"To think that Tyranids are mindless beasts is a grave mistake. When you fight Tyranids you face not only those before you on the battlefield, but the untold thousands which seek to surround you, which attack your supporting units and destroy your supply lines in perfect synchronicity."- Marneus Calgar Solid tyranid video, anyone that says you are wrong do not know what they're talking about
My tyranids are ABSOLUTELY mindless beasts. :D My hive fleet is a random surviving and utterly unimpressive splinter of indeterminate origin that landed on a random world. The genestealer cults present aren't nearly in force yet, and so to them the great arrival of the starchild was... anticlimactic. They've taken it upon themselves to nurture and protect this little brood, leaving unfortunate prisoners/goats by the edge of the jungle to get eaten. The army itself is nothing but the very basic bioforms: Hormagaunts, Raveners, and a couple of foot Hive Tyrants. It hasn't evolved enough to have any intelligent bugs or more specialised bio-artillery. If this was an RTS they'd be permanently locked to their tier 1 units. I love 'em.
@Stinko De mayo part of me wants to say tyranids should always be an unknowable eldritch silent antagonist… but you are so correct gw isnt good enough at writing to make them interesting that way. And your suggestion of a speaker for the hive mind sounds pretty cool. Great thoughts my man!
@Stinko De mayo speaker would take any and all mystery and threat away from nids. Just look at the Borg queen. I feel like an easier way to settle how terrifying the nids are is to have a hive ship be blown to bits and when techpriests do an autopsy they find a half consumed metal plating of a ship that predates the milky way.
Tyranids got much better fluff in the older editions. They were a little derpy on the tabletop (but not bad), but goddamn they were terrifying in the fluff.
I feel like Baldermort really nails how you're supposed to write victorious Tyranid fiction in the very nature of his episodic style. You can still tell a story from the perspective of someone whom is going to die. Catalogue a single fleet campaign with just so many short stories compiled into a novel.
hell rouge 1 from star wars was a great example of this. you still get attached to characters even if it ends up everyone dies. im okay with having stories where the main character doesn't have plot armor, disguised or not.
Especially the one with Tau facing both Tyranids and Orks and the one where the guardsman sacrifices himself in the misplaced hope that that can somehow save his comarades.
I would love more Tyranids special characters. The Parasite of Mortrex looks great. The Tyranids in Octarius should be going GREEN! And I like the idea of infamous Tyranids being named after the planets they were first encountered on. Little details like that would be awesome!
Heck even new monsters in the vein as the parasite of mortex would be amazing. One of the Tyranids greatest characteristics is thier ability to produce top tier body horror, like the parasite.
getting profiles for the Dagon Overlord and the Nephilim King would be a good start. they're both Hive Tyrants known for being particually unique individuals (both in their physical traits and their tactics and personalities).
I remember one Special Character which got wipe out from existence because it didn't had a model for it. It was called Doom of Malan'Tai, this Zoanthrope was terrifying on 5th and 6th edition(in lore he was responsible for the destruction of the Craft world of Malan'Tai).
Something i think is ignored in the lore is the process of tyranoforming of the planets that have managed to hold them off or even during the fight like it is severely underrated and it has a tremendous potential in both lore and tabletop like the fact that most of the local flora and fauna has been either entirely replaced by feral tyranid biomorphs or worse outright contaminated by their DNA and turned into hybrid killing machines that would feel right at home on some deathworlds with this you could also have new and unique tyranid units like imagine a tyranid-tree hybrid flipping tanks and squeezing the innards out of space marines or a grox turned into carnifex looking mofo or even geysers that regularly release tyranid insects/toxins they sometimes forget that tyranids are like orks once they settled once on the world even if you kick the invading force out you're not gonna make them leave short of exterminatus the planet and even then it isn't guaranteed for the tyranids
If nids can infect local fauna like that why don’t they just infect literally every lifeforms instantly to tyrannize them (even if the biomatter use is inefficient in these forms they’d still be able to harvest the hybridized peoples anyway..)
@@KalashVodka175 id guess its either: A- the process is slow, the fleet burns huge ammounts of energy/biomass every second and its just more efficient to just bumrush the resistance and hope they cave instead of waiting years. B- its curable/containable, planets probably get all their fauna/flora turned into half-bug abominations because local forces are too busy fighting the bugs from space. C- it gives too much time for local populations to destroy the planet/ erradicate the biomass
Or hell... Take some inspiration from the Flood from Halo where your dead units and allied could be converted into Tyranid hosts... Like imagine the millions of Imperial Guardsmen you just sent were turned into zombies and were coming back at you...
Ironically enough, “Cain waiting for a hive fleet to arrive while something else is going on” actually can apply to at least two Cain novels that I can remember
Not uncommon for him to be fighting stealers, with a race against time element to stop them called a hive fleet or get rid of them before the hive arrives.
