The Chime of Eons - The Great Devourer (Third Bite!)

“Tyranids are creatures from our darkest nightmares. But remember this: they can bleed, and they can die.”

- Inquisitor Lord Kryptmann,

at the War Council of Tarsus Ultra

Sometimes, you just got to whip out old one eye, and slap him on the table for everyone to see. He gets knocked down, but soon he's up again, and everyone marvels at how "six is enough", even if Uncle Ragnar has seven, and ole Grand-daddy Coteaz has eight. Its what you do with that six that counts.

Just don't let him get bloodied, because there's no coming back from that.

This introduction was brought to you by the British School of Double Entendres. Now on with the article!



SIGNATURE SQUAD - Old One Eye

"Old One Eye"

We've spoken in the last article of Hive Fleet Behemoth, and how it swept into the empire of Ultramar.

Old One Eye was involved in that invasion, notably spearheading the assault on the world of Calth, a notable Imperial manufacturing centre with vast underground cavern cities.

Old One Eye is a Carnifex, though is a particularly fearsome example of his kind.

Historically, when Tyranids were first introduced, the largest walking models that each faction had on the battlefield was the dreadnought. The Space Marines got their dreadnought miniature first, and the orks and eldar soon after. While the modern game places dreadnoughts very firmly in the middle of the size scale (with infantry being smaller, and super-heavy walkers towering over everything), at the time a dreadnought was an impressive centrepiece model and the big hitter.

The tyranids didn't have a dreadnought equivalent initially, so a model called the Screamer-Killer was designed. This big-ass four-clawed monstrosity was somewhat kooky looking, but had excellent close combat strength and a ranged bio-plasma attack it could vomit out.

When GW rebooted the imagery and design of the tyranid range, the Screamer-Killer was renamed the Carnifex (because words ending in x are cool, right?) and the new sculpt was quite simply one of the most incredible miniatures GW had done to date. A large number of players were drawn to collect tyranids just be the gribbly awesomeness of the carnifex. That mini has since been replaced by an even better one, and the carnifex is a great model to look at if we want to check out how much better GW's sculptors have gotten over the decades.

The Old One Eye character was developed not long after...

In universe, the story goes that Old One Eye was a force of destruction on Calth, swatting his way through Leman Russ tanks, and was finally brought down by an Imperial hero (whose name is now forgotten) with a plasma pistol shot to his eye. The beasts regeneration abilities couldn't heal this injury, and it was felled.

Many years after the conflict, smugglers looking for archaeotech excavated its body from the ice-packs of the frozen wastelands (hence "Out of the Ice" preview title on the FFG website). They thawed it out, hoping for a bounty on the corpse, but Old One Eye was in fact still alive. It began to regenerate (though it could never repair the injury to its eye) and slaughtered the smugglers as it awoke.

The Hive Mind was now too distant to control it, so it reverted to hunting instincts. Other tyranid remnants on the planet recognised its presence and actions as making it an alpha, and so soon joined its pack, forming a warband that rampaged across Calth, destroying settlements, attacking freight convoys, and defeating any local militia forces sent to engage with it.

Calth called for aid, and Scout Sergeant Tellion of the Ultramarines hunted and tracked this beast at the head of a Scout Squad.

Tellion dealt the "fatal" blow with a lucky shot, hitting the ruined eye socket. Old One Eye was taken down, and his carcass fell into a cavernous ice ravine. A search for the body was made, but it could not be found.

Since then, there have been multiple sightings of Old One Eye amongst Tyranid forces, in battlefields and warzones far flung from Calth. An explanation for this isn't given, but logical speculation suggests that the Hive Mind has identified "Old One Eye" as a bioform that was especially effective, and decanted him time and again from the Norn Queens - indeed, regenerating Carnifexes were uncommon in the time of Behemoth, but common in Leviathan. That each time it shares the same eye-injury is harder to explain: my own personal explanation is that the Tyranid process of "evolution" doesn't wholly understand why certain phenotypes are more successful than others, so it copies the thing wholesale, including the eye injury. A more generous interpretation is that the Hive Mind has recognised the psychological impact of "Old One Eye" as a myth, and thus is waging psy-ops against the Imperium.

As choices of Warlords go, its an odd one. Old One Eye (and other Carnifexes) are living weapons, rather than Synapse Creatures. The Hive Mind's will is exerted upon them, but not passed through them to other tyranid organisms.

In fact, in his first appearance in the wargame, Old One Eye was a Heavy Support choice rather than an HQ one: he couldn't lead armies, just enhance their hitting power.

