The 40k Lorecast - Episode 38 - Tyranids pt 2 - Genestealers, Tyranid Invasions, and key units.

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

On todays episode we continue our dive into the lore of Tyranids with a focus on the stages of a tyrranid invasion, and key units of the army. We start with a dive into the stages of a genestealer invasion. Then we focus on the stages of a tyrranid invasion of a planet (spoiler alert it sucks) we then spend some time talking about how terrible the concept of Zoats were. We then finish up by talking about some of the key units of the tyrranid army.PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Pebl: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Pebl: https://hipebl.ai* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/loreAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Welcome to the 40K lorecast with me, John Barcotti and Bradchester. This guy. That was take four. So everyone knows. How you need four takes on that, insert your own ideas there,

and they were all my fault. Problems. You would think they, the rest of the time, they are my fault. This is entirely my fault screwing up one sentence three straight times. Anyway, it was impressive.

This is welcome to the, Part 2 of our Tyrannid coverage. As always, like and subscribe to the cast. It only takes a second, but it really does help our algorithm out a lot and pushes out to a lot more people. I have to say this, it's bananas. This is my new term, banana pants. But it helps weirdly like a crazy amount. Like a like and subscribe changes who we show up for.

And it's a big deal for us. The way we get rank, the way that everything comes out, it's a nothing thing. We've cost you guys, zero dollars. it just helps us a lot. So we really do appreciate that. Additionally, only thing that is cost you nothing and actually benefits us,

nothing, but it's just fun. Is our Discord? Please join that. If you haven't so far, it's really grown massively. I think we've doubled membership at like a month. One of us might be putting the link

in all of his cast that he does on YouTube. That does help. The other one does cast on YouTube. I mean, I should actually be doing way better. Yeah, putting it in my LinkedIn profile, which is confuse my entire industry. So anyway,

But it is expanding. We're adding more channels as we go. So if you have questions on lore, modeling, gameplay, or anything else, it's a great place to come in. In questions for future cast, we literally take all... We're taking all of your guys' suggestions. And it comes, I mean, before this cast, Braddon are discussing what we're do after Tyrannids. And we were going through the comments written in Discord. That's where we're taking our inspiration from.

We literally go from where you want to... You guys want us to go. We take, hey, do you want to do factions? What would you like to see? Also, I mean, you've literally written full episodes based on, hey, so-and-so asked this question, which made me ask 22 other questions. Oh, yeah. You guys rabbit hole me hard.

You know, I hope you understand, like, how much time I spend just staring into the abyss of codexes. Like, it is fun by the reading a PDF of a 1990-8 codex. Just because, like, and why was that answer? And then, those were really good, by the way. They were exceptionally well-written. Same with single play. I bought video games.

Every video game used to come with a manual. That was awesome. It's a great lore. It was great. But anyway, another one, too, is for Brad here, for those of you who want to play 40K on other tabletop or on the tabletop simulator. Just interested, period. Yeah, just at all.

Brad is an exceptional coach for this. He does provide professional coaching for 40K. You can find his link on the 40K on the 40K lorecast. or you can try and figure out old man brad 40k at gmail dot com you will for sure remember that screw you john it's easy to know and now you can see the face i'm making as he says something that has that many syllables anyway but brad does have lots of coaching available it is a wonderful resource especially if you're either just getting into the game or you've gotten into the game you just don't really fully grasp piece of the game he's very good and i one of the things i want to point out

that I do in coaching because we have a lot of team events coming up. I will, I have done, and I will do more of, hopefully, a lot of group coachings for people that are trying to get into team events or just groups that are trying to get into the game as a group. Like if your group is just starting in 40K, I'm more than willing to meet with all of the people in your group and let's just go over how a game of 40K works and do things of that nature. 100%. I provide no coaching for two reasons. One, I don't want to and two. You don't want me to. You're the listener.

Trust me, you don't need John's coaching. All the today's cast. So, last week we discussed the background of the tyrantids, how they function, why we think they're in the galaxy and where they appear to be going. Today, we want to jump into what happens when the tyrannids actually arrive at your planet or system? The answer is nothing good. It's not great.

It's not great. That's, we'll just leave it. Also, if you haven't read, read, if you haven't, read, if you haven't, Listen to the last episode. Why are you on this one? Also, skip to the end. Yes. Because the fan theory part is probably my favorite thing.

Yeah, Brett's still high off of that. I'm super. We're doing another cast when I should never do another cast based on my excitement of fan theories right now. So we're going to dive, but as we dive into this invasion, one thing I do want to put it, it does determine a little bit. We're here. We're going to touch a little bit on some addition changes. We talked about this in the first cast. This faction has existed.

since the early 90s. I think they've got one of, they may have more codexes than any group outside of chaos and space marine. They may even have more than Eldar. It's one of those weird ones because some editions you didn't get a codex, some missions you did. So we've got a lot of weird lore that's going to kind of overlap here. And I write these things based off of codexes.

So if those you haven't figured out yet, I just take all the codexes and that's what I like to read because they're fun. True story. And Tarynids don't make great hero novels because, you know. Because they don't have heroes? Exactly. So someone's going to be like old one-eye, God damn it. The old one-eye novel of, it's just yelling.

Written in, written internet. Written in tyrannid, just click, click, click, roar. Anyway, we'll start with the original and the best, which is gene stealers. The most insidious, the most changed. But what I like about the fact that the gene stealer has been retcon a million times, but I love it because retconning a gene stealer is okay. Gene Steeler's main function is to change the DNA of... Well, now.

I mean, this is the fun part of... But even back in the day, they were still infecting. Oh, that's true. That's why they were always... Always. Remember the old rule of Billy's acting, or sergeants acting funny? Because they used to be able to pop out. Yeah, I believe it was white dwarf for this first appeared.

But the very first model of the Tyrannid Army was a gene stealer. And this was, as we talked last time, Space Hulk. Incredible game. We talked about last cast, and you know what? It's good enough. We're going to talk about it again this cast. SpaceOak's super fun again. It's a bad code of a game.

I know I said this in the very last episode, but if you have access to play Space Hulk, just play a game. It's a really fun time. Yeah. I mean, it is, they predated the Therians being a faction. Originally, the genusers were a one-off. They were just alien.

There were aliens that were literally on a spacehole. And that's all they were. And then GW developed them, and I'm going to, again, give them massive credit here. They did it really well. The gene stories, they wrote, they did have to retcon some pieces of it, but for the most part, they were able to make, they took them from what was a alien on a spaceship. And there's actually, in some ways, it reminds me a lot of, like, the movie alien to aliens.

We're going to skip alien three. They evolved. And four. And go right to Prometheus. Still a disappointment. More than Alien 3? I don't, I don't acknowledge that movie exists. Sorry.

One of my really good friends is up with Matrix. He's like, there is no Matrix 2 or 3. I never talking about it. I have no idea what these movies you're referring to are. It's a standalone. I don't know what you're talking about. There was never a sequel. You're out of your mind.

But so Gene's spoilers have now been flipped over to being the vanguard of a Tiernid invasion. Which, while a rewrite, fits perfectly. Fell in, exactly. This is one of their best retcons because it just smoothly goes in. because what the gene stealers are is the vanguard, the four deploying, but also they have a purpose. They are designed with a make more of you. In fact, they infect.

They infect the local populace. But also, the gene stealers are also more insidious than this because the gene stealers none are supposed to infect. We're not talking, you know, just alien where somebody pops out of the chest. No. Gene Steelers were in charge of finding out information about what we're invading

and making more Jane Steelers. Although that bit we're getting into that bit's been kind of moved around. True. It's going to be fun. So from all the casts we're going to do this one and Eldar, I mean the most challenging for Brad and I, because we've been playing the game

longer than reading them more long enough that we're going to be like, you know, he totally said that. That was 1998 Virgin. Damn it. You're like, you made a change in the last 25 years. This is bullshit. Stupid Gen Z. There are no socks wearing shoes, which is a thing that it still bothers me because I'm old.

It's gross then. Yeah, it's just really bothers me. Sorry. You guys are listening. Feel free to make a comment. That's a weird side. You want to know how you feel like you're an old man. You see someone wearing dress shoes and no socks and it bothers you.

Why do I care? But it does. Anyway. Gross shoes. Continue. Gene Stiller's whole purpose is at stage first Tiernan invasion. We talked the last episode about Space Hulk. So what they do is they're going to a deep hibernation and just sit inside these space hulks

until they detect a life form coming in. And this was wild for it to play. This is before Ternan's became something that was in the galaxy itself. And I need to, I didn't look it up and I should have what year the movie Alien came out versus the year this got written. But once they're... 1986. No, that was the aliens.

