NMC's and Poco Bueno texture packs, Project Nevada, Nevada Skies, Weapon Mods Expanded, Bounties I & II, Beyond Boulderdome, A World of Pain, Mission Mohave, Willow Follower (best of all official and fan-made companions), and The Inheritance are all must-have New Vegas mods for me, in addition to your preferred HUD and stability fixes. I also prefer playing through Project Brazil to start my New Vegas game.
Haven't played A Tale of Two Wastelands. Most people seem to like it, but it does limit your available mods. I prefer to mod the Fallout 3 engine per Gopher's excellent Youtube series. Beyond that, NMC's texture pack, Weapon Mod Kits, Fallout 3 Redesigned, Fallout Wanderer's Edition, Mart's Mutant Mod, DC interiors, Project Reality, CALIBR, Alton IL, Ties That Bind, Sydney Follower, Arefu Expanded, and especially GNR Enhanced are my recommendations in addition to your preferred UI mods and required stability & performance mods (which seem to vary greatly in need and effect.)
Two other mod-related items. First, the second half of Project Brazil is currently slated to be out in January to March. This mod takes place in a brand new, non-adjacent world space and requires starting a new character, so if you want to play it all you may wish to start with Fallout 3 or A Tale of Two Wastelands' Fallout 3 content. Second, The Frontier is slated to release in late winter (which probably means early summer.) This is a separate world space comparable (at least eventually) to the Mohave world space and will take your existing high level New Vegas character. These two mods are why I have high hopes that paid mods will one-day help make some of these grand dreams come true.