Lsat year I built a whole bunch of variants of the Dilanza, using this big sheet of Witch From Mercury-specific water slides plus them up:
The sheet also happened to have a whole section of decals just for use on the Darilbalde, and I vowed to one day put them to good use:
The only problem is that those decals are meant for the original version of the model, without all the extra weapons and accessories that came in the Expansion Set. And it’d kind of look weird if all that new gear had no decals at all, so I put the project on hold until I could figure out what to do.
In this case my patience bore fruit, as I recently discovered that G-Rework put out their own sheet of waterslides to cover all the weapons and accessories in the Expansion Set:
How’d it Go?
I’ve talked in recent months about the relative quality (or lack thereof) of Bandai’s official waterslides compared to third party products. I should note, though, that it’s not so much “Bandai’s decals always stink” as it is “Bandai’s decals are hit or miss”. Sometimes they fall apart or fall off with little provocation, and other times they’re rock solid.
This specific sheet of GWitch decals fall into the latter camp, and they were just as reliable for the Darilbalde as they were when I built the Dilanzas.
And yet, the G-Rework decals were still that much more pleasant to work with. I just find it so strange that all these little shops manage to churn out a better product as a giant conglomerate. And it’s not even like the 3rd party products are any more expensive (or if they are, the extra cost is negligible).
Do They Look Good?
There are some models that look too plain and boring without at least a few decals, and there are others that I think look fine - or even better - without any at all. And there are still others where it could go either way.
The Darilbalde falls into that middle ground. It already looked great without decals, but with them?You’ll have to judge for yourself:
Does it look worse? Not at all. But does it look significantly better? I’m not so sure.
It’s certainly a different look, and at least a little bit better, but I don’t think they’re strictly necessary.
But hey, go ahead and judge for yourself:
For what it’s worth, I posted some of these shots to some Gunpla Discords I frequent and got a lot of compliments, so maybe I’m being a little too harsh.
Looking back at my original build, I don’t think I did a very good job of posing or photographing this model, so one of the side benefits of this little side project is that it gave me a nice excuse to try and redeem myself:
Though I must admit I still had trouble coming up with good poses that use all the bits:
This one is pretty good I guess:
Conclusion
That’s it! That’s the post!