I have been wanting to build a Real Grade model for quite a while and I finally got the chance to with the Aile Strike and I must say that I wasn’t disappointed.

I stuck with the OOB paint scheme for this since this was my first shot at this grade, and while the size didn’t really give me any problems the already molded joints of the frame were a bit annoying to paint. Fragility was another issue as I would constantly have to be overly cautious at every point of the build. I only ran into one problem where half of the beam saber tops cracked, but since they were only partially cracked I managed to fix them easily and without any structural damage.

One thing I can say was a pleasant surprise was the decals. I have heard a lot of praise towards the decals of RG’s from the foil stickers to the clear ones so I decided to use a few. The foil ones were obvious since the metallic accents are so overt and I could never be able to paint them quite as bright and shiny. While using the clear decals came about from not pre purchasing water slides for the model before hand. All the small warning and caution decals are waterslides but all the large Strike specific ones are stickers. I basically used all the ones that could be applied flush to the model and discarded the ones that couldn’t. This is the first time in over 10 years I have used the stickers that come with a model so you can imagine what that says about the quality of them.

I really think that all the praise RG’s have gotten are valid and the price of them will surely keep me buying more, but if I had to compare them to MG’s (which they usually are) I would still choose a MG any day of the week.