Building your Deck
In addition to building a squad, players will build a deck of exactly nine Tactics cards. While squad building is almost entirely open-ended, the makeup of your squad has a profound impact on deck building. Players must adhere to three rules when building their Tactics deck.
- Each unit has a Signature Tactics card that can only be used by that unit. These cards will feature the signature title of the unit to which they belong, and can only be included in your deck if your squad contains the unit with the matching title.
- Some Tactics cards include specific traits, such as Earth Federation or Zeon. For these, you may only include the card in your deck if your squad includes at least one unit with a matching trait.
- Players may only include one copy of each card in their Tactics deck.
Targeting Restrictions
In addition to having to include units with specific titles or traits in your squad in order to include certain cards in your deck, many Tactics cards will only target units with a specific name or trait. These targeting restrictions will be detailed clearly in the card’s effect text. In the case of Signature Tactics cards that call out a unit by name, the unit named by the card must be an allied unit and must also have the matching signature title.
Player A has included both the RX-78-2 Gundam, Legendary Hero and the RX-78-2 Gundam, Elite Mobile Suit in their squad. During their turn, they intend to play the Signature Tactics card Epic Shot. This card features the signature title Legendary Hero. As a result, even though both units are named “Gundam” and the effect text says that “Gundam makes the following attack…” the card can only be used in combination with the Gundam, Legendary Hero.
In the event Player A’s opponent was also playing with the RX-78-2 Gundam, Legendary Hero, Epic Shot would only be playable on the Legendary Hero belonging to Player A.
Other Tactics Deck Rules
The nine cards contained in a player’s Tactics card deck are finite. Players will draw three cards at the start of the game and another three at the end of Phase 1, leaving three remaining in their deck. Some effects will allow players to draw additional cards during gameplay. In the event that a player’s Tactics card deck runs out of cards, that player may no longer draw additional cards.
In the event players want to play beyond two Phases, players must add three additional Tactics cards to their deck for each Phase they want to play beyond two. In a three Phase game, players will have 12 card decks. In a four Phase game, 15 card decks, and so on.