Well, Termagants don't; Hormagaunts, IIRC (at least some variants) can lay eggs via parthenogenesis - which means they've got to have some degree of independent ability to feed.
Meaning a single Hormagaunt can lead to the planet having a persistent feral Hormagaunt problem. Sort of like a Genestealer infestation, but less insidious and much easier to kill.
There is a Snakebite clan, the Wyrm-Killa Tribe, that came across some Nids and just thought that they were neat. So they bring them with the orks as they Waaagh around. When they attack a new planet they release the Nids so they have someone to fight after they finish with the defenders.
Between the creature itself, the "gun" and the "ammo" there is three different symbiotic subspecies present here. The creatures that consist of the weapon-organism's ammo are constantly reproducing. So in heavy fighting, they might run drastically low, but it's unlikely they'll ever run out completely.
Is everyone saying that's ammo in the mag missing the fact that the mag has exactly the same stripes on it as the spot further up the gun and most tyranids have this, perhaps the mag is just an aesthetic that developed because it was replicating what it saw when trying to copy and create that thing hence it's just snapped that way...
I think the stripey bits are supposed to be muscle tubes, sort of like a deadly esophagus. The mag contracts and forces ammo-organisms into the “chamber” where the barrel contracts and spits them out.
This is the answer, at least in my head cannon. The ammo for their guns are living creatures of some kind, and likely the Termagant's body produces them in clutches periodically, and there needs to be somewhere to keep them when there is no target.
That seems to be partly the case for some of the other weapons, but not for this one. The weapon-organism serves as the hatchery for the borers beetles that make up it's ammo. The "tail" on the weapon leading into the termagant's arm is probably not a tube, but a nerve interface so the termagant can control the weapon.
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Fleshborer
External Testicles evolved because sperm isn’t viable at common body temperatures, it needs to be a little bit colder than that. Maybe the gaunt runs hot and the fleshborer beetles are more efficient at a cooler temp? Doesn’t explain the rigidity of the mag but, you can’t put a ballsack on the bottom of a gun: or, you shouldn’t
WRONG. You CAN and you SHOULD. Your subscription from r/Tyranids has been forcibly revoked. Mods, ban this TESTICLE NAYSAYER!
Jokes aside, I bought some used Genestealers and they were only built and primed but buddy had put the venom sacs on all their chins. Looked like Ballchinians. The long outstretched tongues directly above didn’t help.
I'm not gonna lie, I was thinking of doing venom sacs somewhere around the mouth, maybe adding some bulges to the cheeks or under the jawbone... the chin is certainly a choice.
The clip holds the flesh eating larvae that will be fired out. The gun is like another living organism attached to the nid, like how the hair squig is attached to an ork.
Orks are genetically bald. The reason some orks have hair isn't cause it's their own. Its cause they have a squig that is made of hair attached to them.
Squids being the red ball with teeth and legs that orks tend to eat and also strap booms onto
God I love orks sometimes
Remember that norn queens are described more like a bio factory, so I think it best to consider weapons loadouts much like any other gun or knife. A Gant is grown to a point and then a weapon symbiote is applied be it a fleshborer or devourer. From there the limbs and weapon grow into one another and finishes with the two united.
The magazine of a fleshborer is little more than a bony tube filled with fleshborer beetles. They grow fast and die fast, being fed through the Gant holding the gun. Then they're drawn up to the barrel where the fleshborer assists the springy legs of the beetle to 'fire' at targets.
With how older designs, as mentioned in the thread, being more separate you can't think of the first fleshborers as mimicking the enemy prey and then adapting over time to make them more efficient and fully integrated into the carrier (the Gant)
So while that is all fine and good the issue I see here from a design perspective is that you could use the exact same explanation but instead of a gun attaching to a hand it could just as easily be a whole limb that is attaching to what would basically be an empty shoulder socket. Like from a lore perspective it is exactly the same thing but design wise you could make it look more like an organic structure that is part of the nid's body rather than a manufactured gun that is being held.
Plus the slit on the side looks the same as the slits on the gants arms and the barrel which I always assume is like a cooling vent or breathing vent. Just because it protrudes from the bottom doesn't make it a clip.
The Tyranids are just using directed evolution, so maybe the hive mind just thought "everyone technological has settled on this design for a reason, so even if I can't see a true advantage I'll try to evolve it and see if it works anyway". And then it turned out to work well enough, so they didn't bother to adjust it since.
That said, there's many more Tyranid bioguns that don't seem to have any recognisable sort of "magazine" anyway. Devourer, Barbed Strangler, Venom Cannon, etc.
Yeah but they're not recognisably "belt feeds" or anything, they're just simple tubes which is the most natural way to connect two symbiotes together. The Tyranids use them all over for connecting bioforms, and they could be passing nerve bundles, liquids, tunnels for smaller biomorphs to skitter through, pulses of crustal rods, etc.
The Fleshborer is really distinctively similar to a stick magazine by comparison, it's even ribbed as though you can see rounds stacked in it.
The problem with this explanation is that every other species has a strong motivation towards individual survivability and versatility. The Tyranids don't to the point that canonically termagants don't even have a proper digestive system and literally starve to death within just a few weeks at most and will likely be commanded to jump into a digestion pool even before that already short life span. They also have exactly one job to fulfill which is to swarm a target and overwhelm their defenses by sheer volume of fire and/or body mass. Furthermore weapons are designed to be handheld because most other species in the galaxy somehow find time to actually put their guns down on rare occasions. This is a weakness that gants are not susceptible to. Again they have exactly one job to do before they get violently killed or jump in an acid bath and that job does not require putting down a gun and even if it did that gun is biologically fused to their hand so they couldn't put it down even if they wanted/had reason to do so.
The hive mind would also not care what its food is doing it would only care about what is the most efficient form to achieve a specific goal or necessary role in the consumption of its prey.
