Gundam Card Game - SEED Strike Starter Set (ST04)

"SEED Strike" is not only the worst named deck but also the fourth and last of the introductory Gundam Card Game dual-colour starters released on July 11. It wraps around the colour palette and cycles back so that its two colours of red and white result in each colour being represented in two starters. The game allows you to build your deck from one or two colours and so you have been given two options each by Bandai and is free to figure out the third combinations yourself. To exemplify, the red colour paired here with white is also paired with blue in the first starter "Heroic Beginnings" but there is no preset white and green deck and so on.


Starter 04 takes two opposing teams and slam them together into a joint task force; Z.A.F.T. and the Earth Alliance now get to work together just because they happen to come from the same alternate timeline. By the same logic Bandai could have made a blue and green deck built up by E.F.S.F. and Zeon forces. This is one of my main issues with Gundam collectible card games (or arena-style shooters for that matter) in general - there is zero adherence to the in-universe settings and everything boils down to a watered down hodgepodge of random units punching and kicking at each other. Anyway...


If you have skimmed through the previous starter deck reviews there isn't much new to say here. You have the exact same component count here; 50 cards for your main deck, 18 resource cards, a cardboard counter sheet, a combined rules/playmat and a promo-pack that contains an alternate foil-colour version of one of the cards in this set.


The double-sided playmat/rules sheet is of course similar to the ones found in the other boxes. Yes, the card artwork is showing cards found in the ST04 starter instead of course, I feel like I am repeating myself needlessly.


The most interesting aspect of this item is of course the deck composition; which units have been chosen to represent each faction and is the new artwork anything special? I must say I was very pleasantly surprised to see more mass-production type units than I had expected. SEED is quite Gundam-heavy but this starter leaves out almost all of the Z.A.F.T.-operated Gundams and completely ignore the Freedom and Justice and instead showcases the Strike and the Aegis.

The white faction is spearheaded by the Aile Strike Gundam which is the faction's "legendary rare" foil-printed card. It is teamed up with a lesser version of the Strike without any backpack (less happy about that), a couple of Strike Daggers and two mobile armours, a bunch of Moebius fliers and Mu La Flaga's Zero-variant. Z.A.F.T. is represented by the Aegis Gundam in legendary rare foil-garb, again backed up by itself in mobile armour form and then a couple of mass-production type GINNs and Miguel Aiman's ret-conned orange machine. I don't like how all the GCB starters are lop-sided like this; why not have five different units for each side?


You will not be surprised to learn that Kira and Athrun are the two main pilots for each faction. They are backed up by combo pilot/command-card versions of Mu La Flaga and surprisingly Miguel Aiman. Well, it isn't surprising considering that his GINN is in the starter, it is just an unusual pick for a game like this but I like it. The Earth Alliance gets the only pure command card which is a Striker Pack set for the Gundam with a lot of rules crammed into its text box. Each faction also gets an iconic space craft as its main base; the legged ship for the Earth Alliance and Raw Le Creuset's command vessel the Nazca-class destroyer Vesalius. I wish someone would make a PVC model of this great design, come on Gundam Converge!


The 18 resource cards that are not part of the main deck are the same tired mix of standard and EX resources as well as these obscure Token Cards that here take the three different forms of the Strike Gundam equipped with the different Striker Packs. Man, Z.A.F.T. is really short-changed in this set. Once again the counter sheet has a couple of custom tokens to match some of the card effects found in this starter.


So what random promo-card did we get with this lot? Well I'll be damned; it is one of the legendary rare foil-cards in an "upgraded" foil version which is denoted as "LR+" or Legendary Rare-Plus as its rarity level. This numbering system is just stupid. Imagine if the two legendary rare cards would have had completely alternate artwork cards in these promo-packs, that would probably have driven collectors completely mad. Instead the card features the same artwork as on the standard card except it has been zoomed in and cropped a little and the Z.A.F.T. insignia has been added into the background. I am honestly quite happy that these promo-cards are so underwhelming; it would have been a real pain trying to chase them down if they were really special.


Just like the other starters; SEED Strike is available as a variant called ST04a which also includes three promotional miniatures for Bandai's upcoming miniature wargame "Gundam Assemble". I find the unit selection really lacklustre. I do like the look of the Skygrasper miniature but throwing in two versions of the GAT-X015 with Sword Striker and Launcher Striker packs attached is silly; they should have picked one and put a different suit in the third slot in my opinion. The Gundam Assemble minis are simple model kits that you need to put together and paint up yourself so only hobby enthusiasts need apply.


