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How long do you think until Vashtorr becomes relevant again? Guiliman came back and turned the entire Imperium on it's head. The Lion comes back and so far nothing has changed. By all accounts the end of 9th edition was a total Chaos Chud victory, and also nothing has changed. I don't understand what the point of Arks of Omen was if not a segway into 10th edition.
 
Male Idiot said:
Could Vashtorr become the Dark Mechanicum's Chaos god? Or will he a be one off mcguffin too?
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If a good writer is handed the job, absolutely,
We're so strapped for good writers right now.

Spilled Spaghett said:
How long do you think until Vashtorr becomes relevant again? Guiliman came back and turned the entire Imperium on it's head. The Lion comes back and so far nothing has changed. By all accounts the end of 9th edition was a total Chaos Chud victory, and also nothing has changed. I don't understand what the point of Arks of Omen was if not a segway into 10th edition.
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8th edition was moving the plot forward. Then 9th happened and whoever wanted to move things forward was fired or left and now we're back to a regressive stagnation. So far 10th has been a complete dud in terms of both story and gameplay.
 
augment said:
8th edition was moving the plot forward. Then 9th happened and whoever wanted to move things forward was fired or left and now we're back to a regressive stagnation. So far 10th has been a complete dud in terms of both story and gameplay.
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What even is the story in 10th? Another tyranid invasion? Tyranids are boring as fuck, generally speaking. It makes sense why every tyranid invasion falls off after the midway part of basically any novel in favor of chaos, because Tyranids are functionally a non-entity in terms of lore, characters, or built up interest. Its like fighting a hurricane. Either itll win, and everyones dead, or itll go away, and everyone lives. There are no compelling characteristics of a hurricane except as an overarching force of nature, and an actual character's response to it. Unfortunately its been done before. Tyranids really need a Necron-esque facelift in terms of lore updates, because as they are theyre the weakest part of any story theyre involved in.
 
daniel day said:
What even is the story in 10th? Another tyranid invasion? Tyranids are boring as fuck, generally speaking. It makes sense why every tyranid invasion falls off after the midway part of basically any novel in favor of chaos, because Tyranids are functionally a non-entity in terms of lore, characters, or built up interest. Its like fighting a hurricane. Either itll win, and everyones dead, or itll go away, and everyone lives. There are no compelling characteristics of a hurricane except as an overarching force of nature, and an actual character's response to it. Unfortunately its been done before. Tyranids really need a Necron-esque facelift in terms of lore updates, because as they are theyre the weakest part of any story theyre involved in.
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There's nids invading and then the dawn of fire books which are kind of all over the place but do have a general plot thread revolving around... chaos doing chaos stuff.

I think the biggest problem with nids is that they're a hive mind, don't really have characters, they never bother trying to communicate so it's either they're there eating everything or not. Any subversive plotting is done by GSC. There's nothing to ever negotiate with or team up with against another foe. I don't know how GW could make tyranids more narratively interesting without completely shitting them up. The necron re-write in 5th was a bit of a fluke because there was so little about them to begin with so that was fine(just assume the imperium writing about them got shit wrong). But you can't really go back and do the same thing with tyranids and have it make much sense because there's been so much of them and we know how they act/fight/travel/etc.
 
Spilled Spaghett said:
How long do you think until Vashtorr becomes relevant again? Guiliman came back and turned the entire Imperium on it's head. The Lion comes back and so far nothing has changed. By all accounts the end of 9th edition was a total Chaos Chud victory, and also nothing has changed. I don't understand what the point of Arks of Omen was if not a segway into 10th edition.
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I don't recall the name of the current spat between the Necrons and the Mechanicus, but Vashtorr did reappear to fuck with both sides.
 
daniel day said:
What even is the story in 10th? Another tyranid invasion? Tyranids are boring as fuck, generally speaking. It makes sense why every tyranid invasion falls off after the midway part of basically any novel in favor of chaos, because Tyranids are functionally a non-entity in terms of lore, characters, or built up interest. Its like fighting a hurricane. Either itll win, and everyones dead, or itll go away, and everyone lives. There are no compelling characteristics of a hurricane except as an overarching force of nature, and an actual character's response to it. Unfortunately its been done before. Tyranids really need a Necron-esque facelift in terms of lore updates, because as they are theyre the weakest part of any story theyre involved in.
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8th, 9th and 10th all had huge story hooks where nothing happens. 8th moves the story a thousand years and nurgle doing everything it can to but fuck the ultramar system only to mogg the Tau because they were nearby. 9th walks back the progress in time because reasons, introduced the silent king back to the galaxy, teased a necron civil war ending with a genestealer cult on terra getting toppled by Custodes because the Arbites and PDF were apparently busy.
Then we reach 10th with the Tyranid invasion you mention on the door step of Terra and again nothing. Same with 11th nothing will happen because just like real life nothing ever happens. End of 7th was the last time the story actually moved forward and I don't see that changing for some time.
 
