In a new move from Bandai Spirits, a Gundam tabletop game called Gundam Assemble has been announced.
The game will feature 5-centimeter tall miniatures that players build and paint themselves and then play with them via a tabletop game.
The mecha included will be across the Gundam pantheon and not just limited to one series or timeline.
The miniatures setup is similar in a reduced sense to how gunpla works, which is a nice touch, but I am somewhat skeptical of how this will work out overall.
Most major tabletop properties use a single framework for the lore. The Gundam saga is split across multiple distinct and separate timelines.
When the various Gundam Build Fighters anime tried to do something across the various timelines, they used re-purposed versions of classic mecha designs and set the story within one coherent setting.
These look to be the actual designs from their respective Gundam series with no unifying lore to make it all work together.
It’s a bit like how Gundam Evolution took a very top-down corporate approach to how the mecha worked and sort of ignored the respective settings, and that didn’t work out well for the game in the long run.
I get that Bandai Namco is trying to diversify the Gundam brand but it’s doing it in a very generic and uninformed way.
If anything is to come of this, it’s that the buildable miniatures could act as a gateway to building bigger and more complex gunpla. However, as a tabletop gaming enterprise, I am certainly wary.
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