One Core Old One Eye

I like what youre doing with this Kingsley. For the new guys

I like almost all the choices here, including the choice of Ymgarl as the elite, which after playing the faction for a while agree is the Tyranid elite of choice. I also very much find that Stalking Lictor is the default, and while I recognise the SWP contingent build some good decks, I'm not 100% sold myself. However, have you considered Zoanthrope? I've noted recently that Zoanthrope is almost as good at the command struggle in the short term, but stronger in the long term because of its ability to clear command cappers. In a way, its a bit of a halfway compromise between Lictor and SWP, and in my opinion, actually works better than expected.

A few questions on the fine details:

2 Predation, 2 No Mercy: I'm going with one less predation and one more no mercy, and generally not finding I lack infestation options as the deck demands little infestation. Are you finding the second predation is paying off?

2 Heavy Venom Cannon, 2 Promotion: I'm running one less HVC and 1 more Promotion. Do you find you ever play the HVC as an attachment? For sure, 8/6 Armourbane is quite a frightening prospect, but I've never found a window to play HVC, practically speaking, so I tend to lose 1 shield from the deck in order to add another copy of the best card in the game.

Finally, Tyranid Warrior? For sure, 2/2/4 is a decent statline, but I've found more combat impact from Termagant Horde, even without any other synergies. Not the case yourself, I take it?

This deck was build out only one Core set, so he didn't have access to the 3rd Promotion and No Mercy.

My mistake! I missed that critical bit of info.

I've been finding that the chief weakness of the Tyranids, limited cardpool aside, is a low ability to deal with enemy Elite units or heavy hitters, especially those that have strong abilities for dealing with hordes. For instance, Gleeful Plague Beast, Shrieking Harpy, and Firedrake Terminators are all huge problems for Tyranid decks to deal with. Thus, I've selected the Elite that best deals with these problem cards - the Ymgarl Genestealer, who can hit hard enough to seriously threaten big targets.

I suspect that once Decree of Ruin comes out the Ymgarl Genestealer goes away and the new Ravener goes in, but we'll have to see. The Ymgarl Genestealer has been surprisingly effective thus far, which makes me quite excited to see them in the hands (talons?) of Subject Omega.

This is an interesting deck, and very close to my own, though I opt for a few different Elite units (2x Harpy and 2x Haruspex), and so consequently have digestion pool at the expense of HVC, and I'm still committed to SWP for Synapse (and so Fall Back).

As for your comment about taking care of Elites, I think that you are right, and Genestealers certainly take care of them better than Harpy or Haruspex. The detriment is that OOE without Harpy has a hard time dealing with hordes himself, and can even steal a win back from overwhelming AM and Ork 2/2s, if they get ahead.

I think that what is great is that each of the three Nid elites are about equal usefulness. Haruspex is a great cash cow, Harpy is a great anti-horde finisher, and genestealers are great anti-elite. I might take out the Haruspex for a bit and test the Genestealers, but it's all probably meta dependent, and I don't think that there's any knock-down argument for any one over the others.

There's five elites of course, not counting synapses. Hot to say, even though my warpack review dissed them I'm finding that even Biovore Spore Launcher and Trygon are of pretty reasonable quality, in the right deck.

Yes, but those two don't immediately come to mind for OOE But you're quite right about their real potential quality. Good job FFG!