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First things first, this is not a woe is me the tyranids codex is terrible and not worth it forum. Please take any negative preconceptions to a different appropriate forum.

So a little explanation to start. I have a tendency to shy away from spamming and Internet lists. While many of the are dominant, competitive 40k knows and practices against them. Going from that theory that your opponent is most familiar with and most capable of defeating the consensus top lists this is a foray into creating balanced out of the box armies that will fit your personality and play style.

For example I tend to shy away from farseer and wave serpent spam eldar. Just doesn't match my play style. I just get bored at shuffle and roll a bucket of dice. So that's part of where I coming from.

So if you have something the opponent is not prepared for, it's like stealing the initiative. They start to second guess themselves, or stray from the plan they are most comfortable with.

So I look at the tendencies of the popular Internet lists seems like a tervignon in troops, a couple of flyrants, and a couple of crimes/harpies. Add carnifex or mawloc to flavor and at least two more sources of synapse.

The tactic against these lists largely is: take down the synapse starting with the fast movers and watch as most of the army folds by itself. When the tervignon dies it tends to kill an equivalent number of gants to what it managed to make. Against some armies you can overwhelm them with the fast moving FMC forces, however if your opponent has either massed fire or abundant sky fire, chances are you won't have more then a single turn of impact damage before you have lost around half your army including your warlord.

So following the thought that the primary tactic for an enemy is to take out your synapse. How to disrupt that and overwhelm them in another way? I have a couple ideas to explore: overwhelming threat waves, speed based synapse formations, and no synapse at all.

Say what? No synapse? I want to follow that thought first. I think it may be surprisingly powerful, especially in lower point games. Now it doesn't have to be ni synapse at all, as long as it doesn't rely on synapse. There are a surprising number of options if you remove synapse from the equation. So starting from 500 points.
NO SYNAPSE
Only two hq choices are available and both offer interesting potential. My favorite is death leaper. Much like a flyrants you can only snap shoot at him. He has shrouded without the ubiquitous venomthrope and he never has to take grounding tests from marker lights. A really neat counter to many of the instant death cover ignoring weapons, ion cannon blasts and blast master shots can't target death leaper. Flames can't either for that matter.
While death leaper will rarely single handedly take on an opponents army and win. He nullifies a lot of the powerful psyker combos out there just by being in your army. He can handle himself very well against general troops, and he has some synergy with any deep striking unit in the book.

Troops in the none synapse lists sadly are limited to genestealers and I would say warriors. They are synapse, but you can build the rest of the army without planning on them baby sitting anyone. I like the genestealers myself because they are a touch cheaper and know what they want to do. Their general purpose would be to claim Objectives and go to ground. If you get close enough to charge them in cover they are still going first most of the time. Also having them and death leaper as infiltrators regardless of who so. The roll off, you get to place most of your on board guys after your opponent. A couple squads of those and your on to the flavor of the army. Keeping with the theme I would tend to pick either a mawloc or a trygon as the heavy hitter. Can drop in wherever death leaper is since he will be a primary target of your enemy, and six wound MCs are hard to deal with at low points. A haruspex, exocrine, or single model carnifexs are also good possibilities.

As you go to expanding the army up towards 1750 points for a tourney list, that is what should be focused on. Monstrous creatures with the feed IB, or units with the hunt IB. When you don't spend the points to provide tons of synapse you end up with a lot of points to throw around. Old one eye can be good because he is one more single monstrous creature your opponent has to deal with. Multi-wound units like ravenors are another good unit to put in there as they will be in combat quickly, and they can sustain the couple of wounds that they might lose to IB.


Going to get this posted for now and look forward to hearing responses. I'll follow up on my thoughts for the other two builds later.

Okay, so I'm going to pursue a bunch of battle tests to get synapse free out there in the near future, but I'm going to follow through on thoughts with fast moving synapse forces.

SPEED BASED SYNAPSE FORMATIONS

So my idea with this stems from the issue I often have with flyrants in how they zip out ahead of my main force and find themselves either unsupported, or no longer providing viable synapse for the army trying to keep up. Aside from trying to fix how I use him, which certainly could be improved, I think if you design the forces of your army to a similar speed it will help with the overlap necessary to keep important units from running. So now you have to figure out the speed at which you want your army or formations in your army want to move.

