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I've been playing Chaos for a long time, and I'm starting to consider branching out a bit. I like the concept of endless swarms of Tyranids (especially termagants to roll the same billion dice for shooting as my KDK do for assault) so I'm thinking about a swarm-style Tyranid army. I've only had a cursory glance of the codex a while ago, but I know the basic concepts are Termagants with Tervigons, and Venomthropes for synapse. A synapse creature for every 500 points or so? What else would be suitable for this types of army? Good formations?

Venomthropes are unfortunately not synapse, youre probably confusng them with their bigger FW cousins Malanthropes.

Venoms along grant shrouding to units with 6, while Malanthropes generate the same aura ontop of beng synapse and if they get a kill in melee grant prefered enemy.

Tervigons generate synapse as well and can be a troop if you take a unit 30 gants, a little pricey but if youre deadset on a carpet of gants it could be fun.

Personally Im unsure of the magic number for synapse units as I often run flying circus with a blob of gants and monsters but I hope this helps.

Endless swarm is a good formation if you want to play a fun/fluffy swarm army. Also expect to die to almost everything (except necrons for some reason) because shooting is king and swarms are primarily melee and short range shooting. Despite the weakness its a massively fun army to play and you can win a lot of otherwise doomed games if you can psyche your opponent up into trying to shoot all the scary things at once (which is also great fun to watch).

As said directly above, you definitely want to take a look at the Endless Swarm formation.

I would also get lots of soothing music queued up, because you'll be modeling and painting a hell of alot of those little buggers if you go the swarm route, and I can tell you from firsthand experience that it gets pretty tiresome. I never want to paint another termagant or hormogant as long as I live.

Tervigons are definitely pretty fun to play with and fit the theme as well.

You will need some sort of potent Heavy Support with this type of army, though. Otherwise, if you run into anything AV11 or higher, you won't be able to make a scratch. Maybe Carnifexes would be a good option here (they also have a couple cool formations for Carnifexes).

Yea, I was thinking something like 1 Flyrant, some Termagants, a Tervigon or two, dakkafexes. Maybe a malanthrope or two depending on how big this list starts getting. How are Harpies/crones? Are they any good? I've heard there's some good shenanigans with spore mines as well.

Also, is it worth it to give Termagants Devourers rather than fleshborers?

Harpies aren't good IMO. Crones are better. They have a nice flamer weapon, and are good anti-air because they can vector strike at high strength. They also have some Haywire missiles that have some kind of AA rule, IIRC. I have two of them. They can be fun and effective, especially with a couple Flyrants flapping around. Point for point, Flyrants are the better option (Flyrants are the best unit in the codex).

Devourers vs. Fleshborers vs. Spinefists. If you want Objective campers, I'd use either Fleshborers (bolt pistol equivalent) or Spinefists (low strenght twin-linkage) so you're not paying extra for an upgrade. If you want dakka, there is dakka to be had with Devourers, but it comes at a cost, and your front lines are going to get killed before they're in range, so I'd recommend a split of minimum 33% fleshborers/67% devourers and put the fleshborers in the front line to soak up fire. If you start collecting Termagants, you will quickly stockpile alot of extra weapons, because each sprue has 3x weapons for every body. Gaunt bodies can be found relatively cheap IME on ebay, so you shouldn't have a problem modeling multiple weapon loadouts if you're willing to go there for bits.

Incidentally, the Endless Swarm formation can be found in the publication Tyranid Invasion: Rising Leviathan II. This dataslate also has a Skyblight formation, which requires several FMCs, but does the endless swarm thing for gargoyles. This one never really seemed to attractive to me, but it's worth mentioning because you said you liked swarms.

Be aware that Gaunts are very squishy, and you will inevitably lose your share of games with a Tyranid swarm army, so if you do it, do it for the fun of it.

So looking through the formations, is the Incubator node worth anything? In combination with Endless Swarm instead of a CAD maybe?

I've never tried Incubator Node. It seems like alot of units of Termagants for a minimal improvement to the Tervigon's "birthing" output. Be aware that while Tervigons can poop out alot of Termagants, there's a rule whereby if you roll any doubles (on a 3d6), the egg sac is exhausted. Its very easy to roll doubles on a 3d6, and nothing in Incubator Node does away with the doubles rule (maybe rerolling 1s might even make it worse mathematically??). The Endless Swarm seems like a much better bonus rules to me. Of course, if you end up with the models to play the formation, which seems pretty easy to do , (especially if you take the minimum number of gaunts in the Termagabt Broods), why not give it a try?

I've looked back at the Endless Swarm and realized Warriors actually have Synapse. I went ahead and made a Battlescribe list for 1k points that gives me a CAD with Flyrant, Tervigon, Rippers for troops, and 2 Zoanthropes alongside an Endless Swarm w/ Toxin Sacs for Hormagaunts and 8 dev/4 fleshborers per Termagant brood.

 KharnsRightHand wrote:
I've looked back at the Endless Swarm and realized Warriors actually have Synapse. I went ahead and made a Battlescribe list for 1k points that gives me a CAD with Flyrant, Tervigon, Rippers for troops, and 2 Zoanthropes alongside an Endless Swarm w/ Toxin Sacs for Hormagaunts and 8 dev/4 fleshborers per Termagant brood.

Nice. If you want 2 cheap troops choices to unlock the CAD, check out Mucolid Spore cluster. You only need one Mucolid Spore per unit, and each one costs as much as a Space Marine IIRC. I believe the rules for this and other units that were released after the current codex are available free on GWs website.

Also, if you can find a boxset called Wrath of the Hive Mind, it includes the Flyrant, Tervigon, Warriors, and Termagants at a discount. Rippers come on the Gaunt sprues. Good value box set relatively speaking for GW. It's out of Print, but my flgs still has multiple copies and I bet they can still be found on eBay.

As someone who owns close to 300 little bugs, nid swarms are great!

The endless swarm formation is great for swarm lists, as is the one formation that pairs 2 units of gargoyles with a flyrant. Venomthropes are needed in order to ensure some of your bugs make it to the other side of the table. You'll have a base 5+ cover save, and at least a 3+ when in any terrain. The other benefit is that your important monsters can hide behind your swarms of horms and terms with a 3+ intervening cover save.

When I run swarms, I tend to run the endless swarm formation, 2 basic warrior squads for objective camping and more synapse, a couple venomthropes spread out in the swarm, flyrants or tervigons (depending on how competitive I want to be), and then the remaining points in heavies. I run either tyrannofexes or carnifexes. Test out different heavies and see what you like.