“If I had a nickel for every time Cain waited for a hive fleet to arrive I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice.”
They can canonicly make new and upgraded models since tyranids have the upper hand on the Octarious war currently going on. I mean a regular ork boy is now a nob sized there, who knows what abominations the hive mind created to counter them.
Picture This: The Ethereals of the Tau Empire hear word of a hive fleet bearing down toward the Forbidden Zone, and let them pass. As a consequence, the Farsight Enclave have little time to prepare before the Horde is upon them. Encountering them in a naval battle, the Tau barely overtake the Tyranids and look to be on the victory. Until tragedy strikes. Farsight's flapship is swallowed by a hive-ship, and now the enclave is left without their commander. Hatching a desperate plan to break him out, the Tau begin charging a great laser whilst simultaneously fending off another hive-ship. Meanwhile Farsight and crew stall for as long they can, fighting off the unending tide of microorganisms. Eventually, the last remaining Tau ship realize that they two choices. Escape the battle, regroup and stomp on the Tyranids, or use the last of their power to blow a hole in the hive-ship big enough for Farsight to escape. Despite Farsight's desperate pleas to save themselves, The Tau make their choice. They fire their laser, puncturing the great ship and giving Farsight the opportunity he needs to jettison out through an escape pod. Farsight watches as his comrades are soon devoured. Farsight, the first and only survivor of a hive-ship. For the Greater Good
@@KalashVodka175 Perhaps a lucky shot sent the command bridge careening off the ship, and the hive-ship took the opportunity to gobble it up. This would leave Farsight without any escape pods though, so it still needs some touch-ups. Or maybe instead the Hive-Ship is uniquely massive, a Tyranid bred counter to battleships
A wise man once asked: "Would you rather have plot armor, or be the reason plot armor exists?" That's how I think of the bugs. Even if gw doesn't want to hurt the imperium, what they could do is write about a tyranid invasion from another factions perspective. Have the tau go against them, or have a craft world get partially eaten over the course of a book. Just make it so they don't always lose.
They could easily eat a chaos faction planet and lose nothing. And it'd be sick. We can watch from the perspective of chaos worshipers at every level as they are cut off from the warp, their powers go wibbly, and they are consumed to the last. And then the fleet moves on, the Shadow in the Warp dispells, and the revelant chaos god realizes they just lost trillions of worshippers in one go. There needs to be stories that makes each faction sit up and take notice, one at a time over the course of a few dozen years, until an informal unspoken truce breaks out. No one wants to acknowledge it, because that would formalize it and they still despise one another, but it harms _all_ factions for a world/system/cluster to be devoured, no matter _who_ owns it, because that makes the nids more powerful. So no words are exchanged. No treaties are signed. The galaxy just sort of quietly collectively agrees that they'll answer anyone calling out for aid from a tyranid invasion, and they won't backstab anyone, and they'll just leave because obviously both forces would be severely depleted by the war for the planet and they can't afford to fight each other. Except the dark eldar, of course, because fuck them. Not like the nids can get at them.
Aside from giving the Tyranids an actual victory for once, I would say also retcon the stupid bit in Devastation of Baal where the Hive Mind was described as being petty and butthurt towards the Blood Angels in an attempt to give it unneeded personality and emotions.
yeah, giving that kind of personality to an individual Hive Tyrant (which are established to have free will and have also been established to be rather petty at times, the Dagon Overlord for example has a particular grudge against the Deathwatch while the Nephilim King actively seeks out combat against Imperial Knights). the overall Hive Mind though shouldn't be shown that way.
I think a writer at GW doesn't like the idea of emotionless killing machines. Necrons got retconned from an army of terminators to literally tomb kings in space. It wouldn't surprise me if they start slowly changing nids to be more like the Zerg from Starcraft.
@@Mechagodzilla128 the thing is that the Tyranids are already a little bit more than just emotionless killing machines like old necrons were basically just terminators in space, there really wasn't anything more to them than killing anything they came across Tyranids meanwhile have always had a motivation driving them, they're hungry. their mind might be unknowable but it clearly thinks in its own way. they avoid fights that aren't worth the potential rewards. some individual Hive Tyrants (which have been established in every Tyranid codex since at least 5th edition to have independant minds and free will) like the Dagon Overlord (seemingly the leader of Hive Fleet Dagon) and the Nephilim King (seemingly the leader of the Court of the Nephilim King, a splinter fleet of Hive Fleet Behemoth) even have what could be considered to be established personality traits, grudges, strange behaviour quirks and such. that's probably why the Necrons were changed massively (and I'd personally say for the better but I can understand why people that grew attached to their old lore would've been angry at the changes) while the Tyranids were simply mistreated but ultimately allowed to remain the same.