Yeah. Alien was, yes, okay. They stole this from Alien. It's all right. It's a good movie. But the idea... 79. It was 79? Wow, it's older than me. That's impressive. Not you. Not me. Not me. It's older than me. Not by a lot, but they beat me. So anyway, the point being, just like an alien, you have a ship that just kind of drifts throughout the galaxy. and when another being walks into it and all the beings inside wake up. But the best part about it is they don't just wake up and mindlessly attack. They wake up and lure you into traps.

That's what we're going to get to. So the best case scenario is you find a Space Hulk, you do what the board games tells you to do. Get a bunch of Terminators and kill anything that moves on the entire ship. Because surprise, this is also a cast about digital cult. But just, you know, screw this, I'm segueing. Gene Steeler Colt is the scariest thing in all of 40K. And I know, watch this. Demons exist in 40K.

Gene Steeler Colt is still scarier. And this is why Gene Steeler Colts invade planets. We're going to talk about a lot of this. But Gene Steeler Colts have generational plans. Yeah. They infect the guy that runs the power plant, the janitor, the guy that's the assistant. assistant to the president.

I mean, we did the cast, right. It's Zinch. It's, yeah, but, but Alien Zinc. But Alien Zich. That concept, like, I'm willing to slow play this game to make, to make my victory that much better. But it's so crazy. That's why it's so, because when a Gene Steeler invasion actually goes into play, everybody has their, hey, those are my three best friends.

You're like, actually. Actually, those were jeans dealers. And so, yeah, let's talk about kind of what JN's invasion does. So first off, genius dealers, they're not. there to consume a planet. They're there to seat it and prepare it for a tyranny. Yeah, for a tiered invasion. They take over the planet and then they light the beacon.

Genealers are not there to kill off and consume a planet. They're just there to seat it and set it for a tyranny invasion. The gene stealers come in a few different forms, but one of the key ones is what we call a pure strain. The game also sees them as if you play Tyrneys, you know, it's as Broodlords. So a purestrain gene story is just a... H-Q purestrain. Yeah, it's a large gene stealer.

they've got psychic, and they've got these really weird combo power that sort of touches a tabletop. And, Brad, you tell me, if they, I mean, I guess in 10th, they've kind of got this a little bit. Well, in the old psychic power used to be able to take control of things, which is one of the main powers, which is they effectively give you amnesia after they give you a command that you just do. Yeah. And on tabletop, I think 10th edition Tyrannid broodlords, they have fight first, which I guess would kind of fall into this category. Because you're dumbfounded for the moment. Effectively, what a broodlord can do, or I'm going to call them broodlords because I play tyrannid. It's not genius-slerical, but what a peer sharing can do is they look you in the eyes and you actually, you are paralyzed and you lose memory, like from a period of time before until it's over.

What they then do. They don't even just do. Let's be honest. Hold on. Let me push the glasses off real quick. They don't give you just memory loss. They alter your memories because a lot of the. sometimes when you meet a pure strain G-Slee, you meet a gene stealer, which should be terrifying,

but your memory does not remember that. You just met with Ted. And you go back to work as the guy that works for the president, the union guy, the head of electronics, you know what I mean? You go back to your regular job, but you are now infected, and you think you just met with some dude. And the infection is a cool thing. So every broodlord pure strain has a special.

tongue at the very tip is like a microscopic needle. And they flick this thing out and it just jabs you. But this is so gross, by the way. This is gross. It jabs you a needle and infects some genes into you. Yeah, but it changes you in a genetic core. This does

not work. This is not how science works, not any way, shape, or form. But it doesn't, this is what it happens in the book, in the game. It is, yeah. So the seed actually begins to change the genetic makeup of the victim. And this is why we call them gene stealers. It's because they actually steal your genetic code and change it to their own.

So this moves us into stage one of a gene-stall infection. So again, we'll talk about before. Space Hulk comes in, a bunch of scavengers rush to the ship and say, because sometimes these ships are dropping out of the warp, and they will drop back into the warp. And you don't want to be on a ship with no Geller Field when it jumps back into the warp. It's a big thing on this, because this is the, it goes back into alien and aliens. you just won hooray, you killed all the

jeans stillers, you got out alive you, a couple of your friends. I don't know. It depends on the day. It depends on what you want. You know what? I want this in the Discord. Which one is better? Alien or aliens? Because they are two wildly different movies. Just like. But

the biggest thing is that this is what the gene stealers do. You think you won the day, but I got a stab right behind my ear. Well, it's even more insidious than that because, yeah, you leave the ship, because it may have only been one gene stealer. Because the game, the Game, Space Hulk, you're fighting, they're fighting you back. But in some of the game, the ideas there's actually only one pure strain. He's just hiding in there.

And he sneaks out of a passageway, jabs you with a tongue. It only has to get one of you, by the way. Also, you might kill him afterwards. Yeah, and it goes back in. You have no idea what happened to you, but it's the Brad's point. We scabbage this ship. We got a bunch of cool stuff. This is awesome.

Let's, let's, you know, and now we're going to leave the spacehulk before free buddhas show up. Yeah. Like, is that, that won't end well. And so, but it also could be, instead of one, there could be dozens, hundreds of pure strains, infecting everyone who comes on the ship. So a thousand people come on the ship and 980 leave the ship fully infected with this. With zero idea. Yeah. Yeah.

And there is no outward signs. Like, you don't, you can't tell anything's wrong. with this person. Although this has changed a little bit. I was just going to say, there's levels of Gene Steeler corruption now. Yeah, I don't really like this.

Gene Steeler, codex, sorry, it's a good codex, but there's also levels of gene stealer. Yeah, I don't like this because the way it was written originally is just like movie Alien. The facehugger gets you.

If no one knows the facehugger was on you, they just find you afterwards and you just wander around. Again, Sarge is, it's an actual, look up the rule, everyone. It was an old rule. Sarge is acting funny and a character would just turn into a gene sailor. Yeah, they'd be cool cool. Modern 40K, they flipped this a little bit.

So now after you've been infected, your skin tone is kind of pale or bluish. Again, you have levels. You have everything for pure strain. No, no, that's like this is the infection. Yeah, I'm saying. Which I'm just like BS. But I'm saying, even with this, it goes with 100 levels. Yeah.

Anyway, so you can imagine. what happens now is that these people are, they may leave the ship. These are not, like, these are rogue traders largely, or, you know, these are space pirates, whatever. These are people who are extremely nomadic. But this infection does two things to you. The first one is it actually makes you desperately want to reproduce. But also it makes you weirdly nomadic. Yeah, it makes you more automatic. Because you are going to have some weird changes that if you were in public, would it be a real...

Well, you're fine. Your kid's going to be weird looking. Yeah. And bringing up them in a second. So what happens is these people tend to just all leave the Space Hulk, drop off their goods, and then go form a colony somewhere, or move to the under hive. Or they move like this, a big group. And they go there, and all that they're looking to do is procreate, procreate, procreate.

Why? Well, stage two. The, ooh, Malignacchi, ooh, so these are their offspring. So these are the first generation. It's three-armed weirdos. And so what these look like is just to save us the time of explaining it,

go to GW's website, look up actuate hybrids. Yep. That's what these are. They're an acolyte hybrid. They are a tyrant skin tone. But also, you've got multiple arms. Well, we have to, we're doing a disservice here because one of the biggest things is they're genetically predisposed to be wildly loyal. Oh, we forgot that.

Yeah, the parents of these, well, there's two things. One, the parents of these ones who are infected have an insane desire to protect these children and raise them. And they don't know why. Yeah. And these children and them have a psychic link. It's not strong, but it's there. But also, they have. again, genetically coded to do what they're supposed to do.

Yeah. In Maglanaki, they are about five to six limbs, so that's two legs and three to four arms. They have what looks like a genie slur's mouth. They're just full of razor-sharp teeth. They're basically beasts. It depends on what. I'm going, I'm just trying.

I know, but there's multiple levels of it. Continue on. Yeah. So this is, this is the first generation. And there are, you know, again, you're talking if we had 100 people infected with this, there's thousands. I mean, that's how many they're making of these. It is a nonstop process.

We've moved into thousands of these. The next piece, though, is what happens in the stage three of the infection. This is when the Malignaki begin breeding with each other. As we said before, this is usually happening somewhere where no one can see them. They're on an abandoned planet, under hides, whatever is. Let's keep pushing it forward because, the farther they get along, weirdly, the more human. Exactly.

