THE HIVE TYRANT The Hive Tyrant is a large and massively powerful Tyranid creature, the closest thing to a leader of a battlefield swarm yet seen. Like many Tyranids they seem able to mutate rapidly, and several different physical characteristics have been reported. All Hive Tyrants are highly psychic, and their relationship to the hive mind is closer than even that of Tyranid Warriors. Little is known for certain about the complex relationships between these creatures, but some of the Imperial Techno-Magi believe that Hive Tyrants are the consort-minds of the Hive Queen that form the repository of the hive fleet's own collective consciousness. If this is true, the Hive Tyrants embody the hive mind completely, but their destruction does not diminish it in any way. The Hive Tyrant is an HQ choice.

Andy Chambers

Andy is a bit of a Tyranid fiend, having written the Warhammer 40,000 2nd Edition Tyranid Codex, Epic Hive War supplement and co-writing the first ever Warhammer 40,000 Tyranid army list in WD145 with Jervis Johnson. Sharing an office with Mr Johnson didn't help much either as he was responsible for the board games: Advanced Space Crusade (featuring the Tyranids), Tyranid Attack and Doom of the Eldar (Tyranids attack Craftworld Iyanden).

THE PROBLEM
Andy: I suppose it all started off when we were putting together the short army lists for the back of the 3rd edition Warhammer 40,000 rulebook. The army lists had to be quick and simple and allow people with 2nd Edition armies to get by until we wrote the proper full Codexes (a distant, hazy plan back then). Each of us in the Games Development pit took armies to champion and Tuomas Pirinen took on the Tyranid list.

Tuomas did a nice job of transferring over the 2nd Edition army list although, like all the lists, we had to trim it to fit into a ridiculously small amount of space. Once 3rd edition Warhammer 40,000 came out, the Tyranids fought well and Tyranid armies were a common enough sight at conventions and tournaments. But as time went by something started to bother me about them. It took a fair while for it to permeate through but when I realised what it was I couldn't shake it.

They were all the same.

There were variations on a theme, for certain, and I mean no disrespect to the Tyranid players already out there (greetings hive siblings) but it was at a point where you could pretty much have a check-list of what would be in a Tyranid army. Hormagaunts... check, Hive Tyrant... check, Carnifex... check and so on. The miniatures range was nice enough and I saw plenty of nice colour schemes, but the armies kept coming out the same. But why should this be a problem for a genetically engineered horde of killing machines anyway? Tyranid armies exist only to fulfil the purpose of slaughtering the opponents of the all-encompassing Tyranid hive mind. It wasn't unreasonable to imagine that they would work like a super-predator with each brood of creatures performing a certain role on the battlefield to complement the gestalt whole.

But I've spent far too long thinking about Tyranids down the years, and a while back I formulated an idea about them which I liked and which seemed to fit in with what Tyranids should be like. It was an idea which encapsulated everything about the Tyranids' nature. Fundamentally the Tyranids are life gone mad, evolution taken to the highest order where it becomes a rampaging, unstoppable behemoth which lives only to replicate itself at any cost, even by stripping entire worlds to their very bedrock with its implacable hunger. The organisms of a race like that would be changing constantly, the chance-made mutations of millions of years reduced down to the semi-conscious manipulation of a few generations. They would take on and absorb the DNA chains and genomes of every living thing they encountered, re-engineering themselves to fulfil every conceivable form and function to supplant native lifeforms from every niche in the natural order.

Given that premise, how likely was it that the Tyranid swarms could show almost infinite variety and mutability? Most of all, how desirable would it be that those capabilities might be placed in the hands of the collector of a Tyranid army so that they could play god and create their own organisms to plague the galaxy?

It was a grand vision, but the problem with good ideas is not coming up with them but turning them into something practical which can then be made a tabletop reality. A question quite a few people ask me is "Where do you get your ideas from?". The truth is that the ideas just come, admittedly at about 12.30 at night just when I'm trying to go to sleep, but good ideas are all too easy to come up with. The real question is "How do you do anything with all those supposedly good ideas?". The answer is that you start by looking at your liabilities. In the case of Tyranids this was:

1. It must be possible for players to design their own creatures.

2. It must be not only possible but practical to make models of a varied selection of player-designed Tyranid creatures.

3. Players' home-spawned monstrosities must be balanced in terms of points cost and capabilities against other armies.

4. Opposing players must be able to tell roughly what those creatures are capable of.

5. Last, but definitely not least, existing armies and miniatures must be accommodated by the new army list.

THE SOLUTION
I felt confident that all of these obstacles could be overcome (hopeless optimism is always a good trait at this stage). What worried me the most was how to make it practical to model a wide range of creatures from what would perforce be a limited range of miniatures.

Fortunately I had a working example to hand in the way that Jes Goodwin's newest plastic Space Marines could be used to make different troop types. By having different frames of arms, legs and such, Tactical Marines could be converted to Assault Marines with jump packs, heavy weapon troopers, sergeants and so forth. This got me to thinking that with a range of defined pieces, horns, armour plates, different claws, etc, which had individual game effects (ie, +1 Attack for talons, +1 Saving throw for armour plates), you could let players create their own creatures by simply attaching them to different bodies.

In this way you might take, for example, one of the smaller Tyranid creatures called a Termagant and alter it by replacing its bio-weapon with wicked claws to increase its number of Attacks and adding extra armour plates to improve its Saving throw. In game terms the creature is now orientated to close combat, its role has been altered to suit the tactics of the player who created it. The model for the new creature can be easily constructed by taking different pieces and attaching them to a Termagant body.

I was happy with this as the core of a really exciting idea, mutable Tyranids! Of course there was then all the niggly details to work through, and the other liabilities to remember, points values, what pieces to do, how to do them, how many to put on a single frame yadda, yadda, yadda. As fortune would have it, Jes once more came to my rescue by bashing out all sorts of alternative plans until (nine different plans later) we had a workable method for making a good idea into a reality.

With the miniatures in safe hands all I had to do was beaver away at the army list, work out the upgrades (or biomorphs as I decided to call them) and make sure the 'Nid hordes were not too ferocious, not too squidgy and, most of all, not too predictable.

Next: Designers Notes - Pt2