51028714
>wiki
>fluff
reeeeee

You don't even need to look at the Swarmlord, it's in the Hive Tyrant entry (both 5th and 6th edition). All Hive Tyrants are reincarnating snowflakes with their own unique knowledge and memories that only they have access to. The Swarmlord is simply the most extreme/worst example - and even contradicts what Cruddace himself said about the Tyranid special characters in his design notes.

>>51035426
The codex came out 2 years before the plastic Hive Tyrant and its (impressively lacklustre) Swarmlord alt-build. Granted, models can sit around for a long time before being officially released - the plastic Daemon Prince from the same period was one example - but I'm still inclined to think the Swarmlord was written before it was sculpted.

However, while the obvious route is to blame Cruddace since it's his name on the thing, there's no way of really knowing without actually asking the people who do know. Ward helped Crud with 5e IG, and Kelly with Nids, but the front of each of those books only said "By Robin Cruddace". Battle Focus was Ward's idea, despite the 6e Eldar codex being a Kelly-Troke creation. Kelly isn't remembered for working on CSM 3.5, yet he was responsible for Lucius the Eternal (although in this case he actually was listed as one of the codex's multiple writers, since that was the style at the time).

>>51035577
The second post above that too. And he's clearly not stopping.

>>51035717
its almost like the lore is written poorly around tyranids

Hmm.

hmmm.

That could also explain the utterly retarded chaos tyranids AS IF THAT COULD BE A THING

Wow its like the black library is garbage

I cannot believe this guys

GW consistently fucks up their own fluff for the tyranids, who would have thought.

that never would have made sense

>>51035679
but he does have names aside from the ones humans gave it. He is specifically a unique individual within the swarm

Yes, this the garbage level of the lore now

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>>51035736
>It's impossible for them to forget like dozens of examples of daemon vs nid in the lore.

>>51035743
Your post formatting is disgusting. Anyways, Tyranid lore is not poorly written, it's just they are a shitty faction. Learn the difference.

If we're just accepting all retarded lore as canon and precedence then where are my backflipping multilaser armed Terminators.

>>51035754
"Tyranid lore is not poorly written, its completely acceptable for the race whose gimmick is adaptation to be out-adapted by the fucking tau in their own codex, especially when said fleet was HYPER-ADAPTIVE beyond normal tyranid standards"

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>>51035743
>That could also explain the utterly retarded chaos tyranids AS IF THAT COULD BE A THING
Like the Kellydex's Legion of Ouroboris?

>but he does have names aside from the ones humans gave it.
Those are presumably just names given by other races though. Like how the Tyranids themselves are "the Penance of the Elder Gods" among other things.

>>51027798
>LOL SWARMLORD IT HAS ITS OWN NAMES AND ITS SMARTER AND IMMORTAL AND A SUPER SPESHUL HIVE TYRANT

It can work you just need to make it as much part of the swarm as special organs or cells are for specials functions, so they become unique in their own organism but not completly individualistic.

Give them special functions, like dealing with psychics or necrons, and you can have both special units and actual tyranids so you can even put two or three in the same campaign and still make sense.

>>51035766
Unlike the Tyranids, the Tau Empire is not led by a dominating "intelligence" that's senile. That's a big advantage.

Also the Tau gimmick is advancement and adaptation. The Tyranids only do it in response to outside forces, the Tau on the other hand do it just because they can and because they love sciece. It makes sense for a race that's perpetually focusing on reaching technological perfection to be better than a race that only adapts when it needs to.

>>51035773
I mean i like the idea of them being the penance of the elder gods and possibly the final weapon of the old ones (would explain their dino aesthetic if the old ones really are the slaan), but they're something beyond chaos, thats why they're the shadow in the warp

>>51035795
>the hive mind is retarded because i say so

great lore/10

>>51035806
I always thouth the Shadow in the Warp is just a telepathic DDoS.

