Clan Unity is the sixth standardized starter set of 2025's new Gundam-themed collectible card game and the first to recycle a colour-combination already seen before - green and red. Fitting perhaps as this time the focus is also solely drawn from gear and characters of the GQuuuuuuX television series which is a bit of a recycling in itself. Anyway, I've already covered the Japanese version of this set (review here) but figured it would useful to also document the English version now that it has been available through retail again here in Northern Europe for a couple of weeks.
Originally released on October 24 last year together with the second general booster series Dual Impact (affectionately known through its product designation GD02) the set quickly sold out everywhere and continued the unavailability-fiasco of the previous starter ST05 (which has so far not reappeared on the local market here). Last December Bandai promised to reprint ST05, ST06 and GD02 and also up the manufacturing volume of future sets. At the moment I've seen local shops get some restock of the GD01 boosters and the ST06 starter and the GD02 boxes are also starting to be seen again so it appears that they are working on it.
The first six starter sets all follow the same basic template, a fixed play deck of 50 cards as well as 12 additional resource cards that are not placed in your deck. A two-sided rules-pamphlet/gaming mat is also provided. To drive a bit of FOMO-sales each starter also contains a single additional promo-card which is a foiled-up version of one of the cards in the starter set.
The rules overview is printed on the opposite side of the play mat which is pretty inconvenient if you need to reference the wording during a game but these days players will look it up on their mobile anyway. Has there been any errata to invalidate the starter rules yet I wonder...
There are a total of 28 unit cards out of the 50 and they are distributed through 8 different cards, giving you a full playset of 4 each of the lesser six cards while the two fancy foil-version cards are supplied at half the amount. I guess the idea is that you should pick up two starter boxes if you would like to field the artificially rarer cards at the maximum allowed quantity. The unit variation is rather slim with two GMs (I'm sorry, they are Gelgoogs in GQuuuuuuX...) and two Rick Doms (it follows that GQuuuuuuX ought to have called them Hizacks or something...) and then two variants each of the pack leaders; the GQuuuuuuX for the red deck and the Red Gundam for the green deck (go figure). I can't complain about the artwork and it is all original for the game as well, this is the reason I like to collect the cards.
The remaining 22 cards are split up between two pilot cards, four command cards (two of which can also act as pilots) and a base card for each faction which is the target of your opponent. This section of the starter decks has always been a bit bland and this is no exception. I am especially disappointed by the two base cards. A base should be represented by... a spaceship, an installation, even a flag or a logotype but look at these two: The green base card reads "Kaneban Co., Ltd." and has a picture of the character Annqi. I thought we were commissioning new art for this game, surely you could have come up with something more, I don't know, base-like? Maybe a workshop or a building? The red card "Clan Battle" is even worse. What's next, a base card depicting Vin Diesel at the wheel called "Street Race"? Horrendous.
The resource cards are the same boring things you've seen before. Bandai prefers to squirrel away interesting alt-art cards as promotional give-aways or tournament prizes to drive engagement - or just put them in very pricy special packs.
Before we wrap up let's also take a look at the promotional foil-card. Ideally, I would want one of the cooler mobile suits in foil so naturally I draw one of the command cards. It doesn't really matter though because the foil effect is really subdued, you can hardly see the difference even in real life. If you really have a thing for foils there are several better Gundam cards to collect out there; Arsenal Base, Try Age and Duel Company to name a few. Anyway, this was just a quick rehash of the English version of ST06, the least impressive of the six starter decks in my opinion.
