Gundam Assemble: First Looks & Quick Play Guide Reveals
It looks like the Gundam Assemble Marketing is kicking into high gear. Time to check out the basics and get a look at this new game system.
The tabletop world is about to get a major shake-up because Gundam Assemble is coming in October. This one has a lot of factors going for it. It’s a massive anime and manga series that really doesn’t need an introduction. You’ve got a TON of long time Gundam enthusiast who’ve been building and hobbying on the Gunpla side for years. There’s been multiple video games and a recent card game. And now we’re getting what’s basically a skirmish-scale miniatures game. There’s already fans who are talking about scaling this game up to the Gunpla scale for their games. The hype is there.
So what about the game itself? Well now we’re getting a first look and a quick play guide on the game.
Gundam Assemble Quick Play
Let’s start off with the Gundam Assemble quick play guide. This video is much shorter and more to the point of how to play. The game itself appears to have various scenarios featuring two sides and a battle over objectives. There are also mission specific goals to achieve, too. The scenarios that were teased featured a 3v3, 5v5, and even an asymmetrical 3v5 mode.
You’ll start off by selecting your units to bring. Obviously you’ve got the miniature to use on the tabletop. But you’ve also got the unit card as well as Tactics Cards, too. Once you’ve got your team selected you’ll then setup the board based on the mission.
It’s worth noting that the board does appear to use elements of a 3D board setup. There’s various elevations that create valleys and ridges. But more on that later.
The each mission will have a victory condition and also a timeline system. Those are fairly self explanatory and can change based on the mission. That said, defeating enemies will (generally) net you VPs regardless of the mission.
When you take out an enemy then you score that many VPs when it’s destroyed. One more thing to note is that units that are destroyed get redeployed. This has some interesting implications in terms of how you score and your own list building options, too.
One of the more unique aspects of Gundam Assemble is the timeline system. The Gundam’s tokens start on a listed position on the timeline as indicated on their card. Then, as the rounds progress and the Gundam units get activated, they can perform actions. These actions have a timeline cost associated with them.
Eventually each unit will activate and finish on their timeline section. Once everyone has finished up and you’ve played the missions total phases, you end the game and tally VPs.
Gundam Assemble Gameplay
Now we get to the fun part of actually activating a unit. When you activate a unit, you’ve got a variety of options to choose from. Advancing lets a unit move up to 3 hexes. The Terrain also has an impact on the cost to move on to it.
So how do we attack? That starts with the unit card. You’ve got the Timeline Cost, the range, and the strength of the attack.
We already covered Timeline Cost. The Range is distance of the attack. And Strength is how many dice to roll for that attack. Obviously attacks also have additional effects that can impact other things but for now, let’s cut to the dice rolling.
In the example above we’ve got the beam rifle rolling 5 dice. A die roll of a 4+ equals a “hit” in this case. Each hit is 1 point of damage that’s applied to the target. There are also ways to modify dice rolls and even score critical hits. Critical hits trigger the effect on the unit card. Unfortunately for the roll above, they only got a single point of damage through.
The modifiers look like they were either a +1 or -1 to the roll, so they seem to be pretty straightforward. The gameplay didn’t really dive into that too much.
Another option during an activation is the use of tactic cards. These are a limited resource so knowing when to use them is really important.
In the video, they used the Renewed Power to add an extra strength to their attack (basically adding an attack die). They managed to do enough damage to take out a unit (which probably had damage on it already). A unit is defeated when it take damage equal to or greater than their Hit Points as indicated on the card.
When a unit is defeated, you remove it from the board. The attacker score those VPs while the target can be redeployed after two rounds have passed on the timeline. That’s basically it from the Quickplay Video.
Initial Impressions
So far, this system sounds fairly clean and straightforward. It’s a D10 system (and not D6s like some of the early images showed). The unit cards look easy to read and things seem pretty intuitive so far. I am curious about some of the more technical aspects but I think this is kind of a mix between a few other skirmish games. That’s not a bad thing. I also think the Timeline mechanic adds another layer on top of things, too.
I also like the unit redeployments as that seems like a nice way to keep players invested in the game even when things aren’t going their way initially. As mentioned above, I also think that leads to some interesting ways your list building can be influenced. I like that the “cheap” units might get destroyed but because they come back they can chip away at some of those heavy hitters. But the inverse is also true about the “big guys” trying to earn their points by taking out waves of enemies.
Would You Like To Learn More?
But if you want to see even more, there’s a First Look video for you to chew on.
This video is almost an hour but it’s a much deeper dive. It also features the creator of the game vs one of the voice actors from Mobile Suit Gundam Iron-Blooded Orphans. So that’s pretty fun! It also covers the rules in more details as well.
Overall, I think Gundam Assemble is looking pretty awesome. If you’re a fan of Gundam, Gunpla, and/or Skirmish Games this one is for you. I really think the main issue is getting these kits out to retailers and keeping things in stock for folks. Then again, Gundam has a supply chain they’ve been using for their Gunpla kits for decades at this point so I’m betting they know a thing or two about that. They’ve also got a MASSIVE catalogue of units to pull from. Since it’s their own IP, they could mine it for as long as they wanted. I’m pretty sure fans are going to be able to (eventually) play with their favorite Gundam units from their favorite series. And that’s entirely the point!
October can’t get here quick enough!
