Tyranid Fluff: What's your favourite? Discuss :)

[tylertt]

I think you nailed it right there. I was thinking more on what I enjoy about the 'Nids and that right there is why.

I really also enjoy the story to Old One Eye. I know people don't like characters for the 'Nids, but his story is left so open ended, and also most of it is just rumors or tales spread around to one another.

[Squire]

I like the idea that our stuff can be wiped out but will simply be respawned to fight again. I don't have to care one bit about having my units blown to smithereens or hacked to pieces, because they're just an insect-like swarm that require no training or time to grow up.

[Kyokii]

There's a snip of the hive mind 'speaking' somewhere, I've been trying to find it since I forgot to save it.

It explains that the Tyranid race hates anything that isn't them. It will scare them, show them despair, devour them, take from them their worlds and lives, and move on.
It hates because that also inspires fear in the enemy- to know an alien mind so incomprehensibly vast is going to do everything it can to scare the living bajeezus out of you and then kill and eat you (and everything around you) and cannot be reasoned with because of its disturbing hatred of you. Imagine something like that.
So, The Hive mind is my favorite.

[biomassbob]

May 3, 2013 19:22:13 GMT commandersasha said:

On a wider perspective, I preferred the presentation style of the 4th ed codex, a mix of eyewitness accounts, hearsay and xenobiological reports.
The current codex, with its matter-of-fact style took away the great sense of something-nasty-under-the-bed that I really liked!
I don't like Tyranid named characters: I'm hoping that the next codex treats the Swarmlord, Deathleaper, Doom etc as particular subspecies, much like the Dakkafex or the Ubergaunts. There's no reason that the bio-blueprint for a Swarmlord couldn't be shared from one side of the Hive Mind to the other, but a unique consciousness, entity or soul? Not Niddy!

There are plenty of fluff elements I like: Lictors, Genestealer Cults, gargoyles with shiny laser-proof skin, but I think it's the overall biological concept I would call my favourite: a living entity with countless individual elements, that eats worlds. No malice, no arrogance, no hunger for fame, just the simple ruthlessness to remove the spiky bits from its food, whether by gentle digestion or by cunningly wrought warfare.
No challenges, no Death Or Glory, just Whatever It Takes To Make You Edible!

This ^ is the same way I feel about nids. I hope the next dex sees the swarmlord removed as a special character and becomes a Hive Tyrant option as mentioned above, a subspecies. I hope the gameplay is able to reflect the fluff better regarding various aspects such as challenges - nids should be able to ignore them as commandersasha mentions: no arrogance, no need for fame, etc. It is the same reason why I hope nids do not get allies because it would make no sense and undermine the fluff when nid uniqueness from other armies can be handled in different ways.

[Hive Fleet Cthulhu]

Apr 30, 2013 10:31:38 GMT ranmafan said:

The fact that they used so many bodies they clogged intake valves, overheated the orbital defense guns and have a rule in Apocalypse that makes the opponent run out of ammo.

Also the story of the Ork Warlord getting outsmarted by a Tyrant which used a bunch of venomthropes and lictors.

And my personal favourite: The Eldar summoned the Avatar of Khaine to help them fight a Tyranid swarm, the Avatar challenged the Tyrant, and was promptly reduced to scrap metal by a dozen fexes.

I agree on the Ork one. It make me laugh.

[hfiswarmlord17]

I seriously hope whoever makes the fluff for the next codex doesn't make them connected to the old ones... That's what makes the Nids so unique is that you don't know where they came from and why they found this galaxy. Do love the fall of Tyran! That's an amazingly horrific story.