Carnifex
A Carnifex is a monstrous Tyranid creature from the Warhammer 40,000 game. A huge and terrifyingly strong monster, the Carnifex often serves as the primary damage-dealer of a Tyranid army list, and is among the most customizable of Tyranid units, allowing for many different varieties of Carnifex to fulfill different roles on the battlefield. They can even be upgraded with regeneration - a mutation previously unique to a Carnifex special character known as Old One Eye, but later introduced to the standard Tyranid army list - making them extremely difficult to kill; It's pretty much a diet Robo-Tarrasque. 40k players commonly name specific variations of Carnifex by taking another word that represents the concept and appending "-fex" to the end - for example, the Dakkafex is a shooty Carnifex based on the Ork term "dakka".
More tricky Tyranid players may attempt to use Carnifexes as decoys to draw enemy fire when their smaller units actually present the greater threat to an enemy, as opposing players are apt to focus fire on the Carnifex to attempt to destroy it before it can do serious damage.
Carnifex in the 5th Edition
In the 5th edition, the carnifex lost a total of eighteen biomorphs and weapon options, having been replaced by more stringent mandatory loadouts. The carnifex has also faced a doubling in base point cost with only tepid stat increases, putting it arguably somewhere between 20-30 points too expensive for a competitive army list. Since the carnifex was previously one of the Tyranid's most popular and best selling models, there was a wide margin of Tyranid players on /tg/ who called foul on Games Workshop, accusing them of wrecking the one creature EVERY Tyranid player owned to force everybody to go out and buy new models. However, whether the new carnifex is a direct result of corporate evils or the result of gross incompetance or prejudice on the part of Robin Cruddace, the 5th editon codex writer, is a matter of rampant speculation.
Furthermore, the old tournament favorite, the "sniperfex," which simultaenously used barbed stranglers and venom cannons to relentlessly stun tanks into submission, has been completely invalidated. It, like so many other choices, including tusks, spinebanks, scythe tails, extended caraprace, and more, have been stricken from play. But on the bright side, 3rd edition's Old One Eye is back, even if he does now cost more than a Landraider.