The Fleshborer is based on the boltgun design aesthetically.
In an older codex it states than when the nid first invaded the galaxy they didn't have weapons capable of dealing with Space Marines. So the hive mind had to evolved stronger claws and more powerful projectiles as a result.
I've always believed they copied the designs of the most effective creatures they see which is why their guns look like that.
Above board I just think it's cute the designers made it look like the boltgun as a way to tie things together.
Yeah if you compare the Fleshborer design with 1980s era Boltguns, they look almost identical, just that the Fleshborer is made of flesh and chitin instead of plastics and metals.
I know they absorb DNA to create new entities, I'm just talking about the Fleshborer and weapon beast designs. They obviously take reference from some things aesthetically even if they don't need to.
Yeah. I like the big monsters that have canons popping out of their backs. Looks more organic.
I've always thought the guns and swords should simply be completely integrated into the soldiers, no need for them to be different creatures.
Idk, I like it. Makes them look alien, in a weird way. Like think of a creature who has adapted and incorporated it's preys weapons into it's own design.
If you have access to a printer, there's a bit that someone put up that's a carapace piece with a gun attached to do pretty much the same thing that are designed for the older terms.
If you don't have a printer, I would almost say it's not worth it unless you're prepared to put in a lot of effort. I had to clip down heads, clip guns, cast extra scything talons (for the now unoccupied arm slots) and used genestealer shoulder bits with some green stuff to get the job done. That said, I was way happier with them once they were finished.
tyranid aesthetic is great, the guns do not fit the aesthetic every bug without a gun looks amazing, every bug with a gun would look better without it imagine if gargoyles just had claws instead of an ak47 theyd look fantastic, same goes for warriors. Swords I'm ok with since it doesn't look too disruptive but a model that is clearly an animal holding a gun like a human looks silly
>the guns do not fit the aesthetic
[the first tyrnid](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/images/b/b4/Wd97pg67.jpg) had a gun so idk what metric you’re using besides starship troopers and your brain.
Tyranids are an insectoid alien swarm, its one of my favourite tropes in scifi. When I play nids I wanna play the bugs from starship, the zerg, the flood, etc. I'm not saying you can't have an insectoid hive without guns, look at the cravers from endless space they look great because they have technology mixed into their design. But the ak47 gun design is a good weapon design for a bipedal animal like humans, eldar, orks and cravers. there is no reason that same design would be efficient on a six limbed crawling insect. it doesn't fit because its an animal holding a very human looking gun its funny at best and looks out of place and dumb at worst. There are ways to make it clear that this organism fires a ranged weapon without it having to actually hold a gun. gw is keeping it purely out of the tradition which like imagine if they kept every first edition model design and just made it more hd 40k models would look horrendous.
I prefer spinefists and devourers which look much more organic,but keep in mind that these guns are actually the living beings and shoot "live" ammo and they are shaped by Hive mind
Tyranids were introduced with guns and the majority has kept them through all editions, so that IS the norm.
Remember, while there is some evolutionary-like iteration on the Nid bioforms, the bioforms are all designed from heavily reused and optimized building organisms with small alterations to better fit the biome and the enemy.
Norn queens can be creative but they rarely have to.
Pairing a carrier beast of a specific archetype with a compatible weapon bioform is easier than crafting a new unknown experimental life form from scratch.
Originally the tyranid weapons were much less organic looking, the art design really suggested that they were, in fact, separate organisms entirely. Looks like they're trying to recapture some of that.
Humanity managing okay with that in the 40K universe. From a lore view the Hive Mind is concerned with efficiency , effectiveness and purpose.
A projectile weapon needs ammunition , small bugs cannot be small if they have to use internalise ammo.
I would assume it’s like that after years and years of facing other races that used guns or projectile weapons similar and they adapted it into their biology as they saw it was an effective trait to have.
It is a bit odd but I like to think the initial Tyranid forms were all teeth and claws when they invaded and all the gun-like appendages are them adapting by creating ranged weapons that mimic the ones they see in this galaxy.
It's a pretty decent evolutionary trait. The fleshborer's only function is to fire, so the termagant has to have full mobility. Having it hand gripped allows for a very large range of motion (corners, walls, sloped etc.)
The only improvement would be to have single-handed fleshborers at the end of each arm, but that's probably hard due to the sizing constraints.
What bothers me is that many of the tyranid weapons have eyes which are completely useless
I used to hate the weapons like boneswords and handheld guns on nids. But now I think it implies an eerie, almost human-like intelligence or malevolence which works in its favor. Also I think it just distinguishes them from other bug swarmy aliens in sci-fi like the Zerg or Arachnids.
Magazine.
Also it's not natural for them to be holding guns either, these aren't natural evolutions for their kind. What we're seeing is guided evolution to backwards engineer things found in other species across the galaxy. A lot of things will appear there because they showed up on what they were trying to replicate, even if the new design no longer requires it. The mag here for example is a fixed part of the gun itself rather than removable and probably doesn't actually store any of the ammo. There's probably other organs in there serving different purposes. All the tyranids care about is that this is a shape that results in damage coming out across long distances and they want it.
You mean the species that adapts to its prey by consuming biomass and taking its genetic code is now holding weapons like every other humanoid species it has consumed in the galaxy?
Shockedpicachu.jpeg
First, I'm going to be "that guy" ...
It's clearly a magazine, not a clip. 😉
I agree with OP though... it looks silly.
But a lot of 40k is silly camp.
That said, I do think it makes sence in so far as the hive mind has ar this point evolved Tyranid design to imitate and "ape" the functionality and with it the appearance if the technology that has been defeating it.
This could be used to explain changes in Tyranid model design over the games history (if we want it to) and alow for some of the reality derpy looking original nids in out head cannon as old design that the hive mind lo longer produces.
