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It depends what you're facing. If you're facing a lot of AV13-14, Hive Guard simply aren't going to cut it. They're great at transport hunting, but you can't base your entire anti tank around them.

AV13-14 is the domain of CC monstrous creatures (which, being mostly strength 6, still can have trouble with AV14, and the sole strength 9 monstrous creature is too slow to catch tanks) and Zoanthropes. Both have drawbacks - if you melee a land raider, its contents are free to counter charge the monstrous creature. If they're the ever present hammernators, you'll lose the MC. If you rely on Zoanthropes, they might have to pod it (and not make it in time), they have more hoops to jump through than regular ranged anti tank and can be shut down by psychic defense (which, admittedly, isn't always going to be there, but is common enough to cause concern).

Pick your poison for anti AV13-14. Tyranids have trouble with it however you try to tackle it.

That's how Zoanthropes are generally run, as a deep strike squad for taking down heavier stuff while Hive Guard wreck transports.

I honestly find Hive Guard tough to balance in my slections. Too many and, while you will reduce the enemies transports to smoulders quickly, once they're done, you end up with 200-300 points not doing much after turn 2. Once they're reduced to hunting infantry, they have too few shots to hurt GEQs and too low AP to hurt MEQs.

This is why I prefer to mix in Zoanthropes - while they have psychic defense problems and need a psychic test to shoot, their warp blast is good against MEQ's and they provide synapse. They have a bit more use after that last transport goes down.

kirsanth wrote:Zoanthropes fit the fluff better.
Hive Guard are late creations in the planetary invasion scale.
Generally speaking.

This is another reason I try not to use them too much, as I'm more of a fluff thinker when I make a list. Hive Guard not only are created later in the invasion, they're made for one purpose - to defend capillary towers and digestion pools. They wouldn't be accompanying a Tyranid wave on the march. I guess they fit in objective games - you could very well have capillary towers as objectives. But generally speaking, they wouldn't be walking around with an attack wave. They're a purely static defensive organism.

Though this is tactics, so that doesn't really factor into if they're better than Zoanthropes, which, well, is as said above, purely situational based on what kind of army and armour you're facing.