Adeptus Ridiculous - BATTLE FOR MACRAGGE: DEATH IS HERE! | Warhammer 40k Lore

Episode Date: December 8, 2021

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Welcome, everyone, to another episode of the Adeptus Ridiculous podcast. My name's D.K. Diamante's. My co-host is Bricky. He's got all the ridiculous Warhammer knowledge. And if you enjoy today's podcast, please head over to patreon.com slash adeptus ridiculous, where you can get access to our Discord, behind-the-scenes stuff, bloopers if they happen, and some sweet HD posters. The new one is a Sisters of Silence One, which is actually very tasteful.

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We'll be having that episode around mid-December as well. Oh, quick question. Yes. Would you, I don't know if you have this information, but people might want to know, is there like, do you know the shipping dates and what the cutoff date is to get something by Christmas? If you live in internationally,

you can roll the dice. Sometimes if you live in like the UK, we can get it to you really quick. If you live in But-Fuck Finland, It's gonna It might be difficult But if you're in America Definitely give it a good like week

Okay cool Just to be sure Besides that DK Yes I have a quote for you Okay You sound unsure

Is it too much of a giveaway Um Maybe Okay now remember I'm kind of slow So you might be I'm kind of, you know, I'm a little, I'm a little, oh, I can't say the thing that I was going to say, I know what you're going for. You know what I'm going for.

That is probably the quote I would give you right now, but you know, yeah, I'm a little slow. I'm a little slow on the upkeep sometimes. It's early in the morning, ish, so you might still be good. Oh, actually, this is actually literally going to, uh, spoil it for you. Oh, well, I probably still won't get it. It's fine. You, you will get it. Okay, fine. You have to tell me who's saying it.

Not the, or at least what faction they're from. Okay, I'll give it a shot. All right. It says, quote, A new tyrant joined the fray and in an eye blink, the whole character of the swarm changed. The ravening berserker spirit that had driven the tyrannids onto the ridge was gone as if it had never existed. Left in its place was something cannier and infinitely more worrisome.

It was then that I knew the battle to be lost. lost. Uh-oh. Nothing is immediately coming to mind. Well, you know what it's about. Yeah, it's about someone that's apparently fucking up the tyranids, right? Or a tyrannid arrived, and now he's about to get fucked up. Oh, boy, I don't know a whole lot about the, the tyranids and who's taken out tyrannids before.

I know we did an episode on the tyrannids. Um, um, amina, um, uh, um, uh, um, uh, sh. I That is not an answer Those are noises I'm I'm trying to think of anything That might even make

A semblance of sense Um Pick a space marine chapter Oh Is it is it is it at least a space marine chapter Is that what you're going with Pick a space marine chapter Pick a space marine chapter DK

Pick a space marine chapter The Ravenguard You're wrong It's the Ultramarines No No not them I would have never guessed them because I hate them

so man what is what the hell what's that clip I don't know what that movie is from but it's like this white guy is being pulled up into this like this like I forget Asian group like Warrior force or army or whatever

and he's like take him to Detroit have you seen that I'm just imagining me pointing to you and saying take him to Ultramar no Not Ultramar. Anywho, we're talking about the first tyrannic war. This is the first encounter with the Tyrannids, the first ever encounter, and the Battle of McCrog. A very enjoyable story that this might make you like the Ultramarines a little more, mainly because it's quite a valiant fight.

Okay. It's very, it has a lot of fallacadia vibes to me, where just the sheer like, uh, difficulty of this war is pretty nuts. But this is the first real major encounter with the Tyrannins. This is when they arrived. What bugs me is that I actually was planning on doing something. I get it. God damn it.

I was actually playing this whole concept. where I was going to, we talked about Marnius Calgar before. Do you even remember who that is? Um, it sounds familiar like the Battle of McCrack. I think you mentioned it in passing before, but I don't think we ever elaborated on it. Um, because Ultra Raines versus Tyrannids isn't ringing any bells,

which is probably why I didn't get the quote at the beginning. Um, Marnia's, oh, he's the, um, uh, he's like the, the first in command, behind robot Gilliman, right? And he lost an arm, or he lost his arms and legs, and he's got, like, big mecca arms and legs or something?

You're getting there. He is the chapter master. Okay. So chapter master for the loyalist space marines, you can kind of think first captain for the Leech, for the Chaos Space Marines. So if you think,

if you think, well, it's not the same at all, but you got to think of, like, the head, honcho. So he's the head honcho of the Ultramarines before Gilliman was resurrected him. And he's still technically, I think the chapter master, but he, because Gilman is the lord commander

of the Imperium in general. Right, so he's not technically leader of the Ultramarines. He's just like leader of the Imperium. Right. So Calgar is leader of the Ultramarines to an extent. I mean, I guess so is Gilman, but whatever. Semantics.

Calgar, I was trying my best to actually hype up Marnius Calgar before him and not tell you who he was. To kind of do this like, hey, all this cool things for this cool character, he's an ultramarine.

And then like, and then, and then, you know, all this kind of thing. And then you're like, ah, oh, no, I've been fooled. I've been fooled. I like an ultra marine. Yeah, like maybe I'll change your mind a little bit. And I was looking for quotes from him. And I got Jack, man

I got Jack All of his quotes are the most Ultramarine things I would ever hear They are so ultramarine They are We follow in the footsteps of Gilemon As it is written in the Codex So it shall be

We are the ultramarines The sons of Gillamine Whilst we draw breath we stand Whilst we stand we fight Whilst we fight we prevail Nothing shall stay our wrath Damnation starts with little steps by arrogantly thinking you are wiser than our great forebears,

by tinkering with truth, by compromising, by departing with the straight and narrow path of the emperor's light. For Ultramar, charge. I'm just like, oh, I can't do this. What a dork. He's such a dork, but he's such a boss. I'm not going to lie, he's such a boss. All right, all right.

