Gunpla, Gunpla Everywhere

My latest build and the most recent release in the Real Grade line of 1/144 Gundam kits, the sublime Gundam Epyon from Gundam Wing. And 38 releases in Bandai are just killing it.

Build finished, and just look at that gloriousness. I feel the need to point out there are only 2 stickers used here off of a sheet of many, MANY more, those being under the sensor gem in the chest, and a teeny tiny one on the crotch. Everything else? Just bare plastic snipped and tidied up.

I cannot recommend this kit highly enough if you have a chance to pick it up

I kinda feel Johns pain, as I have brought the entirety of the High Grade Witch From Mercury line. The challenge now is to get the rest of them built before January and the Gundam SEED Freedom kits start to drop…..

Took a gamble on this one as I’ve had the HG 1/144 Gundam Astray Green Frame on back order with HLJ for years at this point, so brought one off of Aliexpress. And honestly? For the price it does the job – It’s clearly a KO but fills the gap for the time being.

An older kit but a fun one. The Gunbarrel Striker Pack made adapted from Gundam SEEDs early show Alliance Mobile Armour is a neat extra, and fully compatible with other Striker Pack-compatible kits.

So I’ve been trying to work on my Gunpla backlog, and I figured I’d go for a pair of Astray Frames, in this case the Blue Frame Second L, and the Gold Frame Amensu Mina. I was a tad apprehensive, especially about the Gold Frame, as I’d heard some horror stories but both were fun builds that left me with a nicely weighty pair of suits for their scale, even if they are somewhat ridiculous (seriously – the Blue Frame’s massive sword? Does triple duty as a fixed minigun emplacement and as the suits flight pack. It’s only other armament is a pair of daggers like those off the Strike, not even a shield. The Gold Frame meanwhile? Oh it just salvages the harpoon launcher arm off of the Blitz Gundam that was cut off it in the anime just prior to it’s destruction, along with a Wolverine-style claw on the other arm, a pair of what can only be described as rapiers, and hooked wings with in-built dart launchers. It does have a very nice gloss finish to the black plastic though…)

Meant to post these a few weeks back after I’d built them – the Entry Grade RX-78-2 (Snow) and the Entry Grade RX-93 Nu-Gundam. Shockingly these are more excellent kits.

The RX-78-2 is no real surprise as I’ve built one before, but this special edition version with it’s crisp silver and shades of icy blue replacing the yellow, red & dark blue of the regular colour scheme is very nice indeed.
The main event though is the Nu-Gundam making it’s debut as the 3rd Entry Grade Gundam kit, and it’s a bit of a stunner. Colour seperation remains excellent, and the Nu even has a set of quite excellent stickers for the shield and left shoulder featuring Amuro Ray’s personal insignia. The only thing the kit is missing is a blade for the main beam sabre (the Nu’s second blade in the forearm is here just a dummy piece), and the suits iconic “wing” of fin-funnel drones. I have the Real Grade Nu Gundam kit in the build pile and it’s tempting to pull it to the front to compare with the EG version (and to see if the beam blades& fin funnels are compatible between the 2…..

Built a few more kits recently, all of which are interesting in different ways.

First up, the Entry Grade Strike and Strike Rouge, the 2nd of Bandai’s EG range of 1/144 scaled kits that require no paint or colour correcting stickers to get an anime-accurate look alongside a build that is incredibly simple. And in this case I tried something a bit different – the Strike was literally built straight off the sprues with no clean up, whilst the Strike Rogue had nubs cleaned up where it was cut off the sprues and the v-fin nubs trimmed off. And I think they both look pretty good overall. I have a spare Strike I want to use for customs, and whilst these two were bare-bones for kit they are compatible with the range of Striker Packs that Bandai have released over the years with other 1/144 SEED kits, and wouldn’t you know it I do have several of those in the build queue 🙂

Now so far Bandai are two for two on Entry Grades being frankly superb little kits that represent great value for money, and just today I received a delivery that included 2 copies of the latest EG kit, the Nu Gundam. I think I might take a pop at that this weekend to see if the magic continues….

And this past weekend I sat down with the Gundam Perfect Strike Freedom from Gundam Breaker Battlelogue, a 6 episode web exclusive series that the suits are all Gunpla built by their “pilots” (either stock or as customs) that get scanned and uploaded into an online gameworld where they are piloted by their builders by way of physical cockpits (not dissimilar from the old Virtual World Battletech Battlepods that gamers of a certain vintage might remember). The Perfect Strike Freedom is (as the name suggests) a blending together of the Freedom, Strike Freedom, and the Strikes Striker Packs & colours. And my word is it a whole lot of nonsense! I mean I love it but the backpack wings & Dragoons (the red bits detach to become remote drones) are just daftly huge.

So this is my most recent build effort, picked out of my “To Build” pile by the members of a Gunpla build group I’m a part of over on Twitter – the Silver Bullet Supressor, as seen in Gundam NT.

