Clan Unity is the sixth Gundam Card Game starter deck and just like intimated in the recent Iron Bloom review, it has not been readily available in my local market for a while now. The product was released on October 24th and (as also mentioned in the Iron Bloom review) is supposedly reprinted by Bandai Namco and to be made available again in early December. Today's review however will inspect the Japanese language edition since I picked up the ST05 and ST06 decks on a recent trip to Bangkok where the decks are also in short supply. I paid 700 THB for each which is a bit over twenty U.S. Dollars. Going forward Bandai Namco has promised to up the production runs and it remains to be seen if the availability of the game will stabilize somewhat in 2026 but I'm not betting on it.
Clan Unity is all about the most recent alternate universe era of the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise, GQuuuuuuX and its flirting with Neon Genesis Evangelion (and Pokemon for the character designs). I still haven't taken a deep dive into the series and remain somewhat sceptical to the rehashing of old content in general, but at least have gathered as much knowledge as to learn the origin of the "clan" concept. It refers to organized battles between mobile suits kind of like street fighters. One of the most confusing things about this set is how the characters and units have been split into red and green decks where I would have assumed they would go together.
ST06 is the first starter deck to recycle a colour combination - we've seen a red/green-starter before in the Zeon/Neon Starter ST03 (aptly titled "Zeon's Rush"). While I guess this creates a bit of a temporary disadvantage for especially the blue deck I'm sure this will be rectified with the ST07 and ST08 starters that are scheduled for later this winter. This is a bit unusual as the older Gundam-themed cardgames usually favour the blue E.F.S.F./A.E.U.G. decks since they typically have the most mobile suits and characters to choose from.
Contents is similar to the most recent ST05 deck; 50 cards for the main deck and 12 resource cards. The first generation starters ST01 through ST04 also contained another six token cards each but these have been dropped in this second generation.
The rules sheet gives an insight into the main concepts of the game and on the flipside you have the sectioned up playmat. This makes rules reference mid-game impossible but maybe the seller tricked you into buying multiple starter decks anyway; got to collect all those shiny promo-cards, right?
We have eight different unit cards split evenly between the two decks. Red gets a foil GQuuuuuuX backed up by an alternate version and the GQ-universe versions of the Dom and Gelgoog (which honestly looks more like a GM Command of sorts). The green deck is fronted by the Red Gundam (how does that make sense?) in two variants, reinforced by two different GQ-version Doms and Gelgoogs. I don't think I have ever seen such an evenly themed deck out of any cardgame.
The pilot cards contain no major surprises, you know that you will see Amate Yuzuriha and Shuji Ito leading each team and then you have alternate command/pilot cards for two of the three Black Tristar pilots; Gaia supports red and Ortega goes for green. I suppose we can find Mash in the GD02 Dual Impact set (if he is even in GQuuuuuuX of course...). The two base cards are a bit disappointing since they do not show off bases of any kind; I want to see structures, spaceships or even planets here. I find the cards in this set a bit bland.
The resource cards reveal nothing we haven't seen before, 10 basic resources and one each of the EX Resource and EX Base, all with the same old dull placeholder artwork. As with ST05, the full-art token cards that accompanied each starter have been removed completely.
The single-card promo-pack contains one of the sixteen basic cards in an alternate foil-version. Even the two foil-cards have slightly different foil-effects compared to the "regular" cards but honestly they aren't much to look at. Ideally, you want your favourite unit or maybe pilot as this foil-card and naturally I pulled a command card which hardly looks different at all. The darkened text box is gone and there is a slight shiny effect if you wiggle the card. I'm really not feeling this set but hey, if there is a Police Zaku in the GD02 set somewhere GQuuuuuuX might still redeem itself. Clan Unity is easily my least favourite out of all the starters so far.
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