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Blog posts
Gundam Assemble - Piloting Giant Robots is Easier Than You Think!
This is Not a Blog Post We're still a long way off from being able to pilot giant mechanized robots (maybe a good thing) and freeing our souls from gravity, but Bandai has swooped in to give us the next best thing: Gundam Assemble! This miniatures game is the newest addition to the Gundam franchise, allowing you to bring your favorite mobile suits together from across every series to answer the ultimate question every game: which mobile suits are the best and why is it Pale Rider? A Look At The Cards Before we jump in to how to play, we need to look at the cards we'll be using. There's two kinds of cards in the game: Unit Cards and Tactics Cards. They're both really important, so let's look at each. Unit Cards Every unit card looks pretty similar to this, just with different abilities. Here is a quick rundown on what each bit means: A- This unit's Health Points. When it has damage on it equal or more than this number, it's destroyed and will have to be redeployed back at your base later! B- This is how many Victory Points your opponent gets when they destroy this unit. As you win the game by having more victory points than your opponent at the end of Phase 2, destroying enemy units is a pretty good way of earning them. C- This number is where on the Timeline this unit starts the game. The lower on the Timeline it starts, the sooner it gets to act in the beginning! D- The name of the unit. It's important to know that you can have unit's with the same name, but they can not be the exact same unit card (with the exception of models designated by the Mass Produced tag) E- These are the different tags your unit has! They're important to know for any tactics cards you want to use or abilities that might reference them. F- This is what an attack profile looks like. Most units have two you can pick from and they have a few different things to them: It's Timeline Cost, which is how far it moves up the Timeline when used; It's Range, which is how far away a unit can be and still target an enemy; It's Strength, which is how many dice you roll before modifiers when you use the attack; Any abilities the attack has (this particular Char's Zaku II doesn't have any); It's Critical Effect, which will activate when one of your dice rolls a 9 or 10 during an attack! G- These are the abilities unique to this unit. Some are ongoing bonuses that will always be active, some might activate in response to something happening, and others might require you to activate them as a command on your turn. You can use each Command ability on your unit card once per turn. Tactics Cards Your Tactic deck is made up of nine unique cards. They all have strong abilities that can help swing the game in your favor and you can only play one per activation, so knowing when to use them is important: A- This is the type of Tactic Card it is. There are two types: Command and Response. Command Cards can only be used during your activation at any time so long as you aren't in the middle of resolving an action. Response Cards can be used during any activation (even your opponents) as long as you meet its conditions in the ability text. B- This is the card's ability text. When you play the card, you do whatever it says here. If it's a Response card, it'll tell you when you can use it. You can not play a Response card if you do not meet the conditions on it. C- These are the card's tags; you'll notice that they look pretty similar to the ones on units cards. That's because the unit that is using the card needs to have a tag that matches the one on the card. If the unit you're activating or using the response card doesn't have a matching tag, you can't play that card. If a Tactics card has no tags, then any unit can use them! D- The card name. You can not have any duplicate cards in your Tactic deck. Core Gameplay So you've gotten your Starter Set and put your models together. You might have even painted them- so what do we do now? Conveniently, the game makes it very easy to jump in: Pick three of your favorite mobile suits, make a deck of nine tactics cards, then just pick and set up a scenario (there's two in the starter). Last, draw three cards from your Tactic deck, and you're all set to go! Gundam Assemble's gameplay is centered around its Timeline: a representation of the flow of battle as units maneuver, attack, and complete mission objectives. When the Timeline reaches your unit, it gets to activate! Every unit gets a free move on it’s turn, then it has to do a Primary Action that has a Timeline Cost. These Primary Actions include Dashing for additional movement, Attacking enemies, Rescuing allied garrisons for Victory Points, or Energizing your unit so it can use powerful abilities. Once you use a primary action, you move your unit’s timeline tracker forward a number of spaces on the timeline based on the cost of the action, showing that it’ll activate again later in the Phase when the timeline reaches it again! If there are any other allied units on the same spot, then your unit that just activated goes underneath them, showing that the other units will activate before the unit you just used. If you and your opponent both have units on the same timeline, then the player who did just activate goes. Once all units have crossed over the end of the phase, you'll score points base on the scenario objective and then draw three