If Mobile Suit Gundam and card games are both anywhere on your radar you likely already heard about Bandai uploading an online presentation of their new collectible card game project the other day, complete with celebrity studio guests and a couple of slick presentations. What is interesting about this project is that they are eyeing wider global distribution into North America and Europe and not just into the domestic market (or as is sometimes the case limited release in the neighbouring countries). You can find the full 40-minute presentation through the game's official website but I thought I'd just give a very quick introduction to the project here via selected screen grabs.
The infomercial was hosted by a speaker, the game's producer Mr. Hashimoto and two celebrity guests who were gushing and fawning over the game - typically with awkwardly scripted questions followed by I-am-glad-you-asked-that-question-I-just-happen-to-have-a-little-video-that-will-explain-it-in-detail type of responses. Overall though it was informative and not as jarring as say an Amazon Lord of the Rings-superfan panel. :)
We have to discuss the name of the game though... is this really the final name they are going with? It doesn't help that the logo looks like a facelift of Windows 95. I really hope the final product will have a bit more draw to it because now it looks like a smartphone accessory.
There have been many Gundam-themed cardgames over the past 25 or so years if you include arcade game hybrids and similar. However, when you shorten the list to traditional card games there is really only Gundam War that springs to mind; sometimes referred to Bandai's Gundam-themed Magic-clone. The game had a decade-long shelf-life with around 30 regular sets and lots more special releases. The game was overhauled, redesigned and pushed out again as Gundam War NEX-A but it only survived for half that time and the cards are damned hard to find these days. After that we had the hybrid game Cross War which features much smaller cards and it could also be played online. Cross War halved the lifetime again and since 2017 there are only some guest appearances in the Battle Spirits cardgame which features all kinds of IPs in a huge blender. If you are familiar with these older games you will recognize a lot of the concepts seen in the new.... what was that name again... "Gundam Card Game" title.
According to the presentation we have four basic card types as seen above. This feels very recognizable to the earlier Gundam card games although here support units have been broken out into a separate card type called Bases instead. The Command and Operation types from Gundam War and NEX-A have been streamlined into a Command category which spontaneously seems like an improvement. The presentation actually also showed a fifth category of cards called resources, similar to Energy, Generation or NEX-A Graphics cards. The resources in the demo only had that bland logo on them and were devoid of art, so I guess they might only be found inside dedicated starter sets.
Deck construction involves putting together your own selection of 50 cards (better make it a meta-build if you want to win I assume) bringing in choices from up to two factions or rather colours. I didn't catch them talk about what constitutes a colour or how many there will be, from the card examples we can see the E.F.F in blue, Zeon gets green and Neo Zeon goes red, just like in the games that preceded this one. Heero and Quatre join the green team with their Gundams but Lacus and the Strike Gundam form the colour white together with Witch of Mercury. In older games we have seen the Titans and Zanscare Empire in black, franchises such as X, G and Turn-X lumped into orange while MSG00 units tends to get tossed in all over the place or sometimes as colour agnostic cards. It remains to be seen if more colours will be introduced as the game continues to expand.
Talking about the factions a bit more, the game will premiere with representatives from the five eras you see above. Personally I do have some issues with the mixing together of all Gundam franchises into a giant soup but yet they still insist on sorting the various factions into eclectic colour groupings. I guess in the end it doesn't really matter how you slice it; gamers will quickly discover the meta- or overpowered cards and make the same couple of deck variations anyway.
The main card categories to collect will of course be units and their pilots. You can field mobile suits with or without a pilot, pairing the two to combine their attack and hit points into combined values. Some unit cards are designed with a particular pilot in mind and have a name reference to that character. Pairing a combo likes this is called forming a link and it will trigger additional bonus effects.
The Command cards are used as special event cards and can sometimes be played outside of your turn. Some Command cards also double as pilot cards that can be linked to a mobile suit, you can see Quatre and the Sandrock there. I have a bad feeling that this means that certain lesser characters will be reduced to command cards and not have their own pilot cards which I would find very lame from a collecting point of view. Let's hope I am wrong. :)
The Base Card category will consist of units such as fixed installations or a space battleship. You will select one card for your deck and it will act as a meat shield for the attacker to defeat, while at the same time offering support advantages to the defender.
To deploy your units and other cards you have a set of resource cards available to you. These are tapped or rested to pay for your costed cards. Some cards will also have a level requirement which acts as a secondary restriction. In the example above you need to pay two resources to field the RX-78 but you also need to have a total of four resources available to field that card.
If you are experienced with other card games you will probably gain a lot of insight into the game from viewing the set-up alone. Your aim is to defeat the opposing player by removing their base and protective shield cards which will leave them open to a fatal blow.
One of the more novel aspects of the game is that it will ship with rules for 2v2 or Battle Royal match-ups, letting 3-4 players join in at once. Got to love that set-up with all the food, drinks and strategically placed ketchup and mustard bottles on the table, hopefully homeboy there sleeves his cards and laminates his play area...
If you are a card collector, the game's main selling point is that it will offer new original artwork for all cards, at least that is what they stated in the presentation. And to help you part with even more of your money the game will of course feature several tiers of rarities, alternate artwork or secret card variants to obsess over. It remains to be seen if Bandai will actually be able to keep stores stocked when the initial hype-train rolls in at release. Let's just say I will be very surprised if the English release will be at all available those first couple of months.
To increase that logistical nightmare the game will be offered in three different language versions; Japanese for the domestic market, simplified Chinese for the middle kingdom and English for everyone else.
Talking about the release schedule, Bandai expects the first set to hit the shelves in February 2025. They didn't mention anything about a staggered release so I assume this is a more or less simultaneous global launch. I also didn't hear any mentioning about how many sets can be expected in a single year, probably 2-3 would be my guess. Accompanied by an endless stream of promo-cards of course.... that goes without saying.
To wet people's appetite (and to give influencers some help to work that hype) a "beta" release opened for pre-order on October third, with expected delivery in December. As you can see the suggested sales price is pretty steep but to be fair there is contains a good number of cards including a fixed set to make it playable out of the box. Wouldn't be much of a beta without that ability now would it? The beta will be sold to U.S. customers via P-Bandai USA and showcased on the two events you can see above, one in the Netherlands and one in Florida.
What are your initial impressions about the game? While I think it is cool that Bandai is willing to launch a game for the global audience I kind of foresee all kinds of product-availability issues and pricing concerns. The new artwork alone means I am interested in collecting at least some of the cheaper cards. If the current Arsenal Base game is any indication the alt-art cards will likely be prohibitively expensive on the secondary market. The collectible aspect of the game will of course put off many and Bandai doesn't exactly have the best track record for keeping their games (or toy-lines for that matter...) alive, so the game certainly has a challenging future ahead of it.
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