He's like a weightlifting dork. He's like that weightlifter that's got like the broken glasses and he wears like a shirt and tie with no sleeves. No, he's the, he's the super attractive actor that they cast to play the nerd in the 80s. Fair enough. Okay, okay. He's a huge dork, but he's actually kind of fucks. His tactics are insane.

He is a laughably good hand-to-hand combatant, which is rare for ultramarines. Like, he does some fucking fisting. He fists. This guy fists. Well, look at those fisting he's got. Look at those big old gauntlets. He's got two fisting gauntlets.

He's doubling up his fisting. He's fisting squared. Fisting squared. Gross. Double fisting? Uh-uh. Double fisting. You know what they call it, man.

You know, one finger is fine. Two fingers, okay. Three is the shocker. Two fists is the Incredible Hulk. God. I hate it. I hate that. Oh.

Oh. So, it's... Wait, wait. Wait, hold up, hold up. I want to read this. Okay, go ahead. It's only when finishing issue five that I realize that Marnius Calgar is a love story, but it's a love story between me and his power fists.

Kieran Gillen, writer of the Marvel Marius Calgar miniseries. That's pretty great. So, Ultramarines are not accustomed to, like, hand-to-hand, like, up close and personal, like, pah-pah! They're just, are they kind of, like, infantry that, like, they're more inclined to, like, like, do, like, shooting stuff and mid-range? Ultramarines normally operate as a mid-range gunline, but they absolutely can melee.

They're totally good at melee. They're fine at melee. They're space breeds. They're always good at that stuff. Sure. But they're not specialized, like, say, white scars or something. Right, right. So the main concept of the ultramarines is just having incredibly good, well-rounded tactics.

And ultramarines are a bowling ball without the finger holes. There's just, it's not the, like, it's cool to have a bowling ball. Like, that's cool. Like, I have a free bowling ball. Cool. I'm pondering my orb. You know, it's an orb. He's pondering it.

But there's not a crack in the, in the ball. It's a smooth surface. It's a perfectly seamless tactician kind of thing, where they may not specialize in speed or, or, fire or stealth, but they are so well-rounded that's hard to find a weakness. Right. So it's smooth just like their brains. You know, there's a lot of smooth brain space marine chapters, world eaters maybe a little,

let's say the space wolves perhaps. I'm not quite sure I hit them in the smooth brain. In fact, I think their brains are a little too wrinkly that they're nerds. Maybe smooth like a little. ultramarine fan's brain. Ah. There we go. Love you, Luton.

We do. Oh, yeah. Of course we do. I actually was asking Luton for some help on this one, and he probably could have, but he wasn't in my stream for long. He wasn't in my stream for long, so I didn't get a chance to say to ask more questions.

Anyway, anyway, let's get back on topic. So, the first sign of the Tyrannids was on the planet of Tyranes. hence the name because the tyrantids have no actual name we can refer to them as because we do not know they don't speak to us. Yeah. Now originally. Survivors called them, right? Exactly.

So originally Tyran was a planet with about 80% water, tons of sea life, huge like creatures, like crackens and stuff. Like a total nautical paradise. Well, not a paradise is very deadly, but that kind of thing, you know? Yeah, yeah. Now, eventually what happened is that this force, here and it's just, I mean, it arrived. It showed up and it immediately started bodying the planet. And one of the planetary governors or the people behind it, whatever, whoever it was, they sent a data cache deep, deep, deep into the ocean in order to record what had happened there. I guess, I guess Shaya's

another quote for me. Shai has really pulled out the quotes today. It says, we cannot live through this. Mankind cannot live through this. In a single day they have covered this planet with a flood of living blades and needle-fanged mouths. Kill one and ten take its place. If they are truly without number, then our race is doomed to a violent death before every shred of our civilization is scoured away by a force more voracious than the fires of hell themselves. Death. By the machine god, death is here. the last words of Magos Varnaq Wow

When an adeptist Mechanicus Megos says that That's You're in for some shit Yeah So you said that place was like 80% water right How yeah it was pretty How did the Tyrannids do in water

Like Perfectly fine I was gonna say would they drown? No Oh boy that sucks Oh do The Tiren is, they're so adaptable, man. You can't even poison the bastards.

So you couldn't even be like, oh, God, just get everybody onto a barge and just go out to the middle of the ocean or something. They'd still just... Dude, you are underestimating the Tiranis. They'll drink the fucking ocean before that. They'll evolve gills within like a nanosecond. They'll literally within maybe five minutes, realize there's water, change their biomass to form gills, and then eat your ship. Whoa, Tyrannids are, they're a little crazy. I didn't realize they were that adaptable.

Is that something you can do in the tabletop? Did they have like a crazy adaptability, a stratagem, I guess? No, well, there's a stratagem that you can do something called adaptive physiology, and that is basically just the concept that you can give an upgrade to certain, like, models in order to,

it just gives some upgrades there's no like adaptability versus your opponent kind of thing normally that's not a very good thing on the tabletop because then your list gets a little tailored yeah but no like Tyrannids they adapt like hell

they are so quick to fix things if they enter a battle and they're getting hit by anti-tank they adapt large carapace armor if they need to go through tunnels they create smaller bugs like they're just consistently a problem Man, tyranids are a big problem.

