Popy B-Club Lesseps-class Land Battleship

The second entry for our October One-Off Week is actuallynot a figure but a model kit. Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and go down that route when it comes to rare birds like the Lesseps-class Land Battleship. This behemoth has as far as I know never been modelled in any other way than this particular cast suppied to us under the Popy and B-Club brands in 2006.

As a 1:3500 scale representation the mighty 250 meters have been converted down to a measly 7 centimeters but you are still paying a hefty price for the priviledge of adding it to your fleet. If I am reasing the packaging labelling right this baby sold for ¥5800 back in the day although I picked up my copy for ¥1800 a couple of years ago at Mandarake. Mind you, I have never seen it for sale since. In general, model kits of Mobile Suit Gundam spaceships and similar are notoriously hard to come by once you go beyond the couple of old UC0079 kits and the Bandai EX line. There are several small-quantity hard to find spaceship resin kits out there that appear to be very sought after because they always sell out instantly..

The Lesseps as it appears in Gundam SEED (above) and SEED Destiny (below).

The Lesseps is the lead ship in a class of at least two vessels (the Desmond makes a brief appearance in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny) and originally assigned to the colourful Z.A.F.T. personality Andrew Waltfeld (why Bandai never release figures of him or Mu La Flaga I will never know). The class belongs to a family of Z.A.F.T. Land Battleships which in spite of the name also can travel on water through use of its special Scale System technology. I haven't seen any exact number of its supposed mobile suit complement although it seems to carry about half a dozen BuCUE or so.

Z.A.F.T. Petrie-class Land Cruiser, Lesseps-class Land Battleship, Compton-class Ground Battleship and an Earth Alliance Hannibal-class Ground Battleship.

Unfortunately I seem to have misplaced the original photos of the components so we'll have to omit this rather important information from the review. Suffice it to say though, that there is a healthy number of parts ranging from small to very tiny and fragile. The build was a commission done by my friend Marcin for which I am very grateful as I kind of had enough of model kits in my teens...

Here's what the figure will look like once it is built and painted. There are also no stickers or decals with kits of this type and they would also be unnecessary since the Lesseps has very few if any markings on it anyway.

Apart from its mobile suit hangar the main weapon of the Lesseps is a trio of dual 40 cm cannons. It can add an extra punch with its battery of 32 missile launchers and ten torpedo launchers.

The Lesseps is a surprisingly nimble vessel thanks to its special Scale System propulsion technology which carries it forward through use of micro vibrations.

While the 250m long Lesseps is significantly smaller than the 420m Archangel it still makes for an appealing companion to the Cosmo Fleet version of the Archangel. It is too bad that these kits have to be as rare as they are, as I would have liked to get one or two extras.

Kira adapting to the shifting sands of the desert, here in the Launcher Strike Gundam from the Seika EX pencil sharpener range (1:280).

The Lesseps normally carries a squad of BuCUE mobile suits, well suited for desert combat. Here is one from the Gashapon HG MS selection.

The B-Club family of specialized kits contains many rare as hen's teeth-designs and these are typically priced thereafter, but are often the go to-point for odd birds such as the Lesseps. While a very spartan kit the model is one of my favourites and it blends very well with the vessels from the Cosmo Fleet Collection and also makes a perfect piece for a gaming board. I hope to be able to collect and review more spaceships on the blog although I am sure it will take a lot of time to get there.