Carnifex
A Carnifex is a monstrous Tyranid creature from the Warhammer 40,000 game. Carnifexes are hulking beasts that often are used quite literally as battering rams, barging through enemy lines and tossing tanks around like toys. However, the Carnifex is among the most customizable of Tyranid units, allowing for many different varieties of Carnifex to fulfill different roles on the battlefield ranging from the above mentioned battering ram, to a weapons platform for anti-horde duties. 'Fexes are notoriously resilient, and 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-Terrasque. 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".
Languagefaggotry Note: In Latin, "Carnifex" literally means "butcher," but is also used for an "executioner," a "tallow-renderer," or, more figuratively, a "murderer" or "villain."
Carnifexes in 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In the 5th edition, the Carnifex lost a total of eighteen biomorphs and weapon options, having been replaced by more stringent mandatory loadouts.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 rather paltry statistical increases - putting it arguably somewhere between 20-30 points too expensive for the overpowering majority of competitive army lists, and 10 or so points above the cost-effectiveness ratio provided by variant 'Fexes (such as DISTRACTION CARNIFEX).
How profoundly infuriating this is for Tyranid players writ-large cannot be denied, and is notable for being one of the first times that players openly called foul on Games Workshop. Beyond any doubt, the Carnifex is the mainstay big fucking unit of Tyranid players and is the one unit that literally every Tyranid player has in their army list. It was the epitome of ubiquitous; you could mount lots of options on it, and all of them, to some degree or another, were viable - until this edition hit. This is most Likely because Games Workshop wants more money and by making the Fex suck you have to buy, from Games Workshop, the Trygon to stand a chance.
Some of the new biomorph weapons and options were nice, and there was options added to make some of the 'Nid swarm a little less vulnerable to being dramatically outgunned, and considerably improved Tyranid psyker units (its command units especially), but in the process, the Carnifex - the one fucking model every 'Nid player and their grandmother had at least one of - got toned down dramatically and is now rather inefficient - as well as much more vulnerable to being taken down quickly by certain units with reasonably-effective armor-penetrating weapons (of particular note: Guardsmen with Missile Launchers, Hunter-Killer Missiles, Rubric Marines, Necrons, and Stormtroopers, since the fucking thing can't take Extended Carapace anymore.
It enraged players even more that this edition's weapon changes functionally forced people to buy all-new Carnifexes since the old ones they fielded, such as Sniperfexes (which were armed with Venom Cannons and Barbed Stranglers, to give the Tyranids much-needed fire support and allow them to stun enemy vehicles into submission) were no longer valid, whilst several of the new bioweapons, whilst not bad (people like that the Venom Cannons can score penetrating hits now) are specifically designed to take bites out of the Carnifex's originally-legendary punch (since the gun now replaces 2 hands). Functionally, the Carnifex is now half as good at ranged support as it was before with only token upgrades in return and the loss of about 33% of the Carnifex's durability, since it can no longer shrug off a lot of weapons it used to. The new rules for blast weapons (of which the Heavy Venom Cannon is one) doesn't exactly help the Carnifex's average accuracy, either, which renders its tankbusting potential rather lacking on top of all this.
Extensive debate on /tg/ has been had since the update, arguing whether the new Carnifex is a direct result of corporate evils or the result of gross incompetence or prejudice on the part of Robin Cruddace, the 5th edition codex writer. As of currently, smart money is on the former; it's widely known that GW is bleeding money due to its fuck-ups, which indicates that this may have something to do with it, especially since Robin Cruddace isn't exactly the biggest fan of Tyranids. Which sort of makes him a reverse Matt Ward.
Again, there are a few bright spots. 3rd edition's Old One Eye is back, even if he does now cost more than a Landraider and is barely better than a standard Carnifex with no weapons courtesy of Old One Eye's close-combat only biomorph loadout (his primary advantage is that he recovers wounds of fives or mores instead of just sixes, which isn't worth it at all.) The new Hive Guard is a great unit for fucking with Communist Dipshits that like to use the old Fish of Fury tactic. Wider support for variant weapons, previously from Chapter approved, are also a plus. It's a shame that the good stuff gets out-fucked by the bad.