>>51035806
The Hivemind is retarded because this>>51035717 and this >>51035669

>Hivemind in Shadowbrink : "DUUUR WHAT IZ DAEMONS"?
>In reality, the same Hive Fleet ships was invaded by daemons and the fleet accidentally invaded a daemon world the same year and the previous yeah to Shadowbrink

Even the Tau know what daemons are by now.

>>51035813
I mean it pretty much is, its the constant chitter of all the nids communicating basically blocking out the warp from normies

>>51035821
>the hive mind is retarded because poor writing

Its almost like this entire thread is bitching about poor writing related to tyranids, hmm.

I mean come on, this is as silly as thinking Grey Knights murdering sisters of battle to wear their blood to protect them from demons was a totally reasonable and righteous act.

>>51035834
>Everything that makes my faction look bad is bad writing

Freaking powerwanker. Tyranids are not suppose to be a power fantasy.

>>51035848
They are supposed to be alien space horror. Which the recent fluff writers totally forgot.

>>51035848
>Tyranids are not suppose to be a power fantasy.

If you say that you don't know anything about 40k.

>>51035848
let me go ahead and explain why you are dumb

There is a different between 'bad writing' and 'my faction losing'

Warriors of Ultramar is one of the best presentation of Tyranids, they are presented as terrifying, and unstoppable, and only through great sacrifice and a desperate suicide mission are they defeated, and even then its just a small group.

The story of encountering Behemoth and the fact that Ultramar was pushed tot he brink really hammers home their threat.

The tyranids being outdone in adapation by the tau, and being too stupid to recognize daemons is bad writing when the entire point of the tyranids is that they were not just endless and soulless locusts, but they were SMART, and they would fuck with you and use unreal tactics like just throwing bodies to run you out of ammo, or the previously mentioned HAHA I'LL TOTALLY 1V1 YOU 12 CARNIFEXES TO THE FAAACEE

>>51035875
They are still aylim spess whores but now they have flaws like any faction.

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>still arguing with Carnac

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>>51034239
>Even them being created by another species and having outlived them or not being primarily associated with Chaos could work because it'd still play to the trope of evil AI which doesn't really have a presence in any of the armies. The only thing you'd have to work out for them to be an army is how they're managing to not out expand everybody else or mostly everybody else both numerically and technologically.

Chaos Androids would have corrupted AI's, be afflicted by fractiousness of Chaos like CSM and Daemons, and would be more like Decepticons than Replicators.

>>51035891
Read your post and it seems to me that you are bitching more than your faction got their asses handed to them in a few aspects than any bitching about "bad writing".

Stop using the Tyranids are your power fantasy and realize that they have flaws.

>>51035894
>now they have flaws

???

They always had flaws as a faction, there's a great page in the 3rd ed codex that is literally all about SHOOT THE BIG ONES.

>>51035912
>literally the examples of good examples of nids ultimately end with their defeat

???????

>>51035915
Yo mean the examples that make your faction look good. These you are willing to accept but examples where your faction underperform you are willing to dismiss. Get over it. All factions have a rough day from time to time. Not everyone can be good all the time.

>>51035929
Man i forgot how retarded Carnac is.

>>51035938
"SHOOT THE BIG ONES" must be the only flaw of the NIDZ

No, that's retarded.

>>51035944
>why is the race that is the pinnacle of biological evolution nearly flawless, i do not understand, its not fair that the only race that has an actual chance of winning 40k should be good at what it does, only Tau can be good at things!

>>51035834
>I mean come on, this is as silly as thinking Grey Knights murdering sisters of battle to wear their blood to protect them from demons was a totally reasonable and righteous act.

It was reasonable at least. Grey Knights don't do "righteous". They understand the gravity of the threat of Chaos, and that only artifice - their corruption-resistant custom gene-seed itself is a good example -, not feelings, can provide protection from it.

>>51035973
Like I said, a power fantasy that got broken by introducing some flaws. My perfect little bug-dinos must be perfect...PERFECT!