So what is next for the Gundam Card Game? Well, Newtype Rising - the first booster pack series - premieres on Friday; it is likely sold out in many places already. We get two additional starter sets in September and October. ST05 will introduce suits from Iron Blooded Orphans (presumably Tekkadan and Gjallarhorn) and ST06 will follow with everyone's current darling GQuuuuuuX (The Pokemon gang goes to space...).

I am curious if these sets will introduce new faction colours. Four deck colours seems a little bit limited for a sprawling universe like Mobile Suit Gundam. If we were to look back to Gundam War again that game also launched with four main colours; blue for E.F.S.F. and A.E.U.G., green for the Principality of Zeon, black for the Titans and red for Neo Zeon.

The game later expanded with three additional colours; yellow or brown lumps together stuff from Turn-A-Gundam, Gundam X and Mobile Fighter G Gundam, white featured Oz and the Gundam Pilots from New Mobile Report Gundam Wing together with O.M.N.I. and Z.A.F.T. (and all other lesser factions) from SEED. Purple started out as a neutral colour but then became the home of Celestial Being's overpowered monstrosities while other factions from MSG00 where snuck into the green and the black decks. Additional factions were seeded into the existing decks where they seemed to belong; the League Militaire and F91-era E.F.F. went into the blue deck, the evil Zanscare Empire joined black and the Crossbone Vanguard ended up in red. I think it is likely we will see additional deck colours also in the Gundam Card Game as the system continues to expand.

Gundam Card Game - Zeon's Rush Starter Set (ST03)

We're continuing to power through the GCB starter sets that were released last week and today we are looking at what I was expecting to be my favourite; deck ST03. While the red and green combo might be a colour-blind person's nightmare it is also the set that makes the most sense, combining two factions that are actually related. Unlike the unlikely pairings found in the other three starters here we actually have a logical composition formed from the Principality of Zeon (green cards) that go hand in hand with the red cards of the Neo Zeon faction. We will discuss factions a bit more in the next review but for now I can just say this set is the obvious starting point for any Zeon player.


I think the box art used on all the starters is fine but a bit generic and it doesn't really capture my imagination. The flipside isn't better with its litany of disclaimers and product warnings and the overall packaging is a bit flimsy and easy to damage. On my European version we can see names of four distributors in the UK, Germany, Netherlands and Italy respectively.


You know the drill by now; we have the same 50+18 deck of cards, a playmat with rules on the flipside and a promo-pack containing a random foil-version of one of the cards from this starter set.


The playmat and rules sheet is the same as we saw in the other boxes, of course updated here with card examples from the ST03 deck so we can enjoy images of the Sinanju in place of the Wing Gundam or RX-78.


It is hard to disappoint me wit ha deck of Zeon unit cards and this set certainly doesn't disappoint. The main faction in red sports a Sinanju in legendary rare-foil backed up by Angelo Sauper's Geara Zulu, a couple of mass-production versions and to my absolute delight a pack of Gaza-D's and Dra-C's from the Unicorn era. I am really tempted to buy more copies of this pack just to get additional copies of these cards but I have a sneaking suspicion they might be found among the commons also in the Newtype Rising boosters that release here on Friday. The Zeonic faction in green is of course led by Char Aznable in a Zaku II and he is backed up by mass-production Zaku Is, Zaku IIs and Goufs. It is a natural counter to the White Base team in the blue deck but perhaps not as exciting of a unit mix as the one we got for the Neo Zeon gang.


The red team is led by Full Frontal as the single pilot card with Angelo Sauper available as a combination Command/Pilot-card. The Principality of Zeon gets Char Aznable as the pilot and Ramba Ral as a combo-card. Each faction has its base represented by a classic flagship. The single command card goes to the red team. You will of course get access to additional pilot and command cards in the booster pack set but I still find it a bit odd that an additional "pure" command card was not included for the secondary faction in each starter set.


The resource-card section is identical to the other starters with its ten generic resource cards and single EX Base and EX Resource cards. Here the Token Cards are granted to the Principality of Zeon with representations of Char's Zaku II and a mass-production variant. I still don't understand what these token cards are supposed to do and why there are only cards for one of the two factions included but I don't really care as I am not interested in actually playing the game. Lastly, we have a punch-out style paper counter sheet which sports a unique selection of special tokens just like the other starters do.


I just want to take a minute and complain once again about the "resource" cards. These are some of the most soulless and boring bloat I have ever seen in a card game. Compare it to the energy cards from the Pokemon Card Game, each card is representing a certain element and has its own logo and colour printed smack-dab in the middle. Or how about the old Generation-cards from the Gundam War cardgame of the early 2000's? Just look at these beautiful cards from the blue an black faction. Each faction got a whole string of different motifs on the Generation cards just to breathe some life into the decks. Why couldn't GCB do something similar? These resource cards are super-lame...