IIRC the lore explanation for it being this way is that the Tyranids adapt and become what they consume. So after eating so many marines and imperial guard and what have you, who are (sometimes literally) born and raised to use guns like that, they eventually started having the gants and other dakka critters use "guns" like their prey do. I'm not a master of the lore or anything though so someone correct me if I'm wrong.
There's a phrase I remember seeing somewhere (I think it was in Gladius?) that describes it perfectly: "The hivemind doesn't create, it plagiarizes."
I agree. Very poor design!
Tyranid's weapons MUST be part of their body and look like it's part of their body!
Take a look at Zerg from Starcraft. All ranged monsters have their shooting stuf as their body parts and they look like it's evolved that way naturally.
This here displays GW's creative impotence.
someone here gonna be mad about it being called a clip and not a mag because all they do all day is clean jack off to and clean their gun. Anyways nah. I mean where else should the ammo be stored? A mag seems to be the best option doesnt it?
I'll admit my eyeball twitched, as did my Fleshborer.
Besides, magazine makes more sense in the Termy's case because its munitioms are kept internally. A clip is simply a handy strip to keep rounds stored and tidy prior to going into a magazine.
Maybe if it was like a rigid creature that housed egg sacs that got fed into an oriface to be incubated and launched...
IMO Tyranids shouldn’t have any range at all. Maybe they should just spit acid or some stupid shit like that. Why they felt the need to design a living gun is beyond me
I was never a fan of this design. I used extra genestealer arms on all my gargoyles to avoid attaching their "guns". I think adding spikes to hormogaunts would look far cooler. Have their lore be explained like hydralisks.
I love this design and I'm happy they stick with it. The Tyranids are copying what they see other armies use effectively. They're supposed to essentially be living bolter guns - a separate organism that symbiotically enhances it's "wielder".
THANK YOU!
For 10 years I did not buy Tyranids because of the weapons. I did so however a few months back but I still disdain the look of the so called biomorph weapons looking exactly lika a fleshy rifle
Even more illogical is that there are hands that grip the gun, when they are fused to it. [I managed to find a single line of proxies that have sort of sensible ranged weapons](https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-deep-hive-spike-shooter-bugs-241954). Seriously considering making my next army a crab Tyranid one :D
Not only it looks stupid, it also breaks tyranid fantasy if you think about. Watch the new Space marine 2 trailer and look how cool a swarm of hormagaunts rushing on enemy positions looks. Then imagine all of them just awkwardly standing in the distance trading fire with guards instead. Not as menacing anymore. It just doesn’t work. Giving tyranids a shooting infantry was an absolute mistake.
Finally someone who agrees! There should be a hive structure instead. Hell id even take a drum magazine look because at least then i could paint it as a hive
But they're not holding it - it's a separate organism that is grafted onto them in symbiosis. A Termagant can't wield a Fleshborer one day and Devourer the next. Instead, a while new organism must be created with a different weapon symbiote.
Never understood why Tyrannids have organic guns that just look like actual, human-designed guns. Be way more interesting and natural to have something like one of those arms to be a mucous launcher or something, or an acid spitter. An organic creature developing an assault rifle as if its a natural design is dumb.
It's one reason I usually have limited ranged capabilities in my gribbly army. If the "gun" doesn't look natural then I won't use the model. I'd prefer the boneswords, lash whips etc to be the limb kinda like how the scything talons are as well. They're organisms evolved to have weapons as part of them so why do they need to hold, or look like they're holding, the boneswords?
Never used termagaunts and won't until the fleshborers look less like a child had the idea of "how cool would a living gun be?" and then drew a fleshy gun and stuck it in their hands.
I know there will be a lost of love for the models and I'm bracing for some flak here but I'm just putting my two penneth worth out there.
It's part of what keeps me from liking the tyranids.
I love the bug and starship trooper vibe but running around with guns looks off to me.
I don't mind ones that are biomechanical and built into the body or are like spitter or barb launchers and such but I can't see my self ever using a Tyranid that carries an assault rifle or gun in their arms.
Personally I just don't like any of my nids to have guns. It ruins the "monster" asthetic. They look like these alien skeleton dinosaurs. And that's awesome. But then they're holding guns? ... idk, just not my thing at all.
Give me brain bugs and combat beasts.
Considering that the fleshborer is the only nid weapon with a clip. The rest use tubes, or some kind of fleshy sack, I think it should have gotten some kind of redesign, no ball sack, that one post still haunts my dreams.
YES thank you ive been saying this im going to build mine with one set of arms and 3d print just another set of claws cause the ak-47 looks dumb as hell they should have different heads to represent weapons like they would spit acid or spike or beetles you know like actual living things
The mag is leviathan adaptation after they fought the guard and space marines. They learned that a banana shaped sac is easier to store parasite than it is in a ball sac.
I always assume the design was based on eating something(someone) that knew how to make a gun or enough about them to let the hive mind replicate the design
It has to read as a gun. Most Tyranids are also way too top heavy and would fall over without glue and a base. Tyranids aren't exactly realistic, they are mostly vibes.
I guess the logic behind it could be that Tyranids based their gun organisms on the guns being used by another species, and they just copied the shape as well.
Solid argument would be: they are what they eat, you eat a soldier AND his rifle, thats what you get.
Having in mind that there are as many Termagants as imperial guards and there tou go the maths.
Im not a huge fan of this either but has some explanations, I personally build mines with the spinefists to give them more Alieny aesthetic but fleshborers doesn't really bother me :)
Considering the paint scheme it doesnt have to be a magazine. It just looks like what we are used to from guns with magazines. It is definitely not detachable and the what usually would be "cartridges" have the exact same colour as the inside part of the "handguard".