FYI, the Tau have flaws as well. All factions do. Learn to live with them and a senile Hivemind.

>>51036020
except it made no sense because the gray knights themselves are immune to corruption

So murdering some sisters to protect themselves from corruption is

... Retarded?

>>51036031
>tau

>flaws

Next you'll tell me that the Eldar have ever been allowed to be anything but top tier on tabletop

>>51036040
6e pre-new codex

>>51036040
Nativity and being too cock-sure about their philosophy and manifest destiny.

>>51036034
No Grey Knight Fallen =/= immunity

Grey Knights can still be killed by Chaos magics.

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>>51036034
>the gray knights themselves are immune to corruption
But are they really?

Well, according to the codex, yes.
...but are they though?

>>51036064
>being this retarded

>>51036075
i mean if they had to murder sisters in cold blood maybe they were already corrupted

ya know

>>51036075

And why is it that only Crowe among the Grey Knights could be trusted with the Blade of Antwyr?

>>51036089
Read his novel "Warden of the Blade". It explains how he came to wield the sword and guard it.

>>51036078
Grey Knights can be spawned.

>>51035891
Honestly, I feel like the whole "lol, I throw 12 carnifexes at you" makes the hivemind thing better, at least if they didn't need a super special character for it. Just a Hive Tyrant, who gets challenged, but the concept is alien to him, he just sees this thing standing there, waiting for something to happen. So he sends off the carnifexes to do what they're supposed to do.

>>51036229
The Hivemind doesn't have this as an alien concept. It just didn't have anything personal towards the Avatar. Compare that to what happened with Iyanananan~ and Yriel.

>Something was wrong. A sensation at the back of her mind. The sensation grew teeth, became pain.

>Her soul was gripped by agony.

>Iyanna screamed, falling from the edge of the couch. The pain abated, then squeezed her anew. She vomited.

>The dead were dismayed. The blow against her raced out across her attack group, leaping from mind to mind. Wraithbomber engines guttered out. The Wraithborne’s sleek cruisers turned viciously, wallowing in psychic swell.

>Bright light burned at Iyanna’s soul. A long tunnel telescoped away, encompassing infinite distance. A tube stabbed through the fabric of the world. She felt its ripples in the warp. She felt its ripples in the webway.

>She had the sense of an eye, slave to a great power. An intellect that dwarfed the Great Wheel of the galaxy. She opened her second sense, to find the Dragon looking at her with terrible regard.

>For aeons it seemed it held her in its gaze. And there was fury in that examination.

>The Dragon was angry, and it was angry with her. Not with the galaxy, or this sector, or her species. But with her personally. The promise of endless torment came from it, her very being enslaved to its ends and used against others, her body rebuilt over and again so that it might suffer the Dragon’s revenge.

>Terror of a kind she could not have conceived of flooded her mind. She screamed again, and this time every eldar in the fleet screamed with her.

-From Wraithflight (short story) by Guy Haley

>>51028038
To some extent I want to agree with the fact that Tyranids are characterized by their lack of individuality but also I remember the Red Terror and Old One Eye being amazing back in 4th ed

>>51036280
>Yriel plunged his spear deep into the rearing serpent. It keened terribly, and Yriel salivated as his weapon drank. Since the day he had lost his eye due to the spear feasting on the limitless hive mind, he had managed to control its fell power and its obscene appetites, but at this final pass he no longer had the strength, and the spear’s murderous soul overwhelmed him. He could not stop it feeding, drawing upon the infinity of spirit the Great Devourer possessed. Yriel felt the hive mind, heard it howl. It thrashed about, and Yriel was battered by its anger. Its thoughts were utterly, unimaginably alien. But one thing came through strong and loud. Hatred, hatred for this creature that had for the first time in untold aeons wounded it.

-From "Valedor" by Guy Haley

>>51028267
>>51028282
>>51028303
>>51028323
>>51028328

Why, God why are we getting hung up on the dubious binary gender allocations of a fictional alien race.