So what secret rare-foil version card did I get in this pack? Well, it is a pilot this time; Full Frontal himself which should be really impressive. Sadly, it is not. The card has an almost fully black background which doesn't do much to elevate the foil-effect but I guess the colours are enhanced a little bit, the foil effect is very muted and hard to replicate on a still photo but certainly not worth chasing after in my opinion.


Before we wrap up I should of course also mention the ST03A version of the Zeon's Rush Starter Set that also includes three promotional figures for the upcoming Gundam Assemble miniatures game. The selection contains Char's Zaku II and then two different mass-production Zaku II's, one armed with a Heat Hawk and the other with a Zaku Bazooka. I think this is a really solid choice and kind of makes me think it would have been more interesting to have a couple of different Zaku II's in the starter, switching out the old Zaku I for example. Maybe there will be different versions of the Zaku II in the booster packs sporting different weapons, that would be a fun way to add some variety to each faction (but from a card meta-perspective only one of them would ever get played anyway...).

Gundam Card Game - Wings of Advance Starter Set (ST02)

We continue the coverage of the Gundam Card Game - you know that Gundam card game with the catchy and original title? Today we are looking at the second of the four starters that were released on July 11th. There are three language versions of the game, beyond the domestic Japanese release there are also variants in English and Chinese. This is an ambitious launch to be sure.


The ST02 starter, titled Wings of Advance, combines cards of blue and green colour, and focuses solely on the New Mobile Report Gundam Wing series. The Oz faction cards come in blue, making them compatible with the E.F.S.F. cards from Heroic beginnings while the Gundam Pilot faction will group together with the Principality of Zeon.


The contents of the four starters are very similar in that they contain the same number of components, although each deck will have its own quirks and composition. Besides the 50 card main deck you also get 18 additional resource cards, a token sheet, a playmat and a promotional bonus pack containing a random foil-version card. I find it interesting that the token counters aren't the same between the different starters, instead they have slightly differing effects based on certain card abilities.


The ST02 starter has the same flimsy rules sheet/playmat combo that we found in the Heroic Beginnings starter, but some of the card illustrations has been replaced to depict cards found in this starter set which is a nice touch.


Onto the unit cards then! Each faction gets its main card in a foil version where the other cards are printed in a matte finish. the cardstock feels quite sturdy and a bit cardboardy when compared to other Gundam Card game products out there. Three of the five colony Gundams are represented in the Wing, Heavyarms and Sandrock - the Altron and Deathscythe are held back and presumably encountered in the accompanying booster pack set. The Maganac Corps joins in with some disposable grunts. On the blue Oz-side we find the Tallgeese as the centrepiece - backed up by Leos, Aries and Tragos rank and file units. Several of the cards lack special abilities, most notable and surprising among these is the Sandrock that will have to rely on its base strength (or a pilot attachment...).


Among the pilot and command cards we have a heavy skew to the Colony factions; three Gundam pilots are represented while Oz only gets to play with Zechs, the After Colony-timeline version of Char Aznable. Oz also gets access to a single command card while the Gundam Pilots have two combo Pilot-Command cards between them. Each faction also gets a base structure rather than a spaceship; a Japanese boarding school for the Gundam Pilots (really...?) and the very nice looking Corsica Base-card for Oz.


the separate resource card section comes with alternate card backs; red colour for the 10 resource card and yellow for the special EX Resource cards as well as the Token mobile suit cards that are only representing Oz this time around.


Our secret promo-card this time is the Gundam Heavyarms in a rather discreet looking foil-variant. Besides the limited foil-effect you can also see that the shaded box that normally encloses the card effect text is removed to better show the underlying artwork.


Let's talk a bit about the card numbering-system in use for GCG. The Starter sets have their own numbering series with each Starter getting its own prefix, ST01 through ST04. The first booster pack series "Newtype Rising" has the short product code GD01 so I assume that cards from that set will be using a GD01-prefix instead.

The main cards of the starter deck are then numbered from 001 through 016, with each category of cards being sequenced by factions. Card numbers 001-005 represent the Colony faction units, Oz units come in as 006-009, the two "pure" pilot cards are 010-011 and the three command and/or command/pilot cards follow as 012-014. The two base cards end the sequence at 015 and 016 respectively. Each card also has a rarity letter assigned to it. Besides the Wing Gundam and Tallgeese foil cards all cards are rated as C for Common. The two foil cards are instead marked as "LR" which stands for Legendary Rare. Of course all these cards are of fixed distribution so it would have made more sense to give them a dedicated (S)tarter or (F)ixed category instead. I do expect that many if not all of the starter cards will show up in the booster packs as well as unwanted padding, presumably with different card numbers but similar artwork.


