Battlefleet Gothic - Hive Fleet.pdf - Inne dodatki [do posegregowania] - trzeci

THE GREAT DEVOURER

TYRANID HIVE FLEETS

by ANDY CHAMBERS

model conversions by Sherman Bishop and Jens ‘The Hive’ Kroenert

Ever since BFG came out people have been asking

questions along the lines of ‘When the hell are you

guys going to get your ﬁngers out and make a

Tyranid ﬂeet?!?!?!!!’. Well fret no longer oh purple

tentacled members of the Hive Mind, for that jolly

nice fellow Andy Chambers has been burning the

midnight oil in order to bring you this, the one and

only ofﬁcial Battleﬂeet Gothic Tyranid rules and

ﬂeet list!

Seriously, though, for some time now Andy has

been tinkering away with a set of rules to allow

players to use Tyranid ships in BFG, and even

managed to arrange for a small selection of Tyranid

ship models to be made to go long with the rules

(although the rules are designed to work just as

well with scratch-built models – see elsewhere in

this issue for details). Unfortunately, pressure of

work on 40K has stopped Andy from really getting

the time to ﬁnish the project off, so although the

rules are written and the models made, they have

not yet been fully tested.

I knew that Andy had been working on the rules, so

when I joined the Fanatic crew I volunteered to

help ﬁnish the project off. Initially my plan was to

take Andy’s rules, play-test them, sort out any

problems, and then publish them as a supplement

for the main BFG game. However, Andy was

conﬁdent that the rules and list where in a playable

state, so rather than make you guys (and gals!) wait

for six months while we got them ready, I thought

I’d let you join in with the fun by unleashing the

current version of the rules to a wider audience in

Battleﬂeet magazine.

You’ll ﬁnd Andy’s Tyranid rules are on the following

pages. Unlike the ‘experimental rules’ you’ll ﬁnd

elsewhere in this magazine, these Tyranid rules are

deﬁnitely going to be published as an addition to

the BFG rules system in pretty much exactly the

form you will ﬁnd them here. However, we still

need you to help us iron out any wrinkles or loop-

holes there may still be hiding in the rules, so that

they work smoothly and fairly. So, please use these

rules and the ﬂeet list, and then write to us telling

us if you ran into any problems. We’ll be play-

testing them also, and with your feedback we’ll

come up with the ﬁnal version of the rules to be

published as a stand alone BFG supplement some

time next year. Until then feel free to use the rules

in any games of BFG that you play – though if

you’re playing in a tournament you should make

sure that the tournament organisers are cool with

you using them ﬁrst! We’d also like to know what

you think of the Tyranids in general, what new

miniatures you’d like to see, what new background

– in short if you’ve anything to say that that relates

to Tyranids in BFG we want to hear about it! Sadly

we won’t be able to reply to the mail we receive,

but all the letters will be read and the ideas in them

‘added to the melting pot’.

Have fun, and remember to write us with your

comments,

of human spacecraft and astrotelepathy, lies

the unspeakable cold of the intergalactic void.

Few men have ventured into this realm and

none have ever returned. It is the great barrier

that divides galaxy from galaxy, a place where

time and space conspire to hold the galaxies

apart with inconceivable distances.

immeasurably ancient and implacable

intelligence moves through the cold and the

darkness, its many eyes ﬁxed on the distant

glittering lights of our galaxy. The Great

Devourer moves between the stars and hungers

for the ﬂesh of all who lie before it. This

great organism, this monstrous entity, men

know as the Tyranid race.

betray their ignorance. Every thought and

action, every spark of life in the Tyranid race

is bound and interlinked into a single mind,

into a single great entity which stretches over

light years of space and is controlled by the

immortal hive mind. A billion times a billion

Tyranids stand at the rim of the galaxy yet

each one is no more than a single cell in the

living body of the hive mind, the devourer of

worlds.

B eyond the human galaxy, beyond the range

Y et the void is no longer empty. An

E ven by naming the Great Devourer men

The primary difﬁculty of strategic studies of the

aliens designated as the Tyranid race is

engendered by their mobility and methods of

attack. Hiveﬂeets of varying sizes have been

encountered and only one unifying feature of

their methods has been established, to whit

that they maintain no permanent

establishment on habitable worlds once they

have been subdued. Hiveﬂeets stop in one

place only long enough to strip the worlds they

have conquered before disappearing into deep

space until they strike again. In strategic terms

the hiveﬂeets’ attacks appear to be primarily

opportunistic. As worlds with desirable

resources are discovered the nearest hiveﬂeet

will move to consume them. Thus, relentlessly,

they are drawn towards inhabited space and

the most densely populated areas of the

Imperium. As such this document will conﬁne

itself to the known capabilities and actions of

the Tyranids. Addenda shall be added as and

when overall strategic objectives for the

Tyranid hiveﬂeets can be determined.

underestimated. They are unique in so many

respects: their capacity to mutate and evolve, the

bio-technology of their weapons and space craft,

their gestalt consciousness and their single-minded

purpose of being. Because we have never been able

to reason with them, our only interaction has been

war. Yet think what we could learn from them! They

are not all beasts, these creatures. Many are

evidently cunning and intelligent. If we could only

communicate with them, how both races would

beneﬁt! With communication would come mutual

understanding and respect. The frontiers of human

science would be pushed back. Human and alien

could live together in peace and harmony...