For a start; It doesn't matter.

Also, surely if anything is ever going to be some sort of fucked up Tumblresque pansexual pluripotent-demisquidkin its the Tyranids.

>>51028616
God I miss 4th edition. Back when you could actually make a viable army out of what you want regardless of the sales agenda

The Swarmlord is fucking fine, if anything it's a pretty logical conclusion if you have a giant gestalt soup of consciousness like WIFI covering the universe. The Swarmlord is just a really useful program that was granted separate consciousness in order to perform better by thinking as an individual to counter the individuality of the factions the Tyranids are always fighting. It's their trump card when they get stuck and there's some brilliant commander kicking the shit out of them and they can't beat. So the Hive Mind uploads the Swarmlord's consciousness and sends it to unfuck the campaign.

There's no reason NOT to have a single sub-consciousness within your greater entity that stores all commanding experience across millions of years of endless warfare. Not only is it going to be REALLY FUCKING GOOD at killing shit, but pretty damn killy itself in a fight. Evidenced by it carving through space marines like a fucking Greater Daemon.

>Alien race that adapts constantly
>FInds galaxy where heros turn the tide of war constantly
>Adapts to this with its own heros and hero killers allowed a measure of individuality just to exercise cunning enough to kill and feed better
>Spergs find this disagreeable because xenomorph rip offs shouldn't have vicious cunning like a xenomorph?

>>51036382
The Swarmlord is as old as the Tyranid race.

>>51036393
Or at least imperials fwo are butthurt after being bested by it claim so to soften the blow to their ego.

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>>51036346
>Evidenced by it carving through space marines like a fucking Greater Daemon.
Before getting its shit kicked in by a hero, also like a Greater Daemon.

>>51036393
Then why is it stupid? Why would the rules that make heros best in the entire galaxy be different in Andromeda?

>>51035545
>a rogue admech put a captured hive tyrant in a machine and used it to control a tyranid swarm

What the fucking fuck

>>51036423
Fuck off Carnac

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>>51036486
No, Carnac approves of the Swarmlord. >>51035511

Now on the other hand, here we have a Tyranid 'character' that didn't job to the enemy champion, and, unlike Swarmy, probably isn't at risk of jobbing in future since it was just a one-off.
>In their need to find a focus for their hatred, the Iron Warriors named this creature the Tremorbeast, and with each massacre its reputation grew. The Warsmith, in his arrogance, resolved to slay the Tremorbeast personally - he was swallowed whole for his efforts, dragged into the creature's gullet by a writhing mass of tentacles.

>>51036486

You're not acting like Swarmlord's defeat was reasonable, why?

>Mankind boasts many heroes, men of purpose and dedication without whom the Imperium would crumble. Yet even among their ranks there is a man whose nobility overshadows all others. His triumphs are without number and his deeds the stuff of legend. His name is Marneus Calgar, Master of the Ultramarines and Lord of Macragge.

>It is on the field of battle that Marneus Calgar shows his immense skill. He is a proficient tactician and a master strategist, who can read the ebb and flow of battle as easily as another man reads words on a page. He leads the Ultramarines in battle if and when he is required, his mere presence inspiring his troops to great acts of valour and courage. It is here, in the eye of the storm, that Marneus Calgar's titanic might is truly realised. He is a God of War and he will crush all before him, for none can stand before the greatest warrior of the Imeprium.

>>51036465
Well, a Hive Tyrant is fundamentally a Space Bug, and it's not like the Ad Mech doesn't have plenty of experience with making Servitors, so...

>>51036882
AdMech have no clue how thir own tech works.
Manage to hijack Tyranid biotech and warp-tech to the level of hacking into hive-mind signal and taking control of entire swarm of 'nids.
Yeah, totally reasonable.

If I could, I'd fucking kill Carnac desu.
Worst poster on /tg/.