new tactics cards from your tactics deck. If that was the second phase of the game, then you count up Victory Points. The player with the most wins! Your mobile suit's free movement is called an Advance, and it can be used at any point during it's activation. This allows them to move up to three spaces on the map. Moving up elevation costs 1 additional movement per difference in elevation you're moving. In this example, the Zaku II Enforcer needs to spend 2 of it's movement to move up one elevation to grab the upgrade. However, if you move from higher elevation to lower elevation, you have no movement penalty (and there's no fall damage)! You can even jump across gaps as long as it's the same move action. When you end your movement on an upgrade, you pick it up and add it to your unit! It's permanently there until some effect destroys it. Not even your own unit's destruction gets rid of it. Each one does something different, and all of them are useful. Strength upgrades let you roll extra dice when you attack. Shield upgrades prevent damage you take and reactivate the next time your unit activates. Movement upgrades increase the amount of spaces you move when you Advance (not Dash). Here's the Primary Actions available to you and with the exception of attacking, they all cost 2 Timeline: Dash gives you a little extra movement, and is a separate move action from your Advance which important in some scenarios as well as for grabbing upgrades. Energize gives you an Energy token. All your units will have an ability that will cost energy, and this is the primary way to get those Energy tokens to use them. Rescue lets you save an allied Garrison and get two victory points! You'll remove it from the board and put it into your Victory Points on the Timeline. It's important to keep track of how many you've saved since some abilities are more powerful the more garrisons you've Rescued. Attack is the primary way of doing damage to enemy units and Garrisons (it's not the only way though). To make an attack, we have to pick a target in our attack's range, then check line of sight. Line of Sight can be slightly hard to understand at first, but once you know it you won't forget. Just draw an invisible line from the center of your unit's base to the center of your target's base. If that line passes through a space with any of the following, you don't have Line of Sight: An enemy unit or Garrison Terrain of a higher elevation than your current elevation Terrain of the same elevation as the unit at the highest elevation (this is the tricky one, so here's a quick visual). In this image, Gundam Vidar and Char's Zaku II can not see each other. This is because the highest unit, Gundam Vidar, has another space of equal elevation to it between it and Char's Zaku II. If we draw that invisible line directly between the two units, it would pass through that piece of terrain. Once you've determined your target is in range and that you have line of sight, gather a bunch of dice equal to that attack's Strength as well as an additional die for each Strength upgrade on your attacking unit and roll them! You'll do 1 damage to the enemy unit for each die you rolled that shows a 4 or higher. If any of your dice were a 9 or 10, then your attack also got a Critical, and you'll be able to use that attack's Critical Effect! Lastly, if you're on higher elevation than your opponent, you get +1 to your dice roll meaning you do damage when you roll a 3 or higher. However, if they're higher than you, you get -1 to your dice roll, meaning you do damage when you roll a 5 or higher instead. Once you're done with your attack, move your unit's Timeline tracker up equal to the Timeline Cost of the attack. In this image, Char's Zaku II attacked the Guncannon with it's Machine Gun. They are on the same elevation, so there are no modifiers to the dice roll. After rolling 5 dice, it got 3 successful hits, one of which is a critical! Guncannon will take 3 damage, and Char's Zaku II will be able to use it's Machine Gun's Critical Effect allowing it to get a free Dash after combat damage! After doing damage, if the enemy has damage on it equal to or greater than the HP on it's unit card, that unit is destroyed. It will get removed from the board and put onto it's unit card, then all damage and negative effects will be cleared from it (it still keeps any energy and upgrades). Then the destroyed unit will have it's Timeline tracker moved up 2 spaces as it gets repaired back at base. You'll also get victory points equal to that unit's VP value as a reward for taking them out! Garrisons all have 1 HP and are worth 2 VP when destroyed! (Not so) Distant Memories Release That's the basics of Gundam Assemble! There's a little we didn't cover here like scenarios (since each one brings its own rules) and different types of terrain that modify your movement and accuracy, but armed with what you know now you're just one step away from being a Gundam. Release is on October 31st (though Bandai has announced potential shipping delays that may mess with it), and we will have Organized Play every Monday at 6:30! Our first official events, that Bandai is calling Friendly Battles, are due to start on November 16th, where you can get cool promos for playing and doing neat hobbying stuff. Hope to see you there, buddy! Special thanks to a wonderful regular of ours who painted and brought in their starter set! I know that last reference was an Armored Core 6 reference. I'm not apologizing.
