I too have taken a long absence from blogging! I figure what with grad-school being a huge burden, and with all the cool blog-personalities doing it, might as well get on the train right? Well, there is that and 6th. You see, 6th and I have a love-hate relationship. But you didn't come for that, right? You came for Crisis Suits and their related conversions:
6th and I have a 'its complicated' status, for those of you who remember Facebook circa 2006. I love it, because the book has a whole chapter dedicated to the fundamental principles underlying the mechanics, which explains things like when which modifiers take effect, which ones get primacy, and the like. Boring technical stuff THAT EVERY EDITION EVER ABSOLUTELY NEEDED. ahem. Additionally, stuff like facing being important, and taking casualties from models that are actually targetable, and the vehicle HP system. Now, not saying all the FAQ anti-transport nerfs are great, I actually disagree there. But the HP / glancing system in and of itself is great. It essentially turns vehicles into creatures, with a bonus chance of devastating damage in return for additional functionality. So, a landspeeder becomes a t6w2 thing that can be assaulted rather easily even if it moved. How do I know the toughness equivalent? Because a Kroot gun (the Krootox one) glances on a 4. So, 6+4=10! Which means that an Landraider is a t10w4 monster which costs... slightly more than a t6w6 Trygon. I'll leave that rant for another day. But why can't Monsterous Creatures be like the Monsterous Creatures that the humans / other xenos have? But, I also hate it. It feels like a squad game, a platoon game, and a dogfighting game had a threesome and created a baby cat-style. Look it up, cats can use multiple daddies to create one baby. Challenges, overpowered fighters, grenade throws, they bog the game down and feel out of scale. Additionally, the challenge phase in general and wound allocation specifically are so time consuming and convaluted, I question whether anyone does them right. Oh, and the Smash-Brothers Happy-Hammer taken to Null Deployment, and Assaulting... Ok, off this wagon. Essentially, this edition has some good stuff going for it, and some bad stuff that needed some further fine-tuning. But, enough on that. Just... it feels so sloppy. Like not all the fat got trimmed during the revision phase. Moving on...
But anyways, I have in fact managed to get in some Hobbyhammer, on my crisis suits. I HATE how the crisis suits were executed. I love the art, I love the forgeworld models. I even really like the Dawn of War version of them. Which is essentially the actual model only done right. So, not being able to afford Forge World, and already having my own Crisis models, I figured why not refresh them? My goal was to only use the suits I had, the parts I had, and the stealth suits I had. I combed a bunch of forums and blogs for ideas, and this is the result:
There are two photobucket libraries chronicalling the construction of each model, as well as two Advanced Tau Tactica threads discussing how I went about creating them. If you are interested, feel free to call dibs on my ideas, on others ideas, or leave questions or comments!
Pics of the first suit conversion
http://s1362.photobucket.com/user/ninjaturkey/library/40k%20Tau%20Empire%20XV8%20Crisis%20Suit%20Conversion?sort=3&page=1
Pics of the second suit conversion
http://s1362.photobucket.com/user/ninjaturkey/library/XV8%20Crisis%20Suit%20Refresh%20Tutorial?sort=2&page=1
WIP chronicle of the first suit conversion
http://advancedtautactica.com/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=21051
WIP and tutorial of the second suit conversion
http://advancedtautactica.com/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=21078
~ Shas'el Mike