And, like, I just thought they were just ravenous bugs. And they just had different varieties. I didn't realize they could just instantly evolve based on what they were fighting. That's, that's really scary. It's very scary. Way worse than what I thought they were. So who found this area, who found the Tyran planet, eventually later was a man named Inquisitor Krypton, Kripmin, or Phytist Kripman. Now, they found the planet barren.

Like, I don't know if he said when they say barren, they mean no water, but I think they might. I think they mean barren, like, gone. So a planet that was 80% water was barren when the tyranids got done with it? Often the water has microorganisms in it, which involves biomass and minerals and like the crackins and fish. Oh boy. They turned this thing into a rock, a moon. Holy shit. Holy shit.

And this man named Inquisitor Cryptman, which I'm gonna say, let's talk, let's talk about Cripman for a second, all right? Okay, okay. Look at that man's spectacles. Look at his, look at his specs. Look at that man's, look at that man's glasses. Look at those specks. He thinks he's so cool.

Now, I might be getting my actual canon lore and my, Emperor text the speech lore confused but I think Kripim if I'm not wrong was excommunicated

from the Inquisition Oh Because he must have done some real bad then Because he was too evil Oh Oh Wow One cannot consider

The fate of a single man Nor 10 nor a hundred, nor a thousand. Billions will live and die by our actions here, and we have not the luxury to count the cost. Oh. So you know how in Halo, the way you stopped the flood

by setting off the halo rings was to starve them of their food source? Yep. Cripman believes that exterminatus is a similar use to stop the tyrannids. So he's like The Nids are gonna eat this whole world and grow strong Die

Well Was he also I vaguely remember us talking about this Like if they knew that there were several planets in the Tyrannids path Like before the Tyrannids even showed up They would exterminate us the planet Just so that the Tyrannids had nowhere to go And they'd have to like just That's a cryptman idea there

Yep that's the Krypton man That sounds like it That's his brainchild. He's like, this kid might grow up to be Hitler, so I'm going to put it in, I'm going to shoot it. Jeez. That's Krypton. Being too evil for the, because, like, imagine all the books we've read where there's like some like really dastardly person. And it's like, yeah, they're still in the Inquisition.

It's fine. And it's like to be so evil that even the Inquisition is like, uh-uh. Like, you're out. That's, that's a hoof. It's like Hitler saying, whoa, man, let's take a break here. Settle down. That's a little too extreme. Settle down, Jimbo.

Now, moving from there, he was the one who discovered the planet and then immediately warned the neighboring planet because Tyran was in the ultramar system of this incoming threat. So he warned Marnius Calgar of the Ultramarines that this was a high, is this high fleet,

which was nicknamed High Fleet, Behemoth. and it was on a destined course towards McCrug. And if it was not stopped, McCrug is the Homeworldly Ultramarines, if you forget. Yeah. If it's not stopped here, it will be hundreds of light years before they can even attempt a similar stand. There you could see the High Fleet's tendrils moving their way in from that map.

Whoa! That bottom is High Fleet behemoth. Whoa! And if you can see right at, At the end, the final tip, that is McCrogg. That is the battle we're about to discuss. Whoa, those are all tendrils of the, the tyrannids. Those are, that's all just tyrannid swarms?

Yeah, not like, not like physical tendrils, but like those are the swarms of the nids. Yeah. Holy shit. Oh, dude, what fuck. That's so much nids. Yeah, those, like, that system is doomed. That, that's the thing that it's kind of hard. is that since the nids don't have a major story,

you have to kind of make them the punching bag sometimes. But in reality, I think we're fucked. Yeah. Oh, God, that's so many nids. So, let's talk about this battle, buddy. Let's talk about this. Okay, let's do it. So, Marnius Calgar, chapter master of the ultramarines,

amassed a preemptive strike force, warships, strike cruisers, multiple supernova class defense platforms orbital batteries, gigantic battle barges, a couple of those which were really big. He even took up privateers and merchant fleets and hired them to assist. He grabbed everything. He scrounged up everything. And when Behemath finally arrived, they held them off for a time, a slight time.

How long is a time exactly? Is that like a month, a year? Imagine you've got 100 U.S. Marines, right? And they're in like first rank, second rank. Like there's one standing, one's crouching beneath the first one. And they're all lined up in a firing line. And in front of them is an entire, like, pitch black swarm of flies. And the goal is that the flies can't get past the murals.

Marines. Now, if they unload all their guns into that storm of flies, they're going to get rid of a pretty serious amount of flies. There's no way to get rid of all of them. But some are going to slip. Yeah. Some are going to slip. And with each volley, more and more kept on slipping. And in the beginning, it was pretty good. They were holding them off. It's just like this. Remember that scene at the end of Mass Effect 3 with that giant space battle when they all started shooting at the same time? It's like this wall of fire.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, you're matching that, but on the 40K scale. And you got like super, like giant orbital gun platforms that are firing, like, you know, like orbital gun platforms, like cities in space that are larger than the city in space that are strike cruisers. Like, example. Soul Hunter, Night Lord trilogy, Covenant of Blood was a strike cruiser. That is significantly smaller than a battle barge,

which is like dwarf. by an orbital platform. Jeez. And there was like 12 orbital platforms, like 10 battle barges, like 30 strike cruisers. That is, that's a lot. And he even grabbed like merchants

who happened to have some guns on their ship. He's like, if you help us survive this, because they had no idea what the fuck they were going to deal with. They had no clue what was coming. Example. Look at that picture, I just posted on the bottom.