Somewhat of an oddity, the Supressor is a refit of a refit of an experimental prototype: It began life as the Doven Wolfe of the NE-Zeon faction in Gundam Double Zeta, was recovered by the Federation and refitted into the Silver Bullet (as it appeared in Gundam Unicorn), before ending up in the hands of allies to Zeon and being further refitted into the Supressor variant.
In model terms this means that this kit is a hodge-podge of parts built out of sprues from multiple kits spanning the best part of two decades, which is admittedly aces for kitbashes, but that also somehow ends of coming together to, frankly, look kindof awesome once finished. I think in part it’s because the various colours come together really nicely to make the different aesthetics of the component parts feel more cohesive (the only labels included are the now-obligatory ones for the eyes and the front & rear cameras, as well as 2 pairs of dark metallic purple trim for either side of the lower legs).
Once complete this is a nicely chunky piece with a fair amount of heft to it that can pose fairly well. And I’d be remiss to not point out how some of that weight is due to the specific gimmick of the Silver Bullet Supressor – armed with the Beam Magnum from the Unicorn Series Gundams, a weapon too powerful for any other mech to use without causing itself damage from the recoil, the Supressor mounts a rack of 4 spare arms on it’s back with a sliding rail arm to swap them out. Now this is a bit of a cheat, as 3 of the arms are dummies, whilst the 4th lacks the full articulation of the main arm, but it’s a neat touch that is appreciated.

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this project, mainly as it’s been difficult to build up the “oomph” to build anything. But I have made a bit of headway:

1. The GAT-04 Windam from Gundam SEED Destiny, essentially the main “grunt” mech for the Atlantic Federation (next to ZAFT’t Zaku series and Orb’s Murasme) and a fairly new release that makes full use of Bandai’s mold-making sourcery to be an incredibly easy & intuitive build. May end up getting a few more of these…
2. The Gundam Astray Red Frame (Flight Unit) from Gundam SEED Astray – effectively a hero version of one of SEED’s most enduring grunt suits. An older kit, and one I’m sure I’ve built before sans the jetpack, but godsdamn I do enjoy building an Astray. Tried being clever by using Gundam Metallic Markers on the sword & scabbard, which I’m not sure entirely worked…
3. GAT-02L2 Dagger – the other Atlantic Federation grunt suit, wheras the Windam is an all-new kit the Dagger is based off of the Strike Gundam kit. Now whilst on the one hand that makes this a bit more complex than the Bandai’s more modern grunt kits like the Windam & Leo, the Strike is easily on of Bandai’s best modern kits and is always a joy to build. In fact I took this kit with me to work one Sunday when I had to cover a shift for another supervisor – the whole thing was built between 09:00 & 14:00. I especially like how it can (more or less) recreate the pose from the box art….

Oh yes, and at some point I need to give this system a go, now that my copy has arrived….

Ok, it would probably be a good idea to add some flavour to the previous posts:

Firstly these are all 1/144 scale High Grade (HG) kits. If you are not familiar with Gunpla, Bandai produce kits of the mecha suits from the Gundam franchise (and others to be fair) in 3 main scales – 1/144, 1/100 & 1/60, and in levels of complexity (or Grades) that range from ungraded, High Grade, Real Grade, Master Grade and Perfect Grade, with some outliers at either end of the scale. Personally my current Gunpla collection is focused on the 1/144 scale, mainly HG kits with the odd RG thrown in if it’s one I particularly like (looking at you Tallgeese III). Now I do have some older 1/100 kits from Gundam Wing Endless Waltz, and a single 1/60 of the Strike, but honestly I’ve come to prefer the smaller 1/144 scale for three main reasons; even at the Real Grade they are still generally cheaper than kits from the larger scales by a significant amount; they don’t take up as much space (the average 1/144 being the same size as a Deluxe-class Transformer); and engineering – the HG kits released in the last decade under the “Revive” project have been astonishingly good for the most part, featuring excellent colour separation on the plastics (minimizing the need to use stickers) and expressive articulation. As a rule if a kit has two additional letters after the grading (think HGCE, HGAC etc) then these are more recent kits and should see you right.

Second, for this last batch of kits I’ve gone a bit further than normal by using the included sticker sheets to get a more accurate result, and have done a basic clean up of any nub marks left over from gutting the parts off of the sprues.

And thirdly, a quick breakdown of the tools I’ve been using – nothing more complex than a set of basic clippers, a needle file and some tweezers. I do have a few Gundam panel markers but almost never use them (I did use the black on the Strike Freedom to block out the eyes instead of using a sticker)

So bit of an odd one this, but it would appear that one intrepid band of Gundam fans are working to create a ruleset for recreating battles between your favourite mecha, using 1/100 and 1/144 scale Gunpla kits in place of miniatures. From the looks of things they are working with Bandai to make it an officially licences project, with the intention of funding via Kickstarter. And I must say I find this very interesting.

Anyway, they’ve posted the first draft of the rules so if this sounds like it catches your fancy I would suggest checking out their website. Personally I’m looking at my 08th MS Team, and hoping they eventually provide rules for settings outside the Universal Century so the Astray series can hit the field 😉

https://www.gunplatop.com/?fbclid=IwAR1MO36PSgzGJpuwN8titUrJoIkhLtmwIgIQEXZpsvZBHRQuND6Mj0DKu1I