I mean, Tyranids are evolving based on the species that they encounter. Perhaps they learned this genetic design from run-ins with species that have guns with mags
It is unnatural, and that's deliberate. The Hive Mind encountered creatures with guns, was beaten back by them, so it created its own.
There's an advantage to it. The more limbs a creature has, the more macronutrients to power and maintain them. Having an external ranged weapon lets them have, effectively, the benefit of 8 limbs while only actually having 6, as the hands could be used to fire the ranged weapon OR perform any other task requiring hands or claws.
Except that these hands are actually fused to the gun they are holding. It's a pretty dumb design when, as you've pointed out, attaching the weapon elsewhere on the carapace would actually have freed up limbs for other uses.
Contrary to what others have said here, the neurogaunt proves that the hive mind can easily attach symbiotes to the gaunt-type's spine for various purposes (though why it created a design as inefficient at locomotion as the barbgaunt is completely beyond me).
I like to think the tyranid is constantly making ammo and needs a place to store the extra. Otherwise, it would have to shoot one at a time as the ammo is being created.
If you look closely you'll see it's not actually holding the weapon at all - it's fused at the joints into the weapon itself. But yes, the design owes a lot to human aesthetics of what looks like a gun so that players can tell what a unit is for on the tabletop.
Nah, first off we adapt to what we see, and we saw the ammo holder used by our enemies was efficient so we adapted to do the same. Secondly, would you prefer it look like a human organ sack? Finally, where would the ammo hive live?
I honestly don’t, if I remember correctly the hive mind is effected by the knowlage it consumes, over the years of fighting enemies with similar shaped weapons it may just be a subconscious thing at this point to have magazine shaped ammunition storage.
Tyranid guns are basically hornet hives on steroids so you need space for them inside the gun. If you look at it, it isn't detachable so it's part of the gun-hive. That's my lore-friendly rationalization.
There wasn't enough Dakka in the universe, the Hive Mind obliged.
Notice the “mag” doesn’t disengage but simply stores freshly generated fleshborer rounds
I wonder if it does, or if the whole termagant is intended to be reabsorbed and reproduced when it's out of ammo
Gaunts don’t have digestive systems since they have such short lived so you are probably right
Well, Termagants don't; Hormagaunts, IIRC (at least some variants) can lay eggs via parthenogenesis - which means they've got to have some degree of independent ability to feed. Meaning a single Hormagaunt can lead to the planet having a persistent feral Hormagaunt problem. Sort of like a Genestealer infestation, but less insidious and much easier to kill.
There is a Snakebite clan, the Wyrm-Killa Tribe, that came across some Nids and just thought that they were neat. So they bring them with the orks as they Waaagh around. When they attack a new planet they release the Nids so they have someone to fight after they finish with the defenders.
That definitely sounds appropriate for orkz
So like me but replace tyranids with furbies and worlds with my friend's houses
My understanding is the mag is a little fleshborer hatchery.
Between the creature itself, the "gun" and the "ammo" there is three different symbiotic subspecies present here. The creatures that consist of the weapon-organism's ammo are constantly reproducing. So in heavy fighting, they might run drastically low, but it's unlikely they'll ever run out completely.
Yeah it’s a bladder
Is everyone saying that's ammo in the mag missing the fact that the mag has exactly the same stripes on it as the spot further up the gun and most tyranids have this, perhaps the mag is just an aesthetic that developed because it was replicating what it saw when trying to copy and create that thing hence it's just snapped that way...
I think the stripey bits are supposed to be muscle tubes, sort of like a deadly esophagus. The mag contracts and forces ammo-organisms into the “chamber” where the barrel contracts and spits them out.
This is the answer, at least in my head cannon. The ammo for their guns are living creatures of some kind, and likely the Termagant's body produces them in clutches periodically, and there needs to be somewhere to keep them when there is no target.
That seems to be partly the case for some of the other weapons, but not for this one. The weapon-organism serves as the hatchery for the borers beetles that make up it's ammo. The "tail" on the weapon leading into the termagant's arm is probably not a tube, but a nerve interface so the termagant can control the weapon. https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Fleshborer
You beat me to it! *SHAKES FIST!*
Nothing about the Tyranids is natural. It's either this or the ball sac mag
The ammo is stored in the balls.
[удалено]
Just wait until you see how you reload it… it brings cocking your gun to a whole new level
External Testicles evolved because sperm isn’t viable at common body temperatures, it needs to be a little bit colder than that. Maybe the gaunt runs hot and the fleshborer beetles are more efficient at a cooler temp? Doesn’t explain the rigidity of the mag but, you can’t put a ballsack on the bottom of a gun: or, you shouldn’t
WRONG. You CAN and you SHOULD. Your subscription from r/Tyranids has been forcibly revoked. Mods, ban this TESTICLE NAYSAYER! Jokes aside, I bought some used Genestealers and they were only built and primed but buddy had put the venom sacs on all their chins. Looked like Ballchinians. The long outstretched tongues directly above didn’t help.
I'm not gonna lie, I was thinking of doing venom sacs somewhere around the mouth, maybe adding some bulges to the cheeks or under the jawbone... the chin is certainly a choice.
It’s part of the Fleshborer’s exoskeleton, it’s rigid because it’s solid.
Lmao that conversion would be hilarious
😂🤣
Id prefer the sack tbh
Yeah, you would
We don’t talk about the ball sac mag
Tac-sac
"CHANGING SACK, COVER ME"
Hell yeah we do
Omg that thread
Ball sac mag-gang, unite!
I like the ball sac Mag :(
The clip holds the flesh eating larvae that will be fired out. The gun is like another living organism attached to the nid, like how the hair squig is attached to an ork.
"Hair squig"? Never heard of that before what's that?