[records deleted from this point, by order of the

Commission for Human Purity]

Excerpt from the personal log of Genetor Malin. When the

perversive nature of his dangerous theories was uncovered,

the Genetor was immediately removed from ofﬁce, stripped

of all his rank and privileges, and sentenced to spend the

rest of his natural life in the prison Astrophel Penitente.

uncertain currents of the Empyrean. If the

creatures arrive at an inhabited world they can

infect its populace with a genetic corruption

and achieve a vanguard of hybridised slaves

which will also attract the attention of a

hiveﬂeet. The success of this approach can be

argued by the fact that Genestealers have been

encountered aboard space hulks in every

Segmentum of the galaxy. Likewise Genestealer

infestations are commonplace enough that the

High Lords have issued no less than eighty

decrees pertaining to their cleansing by

Exterminatus in the last decade.

If all else fails it is believed that the hive-ships

perform some form of spectrographic analysis

of the radiation from the nearest stars to select

a destination. This has been born out by the

fact that 72.3% of encounters with hive-ships

(as opposed to the smaller drones) have taken

place in systems containing class F2IV -K9V

stars. This spectral band covers 81% of the

worlds inhabited by humanity.

PARTICULARS

The invasion of a system can be broken into

five discrete phases: Discovery, Approach,

Attack, Subdual and Consumption.

The ﬁrst indication that something was amiss was

the detection of a cloud composed of a large

number of unidentiﬁed objects entering the fringes

of the Tyran system. Scanning and telemetry

revealed little about the mysterious cloud but

showed it emitted no energy signatures or signals of

its own. The objects themselves were non-metallic

and irregular in shape, which ruled out a ﬂeet of

starships or pieces of a space hulk cast up by the

warp.

Excerpt from the history of the First Tyrannic War – Hive Fleet

Behemoth.

Phase I: Discovery

Discovery of potential targets is under taken

primarily by warp-capable drone-ships which

disperse among the star systems close to a

hiveﬂeet. Over the course of decades these

living ships methodically investigate planets

and, upon discovery of likely candidates, seed

worlds with ‘vanguard’ organisms such as

Lictor and Genestealer inﬁltrators and various

Gaunt species. It is believed that the psychic

signature of these creatures draws the hiveﬂeet

to them proportionally to their numbers. If the

Tyranid nests are fruitful and multiply quickly

the hiveﬂeet is soon drawn to the apparently

rich feeding grounds, less successful colonies

appear to be given a lower priority.

This method is also employed by the use of

wrecked space hulks to carry pockets of

Genestealers ahead of the hiveﬂeet on the

Phase II: Approach

The arrival of the hiveﬂeet is preceded by what

the Adepts term ‘The Shadow In the Warp’, a

psychic disturbance which renders Astropathic

communication impossible, blots out the

Astronomicon and renders warp travel

extremely unpredictable. Both the relativistic

distance and size of the Hiveﬂeet affect the

intensity of the warp-shadow, but in several

reported instances entire sectors have

disappeared beneath it. As such the shadow in

the warp forms an uncertain compass of the

Tyranids movements, all too often the target of

their attack becomes apparent only after it has

been

and

rendered

unapproachable.

T he menace of the Tyranids cannot be

enveloped

As the tiny system ship closed the range Varnak was

amazed by how regular in size the objects in the

cloud were. Groups of smaller objects hung close to

the largest ones in almost perfectly spherical halos.

As the commander closed with the nearest large

object his sensors showed him that it did possess a

rough kind of symmetry after all. Its surface was

covered in fantastic ribs and whorls. The texture and

surface composition of the object was similar to an

asteroid that had been worked or fashioned

somehow and then left to drift in space. Closer still

the sensors picked up vanes of opaque matter which

spread from the object and angled towards the sun

like sails.

A sudden warning from his crew alerted Varnak: the

smaller objects now surrounded the research ship

and were closing the range, apparently under their

own propulsion. Magos Varnak brought the ship

around and started to move away from the large

object. He attempted to broadcast messages in a

variety of media, using not just radio waves but light,

colour, radiation and others. No change or response

was visible or detectable. If anything, the smaller

objects were now approaching more quickly. In

desperation Varnak ﬁred the boosters to drive the

ship free of the closing web of objects.

