Broadside

A problem I've had with the Tau army is the look of the crisis suits.  The torso has a sturdy feel but the legs are too spindly and the arms too immobile and difficult to give dynamism.  On the standard suits the look is pretty good overall but the standard broadside looks ungainly and top heavy.  The metal railguns are the biggest cause of the problem, difficult to pose and out of proportion with the rest of the model.  The sculpt quality isn't too high either with the long straight lines easily bent or ragged.

In the past I've converted my broadsides to a pose similar to the forgeworld models here.  This time I wanted to try a diferent pose and model it to fit in with the other foot slogging models in the army.  The metal railgun is too difficult to cut and pose so a plastic railgun needed modeling instead.

I went through a few variations, the barrel was made from a trimmed fusion blaster the the metal railgun end finishing the cannon.  The track of the gun is a pair of pulse rifle barreles cut before the sight.  The metal piece is too heavy and the rifles cant support the weight well and the whole thing is too long, almost the same size as the original.

This rifle has the fusion blaster as the base but with the end cut and moved past the track.  the Ammo cell was moved to the underside.  The rear powercell was taken from a crisis suit burst cannon and the antenna from a multitracker.  The only piece not in the original broadside kit is the drone controller node from the stealth suit.  It comes in much smaller and a strong rifle like feel.  Next it needs mounting on the model.

The crisis suit arms are very inflexible and needed to be almost completley rebuilt.  I'll carry on building and update as I go.