Necrons v. Tyranids: Who is the Bigger Threat?

[43rdFoot]

As we all know, both of these factions basically want to destroy or consume all life. Well, technically Tyranids simply want to eat all non-nid life, but the point is basically the same.


Considering that both will not stop until they have consumed or terminated () all life in the universe or are totally destroyed, which is the bigger threat to the other races?

[Kamos]

As a more immediate threat? Tyranids. There is no telling how long it will take for the Necrons to fully mobilize while the Tyranids are guaranteed to arrive relatively soon. Once the Necrons do mobilize then they are more likely the greater threat but I think they're more long term.

Unless the Tyranids wake all the Necrons up in which it's just a cluster**** of morbid death for everyone involved.

[hellheaven1987]

Tyranid. At least C'tan is not a united force anytime while Hive Mind is.

[Ulysses S. Grant]

Who says the C'tan are not organised. They destroyed the galaxy before, and that was while they were eating each other. Besides the Deceivers plans involve getting the C'tan to cooperate.

[Squigfeast]

The two are almost antithetical to one another. Tyranids are, after a certain fashion arguably, the ultimate expression of life. Sure, they leave barren husks of worlds in their wake, but the hive fleet itself is life incarnate.

The hive fleet warp association is so immense that it supercedes most other things out there, isolating worlds.

Conversely, the necrons are death incarnate. Their ultimate gloal is oblivion for anything alive. They don't associate with the warp- which, interestingly enough, if it came to a real fight between the two would mean that they would be uneffected by "the shadow in the warp".

Either way, in a nids v. necron deathmatch, you have two apocalypic forces running in to eachother. Its the old unstoppable force vs. immovable object argument. If I had to take a bet, I'd wager on the necrons in the long game. Why?

Because of how Tyranids fight. They fight with a destroy-consume-reproduce/evolve-destroy cycle. The nature of the necrons really potentially screws with this cycle. Necrons are difficult to bring down, and have a tendancy not to leave remains when you do kill one. This makes consumption difficult. Even if the nids do get ahold of the remains, how much necron mass is even useful to them?

And its not as if many tomb worlds are even particularly good targets to begin with- they are as likely to sit beneath a lifeless rock orbiting a dying star as they are a garden planet.

[hellheaven1987]

Who says the C'tan are not organised. They destroyed the galaxy before, and that was while they were eating each other. Besides the Deceivers plans involve getting the C'tan to cooperate.

Oh my, they did not "destroy" galaxy before since that war with Old One was pretty much a tie until Chaos creatures show up and wipped everyone up (ya, Chaos won), which forced Necrons to enter hibernation. Besides, you actually seriously believed Night Bringer and Outsider would forgive Deceiver? Well, may be Deceiver itself believe that but I doubt Night Bringer can control its own hesitation to seek revenge on Deceiver.

[Ulysses S. Grant]

When the Warp was in turmoil Chaos didn't exist. It was the Enslavers that ended the war. And BTW the was not a draw. The Old Ones were left defending their last strongholds. Only the mass slaughters of their servants caused the Enslavers to breach the material universe.

And once again i will say:

The Outsider imprisoned itself to escape the Laughing God. The Nightbringer hates eveyone else, but even someone like that can be reasoned with (Uriel Ventris managed that).

[nameless]

Because of how Tyranids fight. They fight with a destroy-consume-reproduce/evolve-destroy cycle. The nature of the necrons really potentially screws with this cycle. Necrons are difficult to bring down, and have a tendancy not to leave remains when you do kill one. This makes consumption difficult. Even if the nids do get ahold of the remains, how much necron mass is even useful to them?

And its not as if many tomb worlds are even particularly good targets to begin with- they are as likely to sit beneath a lifeless rock orbiting a dying star as they are a garden planet.

Both races do not rely on the Warp for travel and such.

But you are right, Necrons are just metal so they wouldn't be able to be consumed by the Hive Fleet.

In most cases though, any time the Tyranids ran into Necrons they got decimated. Perhaps if a Swarmlord got involved things might turn around for them.

[knight of virtue and valor]

I think both of them are horribly scary, and insanely deadly to boot. I think people like the eldar and tau will get so, so screwed, and only the massive hordes, like the Orks or an imperuim at war with no one else could have a chance.