Super fast synapse formations: This would be your flyrants and trygon prime. You could include outflanking tervignons here, but I would hate to rely on the chances both of it coming in, and in the correct place. This army gets to your opponent faster then anything else, however it pays for that speed. Your support units are mostly limited to the fast attack FOC, mawlocs, and trygons. All of these are pretty expensive for their prices, and a number of them don't actually need the support of synapse in the first place. Mawlocs and Trygons in the turn after they arrive in deep strike have likely been caught up to by synapse. Harpies and crones are traveling with your flyrants, however they are very fragile support who cannot generally claim objectives, and also seem to have trouble regaining their points either in distraction of fire, or in damage done. The rest of the fast attack FOC will still have to deep strike to really get to the enemy at the same time as the flyrant, if they are jumping or running, they will still be behind your all important warlord, and they will be outpacing any slower units behind you. If they deep strike, they didn't need instinctive behavior that turn anyway. If you have a number of trygons coming up, you could hope to bring infantry through it as scorers and heavier fire power, but much like the outflanking tervignon, that's a dangerous strategy to rely upon. When running a group of super fast units, I would not want the flyrant to be my warlord, I would build it with the plan of a number of infiltrator based units like lictors and genestealers already in place, and I would make it only part of my overall strategy. Infiltrators cannot be relied upon here as they can be easily countered by infiltrators, servo skulls, and poor cover options. I would expect this formation would work best coming on from reserve or thrusting quickly towards an opponents most dangerous units with the expectation of it being a suicide mission.

Faster synapse formations: This would be the bread and butter of most armies I believe. Shrikes, non-deep striking trygons, outflanking warriors, and I suppose careful trajectories on flyrants would be the synapse for these formations. They can be supported by a number of units though. I would expect most of the plan here to be flanking around an opponent. Once again the fast attack FOC works well here, although less so the harpies and crones. Ravenors, hormagaunts, adrenal gland filled monstrous creatures and infiltrators placed just outside your deployment zone will work well in this formation. Infiltrators will have more success when they aren't expected to be right up on the enemies lines, although the going to ground and then popping up in synapse can work well here. A squad of shrikes emphasizing shooting, Venom cannon upgrade for helping take out tanks. Screen with a flock of gargoyles, then backed up by an adrenal gland carnifex with bio-plasma, or an exocrine with adrenal glands would be my starting place. Adding more units based on how much I want to put upon the enemies flank. I would also try to mentally take two of these, perhaps the other synapse based upon a trygon prime. This way I can either send two flankers in opposite directions, or really emphasize one side.

Slow synapse formations: Here are the big anvil units. Tervignons (troop or not). Walking tyrants, zoanthropes, Old one eye, warriors. These guys will generally be pushing right up the middle of the board. Maximizing the bubble of damage possible with their shorter ranged guns, and denying board due to charging. This is the group that would be utilizing a bastion if that fits your style. A venomthrope inside gives a huge shrouded bubble, and forces your opponent to expend their strongest weapons to kill off a 45 point guy in a cheap bunker. Zoanthropes or warriors can hide behind the bastion, but then become very static. A tyrant with heavy venom cannon and one guard I think would survive well on top of the bastion. If it is destroyed out from under him it is only one wound from the fall. This becomes a static synapse formation, but it moved up towards the center of the board at least. The units I would support with here are termagant hordes, hive guard, monstrous creatures without adrenal glands, tyranofex with the acid spray and thorax swarms makes a great anvil type unit. I would consider this the place to throw those large squads of carnifexs' with dual devourers. Both the main scoring portion of the army and the most durable portion of the army.

Static synapse formations: The stay at home mom with the artillery here. A small squad of warriors with a cannon. A tervignon with or without the miasma cannon. Generally babysitting a squad of biovores they sit on a rear objective and lob blasts at the enemy. I feel like that tervignon sitting back there is a good option as a warlord. He's much more durable then the flyrant that was sent zipping forward and he can still support and control your backfield. Tyranofex with the rupture cannon would likely be back here.