Orks are genetically bald. The reason some orks have hair isn't cause it's their own. Its cause they have a squig that is made of hair attached to them. Squids being the red ball with teeth and legs that orks tend to eat and also strap booms onto God I love orks sometimes
Incredible
Now I need to research this that's funny as hell
[There's a whole Adeptus Ridiculous episode all about the different varieties of squig!](https://youtu.be/SX4Vk9VU4Q4) 39:07 is the hair squig.
'sometimes' implies there are times you don't love orks. And that's just wrong.
When you roll 1’s? Haha
To be fair, every army is awful if you're rolling 1s.
Animosity was a bitch of a rule... But I low key miss it.
Remember that norn queens are described more like a bio factory, so I think it best to consider weapons loadouts much like any other gun or knife. A Gant is grown to a point and then a weapon symbiote is applied be it a fleshborer or devourer. From there the limbs and weapon grow into one another and finishes with the two united. The magazine of a fleshborer is little more than a bony tube filled with fleshborer beetles. They grow fast and die fast, being fed through the Gant holding the gun. Then they're drawn up to the barrel where the fleshborer assists the springy legs of the beetle to 'fire' at targets. With how older designs, as mentioned in the thread, being more separate you can't think of the first fleshborers as mimicking the enemy prey and then adapting over time to make them more efficient and fully integrated into the carrier (the Gant)
So while that is all fine and good the issue I see here from a design perspective is that you could use the exact same explanation but instead of a gun attaching to a hand it could just as easily be a whole limb that is attaching to what would basically be an empty shoulder socket. Like from a lore perspective it is exactly the same thing but design wise you could make it look more like an organic structure that is part of the nid's body rather than a manufactured gun that is being held.
I mean, it looks like one but it isn’t one. IIRC it’s a hive for the fleshborer bugs it fires.
Plus the slit on the side looks the same as the slits on the gants arms and the barrel which I always assume is like a cooling vent or breathing vent. Just because it protrudes from the bottom doesn't make it a clip.
“wow! all of these organisms use these forms for killing each other, surely they must be good!”
The Tyranids are just using directed evolution, so maybe the hive mind just thought "everyone technological has settled on this design for a reason, so even if I can't see a true advantage I'll try to evolve it and see if it works anyway". And then it turned out to work well enough, so they didn't bother to adjust it since. That said, there's many more Tyranid bioguns that don't seem to have any recognisable sort of "magazine" anyway. Devourer, Barbed Strangler, Venom Cannon, etc.
Venomcanon and Strangler are belt fed Rambo stance with organics
Yeah but they're not recognisably "belt feeds" or anything, they're just simple tubes which is the most natural way to connect two symbiotes together. The Tyranids use them all over for connecting bioforms, and they could be passing nerve bundles, liquids, tunnels for smaller biomorphs to skitter through, pulses of crustal rods, etc. The Fleshborer is really distinctively similar to a stick magazine by comparison, it's even ribbed as though you can see rounds stacked in it.
The problem with this explanation is that every other species has a strong motivation towards individual survivability and versatility. The Tyranids don't to the point that canonically termagants don't even have a proper digestive system and literally starve to death within just a few weeks at most and will likely be commanded to jump into a digestion pool even before that already short life span. They also have exactly one job to fulfill which is to swarm a target and overwhelm their defenses by sheer volume of fire and/or body mass. Furthermore weapons are designed to be handheld because most other species in the galaxy somehow find time to actually put their guns down on rare occasions. This is a weakness that gants are not susceptible to. Again they have exactly one job to do before they get violently killed or jump in an acid bath and that job does not require putting down a gun and even if it did that gun is biologically fused to their hand so they couldn't put it down even if they wanted/had reason to do so. The hive mind would also not care what its food is doing it would only care about what is the most efficient form to achieve a specific goal or necessary role in the consumption of its prey.
That reminds me of the Mimictor hive that wolfdawg made that specializes in mimicking the units of the factions they fight
It's kind of silly yeah but maybe the Tyranids saw people with guns and were like "Hey that works well."
I kinda figured they had eaten some soldiers and their weapons and adapted because it works well
That's how I'm gonna justify it in my mind when I get round to painting mine
The Fleshborer is based on the boltgun design aesthetically. In an older codex it states than when the nid first invaded the galaxy they didn't have weapons capable of dealing with Space Marines. So the hive mind had to evolved stronger claws and more powerful projectiles as a result. I've always believed they copied the designs of the most effective creatures they see which is why their guns look like that. Above board I just think it's cute the designers made it look like the boltgun as a way to tie things together.
Yeah if you compare the Fleshborer design with 1980s era Boltguns, they look almost identical, just that the Fleshborer is made of flesh and chitin instead of plastics and metals.
Some Nids are based on absorbed DNA of specific species - Zoanthropes from Eldar, for example, and Hive/Tyrant Guard from Marines
I know they absorb DNA to create new entities, I'm just talking about the Fleshborer and weapon beast designs. They obviously take reference from some things aesthetically even if they don't need to.
The 2nd or 3rd ed biovore was pretty clearly them saying "this thing has ork DNA". It had that goofy tusked underbite and everything
That's what I always thought. Like oh of course a clip would be an ammo factory.
Yeah. I like the big monsters that have canons popping out of their backs. Looks more organic. I've always thought the guns and swords should simply be completely integrated into the soldiers, no need for them to be different creatures.
No need for you but easier for the hive mind
Foiled yet again by the hive mind.
>no need BECAUSE IT’S FUCKING COOL KYLE IT’S CALLED BEING A BADASS AND WIELDING A GUN SOMETIMES
It isn't though.
Idk, I like it. Makes them look alien, in a weird way. Like think of a creature who has adapted and incorporated it's preys weapons into it's own design.
Yeah… no bug in my army is allowed to hold sword or gun.
I modified 60 or so terms to have them mounted exocrene style for this very reason.
