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I have Tau and Necrons and have no use of this but i like thinking of rules and with 2 of my friends having Dark Angels/Tyranid and Ork/Tyranid i had been tossing around an idea of why Tyranid cant be allies. Now I can understand if your a Tyranid player and having no one to ally with, your too vicious to share. But If your say Space Marines, or Dark Angels what about the few Tyranids wondering around some rogue planet with no Synapse Creature around to tell it what to do? So why cant any psyker or psychic character just BE the Synapse Creature? And this is what I came up with, id like some input and see what people think of this. Like i said i doubt this will be used in my group of friends but seemed like a decent way around it and if for nothing else for some entertainment.


The Overmind

Any Psyker/Psychic HQ may take this ability for 25 points

The Overmind: Grants the model the ability to take any Tyranid unit (Excluding HQ choice and any Synapse creatures) as an ally. Units taken this way may not exceed normal force organization Slots and must stay within 24" of the HQ. Any Leadership test that has to be taken by a Tyranid unit must use the HQ's Leadership. Once a unit is taken the HQ must make a d6 roll (Concentration Roll) for each Tyranid unit at the beginning of each turn to see if his/her concentration holds. To determine if you are successful or not depends on the type of unit(s) taken (see below).


Troops - 2+
Fast Attack - 3+
Elite - 4+
Heavy Support - 5+


ie; If a HQ model has taken 2 units of 20 Termagants then 2 d6's need to be rolled with a value of 2 or higher.

Depending on the result of the die there are 2 things that can happen;

Sucess: You may move, shoot, assault like normal.

Failure: You have lost control of that unit for the remainder of this turn and they will revert to their Instinctive Behavior (see Tyranid Codex pg 33)

In the case of having to play a Tyranid player with your Overmind ability, all d6 rolls are counted as being 1 higher (see below);

Troops - 3+
Fast attack - 4+
Elite - 5+
Heavy Support - 6

To help augment the chances of sucessful rolls the HQ may reduce all rolls by 1 for 1 turn per 1 Toughness. This cannot bring the Concentration Roll to lower then 2+. And this cannot reduce the Toughness of the HQ model to less than 1 Toughness. This represents the HQ as focusing all of his/her mental focus on holding control of the unit. The HQ can still act normaly but should keep in mind the possible change in Toughness value. An example of this is show below.

ie; Space Marine Librarian has a Toughness of 4, He also has 2 unites of Tyranid, 1 Unit of 20 Termagants (Troops), and 1 Unit of Lictors (Elite), This player now has to make 2 rolls before his Tyranid can do anything this turn, 1 at a 2+ (Termagants) and 1 at a 4+
(Lictors). If he makes his Toughness 2 instead of 4, his Concentration Rolls now become 2+ (Termagants) and 2+ (Lictors). His Toughness stays this value till the next Concentration Roll is made.

Reclaiming a unit
Trying to reclaim a feral unit can be done with a successful Concentration Roll (with no augment of the rolls seeing that you no longer have control of the unit) If the result is a success you can immediately break combat (if with your own units or other allies). If failure to reclaim the unit, the unit continues to seek the closest unit for combat or dies. Attempting to Reclaim a unit can be done as many times as the player desires. Only 1 Reclaim can be done per turn per unit.



Thank you for reading and hope it was atleast interesting and hope it is tried.

I think it actually makes sense...

coming from me (I stand by my name), that means it could actually work.

However, instead of just attacking randomly, I say it just does its individul Instinctive Behaviour, just as though it was out of synapse range.

You also need a range of the ability, 24" sounds about right

I'd say just let them take Genestealer Cult allies. That covers IG, Tau, perhaps Eldar and Orks

Most Tyranid strains do not have stomachs or metabolisms that would support this, and die quickly when not in use. Commonly, only Lictors, Genestealers, and various noncombatant strains (proto-rippers, etc.) have any sustainable lifecycles at all.

Ooh didn't think of the range, I like that. Is 24" normal range for tyranid synapse creatures?And their instinctive behavior? They have a behavior when out of synapse? Cool lol then yeah whatever gw has made up use that.

And like I said I just have necrons and tau and don't have psykers are there many? So that more than one race can do this? And chrisrawr your saying that after some day or two out of synapse they die? So a small window of oppurtunity to be able to take the tyranids.

12" is normal range.

I'm saying that, after 1-2 days, PERIOD, they die. A tyranid assault isn't like a Zerg assault. Rippers carpet the floor, eat anything that dies, and bring it back to the assimilators to be sucked into space-faring leviathans by giant biostraws.

On the same vein, new nids are spawned all over by this same bio-exchange. They don't eat. They don't breathe. They're bio-battery powered.

There are exceptions, as I pointed out, but they're rare. Outside of Synapse range just means that their backup instincts take over, rudimentary brains that can do parabola calculations and velocity tracking for firing weapons or chasing targets.

It's not a "small window of opportunity", it's "If you go to a planet that's somehow fought back all of the strains of Tyranid that DO reproduce (without, somehow, killing the more aggressive ones that don't), by the time you get there, they'll all have begun dissolving into biogoo.

Aww aw well it was an idea. I didn't know much about bids in first place but sounded cool. Thanks for the input.

If they were like Zerg, I'd agree - cool Idea!

But they're more like Snowmen. They melt and get recycled by little Ripper elves, along with anything they've killed.

I'm not so sure how true it is that they don't have sustainable life cycles.
Didn't Old One Eye survive on his own in the wilderness of Calth for ages? I know he was frozen initially, but he eventually thawed out, and continued rampaging against the local populace.

Though I like this idea, I think in order to be fluffy, it would be too limited to be particularly playable. Though certainly, Genestealers, Ymgarl Stealers and Lictors could work, for it.

The Ghorala swarm survived burruwd and hiding in caverns for weeks feeding on orks.

And it apperently took years to remove the tyranids from macrage, so they can survive for long periods.

@chrisrawr

I quote from the Tyranid codex, page 57, Old One Eye

'The legend of Old One Eye might have ended had it not been for a band of smugglers who stumbled across its body decades later." (it was awakened after years)

And later: "(...), Old One Eye roamed across the landscape of Calth in search of more prey. Like much of the Ultramar system at this time, Termagants still lurked within caves (...). These creatures were drawn to Old One Eye (...)."

So unless you can give a source to your claims Tyranids can survive on their own for a very long time.

OT, I like the idea alot, but how are you going to solve the problem of running tyranids without synapse? Gants are only Ld 6 on their own.. What if they get the Ld of the psyker controlling them instead?

Hmm ill have to read a bit of the nix book. But I'd figure basically the psykers would be surrogate synapse creatures. So as for ld tests they would have to use HQ ld. As for races that don't have a how with psychic to basically replace synapse. Could just be a purchase. But the cost for non psychic HQs would be more seeing that they have to learn to be psychic and the Overmind ability.so like 65 points



Or just a genetic neural enhancement that is paid (50 points) to gain Overmind ability. I'm sure in the year 40,000 that augmenting genetics is a common thing. That way everyone can. But necrons, but they have mind shackle scarabs that could do technically the same thing.