((No, I was referring to the Altered. I know the Nids don't really cheat beyond adapting moderately well for a species of their caliber and having an apparent shit ton of numbers, plus attacking an Imperium that can't muster a force to attack them. If the Imperium didn't have everyone else in the setting ragging on them they'd kick the shit out of the Nids.))
((They adapt really well, and there are a crapton of them. They attack planets with literally enough "troops" that the defenders run out of bullets, plus things like quiet invisible giants (lichtors) and really frakking big ones (??), plus 'nids with all sorts of weapons. They can recycle their dead, the enemy's dead, and the local wild- and plant life into more troops. They devastate planets quickly, and their warp presence prevents interstellar communications and travel; by the time they get checked on, the planet is long dead. And their total numbers...well, their fleets are on the scale of galaxies. The Imperium would have a huge problem dealing with Tyranids, even without everything else. They would survive for a while, but eventually they would almost certainly die if they didn't get some absolutely incredible new tech or the Emperor to wake up again.
In other words, they're a bit above average in terms of threat to the Imperium. The WH40k 'verse sucks.))
((Except not all that much really. All the current Tyranid Hive Fleets are either destroyed or preoccupied right now. Behemoth got
smashed at Maccrage; sure they devastated the planet, but the Imperium's on such a massive scale that even the chapter world of the smurfs is replaceable - they recovered, after all. I forget how exactly Kraken died, but IIRC it split into a bunch of tiny fleets that either starved to death in transit between worlds or died whenever they hit any resistance - hell, the frikkin Tau managed to kill a Hive Fleet! And Leviathan got all tied up in fighting the Orks thanks to Kryptmann, which actually isn't the dumb move a lot of people seem to think it was considering that if they really wanted to, the Eldar or a Necron dynasty or someone with access to sun busting tech could go to Octarius and make the sun go supernova, wiping out that particular threat. Even if we do accept the conjecture that the Nids have galaxy sized fleets, that really only equals into several thousand fleets at most. Sure, the Imperium would take heavy losses, but if every other faction stopped attacking them and let them recover for a bit they'd kick the
crap out of the bugs from space.
But that's a bit too off topic for me right now.
((Oh shit. I just thought of something horrible.
What if the Altered got Grate?
Seriously, he is effectively an infinite supply of biomass, and they turn biomass into themselves ._.))
...oh you mean in the quantum cloning sense. That wouldn't make a meaningful difference I think.
Empiricist, that doesn't really seem to be cheating. S'what shapeshifting creatures do in an assault.))
((Come to think of it...Scratch the Altered, we need to keep Xan away from Grate.))
((Well now you gave me the idea.
Hell, it could work, though I don't really need it what with the kitchens.))