The game rules used here (once per round regeneration) are nicely suggestive of his abilities and very interesting in mechanical terms. A fluffier but less mechanically sensible approach might have been to have him have some means of returning from being Bloodied to Hale.


Lurking Hormagaunt

A Tyranid Gaunt subspecies, the Hormagaunt is smaller than a man and armed only with a pair of scything talons, though their well developed hind legs allow them to cover ground at great speed to enter close combat.

In the real world, the development of this mini was a response (call it a tribute, or inspired by, or ripping off) of zerglings in Starcraft. Prior to that computer game, while Tyranids were often described in fiction as being a horde without number, the higher quality of their troops meant they had a higher points cost, and so they'd actually often be outnumbered on the tabletop. Hormagaunts and Termagants went a long way to making the wargame match the fiction.

Back in the fiction, the Gaunt genus represents the most numerous of the soldier organisms of the Tyranids, and has numerous variations, including Termagants, Hormagaunts, Gargoyles, Spinegaunts and many others. The gaunt genus is highly mutable with minimal resource expenditure from the Hive Mind, so when the tyranids need to be adaptable (as during Hive Fleet Gorgon's war against the Tau) it is these smaller organisms that are preferred.

The stats here (1/3/1 for 2R) aren't especially appropriate, as a command icon seems highly out of place on a rank and file trooper with no abilities outside of melee combat and limited capacity for independent thought. The ability to reassign damage to the warlord is great in terms of top-down design, but doesn't make a lot of sense when led by the fiction. Also, the card doesn't even match its own title: in what sense is this Hormagaunt lurking?

While I like this card in game design terms, it doesn't quite hit the spot for representing the fluff. In those terms, it'd have been interesting to see a 2 cost 0/3/1 unit with Ambush that costs 1 less to deploy at the Warlord's planet.


Awakening Cavern

On the one hand, it makes sense for this to have been Old One Eye's signature location, as there's no other places especially associated with his lore. On the other, once he's been dug out of the ice once, how does this card keep having an effect?

There's also the issue of geography, of course. Calth, happily, is in the same Segmentum of the galaxy that we've previously guessed Traxis Sector to be in, but its explicitly not in Traxis Sector. I've covered this ground before, asking why an Outpost on Catachan can effect the battle in Traxis Sector, and been roundly told off that obviously the outpost represents Catachans who have set up in the Traxis Sector, not an outpost back home. How does that logic apply here?

Ignoring geography, a fluffier (but admittedly less game-balanced) card might have had a one-off effect to make hale a bloodied Old One Eye.


Ferocious Strength

This card makes great sense in terms of narrative, giving us a mental image of a wounded Old One Eye (or other tyranid beast) raging on and cutting a swathe of destruction. Its also a great effect in mechanical terms - a 1 cost untelegraphed play that makes the Warlord play better, and puts the jitters in any Warlord hoping to duel him.

Its not a terribly interesting combination of card name and flavor text in itself, of course, but when you promote a personality-free tactically-straighforward heavy-hitter to warlord status, you're bound to end up with signature cards that don't really have a lot of personality.

Giant Scything Talons

I've complained previously that some signature items are a bit of an oddity, in that they're part of the equipment that warlord normally carries. You have to wonder in the 2/3 games that Cato hasn't got his Tempest Blade out why he has chosen not to carry it, or why Ragnar only fetches Frostfang when he is flush with resources in the late stages of a game. The latter, at least, has a nice feel of a Space Wolf Saga about it: "The Great Battle approaches that will end this chase. Fetch me Frostfang!"

This signature attachment has that question attached to it, and doubly so. When we don't see this card, where are Old One Eye's arms? Does he have stubby little Termagant hands and rely solely on biting and kicking? I guess that temporary amputation might explain the lower HP total: every campaign begins with Old One Eye sporting this injury, and only once he regenerates it is he whole again!

The actual game effect is a little odd in being tied to regeneration, but the emergent effect is reasonably fluffy: Old One Eye gets deadliest once he's run the gauntlet of enemy firepower and closed to melee range, and you can either accept that, hope to gun him down before he's close enough to use that claws, or just run away after your opening salvo.


TYRANID CARDS - The Supports

Room left in this article for a few more cards, so let's proceed in an entirely illogical order!

Some Support cards to look over!
Brood Chamber

As we've discussed, Tyranid technology is wholly organic, and every item, soldier and weapon that they use is grown or hatched rather than built, from the smallest chunk of living ammunition to the might of the Hive Ships themselves.

Central to this are the Norn Queens, who dwell within the Hive Ships and ingest biological materials, both for the genetic information within and for the raw building materials.