So the next phase after the MacLignaki come in are called our actual hybrids. I don't know why G.W. made me have to say Malignaki and then went to hybrid after that. Could have just said, you know, anything else, proto-hybrid, I don't care. Words that I could actually pronounce easily. Instead, they did their usual random word in fake Latin followed by, ah, that was too hard to write. why bother it again? I like the fact that you've made it a point to say fake Latin. It's fake Latin.

That's your go-to, by the way. Because that's what it is, Meleknaki's. I know what they're trying to do here, but just I also can conjugate in Latin because I went to school in the 90s. So it was a thing. Nobody speaks Latin, Joe. Nobody.

It's never, it's an old joke about that. Kathy Priest is back in Italy and he's struggling to communicate. So he just gives up and speaks the guy in Latin. And then the guy looks and goes, wow, you haven't been here in a while, huh? Anyway, the hybrids, they're still not human-looking, but much less than the magnetic. They have the mostly human faces, you know, eyes and people structured.

But one of the biggest things is that these guys can, from a distance, just pass. Yeah. So they can just be. And this is, if you look at the models in 40K, they wear cloaks. They were hoods. Right. Because they've still got, you know, again, they still are like, some of them actually only have four limbs. Most are closer to five.

skin tone is off. They're not quite, you know, it's still purpleish. It's great purple. Which, by the way, have the same thing to me. To Brad, it's the same model. So they're a high level.

So these ones, though, the acolytes do have a much higher level of intelligence. They actually can do manual labor, whereas this is the scariest thing, though. Multiple, there's tons of, if you want to go inspect, and this is a big thing, in a lot of the stories, by the way,

you have, especially if you read some of the Inquisition novels, because they do backtracks and they read histories and stuff like that, what happens is, is the accolates infiltrate the crews that work on the sewers, the guys that work on the electrical power lines. And they effectively, they want an entire crew of the guys that work on sector C's power grid to just be acolytes. Well, and it's actually, this is one of the coolest things because one of my favorite pieces of all this lore is that at this stage,

the Genesler cult infection is really good for the Imperium. Because the acolytes, for example, they have an extra arm. They're also supernaturally strong. They're also resistant to radiation. Yeah, and one of the biggest pieces is they're desperately trying to avoid detection.

They're the best workers ever. One of the best ways that the Imperium never come check on your shit is to overproduce your quota. They will never check on you. They are just like that is, you know, we are, it's the Schrodinger scenario. Like, I don't want to know what's going on. I don't care what's going on, but it's fine. I have to give the, as usual, weird Brad's segue off. Does the Inquisition know this is happening, but they know they're getting a good hundred plus years of over quota work?

I can even see the inclusion knows it's happening and the inclusion going like, they're not going to let me do anything about this. They're like, these guys are crushing it right now. You effectively have like, I would assume it's not going to be a full-blown hive world because there's certain way you pick it up. But let's say it's an agri-world.

And this one agri-world is outproducing every agri-world by like a power of four. Yeah. You know something's up. But like, but I've got food. And how do you think- But also you have, you have historical reference for it.

So you know that nothing's going to happen for 75 to 100 years. We can just exceed quota for that. Yeah, in 30 years, we'll exterminate us this. But for right now, like, we're, we should do this, right? So we're going to get some good numbers, guys. At this stage, I mean, this is the best way to put it is that at this stage, the Jesus Suther cult infection is one of the best things going on for the empire. Ever happened.

Yeah, it's like whatever these guys are producing, they are hammering. through. But then we get to stage four of the infection, where it starts to, where this is where this is going to crest and get ugly. So these ones become, the hybrids become what are called true hybrids. And yeah, they're totally phoning this in now. I want to point this out. I went from pure strange genius dealer to Malignacchi to hybrid to true hybrid. Jesus, guys, put an effort in. Anyway, these look the most human. They stand upright. They mostly are normal. Because the last one, the hybrids are hunched over. But these are the guys that, like, can actually work fairly close to everybody.

They're like, they're, this the janitorial crew. So these guys in the game would be, you'd seem as Keller Morse, Locke, if you're looking for like a model to kind of take an example. They can move within the hive cities because their mutations look normal within a hive city, but they wouldn't be able to infiltrate kind of the upper echelons because they, they still look enough abhuman. Because they're not supposed to be there. Yeah.

And that's more because of the. Classist racism of the other than high world. True. One thing that we should also mention is that, as we said before, each of these are inbreeding with each other. So if the original infection made a thousand or 10,000, the next one's going to make 100,000, we are getting to the stage now.

We're at the stage five, which is the pre-Maki. We'll be right back after a quick break. At this stage, we are talking potentially millions, or maybe pushing into a million. I would say it's 25 plus. percent of the planet. Yeah. These, when the pre-machian, it depends on what you're talking about.

Because at this point in time, this is right before they fire the beacon up. Yeah. This is when they take control. Because these are the people that take the positions of, and I'm doing the air quotes, almost in power. These are the guys that are the, the aide, the secretary. The president, who's his go-to person? You know who they love taking over? the labor. It'll be like, you know, all of your, your factories, because as we said, these are, they are trying to avoid detection, the best way in the Imperium to avoid detection, be a hard

worker. Yep. And so these guys are all over putting up giant numbers. Yeah, it's like, this guy's the best employee we've ever had. Yeah. It's the guys that are in charge of sewer, electrical, transportation, logistics, anything that you're- Well, you're skipping the big one. Yeah. Imperial Guard. They also, this, these are the ones because they're fully human, huge deal on this because one of the big, Hawaii, there's Stone Cities, we already talked about this in our episode, but one of my favorite things is why this is so scary is,

one, your best friend is a jeans dealer. You didn't know it the whole time. This is like invasion of the body snatcher's type thing. But worse, because it's not even like, they didn't kill your best friend. They take his place.

No, it's just he's been that the whole time. Yeah, he was born. Like you guys could, you were grown up together. And then when the fighting starts, all of the Imperial Guard are fighting each other, and you have no idea what's going on because your commander is actually a Gene Steeler.

And he's explaining to you, and he looks superhuman, that all of these people are against us. They're trying to kill us. You need to kill them. And you're like, I guess they are shooting at us. As bad as that one is, actually even a worse one. They also joined the Imperial Navy.

And we'll get to why that's a problem in a second to stage six. But that means they also. Well, stage six is literally part two of the movie. Yeah. Well, the issue is that at stage, at this stage, right now, they're now leaving the planet because they, as I was saying, we were discussing, each generation of this infection looks more and more and more human until this last.

Until a certain part where they look completely unhuman. And the Primachi look completely human. so they can join and they can spread. So this is how the Gisler is spreading through the galaxy. As you said, they come in on a spacehulk and they do it that way, but now... Which is also crazy because you got to remember these are a higher intelligence people. So they actually rise up quickly because they're smarter, faster, and better than you are. One of my favorite, like, you know, personal viewpoints on this, and I made this story up, but screw you all.

It's still a good one is you could have a space hulk that was invaded by pirates. These pirates then get infected by a genealers, go back to their pirate world, but because of the genealore infection, they decide that, hey, we need to emigms imperium like me. They stop being pirates and become a positive world for the imperium so they can pull this move off over generation and generation and generation and generation. And now here we are. We have a group of people who were four generations ago. pirates are now running one of the most productive worlds for the Imperium, which is usually a wow

way to turn your life around story, but actually they're screwing the entire Imperium over. Then we get to stage six of the infection, which is not the last, but it's an ugly one. When the prematchee have a child, that child is a pure strange gene stealer, which is got to be wild for the mom, but continue. Yeah, exactly. That's a fun birth. Clause, that's got to be great for a uterus. She dies.

I would assume so. This means that what happens is once these pre-matches, we just said have left the planet, even just a couple, have left the planet. They can have a child. That child will then be a pure strain genealorpe, which can then begin this cycle again. And this is how they are spreading to the galaxy massively.

It's a plague. And the pure strains possess a couple key. things. One, they actually have psychic control over all the other genes to their cults who are local. We did this in our episode on that. The pinnacle of that is the Patriarch, of course. Yeah, and they eventually will turn to, one of them will turn to a Patriarch who's on a planet. The Patriarch now becomes like local control for this. And dominance, like control. Yeah, which everybody underneath him, especially the early ones, just worship him as a God. They can't help themselves.