As to how I would build a list based around this plan. I want flexibility, momentum, and mobility. For me personally the flying hive tyrant is too fragile and too often out there on his own, I think I will be shying away from lists with him. Instead I would start my super fast force with deep strikers to support infiltrators. If I'm going the synapse route, a trygon prime. Depending on my opponents I can either deep strike him with others, or I can run him alongside the fast guys at an edge. Already being 230 points I don't want to give him many bonuses. Regeneration can be nice, but if I expect him to deep strike, he rarely will survive that one turn of shooting he has to take. Ravenors and shrikes, again I can use them either as deep strike suicide shooters who aren't relying on synapse, or as quick engage flankers. Mawlocs can be fun and when paired with genestealer and lictor support can create a good beach head for your speedy guys to catch up to. At this point I've used two out of my three heavy options, and unless I'm using the deathleaper formation I've used up an hq or elite slot. As well as two of my fast attack slots. For the balance of my force I would tend towards the anvil center group. A tervignon as warlord, or troop, regen is worth it on him I find. Barring force weapons I've had a lot of luck with him sticking around throughout games. An exocrine or a tyranofex with acid spray would be my third heavy for the anvil group. If I went the troop tervignon route, this is where the gants are, although hopefully outside of the tervignons popping bubble. They get their synapse from the strong zoanthrope squad or the back end of the speedy formations shrikes. Warriors with a venom cannon or barbed strangler to fill out a troop choice or two. They can sit in reserve if the trygon prime is deep striking. I have a chance that they can pop in deep, or come onto the backfield and control the one objective I leave in my deployment zone. This army I believe is going to be better the more points it is allowed. It's really tough to get multiple speed formations out of any less then 1250 point force. As to the tervignon, I would prefer him be my hq for his toughness, and I prefer stealers and hormagaunts to big blobs of termagants in the troops section.

I am not sure that you will get much discussion on this thread as a lot of what you have mentioned is being discussed on JY2's main Tyranid Thread. People still do not agree on the 'standard' Tyranid list as it is so Meta dependent. You may be better joining that thread.

I know somebody overthere has posted about Low/No Synapse army choices. But no reason not to split it out....

I've noticed that some people are taken with the datslate that apears to have a Deathleaper based formation.

I have started to build a lot of "like like" for Lictors lately, but don't have the models yet to try them out. Last Codex my base (1500 pt) army had two big broods of Genestealers and I build larger forces by adding in, so all my lists used two big broods of 'Stealers.

I've also come to think that Lictors calling down Deep Striking Sporemines clusters is a very nice early turn(s) tactic...

It sounds like a pretty good concept, since Nids are pretty vulnerable to focused targeting on Synapse creatures. The downside IMHO is that so much of your proposed list is infiltrators and deep-strikers, which means you're more vulnerable to focused fire while less of your army is on the board. Your Warlord, genestealers, and Mawloc/Trygon wouldn't come into the game until later, perhaps too late.

You mentioned single-model Carnifex units, why not take multi-MC units? I like to kit one Carnifex with Regeneration and stick him at the front so he takes all the wounds from shooting, and has the best chance to recover those wounds while protecting the rest of the unit. Single-monster units are also vulnerable to giving your enemy the edge in Purge the Alien matches where you might lose out simply because your models were spread over too many units (especially since your opponent can focus on eliminating whole units while part of your army is waiting in reserves).

As a smallside-bar, have you thought about making Tyranid Kill-team lists based loosely on the same concept? It's hard to make Synapse work in Kill-team games, since you only have 200 points and can't take any models with more than 3 wounds, so you'd have to rely more on things like the Genestealers you mentioned.

There are a couple of other dimensions to ignoring synapse. For whatever reason bastions and such are seen good for tyranids. I believe they make the lists more static. You need someone in the backfield to babysit whatever you leave there. Also all your objectives should be on the other half of the board, giving you intensive to get there quickly.