I don't think Tyranids need a change in themselves. They are more of a driving force of a story that makes things happen rather than the story being about them. It can be really interesting to hear how a planet or system needs to come to terms with their impending doom, or desperately tries to survive. On a micro scale genestealers are just the alien from Alien and you could basically just do that movie again in 40k. Tyranids become a lot more terrifying when it's one unstoppable monster always lurking in the shadows. The problem I feel is they are utilized completely wrong.

I feel this is the most common issue with a lot of Black Library novels, that there is rarely a tense back and forth between whatever factions are fighting. It often feels very one sided. In Space Marine 2 the Tyranids are part of the setting, but ultimately are just a punching bag for you and the marines. We don't get a sense for the greater scale of the war, and everything about it takes a back seat to teasing chaos and Titus trying to regain the trust of his chapter. The enemy could have literally been anything and it wouldn't have changed the story. I'm trying to get through The Devastation of Baal novel and for someone who doesn't really care about Blood Angels it's such a drag. I guess it offers a bit of insight to the inner working of the chapter and there's some conflict between successor chapters, but again half of the entire novel has nothing at all to do with Tyranids. It's not used to any effect to create conflict, or drama. There's a little tease about a lictor that I hoped would start hunting around causing mischief but nope. Maybe soon it will but the invasion already started.
 
Spilled Spaghett said:
On a micro scale genestealers are just the alien from Alien and you could basically just do that movie again in 40k. Tyranids become a lot more terrifying when it's one unstoppable monster always lurking in the shadows. The problem I feel is they are utilized completely wrong.
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They were also a comedic point in Infinite and the Divine where Trazyn unleashed a pokeball of one just for them fo completely change the timeline due to a Genestealer Cult getting established (ruining Trazyn’s viewing of a play)

I thought it was a nice touch.
 
Inquisitor_BadAss said:
8th, 9th and 10th all had huge story hooks where nothing happens. 8th moves the story a thousand years and nurgle doing everything it can to but fuck the ultramar system only to mogg the Tau because they were nearby. 9th walks back the progress in time because reasons, introduced the silent king back to the galaxy, teased a necron civil war ending with a genestealer cult on terra getting toppled by Custodes because the Arbites and PDF were apparently busy.
Then we reach 10th with the Tyranid invasion you mention on the door step of Terra and again nothing. Same with 11th nothing will happen because just like real life nothing ever happens. End of 7th was the last time the story actually moved forward and I don't see that changing for some time.
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Octarius war is so irrelevant everyone forgot it exists.
 
AncientPhosphur said:
They were also a comedic point in Infinite and the Divine where Trazyn unleashed a pokeball of one just for them fo completely change the timeline due to a Genestealer Cult getting established (ruining Trazyn’s viewing of a play)

I thought it was a nice touch.
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To paraphrase some of Trazyn's own words about that: "IT WAS JUST SUPPOSED TO BE A PRANK, BRO!"
 
Spilled Spaghett said:
How long do you think until Vashtorr becomes relevant again? Guiliman came back and turned the entire Imperium on it's head. The Lion comes back and so far nothing has changed. By all accounts the end of 9th edition was a total Chaos Chud victory, and also nothing has changed. I don't understand what the point of Arks of Omen was if not a segway into 10th edition.
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He shows up in the crusade book for Pariah Nexus in command of his giant converted Caliban shard and tricks a Magos into opening a portal to let his troops bypass the Blackstone stuff in the nexus, so it looks like they're setting up Vashtorr as the daemon with the ability to fight back against the emerging Cawl/Guilliman/Eldar plan to use the blackstone to push back the eye of terror. It may be a power he leverages to snatch up the bits of the Lock while Chaos gets onto a back foot after its recent high. That's what I'm expecting from him in 11th is more anti-anti-chaos shenanigans while the rest of Chaos reels and desperately calls in Chaos Primarchs to help.