Tyranid Special Characters could work as random mutations that made the creatures much deadlier, but also more expensive in terms of biomass. They rampaged, before being absorbed by the hive-mind and the 'blueprints' of their design being sent to other hive tendrils.

>>51037224
Well, this is actually how they are already. Except their mutatuons are puepose-maid rather than random

>>51036940
>AdMech have no clue how thir own tech works.

Ah, this fallicious argument again. No, if you actually read any AdMech fluff outside the basis you give us the Magi understand a lot of their technology quite well, actually, the whole point is their ritualism and 'praying to make it work' is laced with actual technological knowledge. Further, literally everyone and their mother constantly forgets about the technological disparity between Forgeworlds, there's some out there that rely on ritual more than anything and barely understand their tech and some out there that would laugh at the kind of stuff the Tau are giving their military.

>>51036694
Cause the Swarmlord kick his ass hard last time they encounter ?

>This shit would be like if my pinky finger had its own free will

Guess if I ever play Nids I'll name my Swarmlord "Bottom Lefty."

>>51037140
Foolish anon. I am eternal. I cannot tire. I cannot slow. I cannot fail. You will do all of these, and you will die.

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>>51036031
>>51036040
Tau have flaws. Their lack of TEQs for one.

>>51036040
>Eldar have ever been allowed to be anything but top tier on tabletop
They weren't top tier in early 3 and only were relevant because they killed MEQ (who were both common and had top tier options) well. They weren't top tier for most of 5e either, since their anti-tank was too focused in too few squads.

>>51034316
>Nids leave planets airless, uninhabitable hellscapes stripped of everything from water to metal to soil and even the air. Anything left over would be too deep to dig conventionally, leaving a planet dead and fairly useless to anyone.

lmao they truly are niggers on a galactic scale

>>51036322
They're talking about sex, not gender.
I reckon they're like ants. Mostly sterile females (though it could just as easily go the other way, or some weird alien alternative).

>>51036337
Back when there were rules for Salvar Chem Dogs. Back when there were rules that didn't have minis, and conversions were expected. Back when Orks were good.

>>51028765

>It still doesn't make sense that there is only one.

It's never been specified that there is only one. In fact, it's very likely that that's not the case, given how big the galaxy is and how many Tyranid incursions there are at any given moment in the setting. In fact, they never found the body of the Swarm Lord on Macragge, and nothing indicates it was ever re-absorbed by the Hive Mind, so it's entirely possible it's hibernating on Macragge until another Hive Fleet drops by, leaving other iterations of the Swarmlord to eat other parts of the galaxy. It's probably just a situation where it's gained legendary status because it's the oldest, most effective, and most deadly Hive Tyrant bioform out there.

>>51035938
I fucking told you guys to give up the thread when he arrived, you didn't listen to me.

I'm not sure whether I should be glad or disappointed that a reasonable person stuck around after I went to bed to attempt to shut him the fuck up but it's a losing proposition, he's literally the pinnacle of fanboy autism.

>>51039779
>It's never been specified that there is only one.
So you spared yourself the horrible experience of actually reading the absolutely steaming shitpile that is the Swarmlord fluff in the Cruddexes, then? Wise decision.

>>51036382
Do you just completely not get the concept of what a Hive Mind is?

Do you not understand cause and effect? Someone doesn't change the tide of war because they are a hero - they are lauded as a hero after they change the tide of war. Heroism is not a concrete "trait" a person can have, it's a combination of other traits that only have any effect on an army that would be affected by something like morale.

Tyranids are emotionless unfeeling biological murder machines that are hard-wired to kill every non-Tyranid thing they see move or die trying with no conception of individual mortality or ego or self-preservation. They don't need a "heroic example" to lead them and nothing that is already part of the greater gestalt of the Hive Mind can have abilities that the Hive Mind itself does not possess in the fucking first place. That's like saying there are whole numbers which are not integers.

