Crisis Suit Conversion: Part One

I actually bought all the parts for this guy well over a year ago (it might be closer to two years, actually), and I'm finally getting around to him. Shas'o R'Myr has his own crisis suit...

...so I wanted to convert one for my Shas'o.

During the Viridis campaign, Shas’el Da’Eldi managed to lead the Tau to victory over the Imperial PDF, minimizing losses to the Fire Warriors under his command by making use of large numbers of drones. While the loss in drones was in some cases severe, Shas’O Da’Eldi countered criticism to this by pointing out that every lost drone was equivalent to a Fire Warrior’s life saved. After the Viridis Campaign, Shas'el Da'Eldi was elevated to Shas'o, and designed a custom battlesuit, the XV-100, suited to his combat style.

"Our brave fire warriors are all willing to sacrifice themselves for the Greater Good when it is necessary.  But it does not serve the Greater Good for our warriors to die when their lives might be saved by our technology.  Using our technology in this way does not dishonor our courage; not using it dishonors our intelligence."

-Shas'o Da'Eldi

The XV-100 Battlesuit is modeled off the standard XV-8 Crisis Suit, but is taller, with longer limbs.  It has extra armor, an upgraded sensor and communications suite, and an integrated drone controller system.  Its primary weapons system is a Railgun, with a secondary Airburst Fragmentation Projector for close-in defense.  The suit is powered by a much larger jetpack in order to handle the extra weight.

In order to assemble the XV-100 I needed parts from various models, including the standard Crisis Suit, the Tau Commander's Suit, some vehicle upgrades, Shas'o R'Myr, and the XV-88-2 Broadside suit.  (many the extra bits from these kits have other intended uses in future projects...)

After laying out all the pieces (or at least, the first cut at them...), I was faced with the actual task of starting the conversion. Forgeworld models aren't cheap, and so I approached the job with a bit of trepidation. But, nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I whipped out my jeweler's saw and went to work. Step one was sawing both the upper and lower sections of the legs in half, so I could then lengthen them. The cuts weren't the best, but I hoped that green stuff could fix all that.

Next step is to chop up a Crisis Suit's backpack to provide the extra engines.

At this point I called it a day. The next step would involve lots of green-stuffing, and I needed an uninterrupted block of time to work on all that...