With the Turn A’s done, it’s time to move on to the next build from the logjam. Technically I put together a few of the weapons on this thing all the way back in May 2024, but the bulk of the build was done between May 2 and May 13 of this year:
Just like with the Master Grade Turn A, I had plans to write tons and tons about this build. I am not exaggerating when I say that I was prepared to do a highly detailed breakdown of every. single. minor. difference. between this Gunpla and its High Grade equivalent.
Thankfully I realized that that would be crazy and stopped myself. But I still want to give this thing a fair shake, as it’s one of my favorite mobile suits of all time.
An Old School Favorite
08th MS Team is not the first Gundam Story I ever watched, but it was the one that made me a fan. There are a lot of reasons for that, but the presence of the Gundam Ground Type is one of the big ones. Even now, 25’ish years later, it is still one of my top 3 mobile suits.
On Rankings
This is neither here nor there, but I figured I'd point out that I don't do rankings like most people. If I tell you my top 3 (or top 5, top 10, etc) favorite mobile suits, they are in no particular order. And if you ask me to rank them, or say something like "but if you had to choose ..", I'd promptly ignore you.The beauty of these kinds of subjective opinions is that I don't have to choose or rank, and I don't believe doing so has any tangible benefit.
And if you really want to know, here is my current Top 5:
About the Mobile Suit
There’s a lot of we could cover here, but for now let’s just start with the description from the Gundam Wiki, just so we have some context:
The Gundam Ground Type was one of the early prototypes for the Earth Federation's mobile suit mass production plan, produced in limited numbers before the recovery of the RX-78-2 Gundam's combat data. As its name suggests, it was designed solely for ground combat, and all space-use equipment, as well as the Core Block System, were omitted. This caused the Gundam Ground Type to be lighter, allowing it to rival the performance of the RX-78 while under gravity.
In order to save time and cost, the RX-79[G] was constructed using surplus parts for the RX-78. Since the quality of these parts varied greatly, differences in performance became a problem, so a limiter was added in order to ensure stable performance. This limiter can be disengaged, activating a state known as "MAX mode", greatly increasing performance. However, due to the heavy burden placed on the unit, this mode can only be activated for a limited time.
Compared to the RX-78, the RX-79[G] featured many design changes. The head-mounted Vulcan guns were omitted in favor of the ability to mount various optional equipment to adapt to different situations, such as extra antennae for long-range communication or a Vulcan pod for enhanced close combat ability. An extendable snorkel camera for enemy searching was mounted on the left side of the head. The beam saber racks were moved from the backpack to the legs, and were changed to an enclosed type to prevent dust from entering. A Vulcan gun and a multi-launcher were mounted on the left side of the chest. Its backpack was designed to mount various equipment, such as a weapon container for carrying various handheld weapons or a parachute pack.
The Gundam Ground Type was capable of using beam rifle. However, only a small number of beam rifles were manufactured for it, and few units were equipped with it. As such, its primary ranged weapons were physical projectile weapons, such as the 100mm machine gun and the 180mm cannon. Two spare magazines for the machine gun can be mounted on the side armor on the waist.
As the RX-79[G] was built out of surplus parts for the RX-78, replacements parts were very limited, and many bases were forced to perform field repairs on their units using parts from other mobile suits, creating many customized units. One such example was the unit piloted by Sgm. Karen Joshua, which had its head replaced with the head of an RGM-79[G] GM Ground Type and her suit was mockingly called GM Head
How Powerful is it?
If you’re the kind of person who cares a lot about precise worldbuilding and/or techncial lore (or just powerscaling I guess), the Gundam Ground Type is a headache. Depending on what research you do, or what discussions you find yourself involved in, you can encounter lots of different opinions on how powerful it is, as well as what does and doesn’t differentiate it from other mobile suits.
The core problem is that Gundam Ground Type is inextricably linked to the GM Ground Type, since they were built at the same time, and use many shared parts. There’s been a lot of debate over the years as to how much they actually differ from one another.
For example, depending on who you ask, the answer may be:
- It’s just a glorified GM Ground Type built with a few specialized leftover Gundam parts
- It’s literally just a GM Ground Type with a Gundam head
- The GM Ground Type is actually more powerful
I did a lot of digging and research about this, and while there are lots of different sources with different (sometimes conflicting?) information, the basic idea as far as I understand it is this:
Practically speaking they’re basically the same thing, but the Ground Type is more “powerful” - at least for a certain definition of that term - because it has a few extra enhancements, including:
- A more powerful reactor
- Better quality armor
- Extra gear (like the multi launcher in the chest)
- Some of its parts are leftovers from the RX project, whereas the GM Ground Type is all GM parts
Whether or not any of this makes a huge difference on the battlefield is another matter entirely, but there you have it.
Why I Like It
I think I like this thing for all the same reasons why a lot of people are meh about it. Despite being labeled a Gundam, it’s not an overpowered hero unit. It’s far more grounded (no pun intended) in regards to things like its capability and its durability (it sometimes breaks down!)
Or to be spicier about it, if you claim to like “real robots”, then how can you possibly dislike the Ground Type? It takes that idea about as far as it can possibly go.
(I also love the color scheme, how it’s a darker and more muted take on the traditional Gundam colors).
About the Model Kit
This is an old one, circa the year 2000. It’s so old that it has screws in some of its joints, which is something I’ve heard about, but never encountered until now. We’ll see how that goes.
It’s also maybe not color accurate out of the box. We’ll talk about this more later when we get to the build, but the plastic is white, when it should probably be some grey tone instead.
Despite being so old, the kit does still come with the “sticker sheet + smaller dry transfer sheet” combo, which is (or at least was) standard for Master Grades. Though in my case I’ll be using G Rework waterslides instead.
In terms of weapons and accessories, it’s identical to the High Grade version. You’ve got its three major weapons and it’s storage backpack.
There’s one more kind of weird thing about this model, but we’ll talk about that during the build. But before we get to that, the next post is going to dive into the flavor text from the instruction manual.