Bandai's most recent Gundam-themed card game has taken the world by storm and it is no lie to state that at the moment a) the temperature is glowing hot as fans scramble for product and b) there isn't any to find. If you take a minute to scour the web you'll see all sorts of complaints about shop orders getting scrubbed, those shops that actually managed to get stock shamelessly selling it at multiple times the MSRP vs. pushback from those who claim that it is easily available in their particular neck of the woods. Iron Bloom, the fifth starter deck for the game released on September 25 but the story at my local game store was one seen across the world; at first the product was listed and delayed and then it just suddenly vanished into "sold out" status. The frustration was real.
We've since seen announcements that Bandai could not meet the demand and so decided to focus on stores that were holding official GCG events in house and just a few days ago a new communique that states that reprints of the last two starter decks (ST05 x ST06) as well as the second full set (GD02) will hit the market in early December but if that will cover the demand is anyone's guess. I personally missed out on all three products but during a recent trip to Bangkok I decided to check in on the state of the game there. Demand and availability is pretty much the same there although I did come across some GD02 booster boxes on sale priced around 80 USD for the Japanese edition. I also stumbled on the two new starters sold at around 200% MSRP and decided to check them out regardless - who knows if and when I will get my hands on the English editions after all.
ST05 features units exclusively from the Iron-Blooded Orphans television series and also introduces the fifth new faction into the game - violet. Like the previous starters the box is dually themed with white being the secondary colour but it feels very lopsided towards violet as we shall see. I apologize that the photos are of poor quality for this review, my et-up relies on daylight which is hard to come by up here in November. This box has a big sticker slapped onto it regarding distribution in Thailand and I must say I am surprised that the Japanese edition has found its way here, I was pretty sure it was exclusive to Japan only. On the other hand, multiple Japanese-language cardgames have already made their way to the country but it just seems off.
At first glance the contents mimic the set-up found in the four previous starters. You get a fixed deck of 50 cards, a dual-sided rules sheet and play area as well as a little promo card pack to lure you into buying multiple boxes.
Here is a quick overview of the rules sheet and the gameplay area. As mentioned before, it is pretty inconvenient to have the rules printed underneath your playing area in case you need to go back and review something but fortunately the game appears to be reasonably straightforward, at least so far.
The meat of the contents is always going to be the unit deck and ST05 does deliver here although the contents appear to be heavily skewed in favour of Tekkadan. The two foil cards are the fourth form of the Barbatos for violet and McGillis Fareed's Schwalbe Graze of which there are two each. Violet then gets common cards for the second form Barbatos, a couple of CGS Mobile Workers, a Graze Custom and the Gusion Rebake backed up by Teiwaz's mass-production Hyakuren type. McGillis and Gjallarhorn have to rely on a couple of Graze Commander Types and regular grunt-type Graze suits (these being the highlight of the set for me personally).
Things are no better for McGillis on the pilot side of the things, because he has to go up alone against two of the angry shirtless Tekkadan pilots, Augus in the Barbatos and Altland in the Rebake. There are also two command cards and the Isaribi carrier as base for Violet while white has to make do with a single command card. I get that violet is the new suite that has to break into an established setting where the other four colours already have an established presence but I would have preferred this starter to be better balanced or even made all violet. I assume the GD02 booster packs will correct some of the slight against Gjallarhorn (even though I'm not holding my breath...).
The remainder of the cards are the waste of paper resource cards and a custom token set to match the abilities of the units in this set. One of the particularly confusing (if pretty) cards are the Token cards (the T-series), I still don't understand what their purpose in the game was and lo and behold, these are no longer present in the new generation starter decks. Fun fact: On my recent stay in Bangkok I as browsing the card section of a popular gaming store and the only cards they had available for GCG was a whole stack of the token cards from the GD01 booster box. Not exactly a fan favourite, eh?
We'll close this review off with a look at the random promo-card. As with the previous sets, the Iron Bloom promo-card pack will contain a foiled-up version of one of the cards from this starter deck. Either you get one of the common cards as a foil or one of the two foil cards in an even prettier version (that is arguable from the ones I have seen...). Personally, I see no reason to try to collect these, the foil-effects are really muted and the artwork is the same or slightly zoomed in. In this pack I pulled an extra Graze-type which I was really happy about but I can imagine most players would be very indifferent towards it.
