i think that letting heiro and hydra as the core formations, with biotanks and harridan+gargoyles as the 'scout' formations, and regular gauntswarms and/or carnifex formations as the 'extras' would work

really, all i think you need to do in order to pretty much balance out the biotitans against the AMTL ones is drop their free TK attacks, drop their invuns, make them buy regenerate as standard, and loosen up the restrictions on the upgrades. once a heirophant costs its minimum 400 points it should do ok.

as to naming conventions:

once upon a time there where 2 biotitans and a bunch of little biotanks
the bigger titan was called a Heirophant, the smaller, a Heirodule
then the biotanks where things like the Dactylis, Exocrine, Malefactor and Haruspex, and of course, the Trygon

now thanks to forgeworld and GW messing around with stuff, we have:
one bio titan, still called a Heirophant, except it's now sized like the old Heirodule
we have 4 biotanks, although i hardly consider the mawloc to be a different one to a trygon, and even the two heirodules arent much different.

so to fill in the new gaps a new name for the bigger bio-titan was needed.
its an official concept, not an official name.

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~Every Tool Is A Weapon, If You Hold It Right~

I'm well aware of the mess between the models and background that has been created.

There are two issues.
1) The issue that Zombo refers to in that the current background only has the Hierodule and Hierophant.
2) The epic stats for Bio-Titans are also messed up. The Hierodule should be much closer to the Warhound and the Hierophant should be somewhere between the Warhound and Reaver.

The Conclusion I draw is that we have renamed units that actually shouldn't have been renamed. The epic Hydraphant (9.2.1) should be the Hierophant (40k) and the epic Hierophant (9.2.1) should be the Hierodule.

That would leave a space to drop the Hierodule (9.2.1) for a reimagined set of assault spawn spanning Bio-Tanks and Super Heavy Tanks (Currently just the Trygon but 9.2.1's Hierodules could also remain with reduced DC as reimagined Assault spawn, the Haruspex and Exocrine).

The Assault Spawn at the very least still existed in the background until Apocalypse so there is scope to reinstate them in a modern style list (which would essentially contain all Tyranid units, old style lists would lose the new creatures but new lists wouldn't lose many if any of the old creatures)

It does depend somewhat on the unified stats and names that Jaldon is working on.

Not sure whether this has been brought up before, but hierodules cannot take biomorphs (according to the biomorphs & weapons page) however they can be the titan cluster for a fortress breaker swarm... which requires one to have a synapse biomorph...

Here's the problem, you're trying to mesh the background and unit lists of 20 years ago with the background and unit lists of today, and in doing so you've decided that several of the modern unit types just don't exist at all, or that GW has presented them completely wrongly and that the "real" stats are those of 20 years ago...

...frankly, that's pretty much the antithesis of the "modern" hive fleet list you've been attempting to write. Instead, you've written a list that sits uncomfortably in the middle (With probably too many unit types to ever become balanced, to boot).

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The list is in flux until Jaldon decides on the rules and stats. I don't know whether any of the WE will get synapse by default or would require a synapse symbiote so at the moment there are issues.



Are you refering to the idea of a meshed list or the actual Jormungandr list?
Jormungandr has the Tyranid Codex and FW creatures with the addition of the Hydraphant and Vituperator. What modern unit types are missing, where are the creatures that go against GWs vision and which 20 year old stats are in the list?

I still think that the Harupsex, Malefactor and Exocrine at the very least could be put into a purer Bio-Titan list at the expense of a restricted set of units. They would fill the gap between the Carnifex and the WEs plus we know they exist in later assault waves (via name-dropping in Apocalypse)