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This differs from one unit to the next.
For example, I love the old cadian pewter sculpts better overall. The 4th edition plastic cadians have better-looking weapons and body armour, but they have goofy-looking safety helmets that are more befitting of a special needs child than a hardened inter-stellar soldier! The 4th and 5th edition Catachan plastics, On the other hand, are a great improvement from the 3rd edition plastics. Overall, I am happy with the general trend towards sprues being stuffed with options. One of the most frustrating things was having options in a codex that didn't come in the box.

Some models look way better, while others look far worse.

For me, I miss the original Stealth Suits, the XV15 version.

The smaller amount of armour makes sense for a Stealth Suit, whereas the XV25 just looks like a Tau attempt at an old-school Terminator. It looks like it should be more of an assault armour, with its bulky, hunched appearance not really fitting the Tau aesthetics, as well as the issue of "How does a Tau actually fit inside this thing and operate it"- The XV15 is clearly just powered armour around the Tau's body, and the XV8-class and up have their pilots within the chest (Or visible in exposed seats on the Stormsurge), but the XV25 is too big for the former and too small for the latter. I got some XV25s as my first "battlesuit" unit, and found them disappointing, but when I got the XV15s later, they quickly became among my favourite models, appearance-wise, in spite of their monopose models (The issues with which are probably lessened by there being three or four different fixed poses instead of a single one). I'd very much like to see a return of the XV1-class in some form, especially if it's multi-pose XV15s.

Second would be the original XV88. If the first digit is supposed to be the suit's size class, then the XV88 should be the same size as the XV8. I like the idea that the Broadsides were originally kludged together by taking a Crisis, making it more stable, and bolting some Railguns to it. Similar to how the Titan-killer variant of the Tiger Shark was made by taking the regular TIger Shark and putting Manta Railguns on it.

The newer XV88 looks like it belongs in the same class as the XV9 Hazard armour (As an aside, the Ghostkeel is probably too large to be in the XV9 class). On top of that, the newer one has a distinct lack of massive shoulder cannons, something that was sorely lacking until the Supremacy suit showed up. That's not to say that the new XV88 is bad, in fact, I really like it, especially the Missileside variant, but I'd rather see it as a separate unit to the Broadside. Technically that can be done with the FW XV88-2, which is itself a really nice looking model, and as far as I know, keeps the statline of the original XV-88, with S10 Railguns instead of the S8 Heavy Rail Rifle, but buying up a lot of FW is even more expensive than the GW alternative.


Finally, there's Commander Farsight. Yeah, the old model isn't fantastic. It's basically an XV8, with fewer options, some different antennae and a sword. But at least it isn't the Finecast replacement, which is stuck in an awkward pose, has one of the antennae missing, which makes it look incomplete, and added a pointless tassel to the hilt of the blade for no reason.

I would've included the 6E Crisis Commander for similar issues to Farsight (Awkward monopose), but fortunately the 7E one is a massive step up. I'm tempted to just buy one of these and convert it into Farsight instead of bothering with the official kit.

Some are hit and miss, it's always nice tracking down something old I missed out on and adding it into my army if I like the way it looks. Just got my hands on some of the original horrors for my daemons, since Tzeentchian daemons seem to all be about jazz hands it still fits in to have those guys with their giant jazz hands; just means their spells should be stronger.