Attending a Gundam TCG Tournament

The Gundam card game has certainly been popular - selling out almost as soon as it hit shelves and pre-orders for news sets in October faring the same fate, safe to say that Bandai has a hit on its hands. I was fortunate enough to snag a few starter sets on release as well as a box of boosters, so when James suggested we attend the local tournament at Athena Games in Norwich on our annual trip, it seemed like a good way to test my deck. The lure of an exclusive promo card for attending didn't hurt either.

Athena Games is located in the city centre and boasts a store in its basement with a playing hall above, complete with bar and gaming accessories like playmats, which you can borrow. The staff were very friendly and despite what looked like an initially low turnout, we ended up with 15 of the 16 available slots filled for the evening. Pay attention to that ratio as it's important later!

So in preparation for this event, I watched a few videos that suggested the best deck composition. The basics are that you can mix two card colours with a max of 4 cards of the same type, otherwise it's entirely down to you. I picked blue and white as that seemed the best combo for new players, proving to be a more defensive deck with lots of blocking cards and the ability to recoup damage as well as interrupt play with a few cards like Hawk of Endymion (Mu La Flaga) who doubles as a pilot card and a way to interrupt opponents and return a card to their hand - excellent if you're wanting to delay attacks. 

I spent hours pouring over the deck, thinking of ways to make the most of the 50 card limit - you rarely get through the whole deck, so duplication is important if you want the right cards in your hand, and so I went with four pilots - Kira, Cagalli, Amuro and Banagher, all powerful with good effects. A mix of classic Gundam, Freedom, Justice and Strike Rouge made up my heavy hitters and some mid-range mecha like ReZel filled out the mid-game. As a nasty little sting I added a level 1 blocker that I planned to pair with the Naval Bombardment card that added +3 to an attack - that way I could take out a base very early on before the opposition could muster any defence. This worked. Once.

It was also important that I had cards with the ability to stand blocker units that had already attacked the opponent - this meant that I could attack, rest the card (which makes it vulnerable to incoming attacks next round) and then stand it again so it couldn't be a target. Again, this helped once or twice but wasn't the big win I hoped it would be, mostly because I never had the combination of cards to pull it off effectively.

The game layout is remarkably easy to get to grips with - even I can learn it!

Anyway, I put a lot of thought into things and initially, thanks to a practice game against Sophie, this seemed to be a solid deck. Even with help from James as she fought me I managed to beat them collectively, so I was a little confident going in.

I really shouldn't have been.

Long story short, not one of my matches went more than 10 minutes, and despite my last match proving more even (where my early base attack landed perfectly) I just didn't have the cards in hand thanks to some fabulously unlucky draws - the first game saw nothing but high-level Gundams in my hand that I couldn't deploy. The second game I had to sit out (that uneven ratio I mentioned earlier meant that some of us were sidelined for a match) and that added another half hour of sitting around to the experience. The auto-win wasn't much  compensation.

The third match I had a handful of undeployable pilots, so that was a disaster too. Only by round four did I have a decent draw, able to balance early heavy attacks with command cards and building up a decent defense. Ultimately the whole thing went sideways as the cards I needed remained elusive and I just couldn't compete with the power of what was on the table. Wing Gundam Zero and its breach ability that just wrecked my blockers and tore apart my defences - the cards I needed just didn't appear in-hand, despite being sure to balance the deck with multiples and popping in some "Draw 2" cards to enhance my hand - these were stuck in my shields so proved useless when they popped their heads up.

So, not much of a banner night in terms of gaming, but was it enjoyable? Well, to a degree. I found two of my opponents weren't very talkative and, despite my best efforts, didn't really engage on a personal level. My last opponent was the complete opposite, very cool, personable and funny. Even when I was going down in flames we were able to make jokes about it. I did get to take out his base on my second turn and would have trashed his most powerful piloted unit had he not been able to block the shot, but at least I felt like a genuine threat a few times in the game, bringing out cards that my opponent genuinely hadn't faced before.

Other players I engaged with outside the matches were a lot more talkative. I met a gaming vtuber called R4AVA who loves her mecha and had travelled an hour to be there. She was great fun. A few other players came over and joined us too, and after a while a group of us were chatting away about the game, mecha and all things geeky. It was nice to meet people who shared our interests and were happy to socialise.

I'd also like to give a shout out to the staff at Athena Games, they were absolutely fantastic, very helpful and friendly, offering advice and making themselves available for a chat whenever they weren't busy. The whole atmosphere of the store is a inviting and casual, so full credit to them for creating such a great gaming space.

Unfortunately the promo cards for the event were in short supply and entrants were offered some when they were restocked, but James being his usual smooth self explained to the organiser that we were down from Yorkshire and wouldn't be returning for several months, so we got one each for our trouble from the limited stock they did have. Mine was a card I don't use but I know is in Sophie's deck, so I passed mine on to her - after three losses it felt ill-deserved anyway. I consoled myself by purchasing the promo card I would have liked from Ebay later that evening.

So overall, the game experience was a bit of a letdown, though I take some of the blame for that being inexperienced as I am. It's really not the fault of other players looking for a challenge and finding, well, me. People were clearly there to play seriously and as an amateur it really felt like I was a complete waste of their time (a feeling compounded by their lack of engagement). There were friendlier people at the event I would have liked to have sat with, maybe to learn the game a bit from them, but that wasn't how the matches were drawn. The final match was a pleasure though and there were some genuinely lovely people at the event I did connect with, so socially it was a bigger hit than playing the game itself. 

I find the Gundam card game great fun to play in the right company, it's fast moving, very clear and, importantly, the game has yet to offer "exclusive" cards with abilities that differ from the normal decks and boosters on offer, the rarity being the alternative artwork used or additional foil. I'm all in favour of a game that's not "pay to win" as others have become, so full marks to Bandai for keeping it fair and classy. If they can just get more product into the market, it will be less frustrating for those who want to play, but can't find the cards.

Will I be attending more events? Probably not, I think the highly competitive nature of the game is a bit of a turn-off for me, but for others I can understand that factor being a huge draw, so it's really a case of how you like to enjoy your gaming. I like a friendly match where I can hone my game and come up with new deck ideas, not just have a quick round, be summarily dismissed and spend ages waiting for the next one.

I've got a box of boosters for the new cards in October, and I plan to build and paint the Strike figures that came with the SEED Assemble deck, but I'll keep my matches infrequent and local going forward. I'd recommend anyone who wants to play the game either get in early on the pre-orders, or make friends with existing players so that you can build a deck from their available spares. It's always possible to win, it all depends on how the cards fall.