Eggy's Hobby: HG GAT-02L2 DAGGER L

Dagger is a grunt suit from the Gundam seed series, and like GM, Bandai didn't really give much love to this awesome mobile suit. I think there was one HG dagger from before with an awesome gun barrel but other than that I don't remember seeing others despite its wide variety. Last year Bandai released Windam and with that, there was much hype for another grunt suit from the Gundam Seed series, and this year Bandai released this.

HG Dagger L

Once again, Bandai didn't disappoint.

Starting from the box art.

It's a standard HG box and like Windam, it has a bunch of Dagger L on the box art, showing what it can do.

Being a grunt kit, it didn't have a lot of parts, just a couple of runners. These are all the runners in the kit.

It didn't have any stickers, but it had the usual beam saber effect part. Also unlike Windam, it had this clear piece for the eye.

Although it is new, It still uses the old Strike Gundam parts so it uses polycaps. I prefer newer kits without polycaps, but this isn't that bad.

While the old runners are well old, the new runners look great. It does not have a lot of details which is expected HG version of grunt suits.

The manual is simple. The instruction was well laid out and easy to understand.

It didn't take long to build this kit. Probably an hour or so. Parts came out of its sprues easily with minimum flesh marks. Cleaning the nub mark was easy as well thanks to both high-quality plastic and the small connection points. Bandai also did a great job hiding some of the nub marks.

Here are the pictures of the finished kit.

It is a bit bland and lacks surface details that are present in Master Grade kits that have been coming out lately. This might be turn off for some others but I didn't mind. The thing about a grunt suit is you can customize it. I like to think about how my version of the suit would look like and it is one of the fun building the grunt suits.

As for the kit, the proportion is right, and it poses well. Thanks to its slim profile, it looks great event standing still and it has enough articulation to pull some awesome dynamic poses.

Still, its lack of any strike pack system surprised me. Even Dagger came with Gunbarrel and Windam came with Jet Striker. I was hoping it would come with Dopplehorn but alas it's a separate expansion set from P-Bandai.

Dick move Bandai... Dick move.

For my build, I decided to customize it.

I began by taking all the parts apart and cleaning them. I used the file to sand some of the rounded edges to clean edge, giving it a more industrial look. I also used some chisels to make panel lines and panel gaps. Pla-Plate was used on its skirt to give some extra layers. I also drilled some holes but stopped when I realized that my drill bit didn't really give the clean-cut I wanted.

I usually go easy with scribing a panel line, but for this one, I decided to go a bit further. The next thing I know, a lot of smooth edges were filed out giving it a more realistic look. With panel lines, gaps, and layers, It gave a more industrial look.

Here is the picture of the finished kit.

I choose gray with orange for this mobile suit. I think it turned out alright. I also used generic water slide decals to complete the look. I think it came out great, and it has a different feeling from the original out-of-box build of this kit.