I figured I'd do something different and take a look at the recently launched Arsenal Base Gundam-themed arcade game. Or to be more precise, the starter deck which appears to be exclusive to Amazon Japan (there might be different barcode variants in other outlets for all I know). You can currently find it for sale there at a price of around ¥1200 which is a great price for twenty different foil cards. The rest of the game is, as you would expect, proving to be excessively expensive to collect on the secondary market. Arsenal Base is the successor to the Gundam Try Age game (which ran between 2011 and 2021) and premiered in February 2022. You collect cards through playing the game and use them to create a team of up to five suits and pilots and deploy them against an opposing team.
That's a nice looking little card box. Of course, three quarters of it just contains air because... bigger is better? I guess you can keep your fledgling card collection in there, or maybe your favourite snack...
The actual contents boil down to two individually packaged starter sets, a promotional pamphlet and a player passport card for storing your login identity. I have no idea if these cards are also pre-loaded with in-game currency or gear to get you started. Note that while you do get two full teams in a box there is only one player passport card.
Each deck consists of a fixed line-up of five mobile suits and their corresponding pilots which give you two full pre-configured teams to begin with. As with other games of this type you can build your own line-up and there are also additional suits and pilots to be found from both SEED and IBO in full card list. The spelling on some cards is really wonky but that is Japan for you.
All the cards in the starter are also available in the regular card pool, often in multiple versions. The Aile Strike for example comes as a Master Rare card in the starter (how the fixed starter cards have varying rarities I'll never understand...) but is also available as a common, a rare, a perfect rare promo card and as two different ultimate rare variants, each with different card art and completely different statistics as seen on the backside of the cards above. The pilot cards are also available in multiple variants and with presumably different abilities. Everything is designed to separate you from your cash as quickly as possible.
The Arsenal AB cards are pretty much the same size as the cards from the Gundam Try Age game that they replace (left). On the right are some examples from the similar (and long defunct) game Duel Company.
Review update 2024-10: Out of the blue I stumbled on a pair of retail editions of these starters and am including pictures of them here for reference. The contents are the same in regard to the cards; one pack for SEED and one for IBO. It is incredibly difficult to find cards for this game that are not of the higher rarities or promos and I have yet to see any of the other starter sets that are out there. Frustrating for sure...
Anyway, to learn more about the actual arcade game, see card lists etc. you can check out the official website provided - of course - you are up to speed on your Japanese.
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