Don't see why people are complaining about swarmlords.
All I see are swarms of flying hive tyrants.

Sexy Queen of Blades-type tyranid when?

>>51040166
It's a thread about Cruddace's badly written fluff, not Cruddace's badly written crunch.

When is that cunt getting sac'd.

How long until Tyranids get Necron'd and it turns out they have personalities and stuff?

>>51040513
Given that Phil Kelly has been put in charge of main Codex army fluff as lead writer now - never. The next 'nid Codex will probably undo a fair amount of the damage that Crud-era did to them.

>>51028038
>Q4. Have there been any plans to resurrect the infamous Genestealer Cult in the form of a codex or White Dwarf article with rules for them?

>Phil: Ah, that old chestnut. We do get a lot of people asking, several quite highly placed in the company, and myself and Jes are interested in revisiting them. They will never get their own Codex
lol

>>51027798
Why do I get the impression that the people most butt blasted by this are the ones that don't even play the game.

>>51040710
what does playing the game has to do with fluff?

i play 40k rarely anymore but i read books and discuss fluff everyday

>>51040710
If you mean "don't even play the game ANYMORE" because Crud fucked 'nids 6 ways from sunday and they are unrecognizable now as the elegant and fun army they were in 2e, or the incredibly customizable flexible force they were in 4e, then sure.

>>51040710
Oh the fluff, you mean books written by different authors that have different interpretations on what physical or psychic feats certain aliens/characters can do.

The fluff where Commisars are able to best Chaos champions in hand to hand combat?

>>51040726
Was meant to reply to that with this >>51040773

>>51040773
yes the fluff is sometimes hilariously bad i don't disagree with that, but you didn't answer my question

>>51040773
Not him but yes, that's the exact thing being criticized in this thread - the shitty inconsistent writing from bad authors, like the guy who has been in charge of Tyranids for three editions.

>>51037224
thats how they all work

OUTSIDE OF THE SWARMLORD

>>51040759
ding ding ding

i'll play 40k when my favorite army is playable like a swarm again

>>51037701
++laughing_seth_rogen.servoskullaudio++

gud post

>>51040773
To be fair, those 'commisars' that do best chaos champions are hailed as heroes of the imperium...

>>51035717
>Yet Tyranids have shown zero adaptability or foreknowledge when fighting the Necrons in Shield of Baal. The hyper adaptation that helped the nids squash the Astra-M and Sister forces in the first book of the series was nowhere seen in the second book. The Tyranids just stood there and took it like they were unable to comprehend the Necron enemies due to lack of data.
Looks like someone didn't actually read it and just gets their info second hand from tg, though I wouldn't expect more.

The tyranids lost most of the opening battles to the imperial guard and sisters of battle, it was the next wave that came back adapted. The maleceptors were a direct response to getting BTFO by psykers, the toxicrenes were a response to getting BTFO by tanks on the open field. The newly adapted tyranids managed to wipe out the cryptis system in 3 days.

The blood angels and necrons showed up for one elaborate mission to wipe out a large portion of the hive fleet that took only a few hours, the tyranids had no time to adapt because there was no second wave. Dante specifically calls a withdrawal after because he knows by now the tyranids are already adapting to the blood angels tactics, and they have no chance of winning. The tyranids didn't even lose the war, they just got beat down to something Baal might have a chance at standing up to

>>51042148
>there was no second wave

... Yeah this is retarded

>>51042345
Not him, but how so?

>>51042637
its not like it takes the nids long to make a second wave

>>51042777
More than a few short hours. Even doing it in one day is ridiculously impressive - compare to the other horde armies it takes Ork boys weeks to spawn and Guardsmen roughly 17 years to birth and train a new soldier.

Tyranids can replace a current wave with already existing forces extremely fast but birthing new strains is going to take at minimum a number of hours just for the smaller breeds. Anything else would be ridiculous.

