I was working on the latest Converge Plus review but had to take a pause due to the frustration I felt about it (spoiler alert I guess...) so let's take a little detour into a crazy one-off item instead; a starter set for a really obscure Gundam-themed collectible card game. Well, the term Gundam-themed is only partially correct, as this seems like a perverted mutation with DNA from various concepts like Mobile Suit Gundam, Digimon, dinosaurs in general and why not Japanese baseball? I know absolutely nothing about this product or its premise but decided that it was worth the requested ¥300 to find out what it was all about.
As you can see this is a product manufactured by Carddass back in 2007. The starter box is really compact and dedicated to a character named Hyuuga, apparently a main character in a matching manga that someone had the misfortune of having to write up. I shouldn't really throw shade at things I don't know anything about but I can't imagine it would be a very deep creative statement. Most likely a lot of drawings with dynamic lines and short exclamations as something cool happens I would presume. I've read that one of the cards is exclusive to this starter set and since there is another starter exclusive card there must be a matching opponent starter box out there as well, blue in colour it appears.
Inside the box you find this little plastic binder and a stack of 30 cards. I instinctively thought that this would be the storage solution for your starter deck but no, it apparently acts somehow like your team during a game. There are a total of six transparent card sleeves inside with two pockets each, which could fit 12 or 24 of your cards depending on if you need to see the card backs or not.
The starter deck (if that is what you call it?) contains a fixed set of 30 cards available in quantities of one, two or tree. The first two card types up there in the left corner are foil-type with a nice reflective finish to them while the others are standard stock. The quality of the papers is thick enough but all the cards are slightly warped with the ends bending upwards like a U-shape, having sat in its box for 17 years waiting for some attention.
Here is the double-sided rules sheet unfolded. I haven't taken any time to try to decipher these but it appears that you are supposed to mix a basic Gundam card with an animal- or character aspect to create a mutation of the two. The flip-side of the sheet also features a small playing area.
There are two card types present in the starter, I'm not sure if there are other types of cards in the full set as well. The card numbering uses several different letter prefixes but these appear to denote faction/element or similar traits rather than different basic card types. First we have these three Core MS type cards; the RX-78, the Ez-8 and a Titans-coloured Mk-II (the last one being exclusive to this particular set). The cards are single-sided and have some basic stats at the bottom, including boosts that apply when the cards fuse with the second type of cards.
The second type of cards have two different sides, the "Wisdam"-side features a thematic concept of some sort and the "Fusion"-side shows a creature literally fused with a Gundam to create some sort of fantastic creature. Sometimes various appendages are retained but for the most part it looks like only the Gundam's head remains visible. And the head can be located in all sorts of improper places, sometimes upside down. The starter set lets us fuse the MS with dinosaurs, preying mantis, a wolf and a cheetah, a couple of knights and martial artists and most wacky of all, a baseball player.
Above is a close-up of the card information available in the rules sheet. This list presumably covers all of the cards included in the two starters of the first volume, red and blue. The Core MS appear to be the same except for the fact that the Mk-II card is a different variant in the other starter set. I found a Japanese website which lists cards from I believe two volumes but this game seems to have had a very short life-span.
I don't really have much more to say about this item, stay tuned for the next proper figure review to follow shortly.
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