It was a cool story. We'll tell the next cast about some of the stuff about like the first time that an inquisitor saw a patriarch working with Jesus other cults in what looked like a local revolution. And then they saw a alien pointing and telling things where to go. Not ideal. What happens at this stage, this is where they set the stage of the invasion. So they're going to start sabotaging weapons. They're going to start disrupting movements. They're going to poison as many space marines as they possibly can.

Really? Both. Really? That's where we're going with this one. That's damn it. It's important. If there's any space Marines present, at least you want to do,

you want to poison their food. Which they're immune to. But then you also want to poison the air. Which they're also immune to because you want to inject them with a poison. Which can't poison. Yeah. Especially if they're in a space and what you, oh,

the best thing you can do is drop like a, drop like a cloud of poison on them when they're in their power armor. Because that also does work apparently. You know, we got through another one episode without you mentioning that and then we immediately go back so but what they really do though is their numbers are hidden until a hive fleet arrives and when the high fleet arrives you have no defenses they come out of nowhere i mean that's that's out of the sewer gsce is i still say this demons exist and i still think these are more insidious because you aren't allowed to fight

because you you can fight off demons the difference is like you could you can have blanks the we that The Imperium has defenses against demonic incursion. The High Fleet shows up and all of a sudden you go, let's do this. And you have no power. You have no logistics. You have no sanitation. And all of your defenses are fighting against each other. And 50 plus percent of your planet just attacked you.

Yep. And also some of them were gene stealers, like literal gene stealers. But also the lights are out and communications are down. And also there's no. there's no way to get to anywhere. Logistics are down. You have no way to travel. And you go, what the hell is happening?

You lost, you don't even get to fight. No. The truth is that as far as a gistler cult infection, you have two options. One, you have to detect it at very infancy and kill all them off. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's be honest. We look at the game from the lens of the Imperium. Step one has never happened ever.

No. Unless it's on planet. Yeah. And they don't, they don't tell anybody that this happened. Because step two is kill everyone. Yeah, orbital bombardment. Only way to be sure. Yeah, that one works well. Orbel bombardment.

That is the other option. It is that those are your only two options. Now, one interesting thing that, again, when GW gets stuff right, from a lore standpoint, I'm going to jump into it. So what about other races with genes to their cults? It's like can Juniors their cult affect non-humanism? human races. And actually, they do call this out. So the Eldar, no, because they don't have enough offspring. The process of actually doing a gene-stall infection on Eldar would take millions of years.

Also, the problem is, is that, I'll give you this, they've actually touched this before. Because of the fact that one of the biggest things about a gene stealer invasion is that they psychically link Eldar are already- Oh, they're already psychically. They're like Bill's infected. Yeah, someone shoot Bill. Yeah, like, it lasted 11 minutes. You're like, oh, he's clearly messed up. Orcs are equally impossible because they don't breed. Orks are a fungus.

So you can't really. They also don't care. Yeah, exactly. They're like, oh, he's a jeans dealer. Can you fight? You're like, are we going to wreck the infrastructure? I don't even know what that means. I have no idea.

So you're infecting the grots? Yeah, whatever. Also, yeah, we'll just kill them if you mess with them. Tao. I'm actually not shitting on them here. Here we go. The tau actually have a unique thing because of the crout that are wandering around. The crout can actually smell the infection.

They call this out. And so the crout detect when someone's infected and say, kill that. Well, actually, they don't just point it out. They kill that. They kill them. But either way, so that's why the Jensler cult infection is only an imperium threat. I guess it could work for chaos cultists. That'd be a fun one.

Talk about a meeting you don't want to go to. Yeah, just be a weird one. Like, yes, Slenest genes to the go. I mean, I'm infiltrating your meaning that you're infiltrating, that you're infiltrating. You're like, it's the Spider-Man meme. Oh, yeah, I'd be totally bet. So now, I will say just a quick note from a lore standpoint here as far as a retcon. We're going to call out the retcons as they happen.

I swear to God, if we talk about Zotes again, I will attack you. We're doing Zotes in a second. Zotes are fun. Anyway, originally in the game, this is actually how Tieners came to the galaxy. It was a Gene Steeleer cult would infect, and then they would send signals out. And this was... No, but they like, they still do. This has been right-com, but it hasn't been right on because... You haven't written it out. Yeah. They still like the beacon.

Oh, yeah, they still like the beacon, but it's more of this piece of it, it seems to be in the modern version, Gsler cult infections aren't really driving the high fleet, but the high fleet is happily going to those worlds. I mean, it used to be that's exactly how any fleet move, period. Yeah. Because they went a gene stealer invasion, or a gene steal invasion. Yeah. That's the only way they moved.

It also, the other one, too, that was that this one has been retcon, though, was that the, there are certain beings within the tyranny army that have relations to, you know, other races. So zoanthropes are elder. Well, that's, that got knocked down. All of these. Yeah, the Cowanthrope came from Tao. Get it. I do like that one. The Cowanthropy, I thought you would.

But anyway, but this got retconed out and actually got moved into the DNA of them as being absorbed. Some of Gros used to be terrifying. If you've ever played Mass Effect, it was when they did that where they infected their psychic racists. Yeah, exactly. But then they just changed it out, which is fine. Actually, I'll be honest, it's better now. The old one brings us. Yes.

But it was scary. When I wrote the notes, I wrote John hates this so much. And after discussing, it turns out Brad hates it more. So much more. The Zotes. So we're going to do these guys real quick because GW actually randomly brought the model back last year for no reason. Anyway. I'm willing to, I'm not going to say fight a stranger, but I will try to outdrink a stranger.

If you want to talk about it, if you meet me in a tournament and you want me to be lively in discussion, this is a thing that I've been arguing. about wildly before we did the lore cast. Yeah. I think this is so dumb on such a great thing. Let's give GW some credit here. So we're going to talk about what they did wrong in a second. They did right. They wrote these guys out in the 90s.

This has been out of the lore for 30 years. Which is, they should have. They should have never been in the lore. But anyway, real quick, just the quick hit on this. So people know what Zotes are. They were a seemingly tyrannite, tyrant humanoid hybrid. So we're already starting. not from a good position here.

They were lizard centaurs, and they could speak galactic common. They were, freaking lizard men, infected lizard men was what they were. Well, but they were centaurs, though. Lizard men were bipedal. These us had four legs. Sure, I'm saying, but that was their whole jam. Oh, it was incredibly stupid. And what they were was they were apparently enslaved by the tyrant hive mind that would communicate through them so they could then negotiate with other races.

Which they didn't do at all. half of the tyranids. Anyway, this was... I think you're only doing this to mess up me. I'm doing this because people are going to say, hey, you forgot Zotes. And I'm going to say, I didn't forget Zotes. I wanted to forget Zotes.

So fine, we're doing Zotes. We're doing it quick because they're stupid. Anyway, the problem is then the GW is they eventually wrote, well, the Zotes existed, but then they rebelled against the tyranids because they didn't want to be under their yoke and the tyrants killed them all. And you know what? I don't miss them. So problem solved.

The only problem was is they only got to... kill him once. I mean, this was a stupid concept because the tyrants are a consuming race at their core. All they do is consume. There is no negotiation. It also takes away the mystery. Right. And also,

it also takes away one of the coolest things. You can't negotiate with them. There's a movie that. They're an abstract. You have no idea. Oh, it was aliens. That's right.

The movie's aliens. You can't negotiate with them. Oh, no. It's Terminator. It's from Terminator. You can't negotiate with them. You can't discuss anything with them. They feel no pity.

Or a more. And they will not stop until your death. Exactly. Yes, it makes it amazing for up. And it makes them lame when you're like, sometimes they like cupcakes. They want to negotiate with you. And the Arsenal,

you were listening to this going, wait, didn't the Tao trying to negotiate with the tyrantids? Yes, we will get there. You think I'm going to miss that opportunity? Yeah, an opportunity to talk shit by now. Not a chance, my friends. Yeah.

But anyway, that's the Zotes. We're never going to speak of them again. And they've been bracedly burnout. And the thing is, is that one of my feet, screw this, why I hated the Zotes and why I love the Ternans, I'm not even going to talk about why I hate the Zotes anymore. Why the Ternans are such a good thing for 40K in the lore is they are this mysterious entity that you can't negotiate. You don't understand what they're doing.

You don't know where they're from. You have no idea why they're here. The problem of Terenz, yeah, is that they're just here to kill us and nothing we do outside of kill them works. Yeah. And the thing is, is that they keep showing up in different forms.