@@Mechagodzilla128 the reason is probably that you really cant use the tyranids in a story for anything other that "army thats coming to kill X" and for a grimdark setting where all factions are at war for each other it leaves little room narrative wise for them because any role a the tyranids can do you can probably do with another army in a more interesting manner cause other armys can have characters that can interact with the setting in a way tyranids cant, which is sad because i love monster armies in fiction
Lictors and genestealers infiltrating worlds, causing untold terror by killing livestock, innocent civilians, assassinating key targets, and starting revolts, all while setting up the infrastructure for the invasion infecting the world with Tyranid fauna and flora, can be infinitely entertaining as a conflict that characters can fight against. That's not even to mention the shadow in the warp and nightmares that would be haunting the world, it'd be utter chaos and pandemonium, the world barely holding onto peace and order by a thread if they're lucky even before the real invasion starts. Nearly all worlds would collapse before the invasion ever happened, failing to ready themselves for the coming death from above, and of those lucky few that did manage to maintain order even fewer could even hope to stand a chance against a small hive fleet.
I think the problem with the Tyranids is that GW sort of wrote themselves into a corner. The Tyranids are an endless horde of hungry aliens that want to devour everything in their path, and leave nothing behind. While this is cool and terrifying, it also means Tyranids CAN'T be allowed to win. Otherwise, as you say in the video, we wouldn't have a wargame setting. This is in contrast with basically all other factions. If Chaos wins some victories, they don't completely destroy the places they conquer, because they need the emotions of living creatures. A galaxy where Chaos won wouldn't be a pleasant place to live, but it would be a place where people within that galaxy could still keep fighting from within. Indeed, Khorne would demand it be so. And besides, if Chaos as a whole won, they'd just start fighting with each other, reducing their cohesion and numbers and widening a space for rebels against Chaos to arise. The same can be said of the Imperium. If the Imperium defeated all its enemies and gained total mastery of the galaxy, it would just cause from conflict to happen from within. Either from rebels, surviving xenos hiding deep in Imperium territory, or a civil war between Imperial factions. The same is likely true if the Orks win, as they'd probably take much of the survivors of their apocalyptic Waagh as slaves, who could rebel later, while the Orks were busy turning on each other. Meanwhile, other factions either wouldn't have a chance of completely dominating the galaxy (Craftworlds, Tau) even if they won a bunch of victories, or wouldn't care to do so (Drukhari). Necrons are the only faction that comes close, and their motivations differ enough across dynasties that it's unlikely complete extermination of all organic life would be possible. In all cases, GW can afford to let the various non-Tyranid factions win some battles, and not be in danger of destroying their setting. Not so with the Tyranids themselves. It's all or nothing with them. And because GW set them up to be such a ridiculously huge threat, they can't just walk this back and pretend they aren't an existential threat to all life. GW either have to allow them to win - which is counter to their goals of having a war-filled galaxy where no true victory is possible - or they have the Tyranids lose. Every single time. The best 40K can hope for is a stalemate. It's why the Octarius War is the focal point of the current Tyranid metanarrative. It's a huge section of grinding conflict, where Tyranids and Orks _barely_ keep each other in check (for now), and where other factions need to step in to clean up anything that spills over. But this doesn't change the fact that multiple separate fleets of massive size are moving into the galaxy at all times, as well as multiple splinter fleets hanging around the galaxy's interior. If we only had the latter, it might have made things more manageable in terms of narrative. The Tyranids would be an infestation whose numbers could be contained, but could flare up in numbers and cause more problems. You could have a push and pull. As it stands, the Tyranids cannot win without everyone else losing in a way that's more or less permanent.
GW could write some kind of insane thing where the entire imperium somehow rallies and nukes the tyranids or maybe where the Eldar or something assists in some way during a war. They could write that the tyranids are maybe too strong and so they've run out of bio mass and are being kind of "starved out" like in a siege against a city by being forced to stay on planets or something via blockades. Maybe they could even it out slightly by making some psychers able to control some of the tyranids, or at least mess with their "orders", idek Edit: OR like in an earlier video, GW could actually release a new faction, which has actually been chasing the tyranids, or maybe detected that they were moving towards the galaxy and so they sent an insane military force, like the covenant as he said
@@Dramn_ in lore its almost impossible for psychers to tap into the hive mind without going insane or blowing up due to the feed back , the only one whose done it successfully is ultramarines cheif Librarian and even he was terrified
I really agree that the nids haven’t had that many “big wins” for quite sometime. I really wanna see a great story where the swarmlord actually defeats a powerful dude. Like I love the swarmlord I loved how much of a threat he was described as when he was battling the boys in blue and kicking the chapter masters shit in. But now the swarmlord has barely had any wins back on Baal he almost killed Dante but Dante SOMEHOW got the upper hand enough to melta blast his face. I’m pretty sure a normal custodes warden killed a swarmlord. It would be awesome to see a story where the tyranids completely wipe everything and the swamlord personally kills some super powerful leader.
