Finding balance

It's been quite a week; home for a couple days with a sick rugrat, I spent some long hours on the hobby side.  It's hard, but I love it.  I've been hoarding drill bits, clamps, various sculpting tools, and whatnot for a decade or more - and it feels great to be using them again.  Just building, not really painting yet: the tally for the week is:

• sculpting brains for 2 zoans and pinning all 3, ready now for basecoating;
• built 8 Ymgarls (4 up above to show off how cool the Chapterhouse heads look);
• fell beast that will be a harpy: stripped the paint, disassembled, re-fit, drilled, and pinned the wings, put on the first carapace, gap-filled it with GS;
• built my Red Terror so I can proxy Deathleaper or DoM;
• built my first venomthrope - hardest (stock) figure I've ever put together - truly, less is more when it comes to metal-on-metal supergluing, but very concerned at durability.  Do most people pin all 4 arms?
• picked up foam tray-building material I saw on HoP here and a big Stanley toolbox to carry things in
• traced out stealer patterns to cut out on a 2" layer of foam, cut out about 6 holes and realized what a huge pain this was going to be (30+ gargs, 50+ termies, 20+ horms, 40+ stealers counting ymgarls, etc..) 
• seriously reconsidered the time vs. money ratio for the ~$300 Battlefoam 1520 with custom cut foam; any experience with this case/product?

More on the "finding balance" part of the title after the jump...

Planning my tfexes and 3rd ed. Tyrant as a Prime?

Since the Trygon is the model that got me into Tyranids,  I'm trying to plan out a good Tyrannofex build based on a Trygon.  Right now, the "vision" is to use a Mawloc jaw with some sort of tube made into a rupture cannon protruding between the lower outstretched mandibles.  The hard part is picking the diameter and length.  Not sure how to represent the thorax swarm yet; mounting a carnifex plate on the front might work as I'm already planning on adding additional armor plates to the Trygon model.

The other, and more controversial piece, is to use the 3rd edition Hive Tyrant model for my Primes.  They are smaller than the current Tyrant, and look like a natural progression up for warriors.  Are they too big?? What are your thoughts?

Tyranid Library: The Dusty Books on the Back Shelf

This post is about some of the units, builds, and biomorphs typically discarded as not being efficient enough for the points, duplicative, or simply far outshined by other choices.  And precisely some of the reasons I think the Tyranid codex isn't entirely unlocked yet.

The first isn't too controversial: the Genestealer.  Many lists use 2 units of 5-10, with the sweet spot usually pinpointed at around 7, sometimes with a Broodlord, sometimes not, but nearly always with tox.  How does the 'stealer make this list then?  Stealers are considered easy to deal with by most competitive players.  The vast majority of MSU, MEQ, and mech'd up tournament units can pretty easily dish out 5-10 wounds to a 5+ save troop.  Plain old lack of durability.  But what happens when you throw 40 stealers on the board, with FNP, and cover?  To find out, go here.  Hyv3mynd has some of the absolute best batreps I've found to date.  If you're serious about playing 'nids at a top tournament table, take the time to read every single entry.  The hands down best is his DaBoyz GT BatRep #4.  More after the jump:

Parasite of Mortrex WIP part 2; NOVA list #1 and progress

With my registration in for NOVA, I'm buckling down and putting my army together finally.  More pics of the Parasite in progress can be found on my picasa page here - the last 12 pics or so.  Comments definitely welcome as I'm a bit torn on using the warrior rending claws or scytals - but really liking the dual gargoyle wing look as his torso is pretty long.  No real intent to use a flying base, but I probably should as he's a flyer.

It's been a busy week.  Along with getting back in touch with my putty/greenstuff skillz working on the Parasite and a Zoanthrope head to give it a brain look (3rd ed.), in the last few days I've managed to build 16 termagants, 2 hive guard, 2 tyrant guard, 2 lictors, and drill/pin my 3 zoanthrope bodies, partially build my Red Terror, and have been busy mocking up different gun attempts for a Tyrannofex using a Trygon body - the concept is roughly looking like a Mawloc, but with a big cannon from its mouth instead of a tongue.  Settling on a cannon design eludes me so far...  and I do want a Trygon-based tfex, despite the cover issues with Trygons.

Also found this fun bit of Tyranid-looking terrain; the Heroscape Marro Hive - can be found on Ebay for less than 10$ pretty easily.  It should make a nice bit of decoration for my display board; trying to think ahead a bit.