And they're, you're like, I don't know why you're here, but you're also occasionally corrupting our entire societies. You're like, what, it would be easier if you were just some guys

that they needed to fight. But somehow, even though we know nothing about you, you know everything about us. And every time we fight you, you're different, which we'll get to that in a little bit. So let's spend some time,

though, invasion, which I think we established well. That's not the only way they invade a planet, though. And even if they are there, there's still stages to a Tyrannid invasion. As we said, Tyrannies move as a single unit. You know, wow. Are you usually, I usually try to throw out reading material on this one, Space Marine to the intro, who is a Tiran invasion?

That's actually a really good one. It's really good. I've been trying to stay away from that for a little bit because when they delayed it a year, I was like, I don't worry about it. about that in a year. But if you're doing a TNANN invasion, it is, Ternids are a full, Ternids don't toe in the pool. Tiernids are in the pool or they're out of the pool. This is a weird segue, but I'm going to do it anyway.

So I like narrative 40K a lot, and this is actually one of the hardest narratives to write is a Tarrant invasion, because it basically consists of player one gets 1,000 points. Player 2 gets 10,000 points. And reserves that keep coming back. And endless reserves. players, player one has to survive two rounds. That's basically what you do. It is, tiered invasions are incredible.

And tiernids don't show up at places that they're not going. There's stories, of course, in the narratives of defending against turn invasions. But for the most part, they all require miracles. Yeah. There are. Ternids don't go places where they aren't going to win. I think there's only two invasions. Tiernids cheat the engagements.

It's McCrack and Ball. are they only two. Ball where they were winning. Yeah, Ball was a miracle. Next, next episode, we're doing Ball. Ball's one of my favorite episodes. But I'm saying, like, they don't show up to places that they can't win. Well, because they show up with pure force.

Right. Yeah, and this is important. I mean, effectively, if the Terrians, a full-scale terrorist invasion is effectively unstoppable. It's just going to happen. It's so numerous, there is no resistance. And even before they begin the invasion, is what we're going to discuss.

They actually infiltrate the planet and begin to undermine the defenses. So it makes, yeah, so let's start there. Let's dive into stage one, which is infiltration. So infiltration, this is aside from genius, so we know how the geniuses do it. But if there's not a genusiler cult,

there's another thing that they use, and they use something called a Lector. And Lictors are crazy. Speaking of things that are good in the game, but are, wow. First time I actually find it. So fun story, I actually played with Lictors,

before I read the lore on Lictors, I was mad. Which you should be. Genuinely mad. Because Lictors are the predator on crack. It is a, the Lictors are a synaptic creatures. They can operate outside of the hive mind. It's unknown. If they can communicate vast distances to the hive mind,

it seems more likely that they're just able to operate without the hive mind's interaction. They're a camouflaged unit. And some of these camouflage, some of the best, lictors. Let's talk about the story. Screw it. I'm going to segue into this.

The story of the lictor that they have in imperial custody that they can't detect, but they know is inside the room. Yeah. That's a lictor. It's locked in a room and they can't open the door because they have no idea where in the room it is. And if they open the door, they know it's going to kill them. Yep.

And they know it's in there, but none of there, they're any, they have no detection of it. But they threw, lictor is in there. And the thing is that the lictor learns. Lictor understands. Lictor is trying to figure out everything it can about your society, but more importantly, where are your defensive weaknesses is? So what Lictors are, when Brett says to chameleonic, he means like the predator. They can actually, they can sit and disappear.

The other thing, too, is they actually can do things like they can actually feed into a planet. One of my favorite stories is they can actually eat something's brain and learn their memories. You know who else can do that? Space Marines. Scree. They also can do that. Probably going to poison people. Yeah, exactly.

Well, the Lictors definitely do poison space marines. That actually they do do. Screw you. I'm so angry about this. So what allows them, so if you don't have Gene Sulla's present, though, to Brad's point, the Lictor can give them all the same information. Where are the defenses? Who are the key people? What are, you know, where is everything here?

I actually think the Lictors are wildly more powerful in Ler. Ler. Lentzers are awesome. It's just in the tabletop. Yeah. I mean, they're still good, don't you? They're four deployers, neuralitters are good. Death edition, fine.

Ninth edition. How many, how many? Eighth edition. Let's just keep going additions back last time you saw one. Sean Naden, he brought Lictor Shane. Sean Naden is a unique character. Okay, let's keep going. He'll just make things where.

That's why. Let's pick the addition. There was a reason that the list was called Lictor shame. Yeah. I think the Death Leaper had a couple flashes in the pants. Dead Leber is the shit. Yeah, which is just a super lictor, which is cool. But lictors in the lore are amazing because they're these forward operators that are ramboying it up, to be honest with you.

They're finding out everything about you, whether you want them to or not, because the worst part about being killed by a lictor is, oh, yeah, you wouldn't give me your secrets? Cool. I don't care. I just ate your brain and I know everything about you. One interesting thing, though, from the lore around a lictor, and seen with the genius, but it's easier with a lictor, obviously, is if there's a lictor on the planet. So, oh, I totally forgot, guys, by the way. The lictor gets dropped off. So it's actually just a very small stealth hive ship that goes out with lictors and just drops

someone of the planet and flies away. You can see this in the opening sequence of Predator 2. Just going what it is. They can do that. So if the Imperium or you just get lucky, whatever you are, and you find the lictor and you kill it, the high fleet may not come to the planet. It's because if it doesn't have the information, it's like, why bother? More likely they'll send more lictors.

But their whole point is to find out, is this worth coming to? If it's worth coming to, what are the weaknesses? What are we supposed to do? The Lictor is, when I said Lictors are good, and you talked about it, man, lore versus the plate. It's brutal, isn't it? But think about the Lickner's in the lore. Man, they are so good. Because they're making decisions.

It's just them and Terminator's fighting in the. But the thing is, they're the predator on, like I said, the predator on steroids because they're they're getting all this information they're figuring they're learning they're figuring things out they're almost completely undetectable and yeah they're they're also

incredible killing machine they a lot of stories of like the catachia jungle fighters fighting the lictors like just ripping through 100% hundreds of them cool as shit so but anyway once this has happened either genes or infection or lichter infection

the next phase is called the infestation. And this is when the hive fleet first begins to approach the planet. Well, it's approaching the planet in force. It's not making... We're saying the hive fleet. The fleet is now coming in. There's not a scout ship that shows up at this point in time. It's a, hey, dad, I can't see the sky anymore. Well, you're getting three phases. Phase one is if they were using the narwhal, you're going to get those like earthquakes. You're going to get this whole of

time, like moving around. Phase two is all your communication. stops. Shadows the War. We really need to harp on how incredible this is. The entire terrifying. Remember, though, Shadows of the Warp isn't just your communications are down. Shadows the Warp, we talked about when we talked about blanks. Shadows of the Warp is also, you have an impending sense of dread that you've never, you're more terrified than you've ever been, and you have no idea why.

I like talk about the communication piece of Lubbics. I think it really adds the fear that this isn't like a ship, like a naval ship or a ship moving around the earth, right? They send out communications every so often, but it's not constant. An imperial world has thousands, if not, probably more than thousands of astrophats, and they're just speaking constantly. There's nothing. Every company, every royal, every... There's nothing of his...

And all of a sudden, it just stops. It is dead air. You can, nothing's coming in. And remember, you don't know nothing is going out. That's what's even cooler about this. Just nothing's coming in. Complete silence except for endless static. Now, add to that, your astrapass start going crazy.

Your astrapets just died. Yeah. You have psychers who start killing themselves and screaming. This is like, and then, I mean, that's why I did laugh. You keep bringing up this impending feeling of dread. I'm not sure if that actually is a thing or if it's just this, or if you're just sitting around the room going. So everyone who's in charge of communication is screaming and crying.

and trying in the corner. All of our psychers just committed suicide. I'm not, oh, by the way, and the planets, there's earthquakes everywhere. You know what? I don't think the, I don't think the shadow of the warp was necessary to create

an impending feeling of dread. And you're like, my Prozac is not counteracted. Yeah, this is, holy God. But here's where it gets better. That's not, the infestation is actually what happens now, which is when the high fleets get close enough to orbit, they start dropping spore mines from the sky. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

You know what? I'm popping in this one. John acted like they were dropping occasional spore mines. They dropped spore mines where, again, that was my quote earlier, you can't see the sky anymore. They're dropping so many smore mines. They cloud it in multiple books, they've talked about the fact that it looks like night because you can no longer see.

Because there's so many coming down. And spore mines are not, like, we're in, well, I'm in Michigan. So this is spring for us, I guess. Everyone else, like all the Daniel lines bloomed back in, you know, the actual spring. But I'm in June. And I've got those white pieces of garbage all over the place. You mean the ones that make me sneeze? They're killing you slowly.