Look at the size of that Tyrannid vessel. Oh, that's one Tyrannid vessel? That is a singular. Holy shit. That thing's massive. Yeah, it is. Oh, gross. So as they kept on sending their swarms of bugs in and in and in,

eventually enough broke through to the planet. M. On McCrog, there are two major things you need to defend. You got the polar fortresses. assuming that's north and south pole you know i would yeah that sounds right so the polar fortresses are the main things they need to deal with so calgar split his army into three he had the first because it was not possible to oppose the nids piecemeal you would just get surrounded like if you like all right some terminators here some marines here no way you need to have armies yeah yeah because if

you and so he had three separate things so they wouldn't have to do with divide and conquer the first two were large armies of Imperial Guard and large companies of Space Marine Marines. These were sent to the two polar fortresses to bolster them. Calgar led his own specific army as a rearguard to kind of help bolster the other two armies and act as a main deterrent against the synapse creatures. His main goal was to deal with the big bugs.

he was because he found out quickly that you kill the big bug and the small bugs start to get on the fritz. Right. Okay. So he learned pretty quick. He was like, okay, kill big bugs, small bugs start going, ah! And they don't know how to do it. Yeah, prioritize your targets. Because if you waste all of your ammunition on the little guys,

like you're going to be fighting them forever. But at least you can do some widespread damage by killing the big boys and make the little ones go all crazy nuts. Exactly. And so at the beginning, was working pretty great. Calgar was doing a good job. They were taking out the big bugs.

They were able to very... I mean, these are the ultramarines. Their tactics are unheard of. They have... They're drilled to perfection. They're very good at prioritizing their targets. But despite this, they just kept coming.

The TIRNids just would not stop. And they don't stop coming and they don't stop. Don't stop coming and they don't stop. Yep. They don't... Anyway, so the main stand came at a starport. This was known as the Battle of Cold Steel Ridge. Ooh, what a name.

I like that name a lot, the Cold Steel Ridge. So this was called the Syracos Starport, and this is the main, obviously, it's where all the major, well, ships and stuff to get them off World War. Sure. And so they were ending up fighting off the nids and they were kind of making a, they're backing up to get to the star port to,

because they were bolstering both sides. I think they were like kind of flying over, assisting with help and dealing with a lot of the nids from one fortress then getting back in and flying over and yada yada. I think there was like a major effort. Well, as they were backing their way up to that, a whole bunch of gene stealers blew through the sewers of the star port and slaughtered,

completely slaughtered all of the, pilots and crew. Oh boy, that's, that is, that's harsh. So while there were Thunderhawks and stuff to be able to supply and maneuver, they were able to deal with the ultramarines, but they didn't have enough to help get rid of the auxiliary forces, like the Guard and the other planetary defense. And so because of that, Calgar made his major decision to make his final stand at Cold Steel Ridge.

And with that, the TIRNids themselves had found out that through the battle, they identified Calgar as the main threat. I would imagine so. This is the head honcho. So, because he's the head honcho, they decided to dispatch to them their own commander to meet him.

And that was a beautiful bug we know as the swarm lord. This is the first time the swarm lord has been seen in the 40K situation. And if you look at the picture of him, those are ultramarines on the ground. Oh no, let's go, swarm lord. So the moment this swarm lord arrived,

in a blink, in a heartbeat, the entire swarm completely changed. They went from mindless, berserk bugs to creatures of grand strategy. Ooh. They started to outmaneuver the ultramarines. They started to outflank them. They started to hide.

And they started their accuracy got better. Their dodging got better. Oh, shit. They started to match the ultramarines tit for tat in terms of intelligence. as the swarm lord would move up with an entire bodyguard of things called tyrant guard at his disposal every time he would growl or send a synapse link 10,000 alien minds in his mind would answer he would send out a signal and then mollocks and trigons would blow through the tunnels that they were using to maneuver through and so then the ultramarines

would have to deal with these mollocks and then by the time that they were killed the entire tunnels they would maneuver through were filled with gore and smaller bugs and so they would have to burn it out with flamers but because of this they left their major imperial

bane blade exposed in which the Swarm Lord personally led its contingent to destroy which completely lost them the left flank of the Starfield or Starport Oh shit So Swarmlord is a game change.

Like, oh, fuck. He is matching Calgar. Every time Calgar would make a plan, the Swarm Lord would counter it instantly. The Swarm Lord is like Imitech, the Stormlord, thinker. He's a tactician. He is legitimately better than Calgar and the Ultramar

at this point. Like, if, if, I'm assuming at some point he's going to 1 v.1 Caligar. I mean, there's no 40K, gives no one v1. Right. And it sounds like he should, by all accounts, it sounds like he should body

the shit out of Calgar. So the idea is that the Swarm Lord and remember in Mass Effect, not a mass effect thing for us, the Gephe. Geth intelligence is varied

by a amount of Geth software or whatever it is, systems in a body. What made Legion so special as he was actually actually a thousand geth in one body. Yeah, yeah. Right?

The swore, I always assume the Tyrannus is a similar thing. Termagons and hormagons are a singular mind, or maybe like ten minds, river swarms are one. But then like the swarm lord is the will of 10,000. The swarm lord is the will of the hive mind made manifest. Oh, okay. So they losing their flank, there is tunnels are filled with creatures they can't deal with anymore.