the Swarmlord king of feels like the Worf of 40K it showed up, it did one cool thing, we were told how awesome and cool and unbeatable it was and then every single other major character in the setting was allowed to beat it up in order to show how awesome and cool and unbeatable they are. the Tyranids as a whole are basically the same they showed up, they did a cool battle, we were told how awesome and cool and unbeatable they are and then every single other major faction has been allowed to curbstomp them in order to show how awesome and cool and unbeatable they are. I think the problem is that the Tyranids have no point of view characters, as a result they are never the stars of the story and are simply used as a narrative tool for the stories of others. most people would say that "well they're a hive mind, of course they don't have point of view characters. how are we supposed to see the point of view of a hive minded race?" which would be a fine excuse if it wasn't for the fact that Games Workshop have written a perfect excuse for PoV Tyranids, every codex they've gotten since 5th edition has established that Hive Tyrants are individually sapient (what most people actually mean when they say sentient) and have free will to make their own descisions independantly from the main Hive Mind. some Hive Tyrants like the Dagon Overlord and the Nephilim King have even been given hints of individual personality in their lore. even after these Tyranids are reabsorbed it's noted that their conciousnesses are kept seperate with all of their thoughts and memories intact so that they can be put into a new Hive Tyrant body at any time. if the Tyranids were just given a book or two dedicated to the point of view of a specific Hive Tyrant I'm sure they would quickly be put in a much better position in the lore (which would then boost their popularity allowing them to get more attention from GW in terms of new models and decent rules). I don't think the Swarmlord should ever have its point of view shown though, the Swarmlord feels less like its own entity and more like an avatar of the Hive Mind. I think keeping it as an unknowable monster at the core of the swarm would be for the best.
@@stevenagelutton4322 Wait what? Which book said that? I was sure they were going to go the route, "and then the Space marines came in an killed both sides and won the day" XD
@@Mechagodzilla128 Octarius War 2: Critical Mass. The Swarmlord kills the Overfiend of Octarius (A named character who has been around in the lore for decades) and eats his brain. The Orks scatter in various directions, with the Tyranids behind them. The Octarius system itself has been consumed, and the Imperial Cordon is now in the path of the fleeing Orks and the persuing Tyranids.
An idea for Tyrannid wins, make them be the memories of immortals Example: A daemon roiling in the wastes of chaos recalls how it's host and an entire chaos army were butchered by a Tyranid swarm. The immortal abomination of the Warp feels fear for the first time as it realizes this enemy from beyond might have a chance of casting its shadow over the whole galaxy and the warp itself. Trazyn reawakens in his museum after the last of his army is eradicated by the Tyranids. He had allied with a rival Phaeron to attack the Tyranids and they still beat the combined Necron army. He's going to have to take this Tyranid threat more seriously, perhaps check up on the rumors of the Silent King's return. Because otherwise even his museum might end up being consumed. Saint Celestine returns to fight the Tyranid threat again. Memories of her last encounter with these monsters, how they ravaged several worlds, the last of which a Sister of Battle Perceptory had been defending. She had come to their aid, but the shadow in the warp had weakened her such that even she hadn't been enough to turn the tide. Part of her wishes the God Emperor walked again, for that might be the hope the Imperium has left against the coming horde.
Yeah the complaints about them never winning kind of ring hollow now that they have actually won one of their most important conflicts. Shame the Warzone books have been ignored by the community, the fluff outcomes are pretty significant
To be fair, except for LOTR ironically, every setting has kinda made the Elves one of the major factor for the setting's awful nature. Night Elves shattered Azeroth and put a permanent demon bait on it. Eldar made a chaos god An Elf made the rings for Sauron too.
What you said about Devastation of Baal is true, however, even after the Chaos stuff happens the Tyranids are still the main antagonist in that story, and only because of a last stand effort, from what might as well be the last first born Blood Angels, led by Dante himself, was the threat finally (barely) ended. It was such a last stand that Dante sacrificed himself to kill the swarm lord, and would've died if not for being brought back by the ghost of Sanguinius (maybe, just chalk it up to GW plot armor for now I guess).
I think my favorite story was in the Astarte's Collection was when a Bio-magus(idk some admech shit) merged with a Tyranid Hive Tyrant and through the Bio-magus becoming part of the hive mind we got just a glimpse of what they think you know before the Space Marines win. I would love to see a new story about something like that but from the Magus' point of view bonus points if they may it a new character that keeps poping up to demoralize a world to make it easier to nom.
I think that the lore tyranids problem can be summed up as "too scary to win". They are declared as being so powerful that no matter what it takes to defeat them it would feel like the tyranids lose for no reason, and at the same time they are so evil that if you let them finally apply their power successfully, it would be an instant game over for everyone. You can let others like orks, (new) necrons, dark eldar and Chaos have their victories because they have independent subfactions with small goals, compared to the single Hive Mind going (and able) to delete everyone in the galaxy with demons included and move on.