So I don't have allergies. But anyway, so those things that. We're not talking about like that. Spore mines are large spores that actually fall. You can see the model. They're humans. They fall out of the sky. And they do a few different things.

They actually can contain... Tyrannocytes are a bigger version of this. They actually can contain beings. But the bigger one they do is they actually hit the planet and burrow into the planet to start extracting the nutrients and bring into the surface. Let's talk about the gross part about this. They're predigesting the planet. This is part one.

They also will... But they do carry down monsters like molox and trigons. to start borrowing into the planet. You mean 30 to 40 foot tall giant beings? It seems that they grow. That's the part I'm always kind of confused by because they use tyrannocytes to drop carnifaxes and a carnifax is smaller than a Moloch.

So again, I have to assume that they kind of grow when they're in there, whatever. But the point being is that they now come in and these spores are falling out of the sky, hitting the planet, and beginning to convert the atmosphere and the planet over. Because I love the confidence here. The tyrants aren't you, at this state,

tyrants are going, oh, we've already won. We're going to start digesting the planet now. In between that and the end, we're going to kill all of you. But this is over, right? Yeah. So let's start setting up the predigestion. And this is where, at this stage two, this is where the genius, those rebellions will begin.

We'll be right back after a quick break. So as soon as these spores start coming out of the sky, that's when the geese, they're called attack if they're there. Or going back to what we were talking about, the Lictors, the Lictors have been stalking and learning the planet, and they've been marking who the leaders are of the planet. They will suddenly leap out of nowhere and kill all the planetary leaders. So you now are-

Whoever's in charge just got the captain. If it's a space marine captain, he's been poisoned. God damn it. But the idea is to create. Anarchy at the planet, which makes it even harder for the planet to do it. But we haven't even gotten into the worst part, which is assault, which is when the tyrantids actually attack. Because now, as we just said, they've lost leadership.

Defenses may be offline. Their planetary bombardment canids may be off. Well, and one of the bigger things is about this assault is because of the gene-steal infiltration, because of the Lictors, you know who comes down? Whatever I need to face you. Oh, you have big cannons? Cool. I say whatever I need.

It's always going to be billions of gaunts. Well, yes. But besides billions of gaunts. Like every time. Yeah. True story. But the rest of it is what weapons do I need and what armor do I need? Exactly.

And they're going to bring it in force, but they're mostly going to bring gaunts. Gaunts are the, oh, and when we say bring all the gaunts. Endless swarm. The tyranid system is not a strategic one. Remember, in kind of akin to corn, it's just bloodshed. They don't care. Anything that dies on this planet, they're going to consume it anyway. What's a bigger thing, back that out, I would say including themselves, it doesn't matter.

Whatever mass, biomass is biomass. At the end, it's all getting thursday. thrown in the pool and if the hive ship makes a termagon, that termagon lands on the planet, a imperial guardsman kills that termagon, when this is done, that termagons still getting brought back up. It is still two uses of whatever. It is, there are numerous stories, and we'll cover this later, of defenders effectively running out of bullets because of the massive swarm.

And it's not just gaunts, by the way. So gaunts are on the ground. It's also gargoyles. who have had a nice research. It's more spores. It's exploding spores. They're coming out of everywhere. Spores.

The biophores are shooting. Yeah, harpies are flying over top, shooting you and dropping even more spores. It is, the sky has gone like a greenish black. I'm saying that again, in a lot of the books, they describe it as the sky has gone dark because you can't see anything. The biggest thing about a Ternan invasion is they're bringing the whole thing. The Ternans don't fight in little. It's not skirmishes. It's the whole thing.

And they get progressively more powerful. So as we just said, we're going to start with gaunts. We're going to have termagons, formigons, gargoyles, a version of a flying gongon. But then the warriors will start to show up. And the warriors will start coming. Because the warriors are there. But it looks at it about a little bit larger than a space marine. And they're going to come in.

So they add a little bit more oomph. Or if that's not working, we're going to bring in zoanthropes. We're going to bring in carnifexes. And the carnifex is where I, Side story. I love Carnifxes. I've always loved Carnifxes. Do they suck?

A lot of times, yes. In 40K. They didn't for a while, though. Third edition and fourth edition, they're amazing. Yeah. And then, like,

they're kind of okay in 10th now? With all the one, they're amazing. Yeah. I've also seen them just die, like right there. But anyway, the Carnifax is actually,

in theory, one of the greatest weapons that they have. You know what? You're going to make me sad in 10th edition. In previous editions, you could make your carnivacs be whatever you wanted to be. And I love this about the Tarynids. The more adaptations you have because that's what Tarynans do is they find out information about what you are. And then they make whatever creature they need with the proper weapons and armor to kill you is what shows up, which is why they're so damn terrifying.

Because they're like, hey, you brought a bunch of big tanks to the last time you fought us? Cool. I brought a bunch of things that kill big tanks. They'll even know the planets. They're and say, hey, this planet's got a lot of incredibly fortified positions. Cool. Here come Carnifax is with special claws that can rip through that. Yep. It's usually the carnifax they would use for this, or they've got a lot of, like, you know, flat open land with large ordinance. Cool, here comes to Carnifax with heavy venom cannons. We'll blow your tanks. We'll blow all those.

Carnifacts is land and ripped stuff apart. And that's like me getting into malice. There's biovores, pyrovoris. I'll be else pyrovoris. It's just Flamers. Framers are right. Yeah, it's more from a lore standpoint. I'm like, so you have a thing that falls out of the sky and makes flame. Anyway, Biobores are cool, though. Ten other things are already doing that.

Malatheters are a lot more badass. But so whatever your defense is, and the other thing, too, that we should mention is that, and we're going to talk more about this in a minute, they also will adapt as the battle goes on. Yep. So as if they hit a stubborn defender, they'll look at that and decide what is necessary and then throw a new trick.

Because the ships above in low orbit are actually figuring out and making whatever they need for the best. If you're winning on a front, what do I need to fix this particular front? They just make it. No. A key point I want to make about assault phase at this stage, it's over. And the reason it's over is for any of those of you who played Horizon Zero Dawn. The atmosphere is gone, guys. There's so much, the Tiran invasion at this point has blocked out the sun.

There is no photosynthesis. It's never going to happen. It's not going to happen again. Additionally, it's consuming the planet in what is actually a toxic form. So unless you're a space marine who is immune to poison. God. They're already prediagnesting. So you're losing almost all the soil, basically.

But you're going to choke to death. Unless you're, I mean, this is Death Corps and Creek stuff, which we'll cover later. But you literally would have to be fighting with an oxygen supply at a certain point. It's not a very long point into the assault phase. And the tyrants, we're not really sure how they breathe. It's never really covered. They don't operate in zero gravity. So we don't, I don't know.

It's not really covered, though. Yeah, but in sense, like, I don't know if Tyrionids fighting and true zero gravity. I don't know. It could be a lower thing I just haven't read. But it's one of the bigger things on this is not only are they doing all this, they've already ruined your planet. Even if you win, you're still lost. But almost always Ternans do not show up at a planet that they haven't already figured out that we have more stuff than you have. Yep.

They show up at, they only pick unfair battles, almost always. I mean, there's few and far between. I agree with you until we got to like later ninth edition. Not even because of the devastation of ball. I mean, ball couldn't have been more fortified. But there's very few of those, though. Yeah, you're right. There are the things that they have to do.

Yeah, it's the Leviathan invasion. It's where they change a little bit. They just keep picking battles that they're always going to wear. Actually, not I said that, they would have won ball. Even though ball was heavily fortified, they were throwing a thousand to one ratio, Adam. Yeah, fair enough. They're just no, I'm saying even at ball, but I'm saying every other invasion, they just

go, again, we've always. already infiltrated the planet. We know your defenses and we've, we only invade if we have this we're going to win. Ninety-nine percent chance that we're just going to win this fight. They only fight unfair fights. That's fair. So at this stage, once they've killed all the defenders, we move into what's called the subjugation phase. So they, which is so not subjugation, though. Well, I mean, it's subject. Well, I guess there is one more. It's absorption. You're right. Sorry. Yeah. The second and last phase. So the subjugation phase is where is where they convert.

the planet over to the form they needed for consumption. So what we didn't touch on yet is one of the things that the spore mines were dropping are what they called capillary towers, which play Donovore 2 or 3. You'll see what they look like. Well, they make the pools, though. Yeah. That's what makes sense. Capillary towers come out of the ground.