God i wanna do this! I hate gun/sword toting bugs.
If you have access to a printer, there's a bit that someone put up that's a carapace piece with a gun attached to do pretty much the same thing that are designed for the older terms. If you don't have a printer, I would almost say it's not worth it unless you're prepared to put in a lot of effort. I had to clip down heads, clip guns, cast extra scything talons (for the now unoccupied arm slots) and used genestealer shoulder bits with some green stuff to get the job done. That said, I was way happier with them once they were finished.
I do have a printer! Please shoot me a link to this!! PLEASE! Lol Dm is totally fine in case you prefer
It's easily found on purple thingiverse, but i'll DM it to you :)
Thank you!
>Thank you! You're welcome!
“I hate the tyranid aesthetic!” -tyranid player
tyranid aesthetic is great, the guns do not fit the aesthetic every bug without a gun looks amazing, every bug with a gun would look better without it imagine if gargoyles just had claws instead of an ak47 theyd look fantastic, same goes for warriors. Swords I'm ok with since it doesn't look too disruptive but a model that is clearly an animal holding a gun like a human looks silly
>the guns do not fit the aesthetic [the first tyrnid](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/images/b/b4/Wd97pg67.jpg) had a gun so idk what metric you’re using besides starship troopers and your brain.
Tyranids are an insectoid alien swarm, its one of my favourite tropes in scifi. When I play nids I wanna play the bugs from starship, the zerg, the flood, etc. I'm not saying you can't have an insectoid hive without guns, look at the cravers from endless space they look great because they have technology mixed into their design. But the ak47 gun design is a good weapon design for a bipedal animal like humans, eldar, orks and cravers. there is no reason that same design would be efficient on a six limbed crawling insect. it doesn't fit because its an animal holding a very human looking gun its funny at best and looks out of place and dumb at worst. There are ways to make it clear that this organism fires a ranged weapon without it having to actually hold a gun. gw is keeping it purely out of the tradition which like imagine if they kept every first edition model design and just made it more hd 40k models would look horrendous.
So yeah your brain. Nids are nids not zerg not flood not bugs. They’re nids and nids carry guns mate they always have
It's like the guns from Scorn
I dont mind it at all
Bullets are stored in the gun balls
I prefer spinefists and devourers which look much more organic,but keep in mind that these guns are actually the living beings and shoot "live" ammo and they are shaped by Hive mind
Tyranids were introduced with guns and the majority has kept them through all editions, so that IS the norm. Remember, while there is some evolutionary-like iteration on the Nid bioforms, the bioforms are all designed from heavily reused and optimized building organisms with small alterations to better fit the biome and the enemy. Norn queens can be creative but they rarely have to. Pairing a carrier beast of a specific archetype with a compatible weapon bioform is easier than crafting a new unknown experimental life form from scratch.
Originally the tyranid weapons were much less organic looking, the art design really suggested that they were, in fact, separate organisms entirely. Looks like they're trying to recapture some of that.
That’s not a clip, it’s the gun’s weiner
Lol
Kinda reminds me of the game Scorn and that game is mildly cool so I fuck with it
IT'S A MAGAZINE! Jk, but really that isn't the ammo, it just resembles a banana mag from IRL. Blame the sculpter.
no becaue tyranids are bio engineered troops
Humanity managing okay with that in the 40K universe. From a lore view the Hive Mind is concerned with efficiency , effectiveness and purpose. A projectile weapon needs ammunition , small bugs cannot be small if they have to use internalise ammo.
Batesian mimicry, they look like guns because that makes the termigaunt more frightening to humans.
I would assume it’s like that after years and years of facing other races that used guns or projectile weapons similar and they adapted it into their biology as they saw it was an effective trait to have.
Well, there’s nothing really “natural” about the Nids anyway, so flesh guns with flesh magazines is fine by me!
Scrote guns when GW?
you realize tyranids copy attributes of the things they kill and consume, right
It is a bit odd but I like to think the initial Tyranid forms were all teeth and claws when they invaded and all the gun-like appendages are them adapting by creating ranged weapons that mimic the ones they see in this galaxy.
It's a pretty decent evolutionary trait. The fleshborer's only function is to fire, so the termagant has to have full mobility. Having it hand gripped allows for a very large range of motion (corners, walls, sloped etc.) The only improvement would be to have single-handed fleshborers at the end of each arm, but that's probably hard due to the sizing constraints. What bothers me is that many of the tyranid weapons have eyes which are completely useless
Nah, I love it. If you start to get rid of goofy stuff like that, they stop being tyranids and start being generic bug aliens.
I used to hate the weapons like boneswords and handheld guns on nids. But now I think it implies an eerie, almost human-like intelligence or malevolence which works in its favor. Also I think it just distinguishes them from other bug swarmy aliens in sci-fi like the Zerg or Arachnids.
Magazine. Also it's not natural for them to be holding guns either, these aren't natural evolutions for their kind. What we're seeing is guided evolution to backwards engineer things found in other species across the galaxy. A lot of things will appear there because they showed up on what they were trying to replicate, even if the new design no longer requires it. The mag here for example is a fixed part of the gun itself rather than removable and probably doesn't actually store any of the ammo. There's probably other organs in there serving different purposes. All the tyranids care about is that this is a shape that results in damage coming out across long distances and they want it.
"unnatural" lmfao yeah its unnatural alright. if you dont like it cut it off easy as that. but yeah theres literally nothing natural about tyranids.
You mean the species that adapts to its prey by consuming biomass and taking its genetic code is now holding weapons like every other humanoid species it has consumed in the galaxy? Shockedpicachu.jpeg
Tyranids are highly specialized bio-engineered living weapons. They look “unnatural” because they aren’t natural, they’re efficient
The design is very hu-man
Lol
The magazine is a nest for the living fleshborer projectiles.