You could have two major hive fleets, not just splinter fleets that are both members of the same Hive Mind, but two major Hive Fleets like Leviathan and Kraken meet each other and find out that the different Hive Fleets are in fact, not controlled by the same Hive Mind, but in fact are separate entities and they view each other as food same as all other living things they encounter. They already explored this a little in one of the Ciaphas Cain books, though the two different Hive Fleets attacking each other had more to do with the fact that their shadow in the warp somehow jams the others ability to communicate with their non synapse creatures
That's pretty much the problem at this point, they're implied to be way too numerous for the Imperium or even a somehow united Galaxy to defeat en-masse - the Great Rift also makes it really difficult to mass forces to try to crush a tendril or Hive Fleet pushing in - and are now kinda coming too thick and fast for the whole "yeah they can be stopped, but the price will be HUGE" thing Behemoth set up to work.
I always saw things as ‘for every victory I read in a book or seen in a clip, 100 battlefields got eaten by them’ and even with the lore treatment, I always felt that was the case.
Watching this video, after all the recent 10th edition news is a fever dream of accidental predictions. Which as a tyranid player just sunned me , as if GW saw this.
A story from a tyranid's perspective can be written interesting. Imagine a book where it's taken from the perspective of a hunter stalking it's prey, but the prey is an entire army. It would a very simple form of dialog in it I'll give you that, but if you work with it it could be a decent slasher book from the perspective of the slasher.
"The humans fled their nest, but their warriors are coming. They always come. Some are small like termagaunt, and others rival warriors in size and ferocity. But it doesn't matter. The planet *will* be consumed. As expected, Human warriors clad in green hole themselves up in their homes, in trenches... in their tombs. They are no "Space Marines" as they call them, after all. We surge forth; A wave of gnashing jaws to meet our prey. They resist, as they always do. Try as they might, no matter how many of us fall to their weapons, they will eventually succumb to the inevitable. Resistance will keep the humans alive for only so long, for we are the end. We are innumerable. We are The Maw."
It would almost have to be from a third persons first person viewpoint. By that I mean have some overmind or whatever narrate the viewpoint of different individual units that happen to be there when something important happens. Picture this: you have a narration of some random chaff as they throw themselves at the enemy only to die without achieving anything, its a full segment that's on the front lines of the battle, in the thick of it, then the nid it follows dies and then you get a bit with a nameless, emotionally detached, immensely sinister being ruminating on how best to alter the battle plans to overcome the issue at hand. As the book progresses and the battle becomes more one sided, it gets more and more feral, less worried about micromanaging each and every fight and more concerned with securing an ever increasing amount of biomass to convert, even seeming like it starts to enjoy watching the horde tear into whatever they come across. In the final act, when total victory is no longer a question of if or even how, just how long till the last enemy defenses hold so that the fleet can move on, the overmind is just watching the carnage through the eyes of thousands with savage glee, getting angry whenever its current favorite viewpoint is killed and sending a few more units at the poor bastard that killed it, then spitefully enjoying seeing them torn to shreds a bit slower then the others around them are. After the last defense is overran, it takes a moment to settle down, get the terraforming process started, then set off for the next target, the book ending with it back to its completely detached state as it runs through the strategies it used, how to best use them for the future, or if it it needs to alter them to ensure a faster conquest next time.
you got you wish in the 10th edition trailer, despite the smuarfs had more screen time it was the tyrranids who seem to win the battle heck even with the terminators arriving they still couldn't win and the best part was they thought they were winning but they fought the scouts
I feel like something cool about a Tyranid galactic victory, is that people can still hide in the webway. All of the "sane" races joining forces to retake the galaxy from the webway after it had been nom into oblivion, sounds grimdark to me.
It is very interesting listening to this after 10th edition is released and Leviathan came out giving Tyranids so many Ws and making them sound like a proper threat
I play Nids, here's some perspective. They've been on a downward trend since 2nd ed rules wise (peaked in power in second, balanced out to pretty ok in 4th, and ever since have been outright awful or just meh) surprisingly are good rules wise rn. When it comes to story? All I need to say is the Swarmlord gives Khaine a run for his money on how much he can be beaten up to make black library characters look cool. And model wise? Having to wait 8 years for a new model (last one being the broodlord from *2014* ) isn't really worth it. Unironically go 3d print and see if One Page Rules is a good alternative ruleset.
I've always liked the Red Terror because it looks like a blind rabid thing that wants to eat you whole and its entire lore is that its a blind rabid thing that eats you whole. As for the lore, I've always liked the sparsity of it and I fully accept the Tyranid's position in the world as a general threat. The Tyranids can't really win a fight without a part of the galaxy being lost forever and like Cadia showed, you have to be really sparing with that kind of threat if you want it to feel threatening.
