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Which one to choose...?

For me, Harpy is a good anti infantry flyers and with the heavy venom cannon is a good for killing flyers and the Hive Crone is like a low version of the helldrake.

What armies do you face?

 hellpato wrote:
Which one to choose...?

For me, Harpy is a good anti infantry flyers and with the heavy venom cannon is a good for killing flyers and the Hive Crone is like a low version of the helldrake.

The heavy venom cannon is a blast weapon, so cannot target flyers.

The harpy is pretty much entirely anti-infantry, in a book that should have no problem with anti-infantry.

The crone is a.....well, the crone doesn't know what it is, but at least it can fill several roles to some degree. The vector strike is effective against vehicles and medium infantry (to some degree) the flamer is decent against light infantry and the harwire missiles are solid against flyers and decent against ground vehicles.

In my opinions, it's no competition, Crone all the way. That said, I'm not sure I'd even take a crone.

 Carnage43 wrote:

In my opinions, it's no competition, Crone all the way. That said, I'm not sure I'd even take a crone.

Don't take one. Take two.

The long answer is, like any army, it depends on overall composition. A Crone seems to be fantastically useful in a heavy flyer-based army; if you can get in their face early on, and dominate positioning, then you have natural advantages. But two would be much more effective, overloading the opponent's capacity to respond.

WE had good results on our first game using a single crone, with two flyrants (mashed armour-heavy Black Templar last night) and we've just collected a second. But running one Crone with no other flyers would make no sense whatsoever. THey're a bit like Ork Battlewagons; take a bunch or don't bother.

I will go for the crone to built my model even if I found it to fragile. Will see if is good when I test it.

The harpy seems like the cheapest way to get heavy venom cannons, or other big biocannons, in the list. Compared to the next cheapest option the carnifex, the harpy seems more durable (once it is airborne) and it has twin linked weapons and a high advantage point to shoot from.

Flyrants.

No, seriously. The Harpy provides anti-infantry, which we don't need, especially for its relative expensiveness and fragility. The crone is excellent anti-flier, and pretty good anti-tank too, but is too expensive and too fragile. Any BS5 model on a Quad Gun will likely shoot it down as soon as it comes in.

Flyrants. Two of them.

I love the Crone for her versatility. She's made my lists way more dynamic, effective, and more importantly fun to play.

Has anyone play tested both? I'm looking into one and am honestly leaning towards Harpy

When I first took a look at the Tyrnaids Codex I saw both units as being viable. However you can't just take one as it will get targeted and shot down too quickly. A 1750 list I was looking at doing involves running 2 Crones and 1 Harpy. The Crones will be good for your AA when/if needed and your Harpy is decent anti-infantry. If I had to choose just 1 i'd go with the Crone as a starter.

Dont forget since it is an FMC it doesnt have to come on turn 2 and then get intercepted from the sky

And don't forget you can easily be in cc by turn two with a FMC.

The harpy also is dirt cheap. It's qualefies as a flying monster is not as important that it does a little bit of everything. (Exept kill other flyers.) A bargain for the price.

I play tested both, the harpy was effective with that -5 Init, that helps a lot, especially when your hive tyrants are only init 5.
crones besides my bad luck did quite well but as stated already, die like flys to quad guns. however, if your taking 2 flyrants and 2 crones it doesn't matter because if they are trying to kill your crones first, than they have already lost, (crones are not as dangerour as flyrants). as long as you have some way of supporting you units by damaging squads maning the gun or have sky fire your doing alright. its the same as nids have always been, saturate with mildly dangerous units so something lives to do something. it works. it supports your flyrants and may even give them an extra turn in game which if you have ever played with them is a lot of potential damage.

anyway my experience of playing them, take it or leave it but I will probably run 2 crones in 80% of lists I run and 1 harpy in 1999+1 games

With the Crone, you can Vector Strike another flyer, thus adding more to it's ability to down other things in the air.

Will opponents target it? Yes, but if something dying is your reason for not playing it, you're in the wrong hobby.

Play 2; at 155 points, they aren't exactly expensive. Everything in the Tyranids codex is not pretty damn cheap. 2 Crones + 2 Flyrants is pretty mean in the air.

. . . MAGNETS. Okay so this has absolutely nothing to do with the tactics but a proper application of magnets will allow you to easily swap between the two kits and thusly you can find out which of the two builds best suits your play style and your meta. I've looked into the kit and it looks to be a simple process to make it interchangable. GW has deffinately done a great job developing dual kits which you don't actually have to decide between lately.

 brassangel wrote:
With the Crone, you can Vector Strike another flyer, thus adding more to it's ability to down other things in the air.

Will opponents target it? Yes, but if something dying is your reason for not playing it, you're in the wrong hobby.

Play 2; at 155 points, they aren't exactly expensive. Everything in the Tyranids codex is not pretty damn cheap. 2 Crones + 2 Flyrants is pretty mean in the air.

It's definitely got the harpy beat at AA but with an oval base and 24" of movement that need to be in a straight line good luck VS another flier on yet another oval base. If they have any sense of this limitation you probably won't get any decent VS BUT being a MC it can at least fire it's haywire missiles 360 which is great!