>>51027798
Concept isn't bad, just don't make it an individual hero type, make it a genus of hive tyrant that is more costly to produce but far smarter, still gets called upon during times of stress, but its just another branch of hive tyrant, something between tyrants and dominatrix. Not some super special only ever appears once sorta thing

>>51042854
Yeah, a few hours is nothing

>>51042938
But that IS a wholly different concept. A much better one.

>>51036282
I think that's because they weren't really given any character, they were just rumoured stories of weird nids or experimental bioforms that went on rampages

>>51035545
Source? I can sorta believe the death world and nurgle thing, but the admech guy? Slaanesh stuff? I need source!

>>51043024
A bunch of shitty BL stories and Apocalypse supplements written by second-rate authors who never worked with Chambers and don't do their research.

>>51040553
Wait what? Kelly is in charge of all codex shit now? Or just nids? If he is writing the next nid codex I need to know!

>>51043101
He's in charge of all fluff, as far as I can tell. He wrote it all for GSC and most of the other recent books as well.

I don't think he does crunch anymore, at least ostensibly, but he probably has some input on it.

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>>51028556
>What nids really lack right now is customisation, 3rd edition style. Just let me custom-tailor my bugs, dangit !

Be careful what you wish for..

>>51035848
Are they supposed to be a cosmic horror or is that Chaos or Necrons?

>>51027798
Is it possible to have unique characters for a Genestealer cult?

>>51043345
>implying Thousand Sons are customizable
No, he's asking for the opposite of that.

>>51043390
Tyranids are the most cosmic horror of all the villain races. Chaos are a totally different form of classic diabolic horror involving damnation of the soul and the evils of man made manifest.

Necrons are just ayyylmao spooky space skeletons.

>>51028295
>swarmlord has the memories of
but there's only one mind among the tyranids

>>51043420
Yes, but for some reason that was the Codex they decided not to give the special characters, instead of the other way around.

>>51043437
but thats wrong though

The tyranids are many, many, many minds, all with one collective will of devouring all biomass. Thats what the shadow of in the warm is, the communication of the minds of the tyranids.

This is precisely why the swarmlord is so stupid, all the other nids should be in constant communication with that mind, they don't need it to have its own super speshul body and be super strong, especially when tyranids routinely produce such bodies.

Think the borg, except without the borg queen who is also awful like the rest of voyager barring 7 of 9s ass

>>51043432

>Vilain
>Did a wolf eating a lamb is evil ?

And just look at them ! Are they not cute ? They are just hungry....

But

>>51035787
This is how I like to picture it. These "special characters" are just very specific strains designed for rare events.

The Swarmlord is a hero killer, when the Hive Mind finds itself up against a threat which threatens to stop the whole fleet in its tracks, when up against a singular figure who it cannot just roll over -- it spawns the Swarmlord, a modified Hive Tyrant to act as a focal synapse point, something that could direct things with greater precision, that could outfight the greatest warriors, and in some ways would become an Avatar for the Hive Fleet itself.

Of course, after its done its job, and the nodule of resistance has been consumed, the Hive Fleet devours the Swarmlord as well, because it's a waste of resources when it's not needed.


Old One Eye is another example. A kind of Carnifex with a ridiculously highly developed regenerative capacity and heavy armour, allowing it to shrug off and come back from nearly anything. It's Behemoth's black box, designed to survive beyond the death of the Hive Fleet itself, so that when another fleet sweeps over, they can devour OOE and gain the record of the fallen Hive Fleet's biomass -- the specific mutations and developments made by Behemoth, and guaranteeing that no matter what happens, the Tyranids will be eternal.

It's just that Old One Eye was just so notable because it was the first, and the other Omega Carnifexes haven't been found when Hive Fleets have been wiped out.

>>51043437
there's never only one mind in any synaptic network


you too even are not as single minded as you think to be

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>>51043489
>shadow in the warm
sounds comfy

>>51043574
that would have been ok, but the Swarmlord has names.

NAMES.