"But now the Eldar are getting their time in the sun, and new reining reigning champion of being abused and forgotten by Games Workshop has come about, the Tyranids. Imperial Guard "Am I a joke to you?"
@@gingermcgingin4106 I disagree they're basically the reason the Imperium is still standing, the Guard win quite a lot or else the Imperium would be very *very* dead.
Guard at least got Gaunt's Ghosts last year, Tyranids haven't gotten a single new model since 2014 (Genestealer Cults don't count, they're a seperate codex, if Genestealer Cults count for Tyranids then Space Marines count for Guard)
I feel the best way to make the Tyranids scary is to have them take on an impossible enemy and win by sheer numbers and adaptability. A small example of this happened in Octarius, when they figured out how to eat ork spores. Orks being so intractable, the idea that the Tyranids neutralized their presence on a world that easily is really unsettling. You don't even have to kill any big characters for this to work. Maybe the Tyranids show up with an anti-Chaos hive fleet and start eating the Maelstrom/Eye of Terror (we have the Great Rift now, so neither is super-required lorewise). Or someone finds the Outsider's Dyson Sphere prison chewed through from the outside with the drained C'tan corpse floating silently within. 40k has so many looming apocalypses, having the Tyranids show up and just eat one wouldn't upset too much but would freak people out.
Tyranids defintely need some love but that applies to most xeno races in general. I do hope they get more stuff since theyre my second favorite faction (Behind the Tau who also need some love but Farsight and his stuff will do for now) And yeah the fact the tyranids always lose is basically borderline a plot hole.
Honestly with the tau i think its high time they came up with their technological edge that makes them stand out. Right now their standard tech to the average joe is beeter than most other factions but beyond that they dont have anything super. We need them to figure out their ftl travel, mass produce ai controlled battlesuits and perfect nanomachines.
One thing GW could do for tyranid special characters is play into how Hive Tyrants kind of have personalities. Nothing too major, their personalities all boil down to "we're hungry and you're food" but the Dagon Overlord of Hive Fleet Dagon (shocker I know) showed a distinct *grudge* towards the Deathwatch.
I am currently reading Gloomspite (bloody good book, would recommend) and I think the nids should be pictured this way : they are not "yet another enemy force charging at us", they are a catastrophe, an eldritch abomination swooping down on undefended worlds and cities, and, depicted through the eyes of the common imperial citizen, are the most frightening thing ever. Plus, with the genestealer cults, there is a way to make a real fall story. The previous depiction I read of the GSC in The Infinite and the Divine was menacing, but not world-ending menacing tier, so I don't know if Day of Ascension is any better depiction, but I sure hope so.
Even with most of the big tyranid defeats, they only lose because the imperium teamed up with or was basically saved by another faction. Even with Ka'bhanda randomly showing up the bugs nommed on several worlds in neighboring sectors and wiped out a good chunk of the blood angels and their successor chapters. Hell, Dante even had to burn a bunch of his own worlds to ensure the nids would even go for Baal. So basically the Imperium rarely ever defeats the tyranids, they just survive them. The only times I remember reading about nid victories are a few short stories but they are absolutely terrifying. Also, Lictor shenanigans are pretty fun to read about. Great vid my dude. Looks like GW is showing my buggy boys some love finally so we'll see what happens
Good lore point i can think of is the empire championing single planet victories only to have the galaxy map zoomed out to find burning, cracked or biomass covered planets left in the sector. A single holdout, soon to fall. Among a black sea of vibrant planet innards. Or better yet entire planets going dark. Fading into the dark canvas with only one still lit up by peppers of grand battery volleys
It is a long time ago, but on the GW website there used to be a piece of fiction about an agri-world falling to the Tyranids and the experience of a guardsman watching the Space Marines and Guard being torn to pieces. The story ended with the world being all but lost and just before his position was overrun, he eats his lazgun.
Margit also gave me a hard time, brother. Summon the Jellyfish, weapon oil, and holy resist talisman all got the job done for me. Now that I know about Jellyfish he's made lots of bosses much easier, if for nothing else than tanking a hit or three.
I think the way to solve all these problems would be named tyranid characters able to communicate with each other, and with the hive mind as a whole. Imagine if we were able to see the perspective of the norn queens of each fleet playing game of thrones style politics with each other trying to get the swarm lord or overarching hive-mind's favor? It would both give us the perspective of tyranids winning (because reading stories of characters loosing is hard to do right), gives us a reason to root for personalities rather than a vapid amorphous concept, and named characters allow us to explore more stories other than "the tide is coming" that tyranids always find themselves in.