The Brood Chambers are where the Norn Queens reside, and are filled with the gestating forms of the tyranid organisms.

At first approach, we might assume that the best role for a support card like this would be to simply increase card/resource supply in some way, or to provide recursion of cards. The approach taken here is more imaginative, and ties into another aspect of the tyranid way of war: adaptation.

Tyranids are often noted as being able to adjust their biology to suit different enemies. The keyword-copying is an interesting way of representing this adaptability. Having to deal with flyers? The Norn-Queen produces you some flying units. Want to deal with hard to stop Brutal orks? Decant some Brutal tyranids!

A degree of abstraction is necessary here, but the effect on the faction's playstyle as a whole is welcome. Even some small details, like the process being too slow to copy Mobile units in any useful way, are interesting here.


Digestion Pool

Digestion, or Reclamation Pools are a key part of the tyranid logistic chain. After conquering a world and after resistance is overcome, the Hive Mind's efforts shift from invasion to consumption. Ripper Swarms that had been greedily consuming biomass through themselves into enzyme laden digestion pools, with genetic information surviving intact but organic matter reduced to a cellular soup. Capillary towers are grown which then physically carry this soup up to the Hive Ships, and ultimately to the Norn Queens.

Its good to see this card present, though its design seems to be led by the game mechanics rather than by the fiction. It doesn't make sense for the card to be unique or limited, nor for it to help deploy cards into infested planets where war is still ongoing. Rather, in fluff terms, this card should have given an ongoing discount according to how many planets the tyranids have already won.

Nevertheless, on a meta-level, the effect of the card is to create late game resource advantage for a tyranid swarm that has already eaten its way to a strong position.That more or less works.


Mycetic Spores
The functional equivalent of Space Marine Drop Pods, the Mycetic Spores rain down on a planet in the opening stages of invasion. That this card is a repeatable Support rather than a one-off Event is a nice way of showing the far greater numbers in a Spore assault.

The effect doesn't make a huge amount of sense, however. Spores are used to move from Hive Ship to Planet, and don't really help get a unit from the ground back to the Hive Ship. Indeed, notable in the Tyranid lore is an almost complete absence of ways for tyranids to do this: they tend instead to have their organisms either leap into the digestion pools to be returned via capillary towers, or lurk on a planet in perpetuity, as a future threat. In fact, whenever tyranid organisms leave a planet's surface whole and in one piece in the fiction, its by hitching a ride on the spacecraft of other races.

Of course, that doesn't very well suit the game (can you imagine if Tyranid units could never move from a planet, but instead got reduced back to cards and resources once the planet was conquered? Actually, that sounds awesome to me!) and clashes a little even with established fiction (the Swarmlord moves from planet to planet, so he must have some means of leaving the surface).

If this planet to planet transport function is unfluffy, the limitation on what can be transported is odder still. Termagants don't need to be present for spores to be launched, and its not just higher level organisms that can be loaded on one.


Spore Chimney

As the flavour text says, Spore Chimneys pollute the atmosphere of targeted planets. Deployed during an invasion, Spore Chimneys are grown on the planet surface and pump out toxins and microorganisms that darken the skies (to make further spore pod assaults harder to intercept, as well as to create an artificial greenhouse effect that allows for temperatures conducive to bio-consumption) and infect the local bioforms with Tyranid genetics. Ordinary forests turn into hostile and dangerous terrain, and animal lifeforms are altered.

These chimneys are small at the start of an invasion, but at its end may dominate the horizon.

The card's effect here is perfectly placed, though pluralisation of the card's title would have been a good way to represent that this is multiple effects on separate planets, rather than an upgrade on the hive ships being fired at multiple targets.


Synaptic Link

This is a very functional abstract effect tied to a fiction concept that is key to the way the Hive Mind operates. There's nothing unfluffy or fluffy about this card: it just does what it does.

Notable here is that actually the Synapse Units in the game aren't really that at all, in many cases. We've mentioned this a couple of articles back though, so let's not dwell on this!

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More Quiz!

This is a huge expansion, and we're working our way through slowly. Hey, no-one ever said that facing a Tyranid invasion was going to be a quick task!

To break it up, back to the quiz! Some more nice easy ones, that can be googled pretty quickly. Bonus points if you knew the answers without doing so!

Sticking to the Tyranid theme:

1) What is the Zone of Silence?

2) Which Sin was retconned to be under assault from a different group of angels? Who were those angels?

3) Sewerstalkers, scuttler, clawfiend. What do these have in common?

4) From seed to death, its lifespan is mere seconds, but it can kill many during that time. What is it?

Thanks for reading, back soon with a look at the Synapse Creatures!