The MS-18E Kämpfer was made for the Principality of Zeon very late in the One Year War as a nimble hit-and-run suit. It was one of the few Zeon suits to wield beam weaponry (in the form of two beam sabers stored in the hips) in addition to it's massive armament of shotguns, bazookas and panzer faust (hand held, one shot bazooka rounds). Although it had fairly light armor, it's extreme firepower and maneuverability made it a terrifying suit to go up against. In fact, one Kämpfer was responsible for the destruction of all five suits belonging to the Federation's Scarlet Team on Side 6 in December of UC0079. Unfortunately for Zeon, the Kämpfer was produced so late in the war that it had not even made it to mass production before the war's end.

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The Kämpfer has always been one of my favorite Zeon designs probably just because of how freaking menacing it looks (watch Gundam 0080). The Master Grade itself is quite well made, and finally features a working cockpit door that actually opens like the cockpit door shown in the OAV (generally Master Grade cockpit doors include a much larger area than that of the actual door area, it's understandable considering how small those doors would be, but still). I'm especially fond of the Kämpfer's head, which came out very well, dispute my slight screw up on the yellow and black thrusters near the chin area (which was the only yellow area that wasn't yellow to begin with). The monoeye peg was actually molded in clear plastic rather than the light red it should have been, but coating the back of the peg with a red Gundam marker fixed that problem a lot better than I thought it would. Although stickers were available for the two white strips (on the horn and the left shoulder spike), I used another Gundam marker. I think I managed to keep it pretty straight, although you can tell I fudged it a bit on the horn. I was a little disappointed that the entire beam saber hilts could not fit into their slots on the hips, instead the hilts split into two and only the bottom portion goes into the slot. As far as detailing went, the majority of it went into using a fine tip sharpy to fill in the center of the yellow thrusters and exhaust nozzles. There are a minimum of panel lines, and it's just as well, since I'm really bad at doing panel lines you can see on darkly colored suits. I was a bit lazy on this one, I never went in to detail the two shotguns, two bazookas, two panzer faust or chain mine. Heh, it almost has too many accessories. Come to realize it, I never did the hands either. Oops. Despite my omissions, I think it turned out looking quite good.