Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-46.162.84.254-20130704080553/@comment-6078851-20140710150215

they definitely have weaknesses it's just that overall their stengths vs weaknesses seems (to me at least) to leave everyone else in the dust.

taking out synapse creatures does indeed break the connection to the hive-mind resulting in the 'lower classes' of tyranids reverting to essentially wild animals. the problem with this is that more synapse bio-forms are churned out very quickly, meaning that a warzone may be won by killing synapse organisms but it doesn't help in the long run as they are replaced so quickly, and any 'wild' tyranids that come under the influence of a synapse organism are straight back into the fight under the hive-mind.

norn-queens are definitely the most important target for anyone fighting tyranids - killing a norn-queens can completely hamstring a hive-fleet. again the problem is the speed of tyranid procreation meaning that even norn-queens can be quickly (relatively) replaced, as well as the sheer scale of the tyranid race: hamstringing a hive fleet or 2 (or a dozen) doesn't even dent tyranid numbers, plus all those dead tyranids can still be consumed to replace their losses.

in regards to necrons 'popping' stars to destroy bio-mass sources, this ''wont happen. ''necrons have on occasion used their celestial orrery to destroy a star (and subsequently its system), but destroying a single star requires millenia of exceptionally intense management to prevent a galactic cascade of destabilisation. because of this necrons (most of them at least) try not to use the celestial orrery, and while such a method would prevent tyranids from eating everything it would also result in the eventual physical destruction of the galaxy.

and trying to starve them out also wont work - they enter a state of frozen hibernation when travelling between galaxies, so if they faced a galaxy that was systematically destroying bio-mass sources they would simply enter hibernation and head to another galaxy. plus if they had zero bio-mass sources then their race itself could sustain their numbers by providing bio-mass in recycling their own organisms. because at the end of the day every tyranid is at the beck-and-call of the hive-mind.

the single biggest problem facing the denizens of the milky way though is that so little is actually known about tyranids - the hive-mind's capabilities and their scale mainly. we know because we're the audience but the natives of the milky way know almost nothing compared to what we all know.