Well it had skyfire, and it would pop up and with twin linked devourers (?), he had a ton of glances/pens every round. I really didn't have an adequate defense for it.
I admit he completely caught me off guard with it.
Well if you'd shot it a couple of times with one of your Night Scythes it would very possibly crash, take a wound and then be stuck on the ground where you could have finished it off with any amount of decent shooting.
Dakka flyrants are totally awesome, and they are indeed excellent for popping flyers, but they are also pretty easy to kill...with flyers. Or at least flyers can very easily ground them and set up the kill from the rest of your army.
I see a few people here telling me that the Night Scythe list (which I do not play anyway) is still omnipotent and that I may have done something wrong against the Nids.
I did say that I was caught off guard, but there is no doubt in my mind if you face a list with two of these, they are one of the top anti- Necron air units.
I just found a video bat-rep of a guy playing two of these things against a 6 Necron flyer army and the flyers could not take the Hive Tyrants down fast enough and the Night Scythes were almost all dead by turn 5.
In my game the Hive Tyrant (which I've been told is going to turn into 2 Hive Tyrants!) had Iron Arm. This was HUGE. Same with his Tervigons... both with Iron Arm. After a while you are faced with the question, do you focus fire a flying Tyrant? Or do you start to work over the masses of junk running towards you? The Fly-rants were surprisngly durable... crash tests and all.
I'll tell you one thing, I've never wanted to play a total Necron air army, but seeing this in action personally, and from other people now there's no way I would take it to a tournament.
On a side note the Hive Tyrants are effective for longer because they have a 360 fire arc. So while I may be positioned in a manner that I cannot fire at a Fly-rant, the Nid player can easily pick a spot that limits your arch while giving him a shot at you. Also with nids and Gaunt spam you are limited even more so in where you can actually fit the flyer base.
Countering this isn't nearly as easy as you guys are making it sound. I strongly recommend you tell your Nid buddies about it and give it a go and see what experiences you have!