The bonus card found in the single-card promotional pack has the same number as the card it replaces, but the letter has been changed from (C)ommon to C+. Notice also the number 1 in the hexagon on the far right. I guess this refers to the first wave of Gundam Card Game cards and that the GD01 Newtype Rising booter set will have the same reference number.


All the resource cards have their own numbering schemes. The basic resource cards all have number R-001 and are listed as commons. I expect we will get to see quite a lot of promotional cards with alternate artwork and numbers down the line. The two EX-resource cards are numbered EXB-001 and EXR-001 respectively, perhaps the game will feature different types of EX Resources with different effects and abilities as well. The Token cards however have a shared numbering series across all the starter decks. You will find T-001 through T-003 in the Heroic Beginnings starter while T-004 and T-005 are found here and so on. Why make things easy when you can make them complicated?


Lastly I want to point out that like the other starters in this series you can find a variant of this package that also contains three promotional models for the upcoming Bandai miniatures game Gundam Assemble. I must admit I found the mobile suit selection for this set to be kind of interesting, rather than the expected Gundams the pack contains the Tallgeese and two Leos, one of them in space-flight configuration. However, as I stated before these figures are neither painted nor assembled and so are unfortunately not for me. I find it a bit odd that the suit selection doesn't match what is actually found among the cards but these two games are completely unrelated anyway and so it doesn't really matter.

Gundam Card Game - Heroic Beginnings Starter Set (ST01)

When Bandai introduced their new Gundam-themed collectible card game with much fanfare last year I wasn't sure what to think about it. I was surprised to see the company deciding to introduce not only a card game with a global launch but also a new miniatures game (Gundam Assemble).It remains to see how dedicated they will be to this new game but at least now we can take a better look at it. While some players got their hands on last year's beta release the first wave starter decks have now finally been released.


There are currently four different starter decks to choose from, loosely grouped together based on theme, with another two decks following in September and October respectively. The starter decks are all bite-sized introductions to the game with a fairly low cost of entry. The real meat of the game of course comes in the random booster packs which are designed to suck the players' wallets dry. The first wave "Newtype Rising" launches next week and will probably sell out quickly, so I figured now is a good time to give prospective players a little glimpse into what to expect from these starter decks.

We will begin with the first deck called "Heroic Beginnings" which appears to be the most popular deck seeing how it is selling out the fastest in my area. The deck is themed around the core White Base crew and is paired with suits and pilots from The Witch of Mercury. There are currently four different card colours in the game and you may compose a deck of 1 or 2 of them. Heroic Beginnings combines blue for the Earth Federation and white for The Witch of Mercury-cards (regardless of faction).


The Heroic Beginnings starter deck is also available as a version that includes miniatures for the yet-to-be-released miniatures game Gundam Assemble. It carries the code ST01A and comes with three miniatures of the Gundam, Guncannon and Guntank. This is a nice tie-in with the cards in the pack however the two games have nothing to do with each other, it is simply Bandai trying to cross-promote two very different products. Note that Gundam Assemble figures have to be built and painted into little statues so only modellers need apply. I personally won't give it any time of day (however had the figures been pre-painted and assembled it may have been a different story).


Each starter set contains a fixed composition of 50 main deck cards and an additional 18 resource cards. Bandai also tosses in a promo pack containing a single random foil-card version of one of the cards in the set, clearly intended to lure people into buying multiple starters of the same type. The package also contains a single set of cardboard tokens and a dual-sided playmat/rules sheet.


The flimsy playmat contained within this package will of course be supplanted with bigger and more fancy looking playmats down the line, for now it will do a passable job of teaching the game. With the rules being printed on the flip-side you will probably not be able to use it that much during your first games as you may want to reference the rules sheet from time to time.


I won't go into the rules of the game in this review, other sources will do a much better job at that. Here I just want to go through the various cards you can expect to find within. The main chunk of cards are different unit cards as in mobile suits or mobile armours. The blue section of the deck features the iconic White Base trio and a couple of GMs. The Gundam also appears in its G-Sky form. The white section is centred around Gundam Aerial in two versions and a couple of support suits. The main card for each faction is printed with a pretty muted foil effect, honestly I don't think these stand out that much compared to the regular cards, perhaps the idea is to focus on readability rather than the fancy graphic effects you tend to see in other collectible card games.


