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Four new starter decks are landing for the Gundam Card Game on September 25, 2026: ST11 Aquatic Assault, ST12 Raging Onslaught, ST13 Silent Barrage, and ST14 Heavy Dominion. The release date and MSRP for all four are confirmed on Bandai's official gundam-gcg.com product pages, so unlike a lot of TCG release chatter, this is one you can actually pencil into your calendar.

What makes this wave worth a dedicated buying guide isn't just the new mobile suits — it's the organizing idea behind the four decks. Every prior mainline starter was built around a single anime series: pick the deck, pick the show (ST10 was its own exception, tied to a video game rather than a show — more on that below). ST11 through ST14 throw that formula out entirely. Instead, each deck is built around a battle-style archetype — aquatic combat, melee rushdown, funnel-based ranged pressure, and heavy firepower — and each one deliberately pulls mobile suits from multiple different Gundam series and timelines into a single 50-card deck. If you've ever wanted a deck built around how a suit fights rather than which show it's from, this is the first starter wave designed exactly for that.

This guide walks through what's confirmed about each of the four decks, what's still press-reported and unconfirmed, what's genuinely new compared to the earlier ST01-ST10 lineup, and — most importantly — which archetype and headline unit is likely to click with your playstyle. If you're new to the game entirely, our Gundam TCG Strategy Hub is a good companion read alongside this one.

The Quick Answer

All four ST11-ST14 decks are built to the same standard: same price, same contents structure, same "ready to play out of the box" promise. So the deciding factor really isn't quality or value — it's which playstyle and which headline unit you actually want to pilot. Here's the fastest way to sort yourself into a deck:

• Choose ST11 Aquatic Assault if you want something different from the usual land-combat grind, you like Char Aznable and classic Zeon amphibious hardware, or you're drawn to a deck with a genuine mechanical niche instead of a generic "good stuff" pile.
• Choose ST12 Raging Onslaught if you want to dictate the pace of the game and close the distance immediately, you're a Gundam Wing fan who's always wanted to run Epyon, or you simply enjoy melee-first decks that punish slow starts.
• Choose ST13 Silent Barrage if you'd rather control the board from range than trade blows up close, you gravitate toward Newtype-flavored suits like Qubeley, or you like the idea of a deck built around one of the franchise's signature long-range mechanics.
• Choose ST14 Heavy Dominion if you want to out-muscle your opponent rather than out-maneuver them, you like the idea of two heavy hitters — Unicorn Gundam and The-O — anchoring your deck at once, or you just find slow, hard-hitting suits more satisfying to play than fast, fragile ones.

ST11: Aquatic Assault (Blue-Purple)

Aquatic Assault is a Blue-Purple deck — a color pairing confirmed on Bandai's official product page — built entirely around underwater and amphibious combat, a battle style the Gundam Card Game hasn't dedicated a whole starter deck to before. Its headline unit is Char's Z'Gok, the amphibious MSM-07S that Char Aznable famously piloted during the Jaburo invasion in episode 29 of the original 1979 Mobile Suit Gundam. It's one of the most recognizable "villain rises from the water" images in the franchise, and building a starter deck around it is a fun bit of fan service on Bandai's part.

Because the headline unit and color identity come straight from Bandai's own product page, you can treat those as settled facts. The supporting cast is a different story: according to a box-art writeup from essential-japan.com, the deck is reportedly rounded out by Mad Angler and Kapool, two Zeon amphibious mobile suits from the Universal Century era. That lineup fits the aquatic theme neatly, but it's press-reported rather than Bandai-confirmed, so treat those two names as likely, not locked in, until Bandai's own materials or the box itself confirm them.

Aquatic Assault ships with 4 token cards, the most of any deck in this wave alongside ST13. If underwater ambush tactics and a deep-cut Zeon lineup sound appealing — or you just want the deck that's mechanically unlike anything else on the shelf — this is the pick.

ST12: Raging Onslaught (Red-Purple)

Raging Onslaught is a Red-Purple deck built for close-range, melee-first pressure. Its headline unit is Gundam Epyon (OZ-13MS) from New Mobile Report Gundam Wing — the suit built by Treize Khushrenada and later piloted by Zechs Merquise. Epyon is a fan-favorite precisely because of its design philosophy: it fights with a heat rod and beam sword and was deliberately built with no ranged weapons at all, forcing it to fight up close by design rather than by accident. That makes it a fitting headline unit for a deck whose entire archetype is rushing the opponent down in melee.