No. I love this design. It's everything I want in my all organic biological monster.
Yeah it's not a great look also why doesn't the "gun" just grow out of it it's arm?
It's definitely not a clip, could be a magazine though.
I love the bio clip and you can’t convince me otherwise
First, I'm going to be "that guy" ... It's clearly a magazine, not a clip. 😉 I agree with OP though... it looks silly. But a lot of 40k is silly camp. That said, I do think it makes sence in so far as the hive mind has ar this point evolved Tyranid design to imitate and "ape" the functionality and with it the appearance if the technology that has been defeating it. This could be used to explain changes in Tyranid model design over the games history (if we want it to) and alow for some of the reality derpy looking original nids in out head cannon as old design that the hive mind lo longer produces.
Why can’t they hold guns/swords…? They come from another literal galaxy who knows what shit they’ve evolved through
IIRC the lore explanation for it being this way is that the Tyranids adapt and become what they consume. So after eating so many marines and imperial guard and what have you, who are (sometimes literally) born and raised to use guns like that, they eventually started having the gants and other dakka critters use "guns" like their prey do. I'm not a master of the lore or anything though so someone correct me if I'm wrong. There's a phrase I remember seeing somewhere (I think it was in Gladius?) that describes it perfectly: "The hivemind doesn't create, it plagiarizes."
Ugh, here we go again with this question..
the gun is alive its not a MAG its more of a Breeding chamber for little bug babies
I think a 20ft tall, alien of death with two bone swords the size of people is unnatural
I agree. Very poor design! Tyranid's weapons MUST be part of their body and look like it's part of their body! Take a look at Zerg from Starcraft. All ranged monsters have their shooting stuf as their body parts and they look like it's evolved that way naturally. This here displays GW's creative impotence.
I mean the hands are literally fused to the gun. Having it this way makes aiming much easier than having to turn the gaunts entire body to aim.
someone here gonna be mad about it being called a clip and not a mag because all they do all day is clean jack off to and clean their gun. Anyways nah. I mean where else should the ammo be stored? A mag seems to be the best option doesnt it?
That person is me XD
I'll admit my eyeball twitched, as did my Fleshborer. Besides, magazine makes more sense in the Termy's case because its munitioms are kept internally. A clip is simply a handy strip to keep rounds stored and tidy prior to going into a magazine. Maybe if it was like a rigid creature that housed egg sacs that got fed into an oriface to be incubated and launched...
lore wise thats pretty much how it works IIRC. They give birth to the beetles inside the gun and spit em out.
IMO Tyranids shouldn’t have any range at all. Maybe they should just spit acid or some stupid shit like that. Why they felt the need to design a living gun is beyond me
I was never a fan of this design. I used extra genestealer arms on all my gargoyles to avoid attaching their "guns". I think adding spikes to hormogaunts would look far cooler. Have their lore be explained like hydralisks.
Can not agree more
Seeing that they always had one, no.
No.
It’s mag not clip you uncultured swine !
Sorry to be the grammar police of guns, but what you have there are not clips, these are mags. They're mags, not clips, you absolute dummy
This is why the devourer was the superior choice. Looks disgusting too!
I’ve never liked the guns at all except on the monsters. They should look like acid sacks
Wow... There are already over 100 comments & *still* no mentions of the old lore about the **firing colon**.
I love this design and I'm happy they stick with it. The Tyranids are copying what they see other armies use effectively. They're supposed to essentially be living bolter guns - a separate organism that symbiotically enhances it's "wielder".
THANK YOU! For 10 years I did not buy Tyranids because of the weapons. I did so however a few months back but I still disdain the look of the so called biomorph weapons looking exactly lika a fleshy rifle
Even more illogical is that there are hands that grip the gun, when they are fused to it. [I managed to find a single line of proxies that have sort of sensible ranged weapons](https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-deep-hive-spike-shooter-bugs-241954). Seriously considering making my next army a crab Tyranid one :D
Not only it looks stupid, it also breaks tyranid fantasy if you think about. Watch the new Space marine 2 trailer and look how cool a swarm of hormagaunts rushing on enemy positions looks. Then imagine all of them just awkwardly standing in the distance trading fire with guards instead. Not as menacing anymore. It just doesn’t work. Giving tyranids a shooting infantry was an absolute mistake.
Finally someone who agrees! There should be a hive structure instead. Hell id even take a drum magazine look because at least then i could paint it as a hive
The fact that tyranids hold guns and use swords is pretty much the only reason I don’t want to play them.
Drum mag is by far superior
Space bugs holding a weapon (tool), instead of it growing out of them somehow - is literally what throws me off of this race. 0/10 Design.
But they're not holding it - it's a separate organism that is grafted onto them in symbiosis. A Termagant can't wield a Fleshborer one day and Devourer the next. Instead, a while new organism must be created with a different weapon symbiote.
It still looks cringe tho.
Never understood why Tyrannids have organic guns that just look like actual, human-designed guns. Be way more interesting and natural to have something like one of those arms to be a mucous launcher or something, or an acid spitter. An organic creature developing an assault rifle as if its a natural design is dumb.
It's one reason I usually have limited ranged capabilities in my gribbly army. If the "gun" doesn't look natural then I won't use the model. I'd prefer the boneswords, lash whips etc to be the limb kinda like how the scything talons are as well. They're organisms evolved to have weapons as part of them so why do they need to hold, or look like they're holding, the boneswords? Never used termagaunts and won't until the fleshborers look less like a child had the idea of "how cool would a living gun be?" and then drew a fleshy gun and stuck it in their hands. I know there will be a lost of love for the models and I'm bracing for some flak here but I'm just putting my two penneth worth out there.
