MGUniversal Century

MS-06D Zaku Desert Type Ver.2.0 Conversion Parts

A resin detour that turns your MG Zaku II Ver.2.0 into the sand-worn North African variant, if you're willing to do the work styrene usually does for you.

MechaGrade Score

3.4/5

Zaku II · 1/100 · 2008

GradeMG

Scale1/100

Released2008

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

I'll say this up front, this is not a kit you build, it's a kit you convert.

You need to already own the MG MS-06J Zaku II Ver.2.0 (sold separately) and be comfortable working in resin, and once that's true, this set delivers a genuinely distinct Desert Type silhouette with a radiator backpack and hover skirt thrusters you cannot get any other way in this scale. It rewards patience and punishes anyone expecting a snap-fit weekend project.

Best for: Zaku II Ver.2.0 owners who already prime and paint and want the desert variant nobody else makes in 1/100

The full review

What it is

This B-Club (Bandai's in-house resin garage kit arm) release swaps key pieces of the MG MS-06J Zaku II Ver.2.0 for cast resin replacements that turn it into the MS-06D Desert Type, the sand-camo Zeon suit that fought Federation forces across North Africa and the Middle East before the Dom Tropen took over. You get a new heat-dissipating radiator backpack in place of the usual thruster pack, waist-mounted auxiliary thrusters, reworked hover-skirt armor with jet nozzles, and a 10cm brass rod for the antenna. The parts are cast cleanly enough that seam lines and flash are minor rather than a fight, and they're built to key into the Ver.2.0 kit's existing joints, so nothing about the base engineering gets compromised.

The catch

This is resin, not styrene, so plan on a full degrease soak (mold release ruins paint adhesion if you skip it), wet sanding, and priming before anything else happens, and you'll want CA glue or epoxy rather than plastic cement for some joins. It does not include the base kit, so the real price is this set plus a full MG Zaku II Ver.2.0, which adds up fast for what is fundamentally a parts swap. There's also no molded color separation the way an injection kit has, everything reads as raw grey resin until you paint it, so if you were hoping to shortcut to a finished desert-camo Zaku out of the box, that's not what this is.

Who it's for

This is for builders who already own the Ver.2.0 Zaku II, know their way around resin cleanup and painting, and specifically want the Desert Type's distinct radiator-backpack silhouette rather than another standard Zaku. If you're newer to the hobby, don't already have the base kit, or want something you can build and pose the same afternoon it arrives, skip this one and look at a mainline MG or HG instead. If you're an MSV completionist chasing suits that never got a full injection-molded kit, this fills a real gap and the finished result stands out on a shelf of ordinary green Zakus.

What works

Delivers a Desert Type silhouette (radiator backpack, waist thrusters, reworked hover skirts) that no standard injection kit offers in this scale
Resin casting is clean enough that flash and seams are a minor chore rather than a major fight
Keys directly into the Ver.2.0 Zaku II's existing joints, so you keep that kit's solid articulation and frame engineering untouched

Worth knowing

Requires the MG MS-06J Zaku II Ver.2.0 sold separately, so the real cost is this set plus a full base kit
Resin workflow (degrease soak, sanding, priming, CA glue or epoxy) is a real skill and time investment compared to snap-together styrene
No molded color separation, the entire look depends on your paint job rather than the plastic doing any of the work

Sold? Grab it.

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The build story

What the build is actually like, and the engineering worth knowing about.

Treat this like a garage kit, not a Gunpla runner. Before anything touches glue, the resin needs a degrease soak (a day in a cleaner like Simple Green or a dedicated resin wash) to strip the mold release, otherwise primer and paint will lift right back off. After that it's the usual wet sanding to knock down seam lines and mold flash, which on this set is manageable rather than brutal, B-Club's casting quality here is a step above the sketchier garage-kit resin you sometimes find.

The payoff is in the silhouette. The radiator backpack reads completely differently from the standard Zaku thruster pack, the hover skirt thrusters and waist-mounted auxiliaries give the desert variant a bulkier, more grounded stance, and because it's built around the Ver.2.0 frame you keep that kit's strong hip and knee articulation for posing. The brass antenna rod is a nice touch that survives handling far better than a thin styrene stalk would.

Lore & trivia

01The MS-06D Zaku Desert Type was developed at a captured Earth Federation base in California and fitted with a heat-dissipating radiator backpack in place of the standard Zaku's thruster pack.
02It added sand-proof joint sealing, a short-range communication antenna, and auxiliary waist thrusters to cope with the dust and heat of the African and Middle Eastern fronts.
03Zeon fielded roughly 114 Desert Types in total (43 with double antennas, 71 with a single antenna) as the primary Zeon suit across North Africa and the Middle East until the MS-09F/trop Dom Tropen replaced it.
04This conversion set was released by B-Club, Bandai's official resin garage-kit label, rather than as a mainline injection-molded MG.