My tyranid army was pretty large for a school club army, to the point that at lunch break people would yell at me “TO MANY ‘NIDS!” This guy mained the orks, by the way. He really liked getting his boyz stuck in a fight
In the 4th E nid codex there was an excellent 2page story of a guard fort holding out to the last man against a nid invasion. It was grim, visceral and awesome. And it ended with the protagonist and all the other guard dying. I can't remember if it was the 4th nid or the Eldar codex but there was also a great story about an Iyanden windrider fighting Kraken. All her squad gets killed,and then she gets knocked off her bike by hormagaunts and it ends with her, paralyzed with broken bones being picked up to be eaten by a hive tyrant.
about the new characters there are plenty of unique experimental bioforms that are technically in the galaxy its just that GW has either forgotten about them (doom of malantai) or just never gave them a model (parasite) instead of making new characters you canjust revive the intersting ones instead of always just having swarmlord and old one eye over and over again especially since one hasnt been worth fielding in decades the only good written piece of tyranid lore is a shortstory in let the galaxy burn the gard gets basically beaten before the tyranids even attack, the spores clog up the intakes of their tanks, people are going insane from the shadow while scratching their skin off from the rashes the guard is basically beaten by the pre invasion spores then the nids arrive, people start dying or killing themself after seeing what getting shot by nid bullets looks like all hope is lost then marines come to save the day the nids are getting killed, hope shines in the hearts of the guardsmen then the marines get eaten they die on the same page they arrived its a beautiful story devastation of baal was the tyranid equivalent of grey knights bathing in sisterblood god i hate that book almost as much as i hate that book being praised by people that dont know nid lore you go from: And then he became aware of the psychic presence of the tyranids. It was weird, like nothing else he had ever experienced: an implacable, ferocious sentience which was ancient beyond imagining. It stood alone; no one would ever be able to speak to it. Suddenly he felt as though his psyche had been torn apart like the human body on the floor of the chamber. The scene before his eyes vanished. He was somewhere else. Somewhere dark, but filled with a seething and a rustling. He had entered the hive mind. And now he understood what the tyranids were. The Tyranids were what ants and termites would be if they could evolve further and become intelligent. What made such intelligence incomprehensible was that the tyranids had never evolved emotions. They were aware that concepts such as sympathy and honour existed in the species they harvested, but they viewed them only in the abstract and dismissed them as evolutionary mistakes. Gene coding for emotion was never made use of by the hive fleets. Yes, the tyranids were intelligent, but intelligence was not a quality particularly prized by the hive mind. A tyranid creature could reason, but it never did so out of self-interest. Intelligence, like everything else, served only tyranid hive instincts - or rather, it served the single great tyranid instinct the one overwhelming, compulsive urge. SURVIVE! AND SURVIVE FOREVER! When the tyranids invaded a galaxy they took aboard vast amounts of foodstuffs and raw materials, but those were not what they came looking for. They knew that every system, whether mechanical or biological, eventually runs down. Most species lasted only a few million years. A few - like some Earth ants - managed to survive for up to a hundred million years. But sooner or later they perished as their DNA either failed to adapt or simply deteriorated through natural wear. The tyranids had found the only possible remedy for this. They moved from galaxy to galaxy, harvesting fresh, newly evolved DNA with which to renew and reinvigorate their own. They were the universe's ultimate life form. Quite possibly they had exisited forever and would continue to exist forever. Quite possibly the universe contained an infinite number of hive fleets. The Imperium of Man had beaten off one hive flee. Perhaps it could beat off others. It would be a rare reversal for the tyranids, but that did not matter at all. Ina few million years the Imperium would be gone, the human race would be gone, and some other hive fleet would arrive, meeting weaker resistance, and would leave the galaxy lifeless and desolate. Then, a few billion years later, life would evolve all over again, on millions of planets. And again a hive fleet would move in.... Jaxabarm did not think the hive tyrant was at all aware that he was eavesdropping on the hive mind. He was not worthy of notice. They tyranid did not respect human intelligence - tyranid did not respect any intelligence, not even their own. All they saw in the human race was a species possessing young, vigorous DNA. ... He would try to persuade Drenthan Drews to join the Imperial Guard and help defend the Imperium. Hive Fleet Kraken had to be repelled or humanity was doomed. Not that the outcome was of any importance to the tyranids. To them, species evolved and perished like blades of grass. Galaxies condensed, blazed, then guttered out. The supposedly immortal Chaos gods would not even last that long. They would perish when the psyches which sustained them died out. Only the tyranids lasted forever. and then a bad writer turns it into this: The Imperial scholars were wrong. The hive mind knew. The hive mind thought, it felt, it hated and it desired. Its emotions were unutterably alien, cocktails of feeling not even the subtle aeldari might decipher. Its emotions were oceans to the puddles of a man’s feelings. They were inconceivable to humanity, for they were too big to perceive. The hive mind looked out of its innumerable eyes towards the dull red star of Baal. It apprehended that this was the hive of the warriors that had hurt it so grievously, who had burned its feeding grounds and scattered its fleets. It hated the red prey, and it coveted them. Tasting their exotic genomes it had seen potential for new and terrible war beasts. And so it drew its plans, and it set in motion its trillion trillion bodies towards the consumption of the creatures in red metal, so that their secrets might be plundered, and reemployed in the sating of the hive mind’s endless hunger. This was deliberate, considered, and done in malice. The hive mind was aware, and it desired vengeance.” the damn writer gave lictors arrogance because thats the ultimate thing to breed into your assassins for efficiency also genestorks redemption squad was a good book
Have the tyranids devour that one flesh planet that demonslaya visited in the eye of terror, making an unstoppable planet-sized tyrannid. Voila, instant endtimes scenario
I think a really cool way to make a powerful tyranid character would be to have the hive fleet take a bite out of a primarch and use it to create a special super bug with more sentience(not fully but maybe have it speak or something) and just write some bullshit about how the fleet can’t replicate the dna of the primary and bam, new bug character that can actually be a threat. And it opens the possibility of creating more using different primarch dna if people like it
Ya maybe it could take a bite out of one of the long dead Primarchs of the 2nd or the 11th legion. Say that some gene-stealer found the body’s and was able to give the dna to the hive mind and the hive mind made it into some cool creature.