[Sir Pignans]

Oh my, they did not "destroy" galaxy before since that war with Old One was pretty much a tie until Chaos creatures show up and wipped everyone up (ya, Chaos won), which forced Necrons to enter hibernation. Besides, you actually seriously believed Night Bringer and Outsider would forgive Deceiver? Well, may be Deceiver itself believe that but I doubt Night Bringer can control its own hesitation to seek revenge on Deceiver.

The enslavers were subsequently defeated by the children of the old gods (Eldar and Orks), the necrons only withdrew because there prey was dying to quickly, thus not allowing the C'tan to feed.

[Hopit]

The enslavers were subsequently defeated by the children of the old gods (Eldar and Orks), the necrons only withdrew because there prey was dying to quickly, thus not allowing the C'tan to feed.

they withdrew because galaxy was almost empty of life, because of the enslavers, to wait galaxy to have life againg

[Plant]

Hard to say, since they are both threats which can wipe out the Galaxy of life. Or in the Necron's case, pretty much did so in the past. In the necron's case, they don't want to destroy all life, they want to make it so the C'tan can feed of harvest without trouble. It's like comparing whether a human or an elephant can squash an ant, by the ant's perspective, they are both threats beyond compare.

In the background, the Necrons won the war, not Chaos, not the Enslavers. The C'tan got bored because they couldn't feed. That was it really. So they fell asleep instead.

I remember in the Tyrandis codex, the Tyranid hive fleets would appear to go purposely out of their way to avoid Necron Tomb worlds.

[Carach]

ultimately the tyranids can save the galaxy from the necrons by..destroying the galaxy..lol.

seriously though in reference to what could beat either of the two (imperium with no enemy etc); this is probably what the emperor was attempting in the first place. He knew of the necrons as he had tamed the void dragon, his job was to shepherd humanity and he obviously had awesome power of foresight by the nature of him being..well..a godlike psyker. No doubt he saw only a united galaxy as the only way to fight either of the enemies that were to come. and we dont know how much tech humanity would have ten thousand years on had the emperor not been crippled and the imperium's subsequent fall into backwardness.

the void dragon is after all supposed to be one of (if not THE) most powerful star gods with a grip on technology unsurpassed. Could the emperor have been attempting to limit the necrons in some way? or alternatively gaining such massive advances in technology in order to fight them or the tyranids (whoever comes first)?

[nameless]

Hard to say, since they are both threats which can wipe out the Galaxy of life. Or in the Necron's case, pretty much did so in the past. In the necron's case, they don't want to destroy all life, they want to make it so the C'tan can feed of harvest without trouble. It's like comparing whether a human or an elephant can squash an ant, by the ant's perspective, they are both threats beyond compare.

In the background, the Necrons won the war, not Chaos, not the Enslavers. The C'tan got bored because they couldn't feed. That was it really. So they fell asleep instead.

I remember in the Tyrandis codex, the Tyranid hive fleets would appear to go purposely out of their way to avoid Necron Tomb worlds.

That's because Tomb Worlds are usually empty of life so there's nothing of value there.

The Tyranids are essentially one giant predator. Like all predators we know like Tigers, etc. they will not attack a prey if there's a chance they'll get hurt. They want to use as little of energy as possible when killing their prey. So with Tomb worlds there's no point.

However, not all Tomb worlds are empty so like with Hive fleet Gorgon, the Hive Fleet will attack but they may be beaten back by the Necrons.

[Zipa]

Id say the nids, the main fleet is out there and active already , the necs are sleeping and seem to only awake a world at a time.
That said though I would coin the necrons as a bigger threat if they were not all sleeping.

[thatguy]

Well, this is kind of curious.
If we say that the entire hive mind arrived, and tall the necron worlds awoke at the same time (in a literal Vs situation) Then I can say we're entirely ed.
Tyranids wouldnt die from not consuming Necrons, they'd just eat worlds with life. And like mentioned, both beings have no reliannce on the warp, so all other races are butt screwed. However, I picture the C'tan and the bad guys from Mass Effect having a similiar straegy. Wait untill galaxy is full of life. Wake up, eat almost everything. Go back to sleep. Wait. Which, if the necrons did choose that strategy...well, they might just do the same thing as in the first war "Oh, jeez. Lots of people dying, keeps liek this and we will have nothing to eat. Lets just nap until theres more things to eat" in which case, the tyranids will win, they'll eat every world that isn't already a barren rock, and the necrons'll never wake up.