As the ship passed close to the nearest object it

detonated with shocking force. The shock wave

inflicted crippling damage on the ship, Magos

Varnak was injured and several members of the crew

were killed. Worse still, the ship continued to suffer

further damage as it pulled away. Several more

compartments blew out without warning and power

lines failed minutes after the explosion. Fortunately,

the ship’s engines held and it limped away at best

speed to Tyran.

By heroic efforts Magos Varnak piloted the ship back

to Tyran Primus and crash-landed it in the ocean

nearby. Investigation of the ship and its record tapes

showed that the vessel had been struck by a variety

of complex acids and viruses which had eaten away

over 20% of its hull. By now the cloud was

approaching at greater speed than before, and the

Imperial scientists estimated that its current rate of

progress would move it into Tyran’s orbit within less

than a week. The biological origins of the acids and

viruses indicated that they originated from a living

host. Genetors postulated that the cloud was

composed, in part or in whole, of a swarm of

vacuum-dwelling

hibernation it must be consigned to the realm

of conjecture.

Phase III: Attack

The Tyranid invasion is begun by the hiveships

releasing spores into the target’s planets

atmosphere. The mix typically includes mycetic

spores for landing ‘vanguard’ and ‘main force’

ground assault swarms, spore ‘mines’ of a

corrosive, poisonous and/or explosive

capability, zoomorphic symbiotes and

parasites, plus fertilisation, weather

modification and necrotic varieties. Flying

creatures are also dispatched, primarily swarms

of winged Gaunt species tended to by the

dropship-sized Harridan brood organisms.

Phase IV: Subdual

In the initial phases of invasion the ﬂying

swarms make concentric attacks in an effort to

herd lifeforms into the path of ground swarms.

Pre-existing Vanguard organisms will move to

join the advance, presumably sharing their

information of local DNA, topography and

resistance with higher synaptic receptors of the

Tyranid hive mind. Battles are frequently

reinforced and expanded by the direct

dropping of reinforcements in mycetic spores

from the hive ships in orbit.

The ground swarms are continuously

reinforced with increasingly powerful

contingents of Tyranid Warriors, bio-artillery

and specialised organisms like the Carnifex

assault-beasts and Hive Tyrants. As resistance

lines stabilise they are inﬁltrated or smashed

with coordinated wave attacks and mycetic

spore drops. Centres of resistance are

surrounded, besieged by the gathering of

increasingly large and powerful swarms until

they are overrun.

life

forms

previously

unencountered by Man.

Excerpt from the history of the First Tyrannic War – Hive Fleet

Behemoth.

Phase V: Consumption

Strictly speaking the consumption of the planet

under attack is undertaken continuously from

the moment the hiveships achieve low orbit

and release organisms into the atmosphere.

However, the point upon which the hiveships

begin to replenish their reserves of bio-mass

from the planet is a discrete phase which forms

the culmination of the Tyranid assault.

Initially emerging Tyranid feeder organisms

spring up in the wake of the ground swarm’s

advance, mobile ones following hard at its

heels while sessile varieties spread and

multiply at a ferocious rate, hybridising or

The bio-ships which comprise the ﬂeet may

either exit the warp simultaneously at the edge

of the system or, in many reported instances,

exit in deep space and drift towards their

objective. This latter approach renders the

Hivefleet virtually invisible to long-range

augury and Astrotelepathic detection. There

has been speculation that some hiveﬂeets may

actually drift through realspace for the entire

voyage between systems, but as this would

entail a journeytime of decades or centuries of

absorbing native life. Carrion from the

battleﬁelds is quickly consumed and used by

several species to pupate and metamorphose

into larger lifeforms. Bio-factory organisms

harvest and transmute the remaining feeders

into nutrient gels which are employed to feed

the fighting swarms and droneship-haulers

which replenish the hiveships in orbit.

During this period, climate and humidity is

subject to modiﬁcation, as increasing numbers

of Tyranids organisms manipulate weather

patterns to achieve maximum growth, carbon

dioxide and nitrogen are leached away, leading

to an increasingly oxygen rich environment. As

resistance is overcome more and more of the

planet’s surface is stripped bare by continuous

harvesting until the hiveﬂeet concludes its

actions by draining the planets’ atmosphere

and seas. At this point many hiveships will

calve, adding to the numbers ﬂeet’s numbers of

drone-vessels and immature bio-ships. The

attack complete, the hiveﬂeet will then move

into deep space again to seek a new target.

Tyranid hiveﬂeets typically comprise of a mix of

large Hive ships and larger quantities escort-

sized ‘drone ships’. The smaller vessels

generally act instinctively and are only uniﬁed

into a coherent strategy by the psychic

emanations of the hiveships. The need for the

hiveminds’ overall control to be channelled

through synaptic links makes Tyranids ﬂeets

ponderous but well co-ordinated, a factor

which is more than compensated by their

The three surviving system ships, which Varnak had

held in reserve for such a moment, pursued the

attackers beyond the edge of defence laser range.