"But now the Eldar are getting their time in the sun, and new reigning champion of being abused and forgotten by Games Workshop has come about, the Tyranids." I see the Lost and Damned are still very much reigning champs.
Love subbing to probably big future youtubers. Not that this is the first video I’ve watched of yours but it’s always nice to see funnier warhammer youtubers
Dawn of War Soul storm Mod UA has been the only place I seen the Tyranids get treated with the respect they deserve. Granted I hate those bugs but love fighting them.
The way that you are writing about the nids in this vid, is the way I already perceived them. I guess that's what I get for not really paying a lot of attention to the lore and only focusing on the video games, haha
The Tyranids genuinely feel like GW watched Alien and immediately wanted a xenomorph type faction but had 0 idea of what to actually do with them after the initial lore-boner wore off.
I could see some amount of potential for a Tyranid Invasion being written as a Dracula-esque, slow-burn horror. The logs of a fleet commander, an inquisitor, a commisar, and an NCO as they track the Hive Fleet and the dread builds with each dead world/outpost that they find - culminating in the final realization that they could be falling into a trap - this realization would of course be among the final entries.
Also, the 7th Ed Tyranid codex had a cool page-long story of how Hive Fleet Leviathan scoured an entire shrine world and the Grey Knights in it, and then also stomped on the massive Daemon incursion that ensued. Meanwhile in the 8th codex, the whole fight is quickly referred to in 3 sentences in the Timeline section lol
God damn this channel grew fast in the past few months, awesome to see it and being part of it. Keep up the amazing work man. I'm always so existed to see new videos.
Look up the "Fall of Shadowbrink" its a battle between Tyranids, Imperials, and Chaos Daemons. It's a nice little read if you want to see the Nids get a W.
Me: *Nods in agreement, especially on how the Tyranids should not be treated as people with personalities* Also me: *Writes a 5,000 word fanfic about a failed Tyranid outbreak on a world where the defective synapse creatures evolved true individual sentience and somehow developed their own functioning society that eventually forgot their origins... Only for the Tau to arrive and wipe them out, assuming it's a regular Tyranid infestation. The only hope of the few surviving synapse creatures is to call to the stars for help from anyone who will listen. Of course this just brings down the Hive Fleet on both the sentient Tyranids and the Tau, inadvertently dooming both sides*
That actually sounds pretty cool honestly, a miracle of biology where nature is defied only to be tragically destroyed by ignorance. It might work if it remained a small community that had an undesirable mutation like the Ymgarl Genestealers, but it wouldn't work if applied to the nids as a whole. Keeping Nids in character is important imo.
The fact that they're such a big threat that Space Marines and Necrons temporarily worked together to stop them, should be a sign that they *should* be the scariest thing in the universe.
Dawn of War 2: Retribution has the Tyranid campaign and the victory screen is a lone Space Marine standing on desoalted surface of a planet, Thunderhammer in his hands as the narrator relays that Aurelian sub-sector has been lost to the Hive: "The Imperial Guard regiments retreated when casualties reached 95%. The Blood Ravens fought to the last man." Gave me chills. I really don't want Tyranids to win, even though they're likely candidates if End Times were ever to happen. I'd rather take Chaos victory over their, because at least Chaos madmen will actually be happy about it. In case of Tyranids though... "Nothing personal, you're just biomass."
10th edition will bring new gorgeously terrifying Tyranids, and they're portrayed as a major threat now! You can take credit for it now because clearly you influenced the corporation of Games Workshop to do that!
Weird how half baked fan ideas made up in 5 minutes can be better than the ideas of a billion dollar company and solve issues they just completely ignore for 20 years
