How to Build Gunpla

Grades, and how long each one takes

Gunpla kits are sold in grades, and the grade tells you the part count, the engineering and roughly the evening it will cost you.

• Entry Grade (EG), 1/144. Low part count, pre-colored, and designed so most parts come off the runner without a nipper. About an hour. The best first kit.
• High Grade (HG), 1/144. The workhorse grade. Two to four hours, good articulation, sensible part count. Where most builders live.
• Real Grade (RG), 1/144. An inner frame plus tiny armor parts at HG scale. Four to eight hours and genuinely fiddly — not a first kit.
• Master Grade (MG), 1/100. Full inner frame, high part count, the most satisfying build. Eight to fifteen hours over several sessions.

Our best first Gunpla kit picks go through the specific kits rather than the grades.

Three tools, and nothing else at first

A nipper, a hobby knife and sanding sticks build a kit cleanly. Everything else on a twenty-piece tool bundle is for a later build.

The nipper is the one that matters. A single-blade hobby nipper shears the gate instead of crushing it, which is the difference between a clean cut and a white stress mark. Household scissors and side cutters from a toolbox both crush. The nipper roundup explains why single blade wins, and what tools you need for Gunpla lists the full set in buying order.

The two-cut rule, which is the whole craft

This is the single technique that separates a clean build from a scarred one, and it takes thirty seconds longer per part.

Never cut flush. When you cut a gate right against the part, the blade compresses the plastic as it severs it, and compressed polystyrene turns white. That white mark is not on the surface; it is in the plastic, and sanding it out means removing material from the part itself.

So cut twice. First cut 1 to 2 mm away from the part, in free air where a stress mark does not matter. Then pare the remaining stub down with the knife in light passes, and sand. No compression, no white mark. The detail is in how to remove nub marks.

What order to do everything in

The build sequence has a correct order and getting it wrong means redoing work.

1. Build in sub-assemblies as the manual directs — head, torso, arms, legs. Do not run ahead; later steps often require a part to be trapped inside an earlier one.
2. Panel line each section as you finish it, while it is still accessible. Panel lining a fully assembled kit means reaching into armpits.
3. Decals after panel lining, because wiping back liner over a decal lifts it.
4. Topcoat last, over everything, in thin passes.

If you intend to paint the kit, the order changes completely: everything comes apart, gets primed and painted, and then goes together. That is a different project — see how to paint your first Gunpla.

The four mistakes almost everyone makes

Cutting flush. Covered above, and it is the big one.

Forcing a tight part. A peg that will not seat usually has flash on it or is being inserted at an angle. Check before you press harder; a sheared peg is a repair job.

Panel lining bare plastic with an enamel liner. The solvent can craze stressed polystyrene, and crazing does not come out. Use a water-based marker on bare plastic or clear coat first — the panel liner picks cover which is which.

Skipping the topcoat. Bare Gunpla plastic has a glossy sheen that reads as a toy in photographs. A matte coat is the cheapest upgrade available and it also locks the decals down. See the best matte topcoat.

Which kit to start with

An Entry Grade or High Grade RX-78-2. Both are cheap, both are forgiving, both have enormous amounts of guidance available, and neither punishes a mistake. Start on a cheap kit and make your mistakes where they cost nothing.

Avoid starting with a Real Grade. The part count and the inner frame are not harder conceptually, but the parts are small enough that one slip breaks something, and that is a bad first experience for no reason.