An unexpected surprise this is

HELLO!

Kimi here and I’m back again this week with FINALLY the review for the HG 1/144 ZGMF-099T DOM Trooper! First I need to apologize to those that have been waiting for the review for this awesome kit last week, for taking a while to come around to this and if I were, to be honest though? There isn’t really any reason for me to release the build and review as late as I did, though there is a legit reason as to why I was taking my time with this particular review.

In which, I will explain myself further here…So not to spoil the review.

But I would say this for now that this was one kit that really puts a huge smile on my face…despite its many flaws.

I’m sure all of you here probably wondering why so? Well we’ll get to that, but first, like every other review that we’ve made here, we do need to first get into the juiciest part of this…by talking about the

History and development of the ZGMF-099T DOM Trooper.

Model name : ZGMF-X099T

Classification : Prototype Heavy Mobile Suit

Weapon systems : MA-X848HD Enhanced Beam Saber, MX2351 “Solidus Fulgor” Beam Shield Generator, MMI-GAU 25A 20mm CIWS, G14X31Z “Screaming Nimbus”, JP536X Giga Launcher DR-1 Multiplex

Height : 17.48m

Armour Material : Unknown

Powerplant : Ultracompact Energy Battery

Crew : 1

During the late stages of the First ALLIANCE – PLANT War, ZAFT found themselves in real serious need of a new generation of MS to help cope with the technological disadvantages that ZAFT was finding themselves into. With them seeing the ALLIANCE having their own MS going hand in hand with what the ZAFT Forces had at the time and aswell after taking a closer look of the stolen Gundam Type MS. They were quite concerned that that eventually their enemies will eventually catch up to them.

Even though with that said, ZAFT did at this time period produced the ZGMF-600 GuAIZ a mass-produced MS that was developed from the lessons learned from their encounters with the Strike Gundam and as well from the stolen ALLIANCE’s Gundam units. However, ZAFT felt that this is still insufficient and decided that they should really do more in making sure that they would always have the advantage over its rivals.

So, ZAFT decided to have two MS design team work in creating ZAFT’s future mass production units. They have one team worked on further development on the ZAKU series which was already in their testing phase at the time and another worked on a completely new design, which would become the first iteration of the Dom series…the ZGMF-XX09T DOM Trooper Original Specification Type.

As the war reaches its end and as the treaty of Junius was signed, the development of these new state of the art MS’s was affected. Since all major superpowers had to uphold the Junius Treaty, it meant that there were a lot of changes needed to be made to the new MS’s so they wouldn’t breach the terms of the treaty that was signed.

This majorly affected the DOM Trooper chances since most of its key features needed to be removed and the MS itself needed to be reworked. ZAFT as well find that the Original spec DOM Trooper was as well quite an expensive MS to mass produced and at the same time quite hard to maintain. Due to this, the more inexpensive and a much easier MS to maintain ZAKU Series was selected instead to be ZAFT’s new mass production MS. As well since the ZAKU series can easily be converted to meet the treaty’s requirements kind of made the selection process so much more easier for ZAFT’s top brass.

However, that isn’t actually the complete story of why. There were rumors circulating around that the real reason was somewhat due to political maneuvering by the Clyne Faction. It was said that some of the ZAFT leadership that was aligned with the Clyne Faction, was the reason for the DOM’s not being selected since they were quite taken by how it performed. Seeing how it would be useful to have something like this to intervene in any future conflict, they handed over many of the blueprints to Terminal in making sure that they would have the necessary power when needed.

However, with that said the final version of the DOM Trooper that was produced by Terminal was a slightly different version than the one that was submitted for review during its testing/evaluation stages. On the original spec, the DOM was given MA-SX628 “Fodio” Drill lance, a belt-fed JP536X Giga-Launcher DR-1 Multiplex, a physical shield unit, and the original version as well had the EX-G1 Knight Wizard pack equipped.

However, on the Terminal’s version of the DOM Trooper, they decided to ditch many things from the DOM Trooper Original Specification. Like for an instance, on the Terminal’s version of the DOM Trooper, its Giga-launcher redesigned to have its magazine fed instead of the belt-fed version on the Original Specification. This was actually a much more sensible change since it made the MS more vulnerable to attacks, and as well since the Terminal’s version of the DOM Trooper as well ditched Knight Wizard pack unit it made it impossible to have the Giga-Launcher to still be belt-fed.

The other changes that Terminal made to the DOM Trooper are that they decided to have the DOM to have more Beam based weaponry and defensive system. Yes, after learning much from observing the battles from the second Alliance – PLANT war, Terminal decided to ditch the use of the “Fodio” Drill Lance and the physical shield, for a beam-based one.

Terminal equipped the DOM Trooper with the state of the art MA-X848 Enhanced Beam Saber which was made to be DOM Trooper’s primary melee weapon for close quarters combat. For defensive purposees, the DOM Trooper was as well equipped with two MX2351 Solidus Fulgor Beam Generator that was installed in each arm unit. It should be noted that this is the same system that was installed in the ZGMF-X42S Destiny Gundam and the ZGMF-X666S Legend Gundam.

Though the terminal’s version of the DOM is quite impressively equipped. But there is some elements from the Original spec that was kept on to be used on the Terminal’s DOM units. Just like the Original Spec version of the Dom, the Terminal’s version is still quite enormous. Since both the Original Spec and the Terminal’s version will need to deal with a lot of close quarters combat it was given a pretty substantial armor to deal with the combat damage, hence the size.

To make sure that the DOM Trooper would be able to still be able to be an agile MS It was equipped with a large number of thrusters giving it an excellent mobility which enabled it to overcome or compete evenly with current gen MS’s of the time. As well, both versions of DOM Trooper was equipped with the ‘Screaming Nimbus’ system, a mirage colloid system that is used in a different way than the way it was used on the Blitz Gundam.

