I played Tyranids for years, had 2 different armies of them (1 standard 100+ termagant horde, stealers, gargoyles, carnies, the works, the other was an all Giger Aliens army with a big mutant hive tyrant queen, S7 T7.) Unfortunately both armies got stolen from the trunk of my car.
After a few months of brooding and vainly searching swap meets and Ebay for the missing critters I decided that I was going to start a new army, and my eyes immediately drifted to the army I saw everywhere, but never on a table top. This was back before the 2nd to last Space Marine codex, when Terminators were not full of win. I bought everyone's extra plastic terminators off of them for the cheap and in a matter of 2 nights of furious painting I had a 2000 pt army consisting of five 6 man terminator squads, a Librarian in Terminator Armor, Marneus Calgar, and ~ 20 marines.
It didn't do awesome, but it definitely scared the crap out of people. Nobody could deal with that much 2+ armor and standard combat tactics in the game store had to shift drastically for people to be able to deal with it... Then the new codex came out.
The 20 tactical marines were downgraded to three 5 man squads, each with an Apothecary vet sergeant (I took Purity Above All Else, reasoning that this was during the time 1st company was rebuilding, so keeping the Terminators alive was the chief goal of 1st company.) The Terminators brought in 3 brand new Assault Cannons and a pair of Cyclones along with a heavy flamer for my Librarian's command squad. My buddy made a custom Cassius in Terminator armor for me to lead my other command squad, and also modified a Talon of Horus onto my Librarian who carried a force weapon and lightning claw, as well as Fury of the Ancients (represented by his psy-bolter mounted onto the Talon.) With the apothecary support the terminators proved to be exceptionally difficult to take down, with my greatest triumph having given 0 victory points to a Vyper heavy Eldar Army armed with Star Cannons who simply could not reduce any of my squads below 50%.
But that was last edition, the new edition has found me taking a more balanced list. While I still bring over 20 terminators onto the field, I tend to field just 2 maxed out squads, combat split them (sometimes), and pull in my dreadnoughts for some extra heavy armor. I now bring Assault Infantry (love jump packs), Rhinos with full tactical squads, a Devastator squad , and my trusty whirlwind.