They're being, they're being surrounded and swarmed almost. They're getting like pushed back and back and back. Eventually, what the swarm lord bellowed a challenge at Calgar himself, he let out this screech and it started advancing personally with him and his entire tyrant guard. And in response, Calgar said, you want it, you're going for a fisting boy and started going at him as well. and I gotta be honest What do the tyrant guard look like? Because they sound super special.

Uh, Tyrant Guard are a bodyguard variant of Okay, unfortunately the minis look like shit Um Oh, here we go Dude, this is so dope Oh Oh, that is so dope

Yeah, they're like little creepy Carapis bodyguards Oh, damn, and he's rolling around with a bunch of, what a badass. He's got like six of them. The swarm lord is so cool. The swamlord's so cool, man. He's so dope. Holy shit.

Have we talked about him before? No, because it's not really like a, like this is where you would learn the most about the swarm lord is this topic right here. Okay. Okay. So the challenge has been echoed and they now, of course, now as much as, you know, they may not like the ocean marians. Calgar saying, this tactician saying,

Yeah, it's a good idea to engage the Swarm Lord in hand-to-hand combat with my fists is kind of baller. You know, I don't want to give Ultramarine's props, but it is, that's a, that's a ballsy, uh, Chad move to see the Swarm Lord in all of his, whew, badassery with all those swords and be like, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hand-to-hand this motherfucker with my fist. Well, power gauntlets, but still, that's, that is a ballsy move. I'll give him that. Sees a gigantic bug the size of a freight train. I'm gonna punch it. Yeah, wielding four swords. Is it four or is it like six?

Yeah, four swords. Okay, yeah, yeah. So, but of course, the Swarm Lord is a major tactician. And as they charged, a bunch of the ultramarines that were serving as his rear garb, were stepping over piles of tyrannid bodies that the, Swarm Lord had subdued and were actually still alive. And so as they were making their way up, a bunch of hormagons and bugs would burst from the body pile, pretending to be dead and cut him off from his reinforcements. Oh, wow.

What a move. What a move. Jesus. They were just lying in, literally lying in wait. Literally playing dead. Legit. Oh, my God. That's, boy, Swarmlord is a.

is a bad motherfucker. He is. Holy shit. So as this fight ensued, this became this massive duel, of course, tyrant guard against the Calgar's honor guard, which I believe is called the Vittrix Guard. Mm-hmm.

Vitrix, Vittrix Honor Guard. That's the name of them. These guys actually look really awesome. Their minis are a little old and very Roman. Um, but they're still super cool. I love the helmet like that, uh, the gold. I guess is that an aquila that's on their helmet? Yeah, I think so.

That's actually really dope. Like, if I, I think they look cool. I had to get ultramarine minis, it'd be them. They're dope. I think they look, they look pretty dope between the cape and the, they have like, sometimes they have axes and stuff. It's really cool. Oh, yeah.

But as this, uh, I, I told you, they're, this is the, well, the time where you you would think they were okay. So anyway, as they do their giant duel, this is roughly around the time when the, obviously, it should make sense that with all the pilots dead, they called for reinforcements. So the ultramarine Thunderhawks at this point just about showed up a couple of them

in order to ferry in the remaining survivors back. During this period of time, the Swarm Lord did not take much damage. Of course. Of course. Unfortunately. And the, and Marius Calgar

lost, I believe, both arms and a leg. Oh, this is where he loses them. This is where he gets hobbled like shit. Or it's both legs and an arm. I forget exactly how it goes.

But he basically, he loses a bunch of limbs, and then his main honor, they had to drag him back into the Thunderhawk. And basically his entire honor guard, like all, All of them sacrificed themselves to keep him alive. Oh, wow.

That's, uh, that's, that's hardcore. Let's go, tyrannids. He basically, basically lost his entire honor guard to the swarm lord and the tyrants before they were able to barely evacuate Calgar. Ah, Shaw has the picture. Let's go. What is that from? Did some, is that just an artist rendition?

Oh, okay. Got you. That's hilarious. They got the Monty Python and the Black Knight kind of shit. We'll call it a draw. Oh man, that that image is classic.

I love it. I love it. So, yeah, so wait, and this is on McCrog, right? This is the home world of the Ultramal. It doesn't sound like they're going to win.

It sounds like the Swarm Lord has sufficiently beat the shit out of the Ultramarmar. Like, and I don't recall a part of the lore where McCrog falls and is eaten by Tyrannids, so there must be something that drives the Tyrannids away, but Calgar's fucked. So what happens is now this has become kind of a space battle, right? Because he has head back into the ship and he's sending himself off. And besides the light amounts of light support he's using right now, even though he's missing three limbs.

What's happening in space is practically even more grim than what's on the surface. The first wave, the first wave of Niz destroyed a major battle barge. The third wave destroyed most of the merchant fleet. The ninth wave has completely overrun the orbital defense platforms. And the 12th wave has destroyed them. Oh. So, how? How?

I'll tell you, my friends. Okay. So, also, oh, I think to back this up real quick, because I should mention this, on Tyran, the first time they arrived, the astrophats actually did call for help, but the shadow and the warp from the Tyrannid stopped it from happening. Oh, that's right.

