Codex Tyranids: What Broke the Fans? -Followup

Right now, the nids are being outperformed and outgunned by nearly all factions. The bullshit that the Eldar have especially comes to mind. Today I’ve made a list of specific problems and how to address them. This list uses feedback I got from nid players, and some of the ideas aren’t mine at all, but since they made sense I took them on board, a valid tactic GW might want to try some time when writing a codex. That or lay off the cocaine when writing anything Eldar or Tau.

The Cons:

1. Monstrous Creatures (MC’s) limited to toughness 6, meaning that everything in the codex is vulnerable to all attacks both ranged and in close combat.
2. All Nid monstrous creatures are already fearless, so gain no benefit from synapse, whilst gaining the negatives of instinctive behavior.
3. Having no reliable anti-armour ranged options, and our troops choices being unable to take special weapons above S6. This is of course referring to melta-las equivilant weapons, with the MC’s which rock the large guns being target priority one.
4. Troops can only kill light targets due to strength issues, which is very unlikely to win against the current meta, flyrants and mawloc/lector spam are the only decently competitive options.
5. Reliance on 3+/4+ armour and cover saves in a game which currently revolves around ignoring cover saves and an over-abundence of AP 3 and 4 weaponry.
6. All tyranid units are limited to foot-slogging across the battlefield, meaning that they are slow and largely vulnerable, due to zero transport options, beyond a very costly spore and no means to deploy closer without having to stay in the open for a turn.
7. Shadow in the warp doesn’t work.

The Fixes:

1. Grant MC’s an upgradeable invul save, at a minimum give the hive tyrant access to an optional invun save. If the Zoanthrope can have an invul, so why can’t other albeit weaker psykers?
2. Grant access to the thorax biomorphs to all monstrous creatures, it makes no sense why the only two that have access are the tyrant and the Tyranofex, which are the largest and smallest monsters. This would have the additional benefit of helping some of the lower strength monsters against vehicles with the haywire template, since they have to get in range first.
3. Allow troops to take a warrior or gaunt/hormgaunt prime as a sergeant upgrade to spread synapse around. This would allow some versatility to the movement options of nids as right now synapse dictates movement and a large bubble effect exists where units ‘cling’ to parent MC’s.
4. Change shadow in the warp to alter what is needed for enemy psykers to cast warp charge, make them generate warp charges on a 5, or possibly a 6 if multiple different sets of shadow casters are within range, of something similar to what sisters of silence do. Whilst I hate the current psychic phase in 40k, these are required changes in order for the Shadow to actually have an impact and a consequence on the table.
5. Nid’s need a viable GMC. Currently, the Forge World exclusive nid MC’s are near identical in performance to a Wraithknight but over twice as costly in points. This is ridiculous in the extreme..
6. Introduce a viable ranged tyranid which shoots more than just venom or some such, perhaps a ‘bio railgun’ which is for dedicated anti-tank.
7. Poison. All nids are bio-weapons, and along with this, numerous nids have venom based weapons. Actually give them the poison rule, and obviously make it more potent as per the size of the creature using it!
8. Viable transport options. I’d like to see a Tervigon-style unit which acts as a bio-transport, carrying units within it or upon it, protecting them from enemy fire and providing a modicum of speed to bring them into the battle. This would allow the nids to actually close the range somewhat in what is the most dakka-heavy edition of 40k ever.