This is what I hate most about this rule, this is exactly what the "leader" ability is supposed to reflect. And why does everyone turn into such nice guys fighting the nids, "don't shoot that one, boys? Its out of synapse range."

Oh, and zombo's d6-2 seems like a good idea

The idea is that there are literally hundreds of nids out of range, running around on their own or dug down in ditches etc. Guys can kill them easily, but there are still a vast number left to be "spawned"

Still this messes up with BTS and tie-breaker.

If you use the above method (regardless if it is a fixed number of Spawn Points dependend on number/kind of Synapses, or a random number of Spawn Points) AND a separate Spawn Pool for each formation (again: perhabs dependend on number/kind of Synapses) then it would solve the BTS and tie-breaker issue.

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Yes, but that's too clunky.

but if you add some degree of randomness via rolling to see if a fm can spawn, then the 'nid player can't game this to mess with BTS. Tie breaker less so, but I don't think people should get so hung up on that - if you go to tie break points then in all senses the game is a draw (not sure for tournaments though), plus something has to give if spawning is to be kept at all. Otherwise, for every single suggestion, naysayers will pop up and say "doesn't represent fluff", "breaks tournament play", "is too directed", "gamey" etc ad infinitum and nothing will get fixed.

A spawning pool combined with D6 spawning (-2 for enemies within 30cm, +2 for brood mother) would be lovely.

How about an admittedly harsh "tyranids lose all tiebreaks"? Would remove the tiebreak spawning problem and act as a minor balance against potential spawning abuse.

Hardly background representative; tyranids love a war of attrition.

how about changing the BTS goal into something akin to the old 2nd ed "Shoot The Big Ones" policy, make it something much easier to achieve than a normal BTS, but let tyranids automatically win tiebreaks.

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One of the main reasons for changing the spawning rules is so tyranids can use the standard bts and tie breaker rules. Otherwise we might as well just stick with what we have.