They look like kind of almost like a tentacle coming out of the ground with like a plant coming off the top of it. They look like the StarCraft two towers that the. I know. We know what it really is. We know what it really is. But anyway, they make these things. They come out of the ground, and these begin to actually start converting the biomass.

They've got multiple levels to these. At stage one, they're just kind of coming out. They become areas that would, they'll start consuming all the biomass. The tyrannid, uh, gons will actually bring dead bodies over towards these capillaries. And then eventually they form pools in front of them. Eventually they jump in. Yeah. That's the final bit.

They also jump in. eventually to slowly turn the entire planet into a liquid mass of... They make... They easily make goo. Yeah. They make chicken nuggets out of the entire planet. Well, and the... Actually, I forgot what's...

Sorry, I got that wrong. Let me rephrase that. It's the rippers that do this. It's not the gons. The rippers storms. The rippers storms pop out of it. The rippers basically eat things and then explode. And they explode into a liquid.

So corpses, other tyrantids, plants, vegetation, everything. Organic mass, period. Yeah, and these are, these, these become oceanic in size, pools of just organic matter. Plants gone, by the way, at this point. Like, there's no coming back at this point. Oh, no.

Burnet. Well, it's already a pink goo. Again, they're making chicken nuggets. Yeah. Well. It's pink stuff. Yeah, it really is. Ew.

I mean, sorry, guys. It's violating them anymore. If you're eating chicken nuggets, you ate, Tyrannid biomass. That's actually fair. Good dipping sauce. With ranch. Do a honey mustard.

So now we get to the final stage, which is absorption. And this is, as we discussed, the tyranids don't have cold fusion. They don't have plasma. They don't have anything things. They are a biologic being. So in order for them to live, they have to actually consume for energy. And this is what they're doing. They are coming in and it's really cool.

So the capillary towers at this point actually reach up into the sky and the hive ship comes down. Oh, yeah. And the hive ship uses the capillary towers to drain the planet. These are wildly not even able to be this tall, tall things. Oh, yeah, physics here don't work at all. Maybe just fall down. Yeah, it doesn't work at all. But they do.

They consume everything. And they're doing actually two things. same time here. One, they're consuming all of the energy and mass so that they can create their own and move on the next planet, but they're also consuming all the DNA of what they just killed, which is then used at a later stage we're going to get to in a minute to help feed the fleet. But this is where, when we talked about the last cast, this creates kind of a challenge because when the Imperium comes and post-Tirited invasion, so some of the earlier stages, when they didn't the tyrannins existed, they wouldn't find anything. Like, if there was a Drukari raid,

you would see, like, you know, blaster marks, whatever it is. You mean, you know, you might even find some survivors. If it was Eldar, if it was orcs, there's some relevant thing of, there was a battle here. Well, it's wild, though, because because the tyrantins have been stealing all your DNA, learning from you, they're learning everything from you and you're learning zero from them, you're not even sure what the hell happened. You just know that a planet that used to provide tires isn't here anymore. And also, that's a real thing with the Imperium. A lot of planets provide one.

One thing, which makes that scary is that when a tyrant invasion has come through, all you found is a barren rock. Nothing. Not even, not, oh, I think there used to be a civilization here. It's gone. Although the buildings might still be there. I don't know. It's such a big thing.

What I was saying before, when they started to really, that's why they started to take the tyrann and threat more seriously is, we don't know what you did and you know everything about us. And they didn't realize that until very ways down

in battles and stuff when they started adapting to us. Because originally the Imperium was very, very confident. They're like, we fought this Xenos race. Zenos so many times. Yeah, but also we fought this and they did this, this, and this, we're prepared. They did these three things.

We're good to go. Yeah, dark angels. It's like, okay, the dark angels of, you know, this is what they would do. All right, these guys are a problem. We've got it. We brought this. We brought the specific units. We brought the specific tanks.

We're good to go. We already know what they have. And then they went, no, we adapted to that. Yeah. So from there, what I want to spend some time on is that, think it helps us get. The last cast we're going to do out this one will be more of a timeline of tyrannids. I want some time on some key tierid units because it is actually really important. I don't really care what's good or bad at the tabletop because, as we've discussed, they don't

line up very well. And I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about just some of the key units that make up a tiered invasion and why they're so important. So the first one is the tyrannid warrior. Well, why it's so important is it's a syn... Before anything else. It's a synapse unit, which means that it can control the non-Sinap units around it. Yeah, gaunts. And when we say control, it's not like, oh, I'm in charge of four or five people.

They don't even know that. We actually don't know the number they can control. But it's in the thousands. They're just cell towers, to be honest with you. It's true, yeah. Because they're not, you're right, because then they're not in control. they're just a relay. They're projecting.

You're like, hey, how's my service? Hey, there's a Ternid Warrior there? I have five bars. First off, Ternid Warriors are actually a little bit larger than a space Marine. The Tertan Warriors, they have met 2.4. 2.4 meters. Yeah. Which is Marines-esque?

Yeah, you're right. Well, a Marine's 2 meter, and they're about 1.2 ton, which, and a Marine is one ton. They're significantly heavier. Yeah, they're larger. Because they have their gun is part of their body. And that's metrics. That's 200 kilograms larger. So a little bit. Yeah, that's big. You know what I both lifted kilos. We're both lifting kilos. You know, and just say an extra 200 kilos feels like a lot. How many stone is that, John? That's all I want to know. 13 to bed. I still look at stone. It's a hilarious measurement. The bigger fear, though, on the Tyrion of Warriors is how diverse they are. So when we talk about the adaptation,

In current 40K, the last thing I saw, there are 212 variants of the Ternid Warrior. That's wild. The Imperium has recorded. On the tabletop, there are two variants. But they can be equipped with wildly different weapons. No. In 10th edition, there's two. Yeah, but they-lay or gun.

Yes, but their guns could be different. I know, 9th edition, there were a lot more. Anyway, we're going to be a little moments and we're going to complain about stuff. Sorry, everybody. But yeah, because we also got rid of, well, you guys, Ravner still exists. There's a third. And we lost strikes.

You can legitimately put different guns on them, right? I know, but it doesn't do anything for you. I mean, they're terrible. Yeah. And we lost strikes. But yeah, they could, there was melee versions. There were shooting versions. There were flying versions, borrowing versions.

The idea is that Tiernid Warrior is kind of the take-all-comer. It's the battle-line version of it. Well, actually, it's this in the Carnivax, which you get to in a second. Yeah, but I'm saying this is that you have to have, every invasion is going to have Tyrndenid Warriors because it is the base synapse creature. Yeah. And when they arrive, they also can, what I like about them is we talk about synapse creature is that when we think of like a cell tower, a lot of times we think of like a dude carrying

a radio, which isn't that, what's that dude really doing for, I mean, he's helpful. Don't get me wrong. If you were radio operators in the military, I'm not shitting on you by any semblance. But you have to focus on operating the radio. What makes Tiernan synapse so terrifying is that this warrior is actually front line fighting with the other things and is a synapse creature. So the fact that it is bigger than a space marine and heavier than the space marine, it's also fighting the space marine, which is gross.

It's so crazy. And the thing is they don't care. I mean, they don't even know that they're that. Yeah, they exist. Next one is zoanthropes, which are, again, everything here is rumor. The rumor is that they come from LDNA because we don't, thanks to the loss of the Zos, we don't talk to it. These are brain bugs.

They are floating bugs. They give out psychic blast, which is actually the name of their attack. They give out, I mean, when I say psyched blast, I don't mean. Again, I'm not saying the emperor hit Luke with some lightning bolts. I mean, no, that bolt just destroyed 10 tanks. The start of Leviathan GW put together actually a very good animated, like, movie. Yes, I'm afraid about that. And the one where the zoanthropes melt the librarian.

Yep. Yeah, that's a good example of zoanthrope. Like, they are so powerful that, and we'll discuss one key one later, but even the Eldar struggle against fighting against Zoanthropes with psyched energy. They are. Because they're just pure, because again, they've adapted. They don't do anything else. They just.

