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Hello Dakka-ites. This is my very first post though I have been perusing through this site for quite a while. I have been seriously considering starting a Tau Cadre for quite some time and this site has helped me endlessly by answering all of my Tau questions.

I really love many of the Tau models, I think the Fire Warriors are just boss when painted up really well and the vehicles are elegant and unique. However I have never been a fan of the venerable XV-8 and 88 Crisis Suits. I have seen some amazing conversions around the internet, especially on this site, and though I would give it a try myself. I made a list of all the things I didn't care for on the model and then started collecting good ideas from around the internet to use as inspiration. I am not a stranger to conversion work and I have two rules when ever I start building something. First, any design I put together has to be repeatable. I want to build out a full on Tau Cadre so only having one awesome XV-8 isn't going to cut it. I try to document every step in my process and I make sure that I can easily acquire all the bits I will need to make more of the same conversion. Secondly, my conversion has to be strong. I can't tell you how many times I have seen an AWESOME model start to fall apart the moment someone touches it.

I have a few questions at the end of my post here and I REALLY welcome any thoughts or criticisms anyone might have. I want my models to really stand out so I won't turn any advice away.

Here is my latest suit conversion.


Front


Shield Side


Jet pack design


Plasma Carbine and a little liquid green stuff needed to hide a bad cut in the elbow gear


Another Front shot properly showing my final chest design.

Really, I just need to figure out how many of them I am going to make. I have supplies for 12 but I think I am going to build 9 to start (6 crisis suits, 2 Body Guards, and my Commander) and then I will start onto my Broadsides.


The pose of this suit was supposed to be the suit just landing from after a jump. Right now I think it is my weakest pose in my set. What is hard to see is the new plasma carbine design. Since I am so deep into my conversions I decided to give redesigning the Plasma Gun a design. I will go into more detail about it below.


Side Shot


My Favorite pose so far out of all three suits. I am still working out the body angle (the last thing I ever glue is the ankle joints) and I can't decided if he should be leaning forward or backward.


Secondary shot


Final design and probably the least exciting pose, just pointing his carbine. However you here you can get a good look at my Carbine design.


Side view, he has quite the reach with the outstretched arm and carbine.

I kept thinking about my the BlackOps nature of the fluff I am building around my army and then I decided to take a crack at making a conversion of the Plasma Gun. I really don't like the barrel portion of the standard Tau Plasma Gun, it looks out of place even on the hodge podge unconverted Crisis Suit. So what I came up with was a design that has some SpecOp attachments like the forward vertical grip and the suppressor. I love the look and have some halfway decent fluff excuses for having a Suppressor on the end of a plasma gun but really it is about how the model looks, at least to me.

So, what do you think?

EDIT: Uploaded everything to the Dakka Gallery page! Should work now, I am so sorry about the broken images before.

Hmm... I can't see ay of the pics. Are they private on Flickr?

Resv your pic links are bronken.

I really want to see this Tau hotel room!

I just moved all of the images over to the Dakka gallery. Hopefully the images will no longer be broken.

Flickr doesn't like to do sharing.

I suggest you upload them to Dakka's gallery.

They show up for a split second then disappear for me (under firefox), and I'm too lazy to try on chrome.

Tinypic is your friend.

Otherwise, looking good, reminds me a lot of armoured core and I adore the bulky suit look.

Lets try this one more time.

It is official...I am collecting Tau...


HOW DO YOU DO THIS???

Everything I saw there was absolutely amazing!!!

This is what Tau were meant to be...GW just couldn't pull it off...but you sir...wow

Holy feth! Amazing work!!!

Like them a LOT. Brilliant use of DC dreadnought pieces

Super conversions! Would not like to mess with these fellas.

I love the use of dreadnought armor for shouldar armor.
Reminds me of Zakus. If GW release new suits like these I WILL PLAY TAU

LunaHound wrote:I love the use of dreadnought armor for shouldar armor.

TBH I don't. Whilst it has potential it still looks like a SM bit stuck on. If the OP shaved off the rivets to make it look more "Tau like" then it would blend better to the rest of the suit.

