Tyranids, the new pro?

The more I look at the Tyranid book, the more I think it's one of the most difficult armies to play.  It's been a long time since Tyranids joined the 5th Edition party and I think it's time to revisit them as an army.  Let's talk about some of the flaws of the Tyranid book really quickly:

• A lot of stuff doesn't make sense:  Why aren't there frag nade equivs on a lot of the assault units?  Why can't the Carnifex take 2+ armor?  Why the hell is it priced so high?  Why can't Lictors pop out and charge?  There is a LOT of these questions vs. the last army book.
• The FOC is all messed up:  The elite slot has like 3 pages worth of units.  Really?  All this for 3 unit slots?  Why couldn't some of these been placed in the heavy slot.  In fact, why's there so many units all over the place?
• Why is everything so expensive?  Compared to the 3rd Ed. army book, almost everything went up in cost.. by a lot.  This leaves lists with very "limited" options for the most part.  I put limited in quotes because what I'm going to say next is going to make you think Trygons over Carnifex isn't as clear cut any more.

Now that that stuff is out of the way (and if you disagree, please let me know), let's talk about the good stuff:

• Everyone knows that compared to Cruddace's other book, the IG codex, the Tyranids book looks like a rush job, sloppy piece of shit that's horribly imbalanced both internally and externally.  Then we look at how the book plays and it is nothing like last edition.  Then we slam our faces against a wall for over a year, bitch and moan all over whinseer and fakka and then play with every single unit in the book trying to "crack" the winning build.  Just when all hope is lost, I'm here to tell you that Tyranids is actually a "master-class" army.
• What?!  You can't be serious?!  Well, I kind of am.  I think Tyranids are one of those armies who's synergy and list composition has to be so tight that there's virtually no room for error.  Everything in the army has to make sense and every unit you take has to do its job according to your army's design.
• But, what do you mean?  I mean the general has to be superb, the list has to be a well-oiled machine and that he must play his heart out against the horrors of the current meta.  Like Dark Eldar, the only other army I would put into the mythical "master-class" category, there needs to be a battleplan in your head before your deployment against every army.  This isn't a I'm-going-to-shoot-this army like Vendetta/Chimeras, Razorspam or Psyfleman where the only true skill of the army lies in target priority, but an army that can be destined to fail from deployment to movement, to shooting to assault.
• Lastly, I want to say that no matter what, by book flaws alone, that they'll struggle to place at the top tables.  It doesn't help that Venom spam ruins the shit out of the army and that seems like the new WAAC DE thing.

I will elaborate more as the week goes on.  I want to hear what you guys think first.