They shattered one of the objects, inﬂicted surface

damage on two more and split the surface of

another so that it leaked blobs of liquid into the

void. The system ships, however, were wrecked by

return ﬁre from dozens of objects in the cloud. Only

two of the ships managed to make it back to Tyran

and these were both effectively destroyed by the

same acids and viruses that had consumed Varnak’s

ship.

Further analysis of the records from the wrecked

system ships showed that the objects were

undisputably organic, protected by a dense carapace

of stone-like material which could only be compared

to silicon-based bone or insect chitin. The creatures

appeared to have softer internal components, and

contained ﬂuids. Micro-examination of the tapes

from Silo 3 showed hordes of tiny shapes tumbling

from the creature it had destroyed. Because of the

distance little could be deﬁned on the pictures, save

that the shapes comprised a triple segmented

central section and six mobile protuberances which

had bilateral symmetry.

Excerpt from the history of the First Tyrannic War – Hive Fleet

Behemoth.

overwhelming numbers.

To represent the unique nature of the Tyranid

bio-ships many of the standard Battleﬂeet rules

are modiﬁed as detailed below. The rules are

laid out in accordance with the turn sequence.

Any rules not speciﬁcally modiﬁed apply as

normal to Tyranid ships.

Tyranid bio-ships by Jens Kroenert

Rules for Tyranids in Battleﬂeet Gothic

MOVEMENT/ SPECIAL ORDERS

All Tyranid vessels use Instinctual behaviour

unless the Hive Mind (ie you!) tells a ship or

squadron to do something different via the

psychic inﬂuence of the hive ships.

For ships or squadrons using instinctive

behaviour read down the list of conditions

cited on the table below and and give them the

ﬁrst appropriate action or special order you

come to. No command check is needed for

special orders, but there may be specific

activities that must be undertaken in the

vessel’s movement.

For example: A Tyranid cruiser wishes to move

towards the enemy ﬂeet in support of its Hive

Ship but fails the Ld test. We check the

Instinctive Orders table – there are no celestial

phenomena or enemy ships close or in range

but there is a planet on the table. The Cruiser

has to move towards the planet even though

this actually takes it further away from the

enemy ﬂeet it wished to close with.

is successful the Tyranid player has control of

the ship/squadrons’ movement and may place

it on special orders if desired. Ships/squadrons

placed on reload ordnance special orders must

still roll a D6 to complete them as speciﬁed by

the instinctual behaviour chart below. Rolling

doubles for reload ordnance special orders

does not cause Tyranid ships to run out of

Ordnance

Attempts to use synaptic control count as a

command check so a Hive ship can keep

testing until a command check is failed.

However, if one hive ship fails a command

check this does not prevent another hive ship

attempting to use synaptic control. In effect

each hive ship can make at least one attempt to

override instinctual behaviour.

For example: A Tyranid Drone wishes to

overcome its instinctive orders so tests on the

Ld of a Hive Ship within 45cm but fails.

Because there is another Hive Ship within

45cm it may test again and may continue to

do so so long as there are Hive ships within

45cm of it.

Synaptic Control

Only Hive ships have a Ld value, which is

purchased at a ﬁxed value on the hiveﬂeet list.

During the Movement phase each Hive ship

can make a Command check to change or

ignore instinctual behaviour for themselves or

another ship/squadron within 45cm. If the test

Brace For Impact

During either players turn Tyranid

ships/squadrons can go onto Brace for Impact

orders by testing against the Ld of the nearest

Hive ship. As normal this order is only removed

INSTINCTIVE ORDERS

Condition

Action/order

1. Normal movement will take ship(s) into an Gas/dust cloud,

Burn retros

Asteroid ﬁeld, planetary rings, mineﬁeld, warp rift or other

dangerous Celestial phenomena.

2. Nearest enemy is in front ﬁre arc and less than 15cm away.

No special order

Must move into contact and initiate a boarding action if possible.

3. Nearest enemy is in front ﬁre arc and more than 90cm away.

All Ahead Full

(+2D6cm instead

of +4D6cm).

4. Nearest enemy is within rear ﬁre arc (Escorts only)

Come to new

heading.

5. Enemy in front ﬁre arc and within range/ﬁre arc of operational

Lock-on

bio-weapons

6. Ordnance needs reloading. Roll a D6, escorts ships successfully

Reload ordnance

reload on a 4+, capital ships on a 2+. If a capital ship fails to

reload then it loses a hit instead (this damage does not cause

criticals, and the ship will not lose its last hit).

7. None of the above conditions apply. If there is a planet on the

table, the ship/squadron must end its movement closer to it than

at the start of their move.

no special order

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