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So I'm in the planning stages of doing a Tau army thats set several decades after the occupation of Human planets left behind by the Damocles Crusade. The top officials of the Human government have lobbied for a more active role in the Tau military (I'm making all of this up and I'm going to do more research to avoid conflicts with canon). Therefore my army is effectively the first step in experimentation for using Humans as a front line force. The army is mostly human with Tau squad leaders, my question is how should I model the Human "fire warriors".

Option A: I use the Cadian Shock Troop box mixed with the Tau Fire Warrior box, using the torso and guns of the Tau with the limbs of the humans to get the Tau uniform with human physiology. Would the kits fit together and would this look natural?

Option B: I use either Karskins or Storm Trooper models with Tau guns, therefore modelling the 4+ armor as opposed to the 5+ of guardsmen, using models closer to Fire Warriors in appearance and statline. Unfortunately these are all metal, and I don't know how well I could swap the guns on metal models.

Option C: I use Shock Troops with just Tau guns. This is the easiest option, however the armor 5+ ,cheap Guardsmen doesnt feel like the best analogy for a Fire Warrior

You could always go a different route and mix these with some Tau weapons and alternative heads (or even keep the ones they have):

http://www.scotiagrendel.com/Products/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=59_61&products_id=2851

Or even these:

http://www.em4miniatures.com/acatalog/Science_Fiction.html

It all depends if you are dead set in sticking with GW troops (you'll notice how cheap these are).

If you want to have an infantry heavy army go with C as it gives you more scope to have different looking models. Also you could easily do human variants of Kroot without doing much to the armour. Maybe trimming off the shoulder pads, or using vehicle arms with no pads. Adding carapace armour using GS isn't that hard either.

If you're only going to do a couple of squads of infatry to hide in devilfish, then go with option B. You don't need to remove the whole weapon. I got quite good results just trimming off the end of the lasgun and replacing with the end of a pulse weapon.

I would avoid A as the Tau torsos are considerably smaller than the Cadian torso so it looks rather funny.

Elysian bodies from Forge world also look alot more armoured and techy than the standard cadians, so if you're moving into a limited troops force for devil fish you could use those with tau guns as a firewarrior count-as