The supporting lineup, again per essential-japan.com's box-art reporting and not yet confirmed by Bandai, reportedly includes three units: Gyan, a Zeta-era Neo Zeon melee specialist; Gundam GQuuuuuuX in its "Omega Psycommu" state, pulled from the 2025 series Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX; and Unicorn Gundam 02 Banshee in its Destroy Mode configuration. That's a genuinely cross-timeline roster — Universal Century, Gundam Wing, and the newer GQuuuuuuX continuity all sharing one 50-card deck — which is exactly the kind of series-blending Bandai is doing across this whole wave.

Raging Onslaught includes 2 token cards. If you're the kind of player who wants to be attacking from turn one and hates giving your opponent time to set up, or you've always wanted Epyon as your face card, this is the deck.

ST13: Silent Barrage (Green-Red)

Silent Barrage is a Green-Red deck built around bit and funnel-based long-range combat. Its headline unit is Qubeley (AMX-004) from Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam — Haman Karn's personal Newtype suit, and notably the first mobile suit in the entire Gundam franchise to use funnels. That's a meaningful piece of franchise history to build a starter deck's identity around, and it makes Qubeley a natural choice for a deck themed on ranged, remote-weapon pressure rather than direct melee combat.

The supporting cast, per essential-japan.com's box-art reporting and not yet confirmed directly by Bandai, reportedly draws from two more recent series: Gundam Aerial from Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury, plus GFreD and Red Gundam, both from GQuuuuuuX. Like ST12, that's a multi-series roster rather than a single-show lineup — funnel and bit-style combat is the connective tissue here, not the anime it came from.

Silent Barrage includes 4 token cards, matching ST11 as the highest token count in the wave. If you'd rather peck an opponent apart from range and you like the idea of playing the deck built around the franchise's original funnel-user, this is your deck.

ST14: Heavy Dominion (Green-White)

Heavy Dominion is a Green-White deck built around raw firepower, and it's the only deck in this wave with two confirmed headline units instead of one: Unicorn Gundam (from the UC 0096 era) and The-O (PMX-003), the four-armed heavy mobile suit piloted by Paptimus Scirocco in Zeta Gundam. Pairing a modern Unicorn-era icon with a classic Zeta-era heavyweight is a clear signal of the deck's identity — this is the "hit hardest" deck of the four, prioritizing power over speed or trickery.

The supporting lineup, again per essential-japan.com's box-art reporting rather than official Bandai confirmation, reportedly includes Full Armor Unicorn Gundam in its Destroy Mode configuration and Gundam Heavyarms Custom EW from Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz — both suits built around stacking on more weapons and more armor rather than finesse, which tracks with the heavy-firepower theme.

Heavy Dominion ships with 2 token cards. Worth noting on terminology: Bandai's own copy calls Z'Gok, Epyon, Qubeley, and the Unicorn/The-O pairing each deck's "headline" or "featured" unit — that phrasing hasn't been confirmed to mean these are specifically Leader-type cards. The game's confirmed card types are Leader, Unit, Pilot, Command, and Base, and Bandai hasn't specified which type slot each headline unit occupies, so we're sticking with "headline unit" throughout this guide rather than guessing at a card type.

Head-to-Head Comparison

Here's the whole wave laid out side by side. Everything in this table comes directly from the facts confirmed on Bandai's official product pages:

Every deck in the table shares the same underlying structure and price — the differences that actually matter are archetype, headline unit, and color pair, which is exactly what the rest of this guide is built to help you weigh.

Which One Should You Buy?

Since price and contents are identical across the wave, the decision really comes down to two questions: which archetype matches how you like to play, and which headline unit you'd actually enjoy seeing across the table from you turn after turn. A few ways to think it through:

If you're brand new to the Gundam Card Game and don't have a strong opinion yet, the archetype split is actually a nice feature — it means your very first deck can double as an early signal of what kind of TCG player you are. Players who gravitate toward aggressive, proactive strategies in other games will likely enjoy ST12's melee rush. Players who prefer to sit back, control the board, and pick their moments tend to enjoy ranged, funnel-style decks like ST13. If you like a slower, grindier, high-stats game plan, ST14's heavy-firepower approach will feel familiar. And if you just want to try something none of the earlier starters offered, ST11's aquatic niche is the obvious answer.