I do not have Tyranids yet, but I want to give them a try. I will do that with as few models as possible, thus having e.g. Deathleaper and Old One Eye as HQ options would work nicely. I am still undecided between Genestealers and Tyranid Warriors. As I do not want to play the objectives game (go for tabling , I might use several troops of Tyranid Warriors. They are going to pull a lot of fire, maybe allowing my MC's get there.

I definitely believe that low synapse dependancy is the way to go and am interested to see what you can come up with.

My meta is different, no flyers or Serpent spam and we mostly play at 1500.

I know my own Tyranid army will have no synapse in it. I've always loved the idea of an all Lictor/all Genestealer army, and now I will do it. Deathleaper as HQ, 6-9 Lictors as Elites, and then as many Genestealers as I can cram in with the leftover points. Will it win me a bunch of games? Probably not. But the look on my opponent's face when I dump out my Box o' Genestealers (maybe I should get a little barrel for them, to be a Barrel o' Genestealers and I can chain them like the plastic monkeys?) should be great.

Thanks for all the further input guys. I look forward to putting some dice and models to the idea. I'm still working in the ethereal here though.

You mentioned single-model Carnifex units, why not take multi-MC units? I like to kit one Carnifex with Regeneration and stick him at the front so he takes all the wounds from shooting, and has the best chance to recover those wounds while protecting the rest of the unit. Single-monster units are also vulnerable to giving your enemy the edge in Purge the Alien matches where you might lose out simply because your models were spread over too many units (especially since your opponent can focus on eliminating whole units while part of your army is waiting in reserves).

So my reasoning behind the single model monstrous creatures who have the feed instinctive behavior, is that they won't be killing each other. If the mult-carni squad fails their instinctive behavior and starts chewing on itself you can end up with weakened models very quickly. Already being only four wound guys it makes them a much easier target. On the other hand, a single model will ignore that roll and consider charging the nearest opponent. Likely your plan anyway. This also gives you something of a maximum threat over load with multiple targets your opponent has to focus their heavy fire power on.

There are a couple of other dimensions to ignoring synapse. For whatever reason bastions and such are seen good for tyranids. I believe they make the lists more static. You need someone in the backfield to babysit whatever you leave there. Also all your objectives should be on the other half of the board, giving you intensive to get there quickly.

I believe the primary use of the bastion for tyranids is not to babysit backfield objectives as it is for most other armies. Instead you are placing it near the center of the board and getting a venemthrope into it, and a zoanthrope behind it. The size of the bastion hides your zoanthrope from enemy fire via line of sight making for a very hard to kill synapse. The venemthrope inside has his 6" shrouding bubble maximized by now providing it 6" from the outside of the bastion. Effectively giving you I believe a 13.5 inch bubble of shrouded.

This army will actually cause some problems against the current most powerful build of seer star. (The star itself.) While the seers can be incredibly durable, they are all in all a close combat unit. An average one at that. Being a close combat strong army, most of the units within this build would be able to cause a lot of damage to the seer star if they charged or being charged. Deathleapers ability will target the most important farseer, and the -1 leadership from the lictors will greatly effect both the warlocks and the farseers themselves. Imagine that fortune seer trying to cast on ld 6. If you did have that squad of warriors in their somewhere as well...Ld 3. How the army does against the four or five wave serpents also in the army, that I have yet to figure out. Likely that's more then a little bit of a problem.

I personally am running a near synapse free list and liking it as well. At first I didn't like the 5 man stealer squads, but now I can see that it helps withover saturation turn one. Not many lists can even shoot 14 infiltrating units, let alone kill them all.

Sucks when you get purge, but other than that it is working fine.

I'm planning on running a couple of test games at 500 and 750 points with synapse free tyranids and I need army lists to test against. I'be got eldar on hand and I can proxy as needed for others. I would love to get some suggestions.

I like it, it sounds fun. Could be worth running a Prime with a blob of termagants or Carnifex to bolster the strength of the squad & add that threat of a Prime reaching them in turn 4-5.

Yes he got more expensive for about the same (worse boneswords and all that jazz)... but I still wouldn't wanna throw things at him in combat & a Prime with +30 wounds is just scary. It's usually right around turn 3 people notice it's coming...