I forgot that the Tyrannids had a shadow in the warp, and they could just fuck around with the astropaths and telepathic messages. That's right. He told me about that in the Tyrannid episode, I assume. I forgot to mention that. But obviously, because Kripman found this and then went back to warn them, that's why they were able to know. But so at this point, the Swarmor decided to bait Kalgar into a plam.

He dropped all of his major hive ships in kind of upper atmosphere, unloaded the entire amount of Tiranid, I guess units, whatever, into onto the planet, and then took all of his ships away. And what he decided. decided to do is take them, the Swarmor decided to take them to a ringed planet called, oh, Searcy, of course it was Searcy.

Okay. Or Searcy. And as it sent them away, it was the idea to bait Calgar's fleet into dealing with him. And Calgar took said bait, but he had his own little plan. As he sent his fleet towards to deal with

the Tyranid main battle force, the main hive fleet over in this ringed world. This is when his reinforcements arrived. The Battle Fleet Tempestis, the entire Battlefleet tempestis. Like the whole fleet finally arrived from the planets of da-na-na-na-na-na-Baka.

Those sussie Bacca's. Literally B-A-K-K-A. Those B-A-K-A. The entire Battle-Fleafle-Lead. 10 Vezas from Baca arrived and the point was actually a pincer move so they arrived from the warp immediately with the ultramarines on their backside

to gun them down from both sides unfortunately unfortunately that wasn't even enough as the hive mine was too big and there were too many of them so what they did in stem

was they took a ship something known as an emperor class battleship. Now, that's gotta be huge. It's, I think it's the largest. Oh, boy.

It is very slow and is the largest capital ship. I, is, I think, the oldest design at, of all time,

and I don't think they can make more of them because they don't have the STC. Oh, okay. Remember how we meme on, they've only got like five of them or something,

and they, they just can't make any more? Or more than that But you know There's not as many Remember how we meme on Abadon for basically throwing The chessboard away by eating the

Blackstone Fortress in Acadia Yeah This is that on a smaller scale Oh Do they just sacrifice an emperor class Worship? Is that what they're doing? They decided to

Full speed ahead Ork-style big red button gun this bastard dead into the center of the Tiernid High Fleet and immediately detonate its warp engines. And so what it did was that because

the High Fleet was so densely packed it sucked a good like 90% of Tiernit High Fleet into the warp. Oh wow. Along with the Emperor Class Battleship, which I'm sure there's some Chaos

Boys in there who are having a blast right now. A ball, an absolute ball. But damn, they sacrificed an emperor... Emperor-class battleship. Battleship for that. I mean, I guess at that point, you can't lose Macraugh, and you can't lose any more ultramed's,

because that's like the main Imperium stuff. I guess it'd be worth the sacrifice. You see that picture of ships? So you see the picture of ships that try boasted? Yeah. The one in the middle, the blue one, I believe that's the covenant of blood. Holy shit. And the emperor class of the one on top.

Holy shit. My God. That's who, where do you even find the materials to build something that? Good. It's 40K, man. It is 40K. They build flying citadels. Like, they build knights.

That, yeah, that's true. And it's not like they can readily build these anymore. They don't even have the STC for it. So. or they might have the SEC but it's just the sheer amount of resources is so difficult it's a whole thing

so this is what turns the tide in favor of the ultramarines is like they blew this thing up it sucked up a bunch of the fleet the hive fleet and they were able to fend them off yeah because at that point they were able to finally gun down the rest of the fleet because there wasn't much left

now is this a sacrifice oh my god yeah like it is a sacrifice and a half to get rid of an emperor class. I was going to ask when the emperor class ship exploded, it probably took a shitload of ultramarines with it too, right? Because that's a big boom. Like they might have done it in the center of the hive fleet, but they must have gotten a truckload of ultramarines in there too, right?

Probably not, because I'm pretty sure they charged it into the hive fleet and they knew what they were doing, so they either backed up or whatever. Oh, okay. Now, granted, we don't need to discuss the, mostly, likely hundreds of thousands of souls aboard that ship that are now because detonating a warp drive is the concept of like

I always assumed it like a vortex where everything then gets sucked in through like a drainage hole through the warp from real space yeah it gets like through like a straw yeah a part of me was

thinking that they might have remote been able to like fly it in and detonate it but they had like a full crew on that thing? I'm assuming they evacuate as much as they could. Yeah, but there's always required crew. Actually, yeah. There's always a certain level of required

crew, so. Yep, yep. Damn, that is a sacrifice and a half. It is. And so at that point, though, the tide on the space battle really begin to change. And so as that point, they took their ships down to McCrogg in order to attempt to save whoever was left and deal with the rest of the nids.

The question was really, would McCrogg survive? Would the fortresses survive? Now, they checked out the, I believe, the southern fortress, no, the northern fortress to the first company. And as they waded their way in, they saw tyrannid bodies stacked up to six height. And dead in the center, they found the last remaining of first company,

which was four or five Terminators, literally all back to back, surrounded entirely by tear in its bodies. But all of them were dead, including the Terminators. So the first company was completely wiped out. There was not a single living soul in the northern fortress, and a couple survived the southern fortress. Whoa. That's hardcore.

So if that emperor class battleship wasn't, if they couldn't get it or they couldn't explode it, it's over for like, it's over for Macron, it's probably over for all of Ultramar, right? Ultramar is overall extremely fucked until they can find another major last stand. I know that the blood angels took a part at some point as well, but I'm mainly sticking with this one. Damn. I mean, they're still kind of fucked, honestly. Like, they've lost so many and so much from this, this hive fleet that, like, God, like, have they even fully recovered, like, in present? How long ago was this battle? I'm not sure.