If you're a returning player picking this up alongside earlier starters, the archetype-first design makes these four a genuinely different addition to a collection rather than more of the same. Someone who already owns a series-based deck like ST01 or ST05 might get more mileage out of adding an archetype-based deck like ST13 or ST14, since the play patterns won't overlap as much as picking up, say, two different series-themed decks would.

If you care about the specific mobile suit piloting your deck, that alone is probably the simplest tiebreaker: Char loyalists and classic-Zeon fans should look at ST11, Gundam Wing fans have an easy call with ST12's Epyon, Newtype and funnel enthusiasts should gravitate to ST13's Qubeley, and anyone who wants two headline units — Unicorn Gundam and The-O — anchoring one deck should go with ST14.

What's Genuinely New This Time

It's worth being precise about what actually changed here, because "new starter decks" doesn't always mean a new design philosophy. Every prior starter deck in the line was organized around one anime series: ST01 pulled from The Witch from Mercury, ST02 from Gundam Wing, ST03 from the original Mobile Suit Gundam and the Char's Counterattack-era Zeon lineage, and ST04 from Gundam SEED. ST05 drew from Iron-Blooded Orphans and was also the deck that introduced Purple as a game color in the first place. ST10 was its own kind of exception — a Generation Pulse deck built around SD-Gundam-style art tied to a video game, rather than a mainline anime series.

ST11 through ST14 abandon the single-series formula entirely. Instead of "here's a deck from Show X," each deck answers "here's a deck built around Combat Style X" — and then deliberately pulls its supporting mobile suits from across multiple different series and timelines to fill that role, rather than staying inside one show's cast. That's the real story of this wave: it's less about which anime you're a fan of, and more about which fighting style you find satisfying, with mobile suits from Universal Century, Gundam Wing, The Witch from Mercury, and GQuuuuuuX all mixing together depending on which archetype they fit.

Contents & Pricing

All four decks share an identical box structure, and all four are confirmed at the same MSRP:

• One ready-to-play 50-card deck
• 10 Resource Cards
• Token cards — 4 for ST11 and ST13, 2 for ST12 and ST14
• 1 paper damage counter
• 1 rule sheet / playsheet
• 1 Bonus Pack containing a deluxe or foil version of one of the deck's 16 non-basic cards

MSRP is $15.99 per deck across the board — this matches the baseline set by ST05 through ST10, so it's not a price increase for the line. It's worth contrasting that with how the very first wave launched: ST01 through ST04 originally released at $11.99 each, with an accompanying $34.99 special-edition bundle. That special-edition bundle isn't being repeated for ST11-ST14 — there's no equivalent bundle for this wave, just the four standalone $15.99 decks.

A few things we're deliberately not speculating on, because they haven't been published: Bandai hasn't released the full 50-card decklists for any of the four decks, so exact contents beyond the headline unit and press-reported supporting units aren't public yet. Rarity breakdowns for this wave — something that has been published for some earlier starter sets — haven't been released either. And there's no confirmation of any new keyword ability tied to any of the four archetypes; if the aquatic, melee, funnel, or heavy-firepower themes come with dedicated new mechanics, that hasn't been announced. We'll update this guide once Bandai or retailers publish that information.

Quick Buyer FAQ

When do ST11-ST14 release?

All four decks release September 25, 2026, confirmed for the US/English market via Bandai's official gundam-gcg.com product pages.

How much do they cost?

$15.99 MSRP each, matching the price point already established by ST05 through ST10.

Is there a special-edition bundle like ST01-ST04 had?

No. ST01 through ST04 launched at $11.99 with an accompanying $34.99 special-edition bundle, but that structure is not being repeated for this wave — ST11-ST14 ship as four standalone decks with no special edition.

Are the supporting mobile suits in each deck officially confirmed?

Only the headline unit and color identity for each deck are confirmed via Bandai's official product pages. The supporting-unit lineups discussed in this guide come from a box-art writeup published by essential-japan.com and are press-reported, not Bandai-confirmed — treat them as likely but not final until Bandai's own materials or the physical boxes verify them.

Can I see the full 50-card decklist before buying?

Not yet. Full decklists for ST11-ST14 haven't been made public, and neither have rarity breakdowns for this wave. If you want to know exactly what's in the deck beyond the headline unit and the token-card count, that information simply isn't out yet.

Are these decks compatible with older starter decks and boosters?

The four decks work as complete, standalone products right out of the box — each one includes everything needed to play a full game on its own. For details on building beyond the starter contents, our Gundam TCG Strategy Hub and Gundam Meta Tier List are the best next stops.

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