I remember around nine months ago, standing over the counter of my local LGS and signing up for a Flesh and Blood event. One of the ever-reliable TOs turns to me and my Zaku-themed crossbody bag and leans in almost conspiratorially to ask me;
Did you know Bandai just announced a Gundam TCG?
In the many months since Gundam TCG first saw the light of day I have learnt more and more of what a Bandai TCG is. In truth they appear almost as a genre in and of themselves and before my recent encounters with One Piece, they are not something I’ve had much interaction with.
What surprised me was the commonalities in terms of their scaling resource systems (a nice anti-variance mechanic) and life systems. The Burst function, a mechanic which potentially adds cards to your hand or triggers advantageous effects as you take damage, is something that, as someone trying to coach myself in learning card-draw probabilities, seems like an interesting puzzle.
Over all of this, one thing is clear. Everything has its proper place, resources have their own deck, token cards are set aside. The addition of EX Bases and EX Resources in Gundam add another avenue for expressing the identity of one’s deck. Promo sleeves are distributed in packs of ten to accommodate this. Despite the common gameplay themes of each of the games, it is obvious they are designed to be the perfect vehicle for the IPs they support. Unfortunately for me as a Gundam fan this means only one thing, I want to fill out and theme my deck with all the shiny mechs.
Much later then and we have arrived, past the much-coveted Beta events, pre-release discourse and many many demo deck games. Last weekend I got the opportunity, as did many of you, to pilot a Gundam TCG Pre-Con for the first time. Down at Brighton’s premier FLGS, Dice Saloon, I attended a more-than-sold-out pre-release, drafting one of four Starter Decks at random and here’s my impressions.
Characteristically, I ended up with ST-03, Zeon’s Rush, a go-wide aggro-centric early to midgame deck with a lot of evasive damage. Convenient since what this ultimately feels like is a slicker version of one of the two demo decks. I want to take a moment to praise the high gameplay ceiling of these pre-cons. Despite their very accessible price tag (around 12GBP) my experience was that all four of them are at least capable of powerful plays. Without a picture of the meta, the Legendary Rares in each deck feel good to play and generally powerful enough that I don’t see them falling by the wayside for some time. In fact, I am already picturing a Char Aznable deck focused on the Link mechanic to rush down opponents and utilise the many iterations of his Zaku II. The added promo pack with a single foiled version of a card from the deck is a nice, if slightly evil touch, bound to whet the palate of any collector.
In sitting down to play the deck one of my first impressions was on the LVL system. Gundam cards employ a metric that not only cares about the amount of resources you must pay to play them, but also the amount you must own. This created an interesting curve to each game as a go-wide aggro deck. Whilst in other games you may run out of steam (and cards) by the time you reach the late-game, this system enforces planning ahead. This also leaves design space to create powerful late-game cards at a low resource cost to maintain economy of action, you don’t immediately have to sink all your hopes and dreams into that one big unit.
Another mechanic which only really shone to me after playing the decks in person was the Action Step, the ability for each player to play cards in the window a unit attacks. Whilst interrupts and instants are absolutely no stranger to any TCG, the widespread nature of this kind of card makes it very reminiscent of the attack/defense reaction step of Flesh and Blood. The impact of very powerful cards such as Close Combat or The Witch and the Bride remind me of the ‘Do you have it?’ style gameplay of Warriors and Assassins which often keep you guessing and reward intimate matchup knowledge.
Perhaps the only truly negative comment I have is the ratio of Pilots in each of the decks. Pilots in Gundam operate as functional buffs to respective units and come in two distinctive flavours. The more common are pure numbers and have attached to them an Action you can play instead, here there is useful, but often underwhelming, versatility. The greater of the two are Pilots who are purely Pilots. These characters often buff their units considerably and come with an equally powerful effect, but require a very specific context to thrive, usually linking with another specific card. This can lead to early hands being flooded by very powerful, but conditional pieces which resulted in a few ‘feels bad’ moments for players over the course of the event. I feel like this is a symptom of designers wanting to exhibit a mechanic that makes the game unique. With some applied testing and access to a greater card pool, I think the ratio is easily solvable and creates space for more Action card interactions.
There it is! Gundam has arrived to attempt to assume its place in the greater TCG pantheon. Whilst we are yet to test the boundaries of any Limited formats or glimpse the full scope of a constructed meta I can say that right now I am pleasantly surprised. This is what feels like the culmination of many refinements through game after game on Bandai’s part. With the ever-surging popularity of its cousin TCG, One Piece and the massive scope of its universes, I hope it’ll live to show us that we can all be Newtypes too!
Written by Ed Cardall