Flash of Radiance is the sister-release of ST07 Celestial Drive and part of the third wave of starter sets and booster packs released in early 2026. The two starters formally released on January 16 with the GD03 Steel Requiem booster set following on January 30. The name "Flash of Radiance" of course alludes to "Hathaway's Flash" and is a central theme all throughout the fixed set.
You will quickly recognize the packaging style as it follows the previous starter sets with a dual colour pre-set deck, in this case of blue and red cards. There is nothing new to see on the box itself and much of this review will just feel like repeating myself again.
Inside you find the usual 60 card deck (50 cards for the player's hand and 10 resource cards), a play area sheet and the customary promo pack containing a small (really minor I would say) surprise.
The paper rules sheet/playing mat looks similar to before. As I mentioned in the Celestial Drive review I'm not sure if Bandai actually improves or erratas these things, but it would have to be rather small changes in that case.
Now that we have five deck colours to choose from the neatly divided spread is no longer possible, form here on out some will get more toys than others. The third wave for example does not contain any starter cards for the white faction. As things stand at the moment the red and green decks have the most options from four different starters, blue and white have three appearances and purple only two. It would technically be possible to rebalance with two new starters sporting blue/purple and white/purple combinations but we all know that is not how things will go. Besides, it is not the number of available cards but where the meta cards fall that matter anyway.
Thematically, Flash of Radiance is very focused on "Hathaway's Flash" just like the tight focus on Celestial Being in ST07 "Celestial Drive". While I love the unit mix in this set with a meaty line-up of Messer-variants and a couple of EFSF machines I wonder how well a starter based around two very high-level units is supposed to work. The Penelope and Xi Gundam are extremely high level and point-cost compared to units in other starters that plateau around 4-6 not as here 7-9. If I were to design starters based on these two behemoths I would have made it two different decks centred around each one of them rather than trying to cram everything into on pack. I guess the assumption is that most players are already invested in the game and don't need more entry level cards?
The supporting card section is also unusually bare-bones this time around, there are only two primary pilot cards and one supporting command/pilot-card. Notice the command card "Siege Ploy" which is a reissue of a card from the Wings of Advance starter set (ST02). We have one base card for each colour; props for the beautiful artwork on the Davao card and while the art for the Valiant is also nice why is it not a picture of the ship itself rather than an interior shot? Do better! :)
Side-by-side comparison of the "Siege Ploy" command card from ST02 and ST08 respectively. Isn't it a bit early to start recycling cards? I do appreciate the updated artwork to reflect the differing factions but surely the number should also have been changes to reflect which deck it belongs to, this will create unnecessary identification problems further down the line.
There is nothing new or interesting in the resource card section, it is the same three classes of cards as always. Considering the huge amount of token cards in the accompanying GD03 Steel requiem booster series it is a little bit odd that neither ST07 nor ST08 make use of them.
The promo-card is the usual "foil-upgrade" of one of the cards in the set. With ST08 containing so many cool mass-production type suits that I would like to get that of course did not happen. Not a total loss though, the "Valiant" card at least looks much better without the text box on top. All in all I really like the look of the cards in this starter and with the many mass-production types on offer I may be tempted to get a second one.