I need to double-check the time frame. Let's look up here. It is M-745 M-41, so it's about 250 years back before the current time. time frame. So they probably still haven't recovered from this onslaught. I'm assuming that they, I mean, Ultramar gets a lot of recruits because it's an Ultramar, or the Ultramarines get a lot of recruits because it's an Ultramar. But yeah, I'd say that they're having a, they probably recovered mostly, but it took them a long time. Remember when the Imperial Fists got fucked up by Perciarabo and his iron cage? Yeah. I do.

This is their, this is their iron cage. Yeah, man That's a cage made of flesh So what happened with the swarm lord and Calgar So Calgar Obviously survived He got his bionic replacements Calgar is actually the first ever

Space Marine to Attempt to swap over from being normal to a primaris Marine Oh okay He was the surgery was actually done by Bellasarius call himself and it only had a 60% chance of success

and he said fuck it, do it anyway. Damn. Okay. But wait, didn't Calgar chase the Swarm Lord for like to that ring planet to try and deal with him? No, the Swarm Lord is a bug on the ground. Don't forget, like

this is the hive mind. If it wants to, like, the Swarm Lord I think is dead. They don't really know. The Swarm Lord's They think they found the Swarm Lord and its bodies and stuff on the planet. It died at some point. But it's not dead dead. It's never dead.

Right. Okay. So they'll just find like a new host to put like all of those. Mines into. So, oh. Yeah. They, I was saying it was like Harbinger from Mass Effect where it's like you kill him,

but then he's just going to assume direct control of like something else. Exactly. the swarm lord. Right. There are technically infinite. I don't know if they can make multiple swarm lords at a time.

They probably can, but in a sense, there is infinite swarm lords. You can keep making more swarm lords. Gotcha. God, that's,

that's frightening. That's, to have multiple swarm lords that are just like fucking everything. That's, that's very, very frightening.

Thunderbolts and lightning. Dude, I mean, like, like, just, should I post this already, but just look

Look at this picture. This is what I was happening on the outskirts of McCrug. This is the Battle of McCraug. This is canon artwork of the Battle of McCrogg. They kind of look like Reapers too, going back to Mass Effect. They actually, they kind of look like Reapers. The big ones? A little bit, yeah.

A little bit, yeah. That's such an insane battle. Like you, I can't. not fully wrap my head around the scope of just how many tyranids there were. Like every new picture is like, holy shit, there were a lot of bugs.

And it's like, you can't really comprehend just how many of these little fuckers are there. Like, it's, that's, they're like blotting out the sky. And this is one High Fleet, a singular. This is High Fleet behemoth. We haven't even talked about

Kronos, Krakhan, Leviathan, Yormandar. So, have, Have the Tyrann has ever, like, done a multi-hive fleet assault? Or has it always been, like, they're all kind of, like, so separated that they can't form up? I don't know the answer to that one. I always thought that the Tyrannid hive mines don't like each other. I thought that each hive mine is, like, its own entity, and therefore kind of has a, like, yeah, it's kind of like a competition. They all want the most biomass, kind of like an Ork clan.

Yeah, but you'd think if they all just grouped up, wouldn't that be better? Because then you could just take all the stuff and you could just, everybody could, you'd literally take over the galaxy. Like if all of the hive fleets combined into one giant like biomass hive fleet of doom, you couldn't stop them. But I guess that's kind of the point in 40K, right? Is there so many like enemy factions that like, if they stopped being so petty and hating each other,

they would just overrun the galaxy and kill everything. And I assume this is kind of like their weakness is like they never, they're too busy competing with each other to like form up and actually like overrun the galaxy. One would argue that if they all work together, there would be no food left to share. And then they would just kill each other as well. Yeah, I suppose.

That's true. Also, a reminder, each hive fleet has been found to arrive from a different, point of the galaxy, which means that we might be surrounded entirely. Oh. High Fleet Leviathan came from the bottom left, Hydra in the center, behemoth Gorgon Cracken from the right-hand side, Yormenghis and Mollock from the top right.

Oh, no. Yay. Oh, no. Oh, no. Do you think that's where the story could potentially go, where we're going to be surrounded by tyrannids? The thing is that these are all theories. The tyrannids kind of operate on that fear of the unknown just slightly.

But the idea is really that we don't know if we're surrounded by the tyrannids, but because they enter, so the thing is that tyrannids don't have warp drives. They do not have fashion and light travel. How do they travel then? By just going. They just kind of sail around in space? Shai reminds me that they use like a gravity sling

in order to have them go from destination destination, which means that they don't go faster than light, but they go very fast, but it will take like years and years and years to get there. But once they get there, once they get there, you've got a problem. What's the biggest high fleet?

Or are they all... It's behemoth, right? Or is it... Is it a behemoth or is a leviathan? I think it's behemist. Okay. Largest hive fleet. I was gonna say, are there even a biggest or are they all like relatively the same size?

Oh actually it might be Leviathan. Okay. Uh, I think it's, I think it's Leviathan, it might be behemoth, but I think it's, oh, it's Leviathan, it's Leviathan, yeah. Okay, and I'm assuming humans name these things because Tirinids don't name themselves. Correct. Here's Hy-Fi Leviathan. Oh, cool. Cool. That's our galaxy.

Oh, boy. Oh, boy. So many bogs. And I wonder who named them. And why they named them that. You want to see a, you want to see a Carnifex killing a rhino?