The second half of the deck features a couple of signature pilots and a base card for each colour, the target of your opponent's team. One of the main gimmicks of the Gundam Card Game is that some cards can function both as event cards or pilots. The cards for Hayato and Kai Shiden can be played either as "Commands" (basically events) or be attached to their linked mobile suits as pilots to boost the main card's stats.


The package also contains 18 cards that are not part of the main deck but instead function as resources or tokens. There are ten resource cards used to pay for cards or card actions and a set of "token" mobile suits that are spawned into the game based on other events and function as low level units, at least that is how I understood it. We also have a cardboard sheet with double sided tokens that can be used to represent damage or special effects triggered by some of the abilities on the unit cards.


The different card types have differently coloured flip-sides as seen above. Your main deck consisting of units, pilots and command cards have a blue back, the resource cards have red backs and the special EX-resources and tokens come with yellow backs. I have moaned about it before but the logo of this game really is terrible and seems to belong on a smartphone accessory case rather than printed on the cards of an exciting fantasy wargame...


So what about the bonus-card? Well, I opened it and colour me underwhelmed. I got perhaps the least interesting card in the starter set in a very dull foil-variant. It is not easy to depict a foil-effect with a static photograph but you honestly won't be more excited than what you see here. Chasing these promo-cards seems like a fool's errand to me. The promo-set contains 16 different cards which seems to correspond with the 16 different types of blue-back cards found in this set. I don't know if there are any alternate artwork-version cards in the mix but I haven't seen any information about it.


Above you can see how the GCG cards compare to some of the other games releases by Bandai in the past. On the left we have cards representing Gundam Arsenal Base and Gundam Try Age (cards designed to support arcade machine-games) and on the far right the spiritual ancestor of GCG, the early 2000's Gundam War collectible card game.

From the perspective of a card collector rather than player I have so far found the Gundam Card Game to be a bit underwhelming. While the artwork commissioned for the game is really good looking the overall feeling I get from it is still a bit bland. It remains to be seen how the decks develop and how deep into the exotic mobile suit territory and obscure characters the game will venture. Personally, I would love to see more coherent factions rather than focusing on a few characters and suits from every show ever invented and throwing everything together into a hot mess. If this is just another game with the same old faces and machines that we have seen in every other game for the past 20 years the novelty risks wearing off pretty quickly.

Random Zeta Gundam encounter in the wild

Recently I stumbled onto a set of miniature Zeta Gundam figures in a second-hand store in Bangkok that I have never encountered before. Naturally, I had to pick them up for closer examination and also wanted to present them here to see if someone has more information about them. As you can see we are dealing with soft PVC-based super-deformed designs from the Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam television series. Each figure is a solid little statue without articulation and is attached to standardized round base.


Not much information can be gathered from the bases, we have a generic copyright claim for SOTSU/Sunrise and each figure has a sequence number in what I presume to be one giant set. the Hizack figure has two numbers on the base, I guess there are two versions in Titans and E.F.F. colours that utilize the same base. The figures I found have the following numbers:

1 : MSZ-006 Z Gundam
7 : MSA-005 Nemo
8 : MSK-008 Dijeh
9 : MSA-005 Methuss
10-11 : RMS-106 Hizack (E.F.F.)
12 : RMS-108 Marasai
14 : RX-139 Hambrabi
15 : NRX-055-2 Baund Doc
18 : AMX-004 Qubeley

As you can see, this is a really big series, containing at least 18 figures, maybe more. I have a huge gap in the start of the series where I presume we would find the Gundam Mk-II, Hyaku-Shiki and Rick Dias among others, and there are also lots of enticing gaps that make me wonder if there are Gaplants, Gabthleys or Asshimars out there, really making me curious to find out more.


Size-wise these figures are a little bit taller than the older (and taller) generation of SD Gundam Full Color Figures but the main difference is that the proportions are entirely different. Actually the proportions vary greatly between these figures based on the original design, traditional shaped mobile suits have been given big (and rather ugly) bobble-heads whereas more exotic designs like the Hambrabi and the Baund Doc look better.


These figures appear rather modern; both the sculpts and the paint applications are very detailed and the proportions remind me of the type of artsy collectibles that are in vogue right now with brands such as Pop Mart, and it wouldn't surprise me if these figures are sold as expensive random boxes with chase figures in the set. If anyone has more information about the origin of these figurines (and if they are actually legitimate) I would be curious to learn more as I expect it unlikely I will encounter more of them anytime soon.