Those are very cool indeed! The plasma carbines are particularly neat and the beefed up jetpacks definately look the business. Damn you, it makes me want to re-do all my suits

Will you be doing one where the suit is actually using the front handle on the carbine? You could then model it up taking fire on the ballistic shield.

looking very good! I've always wanted to do a tau army heavy with crisis suits converted to look like gundams and this has given me some cool ideas.
I do agree with Grimtuff about the dread bits i think if you were to shave the rivets off and fill the cross with greenstuff youd have a perfect canvas for Cadre or Squad markings.

But overall AWESOME!!!!

Friggen Eshhhhayzz mayn.

Very very nice. Also, very Gundam ish.

Hmm.. actually that is a question.. did the inspiration come from Gundam or Appleseed Landmates? They look very Briareos/Guges to me

I like the pics, i like the poses

Please, for the love of god gives us a tutorial on how you made your suits SO much better than GW's stock ideas

TUTORIAL!!

Flinty wrote:Hmm.. actually that is a question.. did the inspiration come from Gundam or Appleseed Landmates? They look very Briareos/Guges to me

When I first started building them I was leaning more toward a utilitarian or "grunt" look from some of the older Gundam Series. To be perfectly honest I don't care much for some of the most recent Gundam designs, they are far to complicated and not something that, say, you might come across in a copy of Jane's Defense Weekly. I did look at AppleSeed too however and borrowed some of their pose ideas. The shield attached to the shoulder was actually inspired by the Tau Fire Warrior models, though I do totally admit there is a huge Gundam influence there to.

I have to agree that I am not completely set on leaving the details as they are on the Shield, I have been thinking of removing just the rivets at first and leaving the cross on to start. I love the shield and I think it adds a nice bit of asymmetry to weight to the design.

Flinty wrote:Will you be doing one where the suit is actually using the front handle on the carbine? You could then model it up taking fire on the ballistic shield.

Sorry for the double quote there Flinty. I just finished a suit using the front grip last night however due the the silly stubby arm length on the crisis suits he don't so much look like he is in a firing position as much as he is just holding the carbine at the ready. Since I am going to be making a whole mess of suits anyway I plan on doing another one or two using the front grip but I will have to lengthen the shield arm just slightly to get the desired pose. I will post some pictures here in just a bit of the latest suit.

Thanks for all of the feedback, and I look forward to even more as this project continues.

LassurusMan wrote:Please, for the love of god gives us a tutorial on how you made your suits SO much better than GW's stock ideas

Steelmage99 wrote:TUTORIAL!!

I will work on one over the week end as I start building my next suit.

Excellent work on these, look forward to seeing more and the Tutorial too

LunaHound wrote:I love the use of dreadnought armor for shouldar armor.
Reminds me of Zakus. If GW release new suits like these I WILL PLAY TAU

I'm echoing this, the aesthetic you managed to achieve by broadening and angling them looks much better than the cramped boxy ones that are currently out.

New Suit that I finished last night.





I originally wanted this suit to be in a firing position however due to the stubby arms on the suit I couldn't quite get it to look right. On the next one I do in a similar pose I will extend the shield arm out just slightly to get the angle a bit better.

I did not think I liked this style of suit, but uh, yeah you won me over. These look great.

Great Work, I love Up-Armored Crisis suits. I can isolate every bit you used for the head. An excellent use for all those left over Pulse Carbines and Target Locks we all have lying around. I like the Dread bit for the shoulder, it leans towards the heavy Shields the Gundam Soldier mechs usually have. They look more like a Gundam / Appleseed Combos to me, which is a great combo. And most impressive is the use of Terminator hands. Even though they have too many fingers they work really well with the Crisis suit arms.

Well done

heavybolter wrote:Great Work, I love Up-Armored Crisis suits. I can isolate every bit you used for the head. An excellent use for all those left over Pulse Carbines and Target Locks we all have lying around. I like the Dread bit for the shoulder, it leans towards the heavy Shields the Gundam Soldier mechs usually have. They look more like a Gundam / Appleseed Combos to me, which is a great combo. And most impressive is the use of Terminator hands. Even though they have too many fingers they work really well with the Crisis suit arms.

Well done

The hands were a happy accident, I just happened to have a few left over from a set of GK Terminators I build for a friend and I just tried them out for kicks. I totally realize they have to many fingers but I'm sure there is some fluff excuse we can come up with. The hands also do a brilliant job of adding a bit more dynamism and scale to the model.

Brilliant looking stuff. I like it when people pull off good Tau conversions.