How to Play the Gundam Card Game: Deck, Zones, Turn Order and Combat

By CardSpicy Founder · October 6, 2026

Quick answer

CardSpicy indexes the GUNDAM CARD GAME card by card, and a game is two players with a 50-card deck each, a 10-card resource deck each, and six face-down Shields between them and losing.

A game of the GUNDAM CARD GAME is two players, a 50-card deck each, a 10-card resource deck each, and six face-down Shields standing between you and losing. You win by attacking the opposing player once their shield area is empty, or by letting them run out of cards. Everything else on this page is the structure that sits between those two facts.

The rule numbers in brackets are from the official Comprehensive Rules, version 1.9.0, updated 11 September 2026. One rule outranks all of them: if a card’s text contradicts the comprehensive rules, the card wins (1-3-1).

What you need before the first turn

Five card types exist in the game — Unit, Pilot, Command, Base and Resource (3-1). The first four build your deck; the fifth builds a separate deck of its own.

Piece	Rule number	The number
Main deck	6-1-1	Exactly 50 cards
Resource deck	6-1-1	Exactly 10 cards
What goes in the main deck	6-1-1-1	Unit, Pilot, Command and Base cards
Colours in one deck	6-1-1-2	One or two colours, never more
Copies of one card number	6-1-1-3	Up to four
Copies of one Resource card number	6-1-1-5	Any number
Extra pieces	6-1-2	One EX Base and one EX Resource token card

The two-colour limit is the one that shapes deckbuilding most: a deck of all-red cards is legal, and so is a green-and-white deck, but a red-green-blue deck is not (6-1-1-2-1).

Set-up, step by step

Both players present a deck and a resource deck that meet the construction rules (6-2-1-1).
Each player shuffles, then places their deck face down in their deck area and their resource deck face down in their resource deck area (6-2-1-2, 6-2-1-3).
Decide Player One and Player Two — a die roll or rock paper scissors will do. The winner decides who becomes Player One (6-2-1-4).
Each player draws five cards as a starting hand (6-2-1-5), and each may redraw once: return the whole hand to the bottom of the deck, draw five new cards, then shuffle (6-2-1-6-1).
Each player takes the top six cards of their deck and places them face down in their shield section, without looking, overlapping each other (6-2-2).
Each player places one active EX Base into their base section (6-2-3).
Player Two — and only Player Two — places one active EX Resource into their resource area (6-2-4). That is the compensation for going second.
Player One’s turn begins (6-2-5).

Those six face-down cards are the thing you are actually attacking. Cards in the shield section are treated as Shields with 1 HP each (4-6-4-2), which is why a single Unit with a high AP can take the whole shield area apart in one game.

The five phases of a turn

Every turn runs through five phases in order: start, draw, resource, main, end (7-1-1).

Phase	What happens	Rule
Start	Active step: set all your rested cards in the battle area, resource area and base section back to active. Start step: effects worded “at the start of the turn” fire.	7-2-3-1, 7-2-4-1
Draw	Draw one card. If your deck is empty after that draw, you lose immediately.	7-3-1-1
Resource	Place one Resource card from your resource deck into your resource area, face up and active.	7-4-1
Main	Play cards from your hand, activate 【Activate·Main】 effects, and attack with your Units — in any order, as many times as your Resources allow.	7-5-1
End	Four steps: action, end, hand and cleanup. You discard down to 10 cards in the hand step, and effects limited to “during this turn” expire in the cleanup step.	7-6-1, 7-6-5-1, 7-6-6-1

Playing a card from hand is two separate checks. First you confirm you hold enough Resources to satisfy the card’s Lv. condition; then you choose the Resources that pay its cost and rest them (7-5-2-2-2, 7-5-2-2-3). Lv. is a gate you must already clear — it is not something you spend.

One timing detail catches people out in their first game. During a turn’s end phase the action step runs first, and it starts with the standby player, not the active player (7-6-3-1). Your opponent gets the last word before your turn officially ends.

The field: eight locations, five limits

The rules name eight locations: deck area, resource deck area, resource area, battle area, shield area, removal area, hand and trash (4-1-1). The resource area, battle area and shield area together are called the field (4-1-1-2). The number of cards in any of them is public information — either player may ask at any time (4-1-3).

Limit	Value	Rule
Resources in your resource area	Up to 15	4-4-2
EX Resources in your resource area	Up to five	4-4-2-1
Units in your battle area	Up to six	4-5-4
Base in your base section	Up to one	4-6-3
Cards in hand	10, discarded in the end phase	4-8-4

Resources are the resource deck doing its work: one arrives every turn in the resource phase, and the fifteen-Resource ceiling is what caps how expensive a turn can get. An EX Resource is different in two ways — it is rested and then exiled from the game when it pays a cost, so it is a one-shot.

Attacking, in five steps

Only Units attack (3-2-3). A Unit you deployed this turn normally cannot attack (3-2-4), with one exception: a Link Unit — a Unit with a Pilot meeting its link condition placed beneath it — can attack the turn it is deployed (3-2-6-3). That single exception is the reason the link condition on a Unit matters more than its printed stats.