I would go so far as they're perfected. Like they just took the Eldar's psychic powers and went, yeah, let's turn that to 11. You're like, you also do a bunch of other dumb stuff. Why don't we just make this being only transfer psychic, excuse me, psychic power? We're going to dive back into my favorite unit. Carnifax. I love the carnifex. I love the carnifex. I love the carnifex. I love the carnifx. I love the carnifax. I hate it on the tabletop. I hate it on tabletop. They used to be cool, bro. Yeah. The carnifex is one of the most iconic units. The old screamer killer model is still to this day, the ugliest thing I've ever seen. Heavy Carnifax used to have the big Mast

Yeah, they used to be really fun with card. I actually have two, I think, in my closet that I had the mace tail. Throwing, legitimately, throw one of my favorites is from Space Marine 1 or is it from Donovan, whatever. One of the games has my, one of my favorite carnifex was when it takes a predator and throws it at a unit of Marines after it's destroyed the 10. That's not even though Space Marine 1. Yeah. It's just they are designed specifically for what they are designed for. And I know that's not stupid, but if they're supposed to kill tanks, they kill tanks.

If they're supposed to kill tons of guys, they have sithing talons. Actually, it's funny. The more we do this, and I'm sure it will have this problem in the Eldar cast. The more we talk about this, the more I start to see the similarities in the, in the failure of the lore versus the tabletop to the space marine. Because the Carnifax is kind of like, to the tier it is what the Terminator armor is the Space Marine. because the Carnifax was supposed to be like, it's supposed to have these chitlin plates all over that make it like impervious to like even last

like last kind of blast bounce off of it and I've taken these things out with boulders. You know, on the game. And the thing is, they're also supposed to be designed to take out either shit tons of guys. Oh yeah. They have, they basically have extra arms and everything else or they have huge

heavy siding talons or crushing claws. And they're supposed to take out buildings. Yeah. They're not just tanking. You're right. You're right, buildings. They're supposed to destroy fortifications and be the vanguard that crushes through. It doesn't matter how.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, there should probably have tank shock. That should probably be something they can do. I mean, they are. Now, some of them, one of my, including old one, I even have regenerative powers to a point where it's almost like, is he, is he invincible? Yeah, they would really rise. Something would actually almost rise from the dead like necrons.

They had multiples that some of them only had super front-facing armor in the chitten plates, and they regenerated so fast that small arms fire, while it would affect them, didn't matter because it healed in seconds. Yeah. I mean, it would be fair, like what I did right here to defend GW a little bit is, I mean, if in every book they got taken on a bolter fire, it wouldn't be very cool. And if on the tabletop, you made a model that was invincible. I mean, they've done that in the past. I was saying they've done that in the past. It's totally going to pass.

Yeah, you're right. No, that's it. It wouldn't be cool. It wouldn't be cool now. Seventh edition, cough. It wasn't, yeah, it wasn't cool in seventh edition either, but they did it. The second to last one we should talk about is the hive tyrant. The hive tyrant is as close to free will as you're going to get in the Ternets.

And the hive tyrant is it can control. The differences where we talk about the warriors, even the zoanthropterps are synaptic creatures. It felt like the hive. mind would speak through those creatures. They weren't, they were only necessarily directing trapping. They didn't even know they were directing. The hive tyrant does. The hive tyrant has,

doesn't have free will? People can argue with me on this. I don't think the hive tyrant even remotely has free will, but it has sentience, I guess. Yeah, because the hive tyrant's due, and there's a key one we'll talk about later with called the Swarm Lord. We'll talk about the next cast.

Because that, by the way, for those who don't know, the Swarm Lord is not a multiple. It's a single. entity, just like old one eye. But anyway, the hive tyrants are able to actually direct, they actually sit there and learn, too. So they're going to watch the battle. They're getting, Matt Mellow

watches the bad term there. They're getting the feedback from all the the periods that are fighting and dying. Again, these things are massively intelligent or the controlling power. Yeah, it's a universal knowledge, whatever it is, yeah.

For lack of a better term, Different hive tyrants have different personalities, so they have different tactics. They also seem to actually have a response to will losses and things of that nature. The example I used here is a space marine HUD. So we talked about how a space marine, and this is actually not me shitting on them in this moment, but, you know, the space marine helmet has the HUDs, the feedback. Space Marines are meant to take in massive amounts of data. But they then have to analyze the data, think, and then issue new commands and make decisions.

the hive tyrant does that almost instantly. And it learns from that. And as it makes a decision, things change. The hive tyrant can move an entire flank of gaunts on a whim, and they just start going. This is what makes the tiered invasion so hard to overcome is because you're not, you can't take, I mean, kill the hive tyrant.

That's kind of what you should do here. Kill the hive tyrant. But if it's alive, it's going to adapt and change. and every tactic you have, it's just adapting at all times. But it's adapting in real time right now. It's not like it goes back and thinks about this. Nope.

It's you are doing this. How can I instantly change to it? And an interesting comparison I can make to them is also they're kind of like Primarks or, you know, like whatever Calgar and Dante are, so that next level down in that they also can fight. So you're not sitting this thing where it's like, oh, well, we'll send a kill team. take out the hive tyrant.

Yeah, it might just kill that whole, that whole, that whole kill team. Like, they're not, these are, these are no joke. These are war boss level fighters, who are also in complete and total control of trillions of beings. And that goes out.

And immediately affecting how they fight. The last one, and Brad, I don't know if I'm worked here, I don't believe the Norn Queen has ever been on the tabletop. No. Okay, good. Thank you.

Just had to check. But the Norn Queen, Queen does, what's killed about the North Queen is it's the mother of all the Tarynod units. The Northern Queen actually sits inside. I'm not even going to pretend. They stole us from aliens. This is aliens. It's the, it's the mother in aliens. It's also Starcraft. Each ship had that. Right, but StarCraft came out 15 years at, or 10. Well, StarCraft also stole everything from aliens. Yeah, I mean, that might be a story we'll do on a sidecast about

me, guys, why is Starcraft so close to Warhammer? Let me explain to you about a very fun IP. Oh, that didn't work out very well for everyone. Oops. Anyway, but the Noren sits on the ship and actually births all the new units. Now, does she birthed the units?

She also reconstructs DNA to make the best unit possible. They are probably the most, one of the most important part. They probably are the most important part of the ship because they create every single unit. But she's not just pumping out eggs or units.

She's adapting them to what she needs, again, in real time, because she has a link to everything that's happening on whatever. And it's not just planet, planet, system, whatever. A lot of times the queen is invading multiple planets in a system. No, there's a queen on every ship. No, I'm saying, but like, okay, in some of the things you have the, you have the queen on the ships, and then you have the, the overriding.

Oh, yeah, the overmind coming in. Yeah. That's right. The queens communicate back through to the other queens. Correct. That's what you were saying. Yeah. And what happens is the queens do two things.

As I was saying, as the battle is progressing, they're adjusting the units that go through. But then when the battle's over, the Norn Queen takes in, basically assesses what units did well, what units didn't do well, what adaptations were good versus bad? And also, what's the new DNA I just got off of this planet that I can then feed in to make new horrible things? As a gamer, this is one of my favorite things, though. The Noren literally looks at the, the Noren queen looks at the aftergame data and goes, all right, look, guys, this is what worked, this is what didn't, and now we're going to fix it for the next time.

Yeah, suppressors, turns out they're not have any value to you. Too soon, even though it's so long. Super inside joke there. Sorry, everybody. But this is why as a tyranton invasion continues through the galaxy, it's getting worse for everybody because the Norn queens are learning, adapting, and changing. So each battle you have to wage against the tyranids is harder than the one before. And not only all of that true, true, true, but also she's getting information that you didn't even know because, again, Gene Stenler infiltrations. Lictors.

So she's getting information about what you're planning. Your plan to counter what she just did is she's two steps ahead now because not only she's already adapting, but she's using the information about what you're changing to try to fix against you again. So like that's why tear nids are disgusting. Tehrase terrifying. Tirendin invasions are absolutely horrifying. And actually, that's a good place for us to break because this will conclude it for the tyranny invasions.

We hope this was kind of, we made you guys understand the terror and the inevitability that is a tyrannid invasion. Because really, like, I can't say enough times. Once a high fleet has set its sight on something, that thing is gone. It's, we'll talk in the next episode about some of the tactics mankind is employed. And I want to point out again, because we've got a couple tiny victories by like, for almost every time, the hive mind doesn't go after things it already doesn't know it won.

It shows up in battles that are a foregone conclusion. It's not like we brought so many forces we think we can take you. No, we brought exactly what we needed. Well, and then some. Yeah, and then some. And then some. And this is done.

Yeah. So the next cast, we're going to dive into the actual history of the Tarrant invasion, starting with Tyran and then moving our way all the way through into modern Leviathan, Ball, things in that nature. Yeah, Ball, McCraig, all of these. We'll even talk about some of the Eldar and even a very brief one on the Tao. So with that, we hope you all can join us next week.

This has been John Varsati and Bradchester. This guy. See you guys next week.