However, i find another siutation more interesting. We saw one hive, while fighting the tau, develop a resistance to pulse and plasma weaponry. The Tau where able to overcome this by using other weapons, such as Kroot rifles...but what if the Tyanids, fighting the Necrons, would develop a defence against gauss weaponry?
The Necrons would be screwed, ALL their weapons are gauss weaponry. They'll have to start hitting the tyanids. Which...well. Wouldn't work very well.

We also don't know how many Tyranids there are, they're coming from another galaxy, for all we know, they have consumed that Galaxy, imagine, an entire galaxies worth of Biomass. Imagine, there is the possiblitty they only came to that galaxy from another...essentially we have a Hive Mind with two galaxies Biomass coming...maybe three? We don't know. They might have even killed, eaten, or eradicated races and beings more powerful then the imperium or the necrons in the previous Galaxy, in which case, the Swarmlord is goign to have a cakewalk.
There might be so many tyranids, you could literally walk over them from one planet to another. Thats a lot of hive ships..with a lot of Nids.

But I suppose thats the problem with these two insane forces, we truely do not know much about them. We do not know the extent of the Necrons technology. I mena, for all we know the deciever may have developed some sort of star-shotgun.

[nameless]

Well, this is kind of curious.
If we say that the entire hive mind arrived, and tall the necron worlds awoke at the same time (in a literal Vs situation) Then I can say we're entirely ed.
Tyranids wouldnt die from not consuming Necrons, they'd just eat worlds with life. And like mentioned, both beings have no reliannce on the warp, so all other races are butt screwed. However, I picture the C'tan and the bad guys from Mass Effect having a similiar straegy. Wait untill galaxy is full of life. Wake up, eat almost everything. Go back to sleep. Wait. Which, if the necrons did choose that strategy...well, they might just do the same thing as in the first war "Oh, jeez. Lots of people dying, keeps liek this and we will have nothing to eat. Lets just nap until theres more things to eat" in which case, the tyranids will win, they'll eat every world that isn't already a barren rock, and the necrons'll never wake up.

However, i find another siutation more interesting. We saw one hive, while fighting the tau, develop a resistance to pulse and plasma weaponry. The Tau where able to overcome this by using other weapons, such as Kroot rifles...but what if the Tyanids, fighting the Necrons, would develop a defence against gauss weaponry?
The Necrons would be screwed, ALL their weapons are gauss weaponry. They'll have to start hitting the tyanids. Which...well. Wouldn't work very well.

We also don't know how many Tyranids there are, they're coming from another galaxy, for all we know, they have consumed that Galaxy, imagine, an entire galaxies worth of Biomass. Imagine, there is the possiblitty they only came to that galaxy from another...essentially we have a Hive Mind with two galaxies Biomass coming...maybe three? We don't know. They might have even killed, eaten, or eradicated races and beings more powerful then the imperium or the necrons in the previous Galaxy, in which case, the Swarmlord is goign to have a cakewalk.
There might be so many tyranids, you could literally walk over them from one planet to another. Thats a lot of hive ships..with a lot of Nids.

But I suppose thats the problem with these two insane forces, we truely do not know much about them. We do not know the extent of the Necrons technology. I mena, for all we know the deciever may have developed some sort of star-shotgun.

I don't think so.

The Necrons are a very old race and have very advanced technology. Their ships can travel across the galaxy in seconds and it's a 5:1 ratio when it comes to battles between their fleets and other species' ships.

Gauss weaponry also works in that it "strips" its target molecule by molecule. It's not like a heat or laser weapon. It's really a break down weapon. Not sure if the Tyranids could adapt to such weapons. A basic Necron warrior is capable of blasting a hole through a land raider tank by himself.

Plus, Tyranids are living organisms so that puts them in the crosshairs of the Necrons and since some of the C'tan are working within the Imperium, I doubt they'll just allow the Tyranids to have their way.

[Kamos]

The Tyranids leave a world to ravaged for the Necrons to just sit back anyways. They'd have to act or they C'Tan would risk starvation.

[Ulysses S. Grant]

Or they could just eat the Nids................

[Kamos]

More to eat if you act sooner.