Early Gundam Card Game Lessons

    I have three Gundam Card Game events under my belt right now. The beta event, a stock preconstructed deck event, and now a precon constructed event. For the latter, the decks could be modified, but only with cards that were in the starter deck lists. In the interest of fairness, people who had been to the beta event (like me) could not use cards that were in the beta box but not in the precon decklists.

    Which I didn't actually know about because I live under a rock and never actually looked at the calendar or anything, all I knew was we were playing Gundam at 6 PM and I was just showing up to play for love of the game. Very fortunately for me, one of the Altered players was also coming for the Gundam Card Game and let me borrow some cards so I could make a Red/Green deck.

    In my defense my deckbuilding was very on-the-fly. I had only so much time to put things together and just went with my best guess. The headline of the deck was:

    The game plan was to have these powerful link combos and hopefully get through with them. If I won the die roll I would always choose to go second so the EX Resource would put me at Level 6 first to hopefully slam the Sinanju or Wing early. Two damage is a little limited but I was impressed in the stock precon event with the ability to clean up the opponent's board by going Sinanju+Full Frontal, blow up the opponent's base, zorch something for two damage, and with Frontal's When Paired effect (NOT EVEN A WHEN LINKED EFFECT!) play something with Support that can boost a Zaku II token enough to trade with something else the opponent has.

    Green and Red don't come with any Blockers and beside the two damage from Close Combat there's little in the way of interaction but I hoped that some of these pairs would be powerful enough.

    Well I went 1-4 but had a lovely time. My opponents were all lovely people and having lost my Magic communities it was really nice to be part of something again.

    All the pairs were really powerful- But none of them had any crossover. I could have a hand of: Char's Zaku II, Athrun, Sinanju, and Heero. That hand would not actually do anything. I could always just play a unit out without its pilot, but there are enough things floating around to rest a unit or allow an attack on an active unit that throwing out a Wing Gundam without the haste effect from the Pair could just be a waste. Maybe it would buy a turn for them to destroy it, but what would my chances of winning be without the Link?

    The lesson I'm taking away is that more flexible Link requirements and more Link targets will be very important. I didn't have time to do anything with it the knowledge but I had already noted the units that only require a trait and not a specific name to Link. Or how there were multiple Strike Gundam cards that any Kira in your hand could link with.

    The Gundam Card Game can be very explosive and the power of Links is the key part of that. Not only for actual Pair/Link effects but for the haste factor letting you make trades with your opponent's board and reduce their ability to get back at you.

    So, once I get a box of the booster set and start deckbuilding for real with intention that's what I'll be doing- making sure to include more flexible Link requirements.