Oh and Abbadon has recently taken one of the few passages left into the Imperium Nihilus which is presumably setting up for either a big crusade to retake it which leads to a character death/return or the Nihilus breaking away from the Imperium fully.
 
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The necron redo was controversial. The C'tan pokemon deal was silly, but the added named characters worked out. It was for all its faults better than Votan.
 
Buckaroo said:
Even that was hated at the time and it took a while for people to appreciate what it added to the faction.
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It was hated because it was Matt "Spiritual Liege" Ward who did it at the same time he gave the world the equally despised Grey Knights codex with things like the Baby Carrier. The actual quality additions were done later by more talented writers. While the changes are indeed very much a net positive trying to give the codex or the man who wrote it any credit is ridiculous since its all happened despite, not because of that.
 
The Nids are useful because they are mooks that can die in the billions to make the main character look bad ass without having any real impact on the overall storyline.

Mr. Bad Ass kills a Hive Tyrant no big deal, the tyrant is just reborn and continues on. Mr Bad Ass kills a big named character well that throws a wrench in the spanner now don't it?

yes the Nids are bland and boring and every author uses them as a punching bag but really that's their purpose. They can never win because winning for the Nids is end game for everyone else so they get to rampage for a while to build up the tension, which those familiar with the setting knows will never pay off, then blamo! the real story starts to happen and the Nids fade into the background because they cannot win.

It's a story as old as...well the Nids. In Fantasy they use the Orks the same way and they suffer the same problems. But at least with DaBoys winning your not getting the whole galaxy rendered lifeless as chances are the victorious orks will just let everyone go back home to have more babies so they can come back to fight again in a few years.
 
Nids are boring and thats gay, when otherwise its a really sick faction with a lot of cool designs. Starcraft 2 had major issues, but the Queen of Blades isnt a terrible concept in and of itself. Starship Troopers, as well, had a really interesting concept with the arachnid wars. Nids being entirely one-track minded is fucking stupid and doesnt even make sense. If theyre always hungry, and massively intelligent, then shouldnt they prefer settling on a living world and introducing agriculture on a planet wide scale as a single hivemind unit? Is there NOTHING about the nids that can even be considered interesting plot wise? Its such a missed opportunity for what is one of 40k's oldest, truly independant factions. Of course that could define most of the 40k factions, but I digress.
 
daniel day said:
Nids are boring and thats gay, when otherwise its a really sick faction with a lot of cool designs. Starcraft 2 had major issues, but the Queen of Blades isnt a terrible concept in and of itself. Starship Troopers, as well, had a really interesting concept with the arachnid wars. Nids being entirely one-track minded is fucking stupid and doesnt even make sense. If theyre always hungry, and massively intelligent, then shouldnt they prefer settling on a living world and introducing agriculture on a planet wide scale as a single hivemind unit? Is there NOTHING about the nids that can even be considered interesting plot wise? Its such a missed opportunity for what is one of 40k's oldest, truly independant factions. Of course that could define most of the 40k factions, but I digress.
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wait...are you expecting GW to actually come up with new shit that makes sense?

oh you poor summer child

All the creatives left GW long ago as the only shit the company now cares about is introducing new high priced overpowered models every year. Balance? Fuck that noise.

The only thing GW gives a shit about is milking their pay piggies every 6 months with new must own models. Creative idea's and storytelling don't even enter into the picture. That's probably why so many old school GW'ers left. The company is a soulless cash grabbing machine that only lives because it's customer base is the dumbest one on the planet.

edit: yah yah I know I'm beating a dead horse and ain't saying nuffin that hasn't be said a million times before but as a old fan I just get so MATI at what GW became I can't stop.
 
I think humanizing Tyranids is a terrible choice. We have plenty of humanoid factions and the Tyranids are at least unique in how totally and completely animalistic they are. I find it far more interesting to see them fight against an unconventional enemy that completely breaks everything we thought we knew about war. Their morale can't be broken, what works now wont work in a few hours, they have almost no logistical needs, they communicate army wide instantaneously, and they don't give a single shit how bodies they have to throw at a problem. If they win, all that biomass can be completely reclaimed.

I don't want to hear Tyranids philosophizing about the nature of good an evil, or reminiscing about some lost empire. I want it to eat, adapt, and watch every other faction failing to figure out how to stop them.
 
If GW decides to characterize Tyranids, I sure hope they do not go the usual "queen alien" trope (just typing that word gives me nausea) that has been overdone to death.
 
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