We're continuing down the line of the four September starter decks. I won't spend a great amount of time repeating myself as these sets are quite similar, at least in the way they are organized and packaged. If you have looked into one box, you will know what to expect from another. The ST 12 starter features two of the game's five suites, red and purple. Together with green they are the most fortunate getting included in two different decks, while blue and white only feature once.
"And it's name is Epyon!" Well, actually no. This deck has been given a terribly generic name in "Raging Onslaught", what does that even mean? The inference is a deck full of brute-forcing, high-damage dealing ogres that will prey on smaller combatants, we'll see about that in a second. I do like the box-art though except that the beam doesn't really look like it is being emitted from that hilt there, it looks a bit odd.
Inside you will find the familiar set-up with a main deck of 50 cards, twelve additional resource cards as well as a punchboard of tokens and a folded paper-playmat (which also features the quick start rules on the opposite side). There is also the single card-promo pack which is exclusive to this particular starter box.
As mentioned in the review of ST 11 the rules have been updated and now also feature instructions for how to set up a multiplayer battle-royal style free-for-all to create some real tabletop mayhem.
So, let's check out the cards. The GCG starter decks are always generous with unit cards even though they rarely offer full playsets. The two signature "Legend Rare" cards always come in pairs while other units typically get three or four copies each.
There is a ton of signature-type mobile suits in here with medium to high attack- and health values, and only a single mass-production type in the mix. If you expected this to be another Oz-themed deck you would be wrong because the Epyon and the Tallgeese are rubbing shoulders with totem machines from Unicorn, G Gundam, MSG00, GQuuuuuuX, U.C.0079 and SEED Destiny. This thing is a real mess. The Aquatic Assault starter featured units with the "Marine" keyword but I am not seeing any obvious similarities among the units here. I assume they are intended to provide additional muscle for the red an purple suites but I don't really know.
Before I move on I just want to point out that I find the recent art style quite underwhelming. I like clean imagery that shows off the entire body of a mobile suit but most of these cards feature zoomed in messy poses. My guess is that several of these images have been cropped hard from their original illustrations.
I put the Tallgeese III on the spotlight here, just what is going on in that picture? Even though I know what this mobile suit looks like I find it hard to tell what it is I am actually looking at. Compare it to some of the previous illustrations of the OG goose here and I find the quality to be steadily deteriorating (I can't comment on the Tallgeese III from GD05 because I haven't seen it yet...). Similarly, the Efreet Schneid is a beautiful and iconic-looking machine, but I would never have guessed it from the image unless its name was printed on the card. Terrible.
Our two signature suits of course come with their matching pilots (Zechs as Milliardo and Marida as Ple Twelve to shake things up a bit) and we also have M'Quve skulking about on one of those combined command/pilot cards that I really don't like. I don't think we have seen this side of the Lightning Baron in the game before, but M'Quve already has a proper pilot card in the green suite, while Marida used to be red.
The bonus pack contains one of the starter deck cards in a foil-upgrade, that is a non-foil card gets a discreet foil-effect added to it and has the text box removed, while an already foil-card gets a slightly different appearance, sometimes zoomed in a bit. There aren't that many good looking cards in this set and the one I pulled is a bit of a dud. I quite like the Banshee but here it is obscured by that large beam effect. The original illustration most likely features a view of the two Unicorns locked in combat and so you get disappointing illustrations like this. I wasn't too thrilled about the contents of this set but at least that Epyon is looking good. I also quite like seeing that green-coloured Slash ZAKU Phantom, such illustrations are quite rare.
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