Editing Warhammer 40,000/5th Edition Tactics/Tyranids (section)

===HQ Units===
*'''Hive Tyrant''' - The Hive Tyrant is often regarded as the "leader" of the Hive because they are gigantic monsters with synapse power. Synapse keeps all the little monsters from running around out of your control, therefore the Hive Tyrant is the boss. Unfortunately, Hive Tyrants are very expensive in the 5th edition, clocking in at 1.7x the cost of any no-name Space Marine HQ but lacking invulnerable saves or the ability to join most squads. Their upgrades are also pretty expensive, but they sport some interesting psychic powers that some players feel make the investment worthwhile. Unfortunately, most of those psychic powers are short range, and plenty of the options aren't terribly helpful. Odds are, when somebody is telling you that the Tyrants have good psychic powers, they're really just talking about Paroxysm, which lowers one enemy unit's WS and BS to 1.
*'''The Swarmlord''' - Essentially just a bigger, more expensive Hive Tyrant, the Swarmlord is what people refer to as a "Deathstar" unit. The reason is because the Swarmlord is massive, devastatingly powerful, unreasonably expensive, possesses a high demand for resources during the game, and has laughably stupid weaknesses for all it took to get the damn thing. For one thing, hitting it with six Krak missiles or any equivalent will statistically put it down without a fight since every missile wounds on a 2+ and ignores the damn thing's armor save. However, the Swarmlord can cast two psychic powers per turn and has several special abilities that buff nearby units in varying ways. It also gets an invulnerable save in close combat, inflicts Instant Death, has a ridiculously high WS, forces the enemy to reroll successful invulnerable saves and so on. If it ''can'' be put in close combat then it is liable to seriously mess up whatever it's fighting. The Swarmlord is generally agreed to be one of the most devastating melee hq units in the entire game, quite capable of going toe to toe with Abaddon, and if Paroxysm is used first, will cut down Abaddon without a scratch. Oh and paroxysm is pretty much the Swarmlord's "I win" button against other close combat monsters, Abaddon won't look so threatening when he has an WS of 1.  
**Note: The Swarmlord is more or less meant to be taken with a Tyrant Guard brood. This takes the death star unit and turns it into grotesquely durable death machine, with two additional t6, 3+ save, ablative wounds a piece and a large number of high strength power weapon attacks that allow the Swarmlord to defeat pretty much any other equivalent commander and whatever retinue he's packing, especially with Paroxysm. Yes it's expensive, but it is absolutely devastating.   
**Edit: Holy shit he's got a model now!  And good god it is ''beautiful''!  
*'''Tyrant Guard''' -big, dumb walls of armor that serve only as meatshields and honor guards for your Tyrant or Swarmlord. They're s5, t6 with 2 wounds and a 3+ armor save and  have access to power weapons, meaning they don't slouch in combat. If you're planning on footslogging the Swarmlord or an armored shell Tyrant across the board, Tyrant Guard are your means to get them there. Just beware that the Tyrant doesn't die while with them, or you'll completely lose control of the bastards. They're really handy, but would 3 wounds and/or a 2+ armor save be too much to ask for?  They are stated to be pound for pound the most well armoured tyranids, for fucks sake the Hive Mind decided not to give them eyes so the enemy couldn't shoot those and they stole space marine fused ribs and black carapace!
*'''Tyranid Prime''' - A handy little bugger. For about 15 points less than the Space Marine captain, you get a Toughness 5, Strength 5, super-Warrior, who provides Synapse, and possesses his fair share of combat options. Most importantly though, he is an Independent Character. If the Prime joins a Warrior unit, the Warriors can use the Prime's WS and BS, but it is also sincerely helpful to join the prime to other multiwound Tyranid broods, such as Zoanthropes. Normally those broods are Krak missile and Melta bait, but with a Prime attached the wounds can be allocated to it instead, saving the other models the frustration of Instant Death. 
*'''Tervigon''' - This is the cheesy bread and butter of the new codex. There's no point in putting Tervigons in the HQ section, because even though they can be taken as HQ, they will always be troops. For every squad of gaunts purchased, one Tervigon can be made a troop choice. Since tervigons are gigantic monstrous creatures with six wounds and actually spawn more gaunts, you would be fucking insane not to include at least one in your more competitive armies! '''AND IT FINALLY HAS A MODEL!'''
*'''The Parasite of Mortrex''' - This here is one of the glaringly gimmicky additions to the new codex. It's a flying Warrior, kind of, that spawns 1D6 rippers every time a unit it kills fails a Toughness Test. Once you place all six bases, you'll easily be able to see that six ripper bases would never fit inside a Guardsman, but fuck that noise; the description says they all came from eggs put in the Guardsmen by the Parasite. Although it sounds neat, it actually doesn't spawn all that many rippers most of the time, especially against Space Marines and their equivalents, and since it's T4 everybody's good friend Mr. Space Marine With a Hidden Powerfist will instantly kill it during the return fire. The Parasite is a pretty circumstantial little fucker, but a great fuck-you against tarpits.