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For those unfamiliar, Dreadnoughts in 30k can be taken in "Talons," which are basically units that can act independently. You have to deploy them together, but after deployment they can go off on their own and are, for all intents and purposes, treated as their own units. The benefit is that they only occupy one slot in FoC. It makes sense to me to have something similar for Tyranids, specifically for Lictors, but possibly for other units (Venomthropes come to mind as well, *maybe* Carnifex broods despite being HS). It's no secret the Elite slot for Tyranids is way crowded, and many of those units are ones you would want to all have in your army, and would want more than one of, but it's tough to fit them in well. It would make a lot of sense from a fluff perspective as well: Lictors are part of the initial drop/recon force, so the Hive Mind would deploy a group of them and then they split off and do what they need to.

The talons would be limited to the same unit sizes as currently, so 3 of each per slot, and no mixing (So no talon of, say, 2 Venomthropes and a Lictor as one talon). This way, it relieves the strain on the Elite slot, introduces a more tactical element to deploying and unit coverage, and really isn't anything gamebreaking.

Sounds similar to how lictors and zoanthropes worked in the 4th edition codex. You could buy up to 3 of each in a single force org slot, but they deployed and acted independently.
Although back then you were also limited to a single force org slot for each of those units, for some reason.

It's an interesting idea, but I don't think it really adds much these days. Unless you're playing in a tournament with comp rules, detachment slots aren't much of a limitation.
It's just a matter of putting a flyrant in another detachment, adding a pair of 15pt mucolid spores, and now you have an extra 3 elite slots.

Also the Elites slot for tyranids isn't really congested anymore. It certainly was back in the 5th edition codex.
Back then you had Hive Guard being absolutely essential for dealing with all the vehicle spam, the Doom of Malantai being its hilariously broken self, and Ymgarl Genestealers being possibly the games best ambush unit.
In the 6th edition codex however, 2 of those units no longer exist, and the third has been nerfed and meta-shifted into irrelevancy.

These days the only decent units in that slot are Venomthropes/Malanthropes, of which you only need 1 or 2. Along with Lictors.

With respect, I have to disagree. Since variable FoCs is now a thing Tyranids should just receive more slots than other factions. In fact binding them to big squads is actually more thematically appropriate, since Tyranids are suppose to be a roving horde of bodies all following the same will. separating like that implies individuality, which kinda goes against the Nid's theme.

If a unit must have it, I would say the Lictor and that's about it; they and the genestealers are suppose to think independently so they should be the only ones that can go "native" so to speak. But letting every genestealer become a unit of 1 would be too broken (imagine being charged by 20 genestealers and each one counts as a charging unit)

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
With respect, I have to disagree. Since variable FoCs is now a thing Tyranids should just receive more slots than other factions. In fact binding them to big squads is actually more thematically appropriate, since Tyranids are suppose to be a roving horde of bodies all following the same will. separating like that implies individuality, which kinda goes against the Nid's theme.

If a unit must have it, I would say the Lictor and that's about it; they and the genestealers are suppose to think independently so they should be the only ones that can go "native" so to speak. But letting every genestealer become a unit of 1 would be too broken (imagine being charged by 20 genestealers and each one counts as a charging unit)

Might be fun to see competitive 'nids again.
They are supposed to be the biggest threat in the known universe - fluff that falls apart when you watch them get shot like clay pigeons against any decent player.