>>51043644
You mean like Swarmlord, Tyrantlord of the Hive Mind, the Herald of the Great Devourer, or the Destroyer of the Kha'la Empire?

Yup. Those all sound like names people would give it.

>>51043663
Its also specifically a unique presence and a unique mind within the hive fleet

So.

>>51043574
>This is how I like to picture it
The problem is that all these defenses of the Swarmlord need to start like this. They're all headcanons created by altering the retarded aspects of how it was written to make it more palatable, which are varying levels of successful.

Your particular example does nothing to explain why they would spawn "a Swarmlord" and not "Swarmlords". When you're working on the scale of a fleet of thousands of ships each containing literally trillions of organisms why would you ever make one (1) at a time? When your body is sick with the flu does it produce one (1) t-cell to deal with the infection? Fuck no.

The old special characters like OOE and TRT worked because they were implied to be accidental random mutations, not intentional creations of the Norn Queens, and in later editions they were removed from the Codex and replaced with generic units or upgrades which were callbacks to them, showing an actual evolution of the Tyranids, which was very cool. The Neurothrope is the newest example of this, and one of the rare examples of a job well done with modern Tyranids.

>>51043420
Aren't there already notable genestealer cult characters? I'm sure more than one deserves special rules, it's a completely different situation than with actual tyranids.

>>51043756
There are three named ones from White Dwarf based on the Overkill game, but they were basically just early prototype versions of the generic HQ options in the final Codex and have more or less equal or inferior rules.

>>51043688
Yeah, it's the big problem.

But as for the number, if you want another ex-recto explanation, it's a resources thing. Maybe growing the synaptic organs and weapon symbiotes to weave together into the Swarmlord uses a ridiculous level of biomass, so the swarm doesn't want to use more than a single one, and then only rarely (for the same reason it doesn't just pump out biotitans and uses gaunts.)

Or it is just a prototype thing, like the Doom was (and OOE had aspects of, given that Behemoth lacked regeneration until him, and the later hive fleets had tonnes of regenerating carnifexes.) Maybe a future Hive Fleet will be led entirely by Swarmlords.

>>51043683
Yeah, that's the big problem. Not the names, which seem to be just what other species call them.

>>51043777
>Or it is just a prototype thing, like the Doom was (and OOE had aspects of, given that Behemoth lacked regeneration until him, and the later hive fleets had tonnes of regenerating carnifexes.) Maybe a future Hive Fleet will be led entirely by Swarmlords.
If they had done it like this, and the unit profile for the Swarmlord was literally just representing that one Tyrant at the Battle for Macragge, which was never seen again, and didn't have its own "super speshul lol" consciousness that also jumped between hive fleets, I would have no issue with it.

All Tyranid special characters need to be treated like Tycho in Blood Angels - historical entities that are dead in the current lore, but have rules to represent them for "re-enactment" battles.

>>51043832
Yup. Or the idea that all "characters" amongst the nids are pretty much just pareidolia.

"Deathleaper" the incredibly smart lictor who picked off all the advisers of a major figure, while leaving him fine? Rumour and hearsay built into a legend, so now when a particularly lucky Lictor appears which the guard can't handle, it gets called Deathleaper.

>>51043881
>pareidolia
Good word, I'm gonna go ahead and assimilate that into my lexicon.

Also yes, that was my suggestion for how they could fix the current Swarmlord lore - by revealing that everything stated about it to-date was myth perpetuated by the Ultramarines to raise imperial morale during the Battle for Ichar IV - when Marneus faced off against a Hive Tyrant there he mistakenly thought it was a reincarnation of the same beast he fought on Macragge, and treated slaying it as a matter of restoring lost honor, and the Imperial propaganda machine just agreed and ran with it, and silenced the Magi Biologis who conjectured otherwise after the battle.

>>51043962
the swarmlord is actually a cool model too, i love the look

I'd totally make one of them out of my 3rd ed Tyrant if groundnids were playable