This kit comes with a total of five runners. They look like a combination of old runners from the original Entry Grade Strike Gundam and new ones for the Exceed Galaxy
And if we look in the manual, we see that there are only four unused parts:
It’s interesting to compare this spread to previous Entry Grade Kits, such as the Entry Grade Grandaddy Gundam (which only has four runners):
As well as the Entry Grade Nu Gundam FF, which has five big runners (and one tiny one for the face):
But keep in mind that one of those runners - the biggest one in fact - is dedicated entirely to building the Gundam FF’s massive Fin Funnel:
Meaning that, like Gramps, the body itself uses just four runners worth of parts.
Basically what I’m trying to say is that the Exceed Galaxy looks like it has a larger part count than other Entry Grade kits. Not much more mind you, but it’s still noticeable. And this goes hand in hand with its increased price - whereas Gramps or the OG Strike are just $10, the Exceed Galaxy is $14-$15, which is closer to the lower end price of a High Grade model.
Or to put it another way, we may start to see the lines blur between High Grade and Entry Grade, as both their costs and their part counts start to converge.
Or maybe this is just an outlier! It’s hard to say considering how few EG Gunpla are out there to compare it to.
Whatever. Let’s move on to the build. Since I don’t get to build Entry Grades all that often, I’ll go through this one blow by blow.
Beam Rifle(s)
The one on the top is the Exceed Galaxy’s custom rifle, while the one on the bottom is the original Build Strike rifle (which you’re more than welcome to use):
They’re not made out of many parts, but each one has a lot of nice surface detail (and of course, the new rifle has hardpoints for customization).
(PS - while you can’t see it in these photos, I had to paint the camera sensors on both rifles with some blue paint)
Shield
While the guns may not be made of many parts, the shield is. Five by my count, which actually seems like more than it should be.
It looks nice, but it’s also really small. Maybe too small.
Head
The head is the one area where you arguably “need” to do some color correction. Both the front and rear camera sensors need to be painted blue. I feel like they could have solved that by building the head around a blue plastic core containing the cameras - they’ve done that before on other kits - but perhaps the shape of the head got in the way of doing that.
Or they could have just put some GD stickers in there, which they seem to be deathly afraid of doing with Entry Grade kits (aside from special ones)
At least the vulcan cannons are color separated, which seems like a huge engineering flex. And like on other Entry Grades, the eyes are also made out of color separated plastic,
(PS - I also had to paint in the little grey vents in the front of the face)
Core Fighter/Backpack
The backpack is actually a little Core Fighter, and it’s made out of a surprising amount of parts:
It’s got a little hinge gimmick to allow it to dock to the mobile suit:
When it’s done, it looks pretty great. I did no touch ups save for basic panel lining:
Chest
There’s not much going on on the inside, but I’d argue there’s quite a few parts (and some nice parts layering) going on on the outside, as you can see here in the manual:
And the result is rather striking (no pun intended):
It’s nicely colorful, and it doesn’t sacrifice much in the way of detail
Lower Torso
This is by far the simplest part of the model:
There are some opportunities to use some grey paint to add a bit of extra color separation, but by and large we’ve just got some big, single, chonky parts for each of the skirts.
Legs
I was curious how this kit would achieve the color separation between the grey and white bits on the leg. The answer is that the parts are very carefully engineered to interlock in such a way to achieve the effect:
To me, this is what Entry Grade is all about: creating incredible detail and intricacy through creativity and state of the art engineering precision. This is the kind of finesse that you’d never see on a 20 year old High Grade. They’d just mold all the detail on two halves that you’d snap together, leaving you to paint in the missing color.
And here is how they look finished:
A fe notes:
- You can see through the pink clear parts, which means you can see the hole in the leg where they plug in. It’s an eyesore, and I’m wondering if there is some alternative connection they could have used
- They grey around the hardpoint on the side of the leg had to be painted
- I’m impressed they managed to capture the little thruster area on the backside of the legs
- There’s a big hole right in the middle of the ankle armor. On the Build Strike, this is filled in with a clear part. I’m guessing they didn’t want to bother on the Exceed Galaxy due the added complexity it would bring, though it does look a bit odd for that space to be just … empty
Arms
There are little grooves inside the pink parts that go on the shoulder, and the manual suggests you panel line them:
I tried doing it, but it didn’t look very good in person, so I ended up removing all the panel lining marker (which took quite a bit of time).
Once again we can see the holes where the pink parts plug in, and this time they’re even more noticeable than on the legs.
Everything else looks nice though. The arms themselves benefit from some panel lining, while the shoulders have excellent color separation.
A Pleasant Build
I didn’t like the first Entry Grade I ever built. Maybe it was because I felt jaded and skeptical about the new Grade, or maybe it’s because the finished build didn’t come out looking as good as I had hoped. What I do know is that every build since has gotten more and more pleasant, and this might have been the best EG build yet. I had a lot of fun plussing it up with extra painting and panel lining, and everything kept looking good as they came “off the line” so to speak.
Completed
The build is done, and it’s looking good, but we’ll have to wait to see just what it can do in the lightbox.