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Recapping our Riftbound Pre-Rift Event - October 17, 2026
Riftbound: Radiance, the newest set for the League of Legends card game, is nearly here! With it releasing on Friday, October 24, we ran a couple of Pre-Rift events this past Saturday to let players get their hands on the new cards early and experience the set. If you're not familiar, a Pre-Rift event is just like the classic prerelease event for other card games: you get a kit of 5 packs plus a thematic pack including a legend (making sure you can actually, you know, play Riftbound), and then you open your packs and build a small deck. Because everything you need comes from the kit you get with your entry, pre-rift is a great way to get into the game after learning the basic rules, and is considered a "sealed" event. We saw over 60 local players across our two events--thank you to everyone who came out to play! We know it was a busy and hectic day, and we so appreciate you choosing us to be your Riftbound destination this weekend. Deckbuilding Once the event started, we passed out kits and gave everyone 45 minutes to build their decks. Each deck has to include a minimum of 25 cards--typically, that's also the maximum, since it reduces randomness as much as possible. Then, we provide runes so you can actually play your cards. Imagine if you had to open the right runes to play! What a nightmare. Here's a few highlights from deckbuilding. It's always a fun time once you've got your cards in front of you as you try to figure out how it all slots together to make the best possible deck. Plus, you get to gawk at the coolest legends and rare cards you opened. Rounds After deckbuilding, we played three rounds of Swiss best-of-3. Since it's a pre-rift event, it's nothing too intense. It's definitely not like a Summoner Skirmish, although we do have one of those coming up in November if you need to scratch your competitive itch! Instead, gameplay is friendly, and our judges, Adam and Josh, were around in case anyone needs help understanding the rules or resolving issues mid-game. People could also help one another, give suggestions, and modify their decks between rounds. Future Events We'll host a Pre-Rift for the upcoming set, Legacy, between January 22 and 28th next year. In the meantime, we have our weekly Nexus Night tournaments every Thursday night (besides this one, since we're hosting another pre-rift, instead). They're $10 to entry, start at 6:30p, and last for about three hours. Once you have your own deck and you want to get practice playing through games, it's a great place to go. You can also check our event calendar to see our upcoming events!
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The Gundam 1st Anniversary Tournament - October 7, 2026
The Gundam Card Game first anniversary was last week, including our tournament in celebration of the occasion! Thank you to everyone who stopped by and played the Gundam Card Game with us--it was a ton of fun hosting everyone. Congratulations, as well, to Shijie for winning the event! You're the champion of our first-ever Anniversary Gundam Card Game event, and that's pretty cool. Here's a photo of the top 8 receiving their prizes and celebrating. In addition to the usual promos and prizes, we also raffled off a massive, special Gundam kit. Check out his reaction when he received the Real-Grade MSN-02 Zeong Gunpla. Good luck building your kit--that should keep you busy for a while!
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What events do you host?
What events do you host?
We host a wide variety of tournaments, open play, and teaching events! Find out more on our event calendar or by joining our Discord server.
Which card games do you carry?
Which card games do you carry?
We are currently stocking boxes, packs, and accessories for Magic the Gathering, Riftbound, Pokémon, Gundam, One Piece, Disney Lorcana, and Star Wars Unlimited.
Do you sell card game singles?
Do you sell card game singles?
Yes, we take in Magic the Gathering and Riftbound singles based on TCGplayer Market Pricing. For more information on our policies, check our card singles page.
We do not give quotes over the phone or by email, but always have a staff member available in-store to help you.
Do you buy used games?
Do you buy used games?
Unfortunately, we do not currently accept used games for trade-in.
Do you sell video games?
Do you sell video games?
We are a tabletop gaming store only, meaning we do not carry any electronics or video games.
Are you an escape room?
Are you an escape room?
Nope! Despite having "escape," in the name, it's all tabletop games here.
Fun fact: we opened in 2009, and the first escape room opened in 2012 in California!
What payment methods do you accept?
What payment methods do you accept?
We accept various payment methods including credit/debit cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. Secure payment options ensure a smooth and safe checkout process.
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