Carnifax, man, we are just going full-on Mass Effect today, aren't we? Carnifx is the name of a bug, of one of the bugs. Oh, boy. It looks like a swore of a war with us. What? It looks like a Krogan a little bit

Without the armor No Well and fangs The face looks like a Krogan They just have a carapace Shut up Whatever We're in Mass Effect mode

There's gonna be a new Mass Effect game eventually Anyway Yeah I'm really tempering my expectations Yeah Andromous I've been I've been burned before So is there a Swarm Lord mini

On the tabletop And does it fuck? The Swarm Lord mini on the tabletop does exist and it does fuck It doesn't fuck as much as it couldn't Well right Because you can't make it too overpowered Well unfortunately

So there's the mini Oh The pictures look a lot cooler It's still nice It's still cool but The pictures you showed made it look way cool It looks a little too chunky I think Yeah I think the hive

Tyrant slash Swarmlord kit is a little bit older compared to some. Okay. Oh, God, it can grow wings? That's a hive tyrant. That's a different unit. Oh, okay. Gotcha. I was going to say, that's very different.

Yeah, it's not as fun for me as like a toxicrine, which I find to be quite enjoyable. Oh, God, those are, those are so gross. That's, that's, that's. But the Swarm Lord actually is, it's one of, for me, the Swarm Lord is one of those things where it actually doesn't do as much damage. that should probably be doing.

But it has an ability that makes it like invaluable. It's got to have like an aura that like supercharges allies within X meters, right? It's actually it has an ability where after a unit has moved, you can pick a unit and just let it move again. Oh. Which is actually, in my opinion,

Tiernids are besides a certain build are not very good at tabletop right now. But I tend to feel like a lot of old codexes have these occasional rules that are just insanely bullshit, but are acceptable because it's an old codex. That's one of them. I think that Tyrannid's double move is fucking bullshit and it's really dumb. But, you know, the codex sucks, so it's whatever. Yeah.

Are points wise Are Tyrannins expensive To buy or field? To field them Like because I I imagine the whole point of Tyrannids Much like in the lore With what we just talked about

Like the idea is you want to have a Fuck bucket of them So I would imagine like one Tyrannid bug is like Oh yeah that's like one point So you can have like fucking 2,000 Of these little motherfuckers running around or something Yeah There's you would

swarm with tyranids yeah i mean the swarm lord's expensive because he's an expensive model but yeah a little like each little gaunt is i think the same cost as a guardsman so you're roughly a similar model count as guard but maybe more cool cool also uh tyranids are dope like after hearing about the swarm lot i'm kind of like yo tyrannids dough i i know calgar made a cool stand but damn tyrannids dough they had to explode an emperor-class battleship to deal with them. Once you hear about the Tiernids' feats, it makes you want to get Ternids. And then you look at the models and stuff, and like, and like the armies look so, I mean, the models are a little old sometimes, and they look so dope.

And then you got this guy who's the Tervagon, and he, it's a little like a birthing thing where it bursts a bunch of tiny little Tervagons with guns. Ew, it is birthing them. Gross. But then you've got the model That has a mini And it's good look They come Hello it's me

Oh no We're being births Ew Those are awesome Ew those are awesome Yeah It's the big Tyrannid models

That I'm like Yo let's go The little ones are fine The little normy ones are fine But those big ones are like Damn No wonder people What is it

Monster Mash Monster Bash? Monster Mash Nids. Big Tyrannids. They're so cool. I, man, the Tyrannids and the Tyrannic War, it's how you, one of the reasons people get into Nids, I am curious if this video makes us start any Nids fans, just like we've got White Scars fans from the White Scars episodes and blah, blah, blah.

I mean, you've made a Tyrannid fan out of me just because they fucked some ultramarine shit up. Yeah, but you got a... I appreciate some ultramarines a little more now, though. They put up a fight. Yeah. Yeah, they were willing to sacrifice a lot. They didn't just, hey, look, we're so strong.

We beat the nits. Boo, pooh, pooh, pooh, pooh. They last-standed, a lot of them last-standed on McCrogg. So, I mean, I give props to the Ultramarines this time. This time. If you want to hear about Tiernids fucking shit up, wait till devastation of Ball. episode. Yes.

Devastation of Ball. That is going to, but that'll be more exciting for you because that's Tierness versus the Blood Angels. Ooh. Oh, uh-oh. That clock. Mm.

Mm-hmm. That's that, that's, that's the cliffhanger of the episode. When's the devastation of Ball episode? Oh boy. That's a, that's a good one.

We don't do a ton of like battles too often because it requires a lot of research, but it's, it's a good time. All right. All right. All right. All right. Well, in that case, I don't think I got anything else. Any questions, D.K.? No, I think I asked all the questions that I had about Tabletop and Nids. Yeah, that's good. A new respect and love for the Nids. A modicum of respect, I guess, for the Ultramarines. I think overall it. We did it. We did it. He begrudgingly is okay with the Ultramarine. I know I still hate them, but I'll give them.

He's begrudgingly okay. Eh, fine. This episode, I'm okay with the Ultramines. They did good. Yay, all right. We did it. All right, everyone, you now have to, we win. Oh, my God, someone drew the Swarm Lord as a wifu.

Oh, nice. All right, the episode is ending now. Shai has no right to judge us. Goodbye, everybody. Thank you for watching. Eat your biomass. I'm reporting this to the fucking authorities.

I'm marrying it.