Help me spend $400 on miniatures!

Sorry about missing the last few days' worth of content, Men With Toy Soldiers was away at the first of many illustrious holiday events!

We also had a family dinner tonight, at which I over-indulged.  I think the Hive Mind was fully in control, because I was definitely The Great Devourer!

But we're back in town for a couple of days until we do the real Christmas marathon, and Santa is coming around tomorrow in the form of a shopping spree at my Friendly Local Game Store, sponsored by my Sugar Mama.

It's all about the Elizabeths, baby

So I'm going to put up what I have, and if anyone still reads the blog you can help me choose how to spend money!

Here's what we've got:

1x Tyranid Prime

2x Tyranid Warrior

16x Hormagaunt

28x Termagant

8x Genestealer

1x Trygon

So, I've got $400 (Canadian) to spend, at 20% off GW prices.


What should I buy?  GO!


Bonus round:

If you run out of Tyranids worth buying, I've also got a budding Blood Angels army....

Blood Angels - 2nd Attempt

After receiving some solid advice, I think we can all agree that this is more like it:

When I showed her this model, my girl said: "I wouldn't kick him out of bed."

I'm excited!

As you may notice, I actually finished this model.  That wasn't the original plan.  I had intended to paint just the body on this model again until I figured out how I would be doing my Blood Angels, but I was so pleased with how this was going that I wanted to see it finished and based to see if I liked the results.  I do.


So let me give a nod to my two sources of inspiration for the improvements that I made:

First attempt for Blood Angels paint scheme

Since I'm leaning towards Blood Angels for my fledgling Marines, I figured I should do some paintin' and make sure that I actually enjoyed painting the model and could do it to a standard that I found acceptable.

So I'm going to put up two or three test models using different techniques and hopefully get some feedback on what looks best.  I have a tendency to create extra work for myself by picking out areas of detail that aren't necessary, which slows down the whole army production, and I have a feeling I might have done that on the first test model here:

Look Ma! No hands!

First of all, as many people have mentioned, it's amazing how much you can see in terms of errors when you photograph the model.  Having said that, you can't really see any of them on the tabletop, and this is just a test model after all.

So here's how I did it:

What Flavour of Space Marine am I?

Well, being the proud new owner of the Assault on Black Reach set, I find myself in possession of about 600 points worth of Space Marines, and living near a hobby shop where I can pick up extra pieces out of the AoBR set for very cheap.  Also, I have some Orks, I guess.  As such, Hive Fleet Turbo-Ants, my main project and real buggy passion, will now be competing for shelf space and painting time with my new strike force of Space Marines.

This leads to a crossroads, as it were.  Because Games Workshop is a little too enthusiastic about them, we have a whole bunch of options as to what kind of Marines you want to play.  Meanwhile, we Tyranid players get the Pyrovore.  So before I start down my path to the Dark Side, I need to decide what kind of Marines I'm going to play -- And this is where I would absolutely love any input.  But let me see if I can give you the 'new to the hobby' perspective on what I consider to be my four choices for what type of Marines I'm going to play.

Laziest White Scars paint job ever?