Here, the mirage colloid was used as an offensive/defensive system instead of just being a system to hide an MS. How this was achieved is that the system produces a cloud of particles that would form like a defensive line around the MS while allowing the MS to plow through any groups of MS units that might be coming in between the MS and its objectives. This was one of the reasons why the Clyne faction was so interested in the DOM Trooper in the first place.

Why wouldn’t they be? It was an insanely useful feature and as the same time a very powerful one at that. It was so powerful in fact that even only with three MS, Terminal’s DOM Trooper unit manages to destroy scores of MS’s during the Second Alliance – Plant War without any one of them being destroyed in battle.

Even though the DOM Trooper was quite a formidable MS, Terminal really didn’t mass produce the DOM units. Only three DOM Trooper MS was known to be produced during the conflict and three units were piloted by Terminal’s ace pilot team, which was piloted by Hilda Harken (which was the team leader for the Dom Trooper unit), Herbert Von Reinhardt and Mars Simeon which were all veterans of the Second Battle of Jachin Due.

I shudder to think what would have happened instead if these were mass produced. I can imagine a large number of these is really one scary sight to behold.

With that ends the history lessons, now lets finally move on to the review, shall we?

The Review

When I first decided on this kit, I was really coming in the build with no idea of what I’m getting myself into and nor did I have any expectations for it being something that would blow my mind away. I thought to myself since this is a pretty old kit, it would be insane for me to expect it to be as revolutionary as the origins Char’s Zaku II HG kit or any of the latest HGUC kits that were on sale today.

However, even with that said, as I reached the end of the build I was finding myself smiling to no end and not it wasn’t because I am slowly descending into madness.

It’s just that I really enjoyed myself building this.

Why?

Well, there are many reasons for this but to start, for an old kit, I really find that the building process for the HG DOM Trooper to be quite fun. The parts though isn’t really that well gated but at the same time, I do find that the nubs here were pretty easy to deal with and most of the bad ones were positioned in areas where is well covered by some other part. So bad parts weren’t actually made obvious.

Though there were some fitting issues that were found at some points of the kit which does end up with the part having some seriously bad seam lines. However, I still felt that most of the parts here were still quite well designed. You can see some of this awesomeness when you get to work on the body unit and the leg unit. Honestly, I really found myself quite thoroughly amused by how detailed and how thoughtful they were when designing the parts for the kit.

To come back to the previous point, it’s not like the seam line issue is that big of an issue here since you can decide to deal with them with a touch of glue and a lot of sandpaper action. Plus, even if you decide to leave the parts be without doing much, that you will find that it might not bother you as much..well as long you can have your Gunpla builder OCD in check that is.

The only thing that I find the HG DOM Trooper might have an issue with, is the fact that there were many unpainted sections of the kit that can be seen here. So bad in fact that Bandai didn’t even bother to include any sticker parts to hide them unpainted sections. However, this isn’t really an issue since many of the unpainted sections are pretty easy to work on if you do decide to work on them. But yeah you really do need to get some paints if you do decide to work on this particular kit.

I do honestly found myself having a really fun time painting the parts up, the sections here were really easy to paint on and never during this process that I found this to be a pain in the ass. I was really finding myself thoroughly enjoying the painting process of it here. This was one of the reasons why I was taking my time on this since…I really just wanted my HG DOM Trooper to look really good when it’s done.

However, it is not to say that the sticker that comes with the kit was useless here, I did find some use of it for the head and the feet unit (because I don’t have a purple paint). Surprisingly enough, I do find that the sticker parts here hold up better than most of the HG stickers that I’ve worked on. Not to mention they as well included some waterslides here too, which I am really considering on using here.

The articulation of the kit was as well something that I was quite happy with, despite the DOM having a lot of chunky huge parts I was still quite surprised that the DOM still had a pretty awesome articulation for itself. Not to mention that at no point in the build that I found to have any issues with posing the kit up since both the parts and the joints hold itself well here.

What’s more, Bandai as well included a stand with the kit. In which made posing the HG DOM Trooper to be quite enjoyable. It was as well something that I found to be quite useful since I do think the best way to really pose the kit is really by using a proper stand. Even though the stand itself was quite basic, the HG DOM Trooper could fully utilize the stand well since there was an additional joint that was present in the HG DOM Trooper which made the posing the HG DOM Trooper on a static stand much better.

Looking at this, it kind of made me wonder why this wasn’t made as standard to the newer HG kits since I do find this particular feature to be quite, useful.

Overall, I do really think that the HG DOM Trooper is an EXCELLENT kit and it is one that I HIGHLY recommend to all of you to pick up. Yes, this now might be a pretty rare kit to get nowadays but if you ever come across it, I promise you that this would be one that you will have a lot of time working on with.

and really don’t forget to stock up on paints. So you won’t end up like me, fucking up the white sections of the kit.

With that ends the review for the HG 1/144 ZGMF-X099T DOM Trooper! What do you think of the kit and the review? I honestly really enjoyed my time with it, and already am on a hunt to get another two more of the same kit so I can finally have my own DOM Trooper team posing awesomely in the Homebase.

Really it has been a while since I felt this happy with a kit, and it really made me really look forward to building again. It made me really look forward to starting work on the RG Exia.

Anyways, we will be back again this week more Let’s Talk Gunpla Segment on the coming Wednesday and as well we will be back this Sunday with an unboxing and First impressions on…. I may say one of my most anticipated RG Unboxing this year! So do look forward to that!

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Anyways, we shall see all of you again next week, and we hope that you all have an awesome week and weekend ahead! Have an awesome Gunpla building time there as well and until next time!

Ciao!