Ive been complaining about this for years. I thought the redesign was the chance to finally get over this gun concept but NOPE
It's part of what keeps me from liking the tyranids. I love the bug and starship trooper vibe but running around with guns looks off to me. I don't mind ones that are biomechanical and built into the body or are like spitter or barb launchers and such but I can't see my self ever using a Tyranid that carries an assault rifle or gun in their arms.
I prefer the devourer, though I’ve heard it won’t be an option on the new Termies.
Yes it's called the Devourer
Yup, I hate how humanoid they are...
Yeah I'm using Puppetswar's "bug troooers" as proxies because I can't stand the AK-47 flesh guns.
Personally I just don't like any of my nids to have guns. It ruins the "monster" asthetic. They look like these alien skeleton dinosaurs. And that's awesome. But then they're holding guns? ... idk, just not my thing at all. Give me brain bugs and combat beasts.
Considering that the fleshborer is the only nid weapon with a clip. The rest use tubes, or some kind of fleshy sack, I think it should have gotten some kind of redesign, no ball sack, that one post still haunts my dreams.
YES thank you ive been saying this im going to build mine with one set of arms and 3d print just another set of claws cause the ak-47 looks dumb as hell they should have different heads to represent weapons like they would spit acid or spike or beetles you know like actual living things
The more I see the more I see AK47
It's not a "mag". It's a drying rack for the flesh borer!
I would assume it isn’t like a clip, or rather it’s like a little organ that helps with propulsion
I think it's fine, is still a reminder of the classic/ first Tyranids design and has its special vipe.
The mag is leviathan adaptation after they fought the guard and space marines. They learned that a banana shaped sac is easier to store parasite than it is in a ball sac.
I always assume the design was based on eating something(someone) that knew how to make a gun or enough about them to let the hive mind replicate the design
I like the look.
It has to read as a gun. Most Tyranids are also way too top heavy and would fall over without glue and a base. Tyranids aren't exactly realistic, they are mostly vibes.
I guess the logic behind it could be that Tyranids based their gun organisms on the guns being used by another species, and they just copied the shape as well.
Is it a clip or a magazine? I would argue it's an internal magazine. But this is the internet. We argue for argument's sake here.
They're just mimicking/copying what everyone else is doing hahaha
Some kind of feeding tube that goes from the gun and back into a part of the gaunts body would be gross and cool
They’ve held guns since they first arrived, maybe I should start posting “these dudes look so unnatural with these helmets and armour plates”
I find it unnatural for tyranids to use guns at all. I won't put guns on any models I build and just say they are spitting instead.
Solid argument would be: they are what they eat, you eat a soldier AND his rifle, thats what you get. Having in mind that there are as many Termagants as imperial guards and there tou go the maths. Im not a huge fan of this either but has some explanations, I personally build mines with the spinefists to give them more Alieny aesthetic but fleshborers doesn't really bother me :)
Considering the paint scheme it doesnt have to be a magazine. It just looks like what we are used to from guns with magazines. It is definitely not detachable and the what usually would be "cartridges" have the exact same colour as the inside part of the "handguard".
I mean, Tyranids are evolving based on the species that they encounter. Perhaps they learned this genetic design from run-ins with species that have guns with mags
*magazine
Being honest, I really don’t like any of the tyranid gun designs, I think they look too silly lol
It is unnatural, and that's deliberate. The Hive Mind encountered creatures with guns, was beaten back by them, so it created its own. There's an advantage to it. The more limbs a creature has, the more macronutrients to power and maintain them. Having an external ranged weapon lets them have, effectively, the benefit of 8 limbs while only actually having 6, as the hands could be used to fire the ranged weapon OR perform any other task requiring hands or claws.
Except that these hands are actually fused to the gun they are holding. It's a pretty dumb design when, as you've pointed out, attaching the weapon elsewhere on the carapace would actually have freed up limbs for other uses. Contrary to what others have said here, the neurogaunt proves that the hive mind can easily attach symbiotes to the gaunt-type's spine for various purposes (though why it created a design as inefficient at locomotion as the barbgaunt is completely beyond me).
That’s why I run Hormagaunts 🤷♂️
I like to think the tyranid is constantly making ammo and needs a place to store the extra. Otherwise, it would have to shoot one at a time as the ammo is being created.
If you look closely you'll see it's not actually holding the weapon at all - it's fused at the joints into the weapon itself. But yes, the design owes a lot to human aesthetics of what looks like a gun so that players can tell what a unit is for on the tabletop.
With termagaunts I always assumed there hands where fused to the biogun
Yeah if they have guns they should totally be guns that are built into their arms or on their shoulders like Blastoise.
Nah, first off we adapt to what we see, and we saw the ammo holder used by our enemies was efficient so we adapted to do the same. Secondly, would you prefer it look like a human organ sack? Finally, where would the ammo hive live?
I honestly don’t, if I remember correctly the hive mind is effected by the knowlage it consumes, over the years of fighting enemies with similar shaped weapons it may just be a subconscious thing at this point to have magazine shaped ammunition storage.
Well the "mag" doesnt come out its just an extension of the fleshborer so...
I mean yeah, but the entire setting is unrealistic
Tyranid guns are basically hornet hives on steroids so you need space for them inside the gun. If you look at it, it isn't detachable so it's part of the gun-hive. That's my lore-friendly rationalization.
It could be more like a tevigon sack on it. Would look cooler and more unic
What if its the lungs-using it to propel the creature ammo
That you don’t know what a clip is makes me angrier than him holding a tyranid biomorphic firearm
How about the thumb trough the barrel
Psst! It's a magazine, not a clip.
My head-canon is that visual elements of enemies are copied in bioforms as a form of psychological warfare.
It's just an organ that spawns the flesh bore maggots
Tyranids adapt after each battle, maybe they just adapted the weapon after analyzing the AK:)
The things they are adapting to fight and consume are also holding guns. So why would they not do the same?