#witp

MS-18E Kämpfer

Oil on canvas

MG 1/100 E.F.S.F Mass-Produced Mobile Suit RGM-79G "GM Command" [Colony Type] Side 6, Island Libot, "Tiger Group" Commander Abbot Use

My second real MG! I really love the design profile of the GM, so when I saw this one for a reliatively low price at the store I had to pick it up. I've only really done one proper 1/100 MG before, the MG Vidar, so it was interesting to go back and build a slightly older kit from this line.

The GM Command is part of a series of intermediary GM designs developed towards the end of 0079 and used throughout the early 0080s UC, before being supplanted by the reliatively underpowered GM-II and Hi-Zack. It's part of the same design family as the GM Cold Districts Type and the GM Sniper II, and in fact, the MG kit is just a redesign of the MG GM Sniper II kit, even sharing quite a few of the runners and thus including several of its torso and head parts. The GM Command [Space Type] is a lot more well known, having a more widely circulated HG kit, however it looks like the Command [Space Type] variation is a P-Bandai exclusive.

The MG GM Command is from 2018, but feels like an intermediary in MG design. It's not as limited as some of the older MG kits, and doesn't have the screws and rub-on decals that were common to these kits, but it does have some limits to its colour separation.

It's mostly well separated, with a somewhat detailed inner frame complete with detailed sensors behind the visor, fully separated head vlcans, and several individual grey parts to recreate vent parts in the right colour. However, the vents on the face and the verniers on the shoulder tips need to be painted grey, and all of the red detail on the inside of the shoulder vents and on the thrusters needs to be painted as well. The grey trim on the chest vents isn't recreated either, but I don't think that would be possible to colour separate at this scale.

A lot of the thrusters are depicted as grey in the manual, but typically UC content depicts thrusters with a red colour on the inside (likely a heat resistant coating). The thrusters on the backpack are recreated with two parts, giving them a little more depth, but it's annoying that this wasn't used to give them some colour separation.

To help the visor pop a little more, I painted all of the detail behind it with a chrome marker, and then picked out the individual cameras with a UV reactive green metallic marker. The visor itself is also a UV reactive trans-green piece, so the combined effect with UV or blue light is quite striking.

I also took the time to paint the little pilot figure. I'm super proud of how he turned out, but unfortunately the design of the kit hides almost the entire figure behind the cocckpit's hinge.

While this positioning is accurate to the anime, with the door below the pilot's feet and behind the controls, I would've liked to be able to see the figure I spent an hour painting.

Apart from painting, I applied my usual weathering to this kit. All of the grey frame parts got a drybrushing in gunmetal and silver, with a silver pigment powder to add extra wear to the edges. I also added plenty of sponge chipping to both the brown and beige sections of armor, and dirtied up the otherwise plain beige armor sections with an oil-stain pigment powder to up the visual interest. I also added some heat discolouration to the tip of the rifle.

MG kits from this era aim to provide a more anime-accurate look rather than increasing surface detail (like the Ver. Ka. line), so weathering and decals feel somewhat necessary. The kit includes a few number options, and plenty of other caution details, EFF insignia, and other neat-looking stickers. I supplemented the included stickers with a few other spares of my own.

I haven't really done this much for a kit before, but I decided to give this unit a little bit of a specific backstory. I used a panel lining marker to add graffiti detailing a specific colony, fireteam, and pilot that the mobile suit was meant to be assigned to. Side 6, Island Libot is the location of the 0080: War in the Pocket OVA that this suit design is from, and I chose to invent the "Tiger Group" so I could use up some of the spare tiger sticker decals I had lying around from a previous kit.

As a MG, this kit comes with a few nicely designed gimmicks. As above, the cockpit can slide open to reveal the pilot. There are plenty of hidden articulating pistons that reveal themselves when bending the ankles, knees, and elbows. The kit includes similar MG-style hands to the MG Vidar, with swappable fingers that tab into the weapons, and an articulated poseable thumb. For some reason the closed fist option was very poorly designed and would not attach to the hand properly, so unfortunately I had to get rid of it, but the rest seemed to cooperate.

There's one pistol grip option for the right hand, that tabs into the included bullpupped 90mm rifle, two open hand options, and two open fist options for the beam sabers and shield. The included shield can be built with or without a deployable stand that lets it stand up as portable cover (vestigial from the GM Sniper II runners), and you can attach two spare magazines from the 90mm rifle to it.

You can remove the beam saber rack from the rear skirt and attach it to the back of the shield as well, although the connection feels a little weaker than the one on the skirt. The beam sabers come with two MG sized beam saber effects in an older trans-light pink.

The magazine for the 90mm bullpup rifle can be removed and "reloaded", but there's no tab to let the kit hold the magazines, so you just need to wedge them in between the thumb and palm.

The MG GM Command is fairly well articulated, with plently of articulation at the shoulder to let it pull of some really dynamic poses, even while keeping the shoulder armor upright. The elbows and knees can bend up to 90 degrees, thanks to some clever layered double-jointing, and bending them reveals hidden mehanical detail. The hips are fairly good, but lack a proper tab and so can be worked loose from the waist if the kit is carelessly posed. The head can't look up too far, and the neck piece feels a little limiting for a MG, however.

That being said, the kit can still pull off a lot of dynamic poses.

Overall, this kit was super enjoyable to build. It's fairly simple, and doesn't take too much longer to build than a modern HG, but it's very well designed and has some great detail. I'd say between this and the MG Vidar, I've been converted to the Master Grade line - at just the moment when Bandai seems to be making less of them 😔. While some of the parts feel a little loose or tight, I'd still reccommend this as a good introduction to MG in terms of both scale and complexity.

All of my builds from the past few weeks post-exams have now been built and photographs, so now I can start to pack everything up while finishing off the last feww reviews for the year. See you in the next review!

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