Carnifexes in 6th Edition
In 6th the Carnifex saw a slight and insubstantial list of changes that does nothing to alleviate the sheer spleen bursting pain you have to suffer just to field one. The carnifex gets it's biggest bonuses riding the monstrous creature buffs that came around in 6th, such as the ease of cover save availability and the sweet hammer of wrath attack you can make when you charge into battle and swing with a S9 I10 attack to sucker punch some unlucky guy. Fear is generally useless and should not be relied upon to make much of a difference, however if it does take effect the Carnifex gains a big in combat boost vs. it's enemies.
The carnifex loses a bit of its tank crushing power as well because it no longer gets to roll 2d6 on the penetration roll and instead taking only a 1d6 unless it ditches half its base attacks (not recommended) to up the strength by 1 and get a reroll on the penetration die. Otherwise the carnifex still takes apart vehicles with record efficiency most of the time. Also people field a few less anti-tank weapons in favor of more anti-infantry power due to 6ed move away from mech warfare, not huge but it helps a bit to have one less railgun rammed down your fex's throat. Oh, and if your canifex falls out of synapse range and falls to instinctive behavoir, the sucker gets +2A on the charge from the Rage rule now, LULZ!
All in all the Canifex remains too expensive to realistically field and hurts your army with every body you throw into the heap (this goes double of Old one eye) while not being a solid enough unit to contribute its own to the battle in any real way. At time of writing a new tyranid codex is not anytime in the foreseeable future and very little love is finding its way to our hulking behemoth.
(With 6th second force org chart at +2000 point games, you can field a total of 18 fexes, that's about 72 T6 wounds and up to as many as 126 S9 attacks ont he charge (if raging) and could go up as high as 180 with crushing claws (very unlikely, but hella scary to think about))
Old One Eye
Old One Eye is the only unique Carnifex in the entire Tyranid Codex ... along with being one of the few unique characters in said codex. He's known for being ultimately fluffy but not the slightest bit crunchy. He has nothing to back his fluff up.
Old One Eye is a Carnifex that was present when Hive-fleet Behemoth came to fuck the Ultramarines' world of Calth. Now, like most Carnifex, his armor was nigh impenetrable. Reaching around the problem, a soldier ignored his armor by aiming a plasma bolt at his head, searing right through his eye and into his skull. The beast was declared dead. He was quickly forgotten, his corpse freezing up during the winter and left behind after his Hive-fleet was obliterated.
Sometime time later, some scavengers found the ice block and thawed it out, hoping to get some cash. (Yes, they decided to follow the plot of Jason X, I would say more like the movie the Thing.) However, like a defeated hero who has to do a sequel, he quickly regenerated his wounds, save for his original plasma scorched eye. He fucked their shit up, ravaging Calth along with the Tyranid remnants from the original invasions. Rumors were spread of a terrible, single eyed beast hunting the terrified population, earning the creature the title of "Old One Eye." You see, despite being cut off from the Hive Mind, skull fucked by a plasma bolt, and frozen, he was still alive. His long stay on an Ultramarines world had earned him a skill that none could counter: Plot armour, rivaling that of the Ultramarines.
The Ultramarines, unable to stop him with regular means, sent in Scout Sergeant Telion, the greatest scout sergeant/sniper in the Imperium. Telion hunted OOE down, cornered him near a cliff, and managed to disable him by shooting his ruined eye socket, causing OOE to stumble into a large ravine die yet again. However, since he was plated with the same plot armor of the Ultramarines, he survived and traveled around Calth, ravaging more and more Imperial cities. Now, this wasn't OOE's only plot armored moment. OOE has been hit on numerous occasions that would outright killed a regular Carnifex. Rumors abound that the creature was killed dozens of times, only to get back up again like some Necron player who owns cheating amounts of good luck with his Reanimation Protocol rolls.
Table-top wise, OOE is a unique Heavy support choice who's more expensive than a regular Carnifex (Around the cost of a Space Marine Land Raider), while not being able to significantly outperform one. In the retarded 5th Edition that is when the Tyranid army went to the shitters, much like the 5th edition space zombies (Check your 6th edition, Necron are now at the top of the heap). So yeah, he's going about, being one of several, excellent avatars of what is wrong with 5th Edition (Cptn. 6th edition here with your morning news, Old one eye; still bad, kind of worse even).