Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-79.134.161.49-20130225232452/@comment-79.134.161.49-20130225233112

Copy paste from another discussion

I see your point about the codex, but i don`t think there are enought astartes in the galaxy to halt the full on advance of a entire hive fleet. The other two are ocupied fighting tau and orcs, but if they win that leaves the astartes the best choice against the tyranids.

I`m sure you realize how effective the tyranids war doctrine is. They use biomass for everithing, in such harvesting the corpses of the dead tyranids and their dead fowes actually incrieases  thei numbers, throwing a billion guardsmen at the tyranids would result in a lot of biomass intake for the fleet. For that reason to defeat tyranids you need one of two tactics.

The first one is to have warriors killing hundreds of tyranids by themselves, such as astartes, and not allowing the tyranids to gain advantage of numbers and hault the intake and recycling of biomass. I personally know a lot about actual war tactics and history battles and i have to say the tyranids are an incredibly effective war machine. The ability to recycle their own soldiers and take whatever biomass is around them to create new ones is brilliant.

That takes me to the second way to kill tyranids, direct destruction of the biomass, for that you need `undigestible` biomass and weapons that destroys it directly. The necrons are made of living metal, the tyranids cannot harvest that, and their gauss weapons de-atomize matter, the best part is that the Necrons themselves rely on high numbers effectively matching the tyranids. I actually believe that the Necrons are the greatest threat to the tyranids, because in a sense they are their opposite.

The Brannigan Principle is an effective way to fight anything other than tyranids, and it could only apply when using astartes. Guardsmen weaponry is simply ineffective and too many guardsmen would provide biomass. When fighting an enemy outnumbered you need to take into consideration the kill ratio if one of your soldiers is equal to a single one of the enemy and if one soldier only kills one of the enemy, then you`re dead,if 1guradsmen equals 1 tyranid, therefore you need as many guardsmen as tyranids, and i don`t see that happening. There aren`t enought humans in the Milky Way to match the tyranids. If enought guardmen reinforce enought astartes then perhaps. But wait! Enought astartes can kill an entire fleet, here is how.

The major weakness of the tyranids is those `Norn queens` if an entire chapter somehow enters the tyranid vessel carrying that `Norn queen` and actually defeats it, a chapter lead by a primarch, that would throw the entire fleet in a state of chaos ,thus allowing it`s destruction at minimal casualties. The ultramarines can employ such a tactic using their first company, and Marneus Calgar realises this so kudos to him.

Astartes are simply too effective to dismiss, if the emperor`s plans had come to fruition he would`ve kept the astartes just in case or to fight the necrons,tyranids or orcs that are very hard to exterminate.