You attack by selecting one active Unit, resting it, and naming either the opposing player or a rested enemy Unit (8-2-1). The targeting rule is symmetrical and easy to remember: you may only hit something that is already resting, and attacking is itself what rests your Unit.

Attack step — the attacker rests and declares. 【Attack】 and “when this Unit attacks” effects fire (8-2-2).
Block step — the standby player may activate <Blocker> on one of their active Units, which moves the attack onto that Unit (8-3-1). It can be used once per attack, and a Unit that was already the target cannot block for itself (8-3-2, 8-3-3).
Action step — players take turns, starting with the standby player, activating 【Action】 Command cards and 【Activate·Action】 effects (8-4-1).
Damage step — the target is confirmed and damage is dealt (8-5-1).
Battle end step — effects worded “during this battle” expire and you return to the main phase (8-6-1, 8-6-2).

What the damage step does depends on what you hit, and the order it checks things in is fixed:

Target	What happens	Rule
A player, with a Base in the shield area	Damage equal to the attacking Unit’s AP goes to the Base.	8-5-2-4
A player, with Shields but no Base	Damage goes to the top Shield. A Shield taking 1 or more damage is destroyed and revealed; if the revealed card has a 【Burst】 effect you choose whether to activate it before it goes to the trash.	8-5-2-3, 8-5-2-3-1
A player, with no Base and no Shields	The attacking Unit deals battle damage equal to its AP to the player, who is immediately defeated. The attacker wins the game.	8-5-2-2
An enemy Unit	The two Units deal damage equal to their AP to each other simultaneously; a Unit whose HP reaches zero is destroyed.	8-5-3-2, 8-5-3-2-1

So a Base is not decoration. While one is present, every attack that would have eaten a Shield eats the Base instead — your Shields stay put while the Base takes the damage, and a Base whose HP reaches zero is destroyed (8-5-2-4-1).

How the game ends

There are two defeat conditions, and both are checked when rules management next runs (1-2-3):

You receive battle damage from a Unit while you have no cards in your shield area (1-2-2-1).
You have no cards remaining in your deck (1-2-2-2).

Either player may also concede at any time, which ends the game immediately (1-2-4), and there is no card effect that can force a concession (1-2-5). In a two-player game the winner is simply the player who was not defeated (1-2-1).

The keyword effects you will meet first

The card text uses two kinds of bracket, and they do different jobs. Angle brackets are keyword effects — a rule the card carries with it. Square brackets are timings — they say when the text after them happens, not what it does.

Keyword effect	What it does	Rule
<Blocker>	Can move an attack onto this Unit when you declare a block and rest it.	13-1-4-1
<First Strike>	Deals its battle damage before the opposing Unit or Base does.	13-1-5-1
<Repair (amount)>	At the end of your turn, this Unit recovers that much HP.	13-1-1-1
<Breach (amount)>	When this Unit destroys an enemy Unit with battle damage during your turn, it deals that much damage to the first card in the shield area of that Unit’s owner.	13-1-2-1
<Support (amount)>	【Activate·Main】 rest this Unit to give another friendly Unit AP plus that amount for the turn.	13-1-3-1
<High-Maneuver>	While this Unit is attacking, enemy Units cannot activate <Blocker>.	13-1-6-1
<Suppression>	Damages the first two Shields at once when it hits the shield area.	13-1-7-1

The square-bracket timings you will see most often are 【Deploy】, 【Attack】, 【Burst】, 【Main】, 【Action】, 【Activate·Main】, 【Activate·Action】, 【Once per Turn】, 【When Paired】, 【During Pair】, 【When Linked】, 【During Link】 and 【Destroyed】. We counted how often each of them appears across the whole card pool in a separate guide.

Formats beyond a single game

The official rules site sets out more than the one-on-one game: a Best of Three match format in which the first player to win two games takes the match, a Team Battle format for teams of two players each, Battle Royale for three or more players, and Sealed Battle for play with sealed product. Language-usage rules exist separately for the Japanese, English and Simplified Chinese printings.

The numbers behind this page

Our Gundam index tracks 1,148 cards from the official card database: 600 Units, 127 Pilots, 157 Commands, 72 Bases, 107 Resources, 28 EX Bases, 28 EX Resources and 29 token entries. Across the game the five colours split 210 Green, 208 Blue, 202 White, 184 Red and 152 Purple, and the rarity labels run 552 commons, 204 uncommons, 177 rares, 111 promos and 96 Legend Rares. Every one of those counts is a count, not an estimate: it is what the database returns on the day we read it.

Frequently asked questions

How many cards are in a Gundam Card Game deck?

Exactly 50 in the main deck and exactly 10 in the resource deck (6-1-1). Up to four copies of the same card number may go in the main deck, while any number of the same Resource card number may go in the resource deck (6-1-1-3, 6-1-1-5).

How many Shields do you start with?

Six. Each player takes the top six cards of their deck and places them face down in their shield section without looking, and each of those cards is treated as a Shield with 1 HP (6-2-2, 4-6-4-2).

Can a Unit attack the turn it is deployed?

Normally it cannot (3-2-4). The exception is a Link Unit — a Unit with a Pilot satisfying its link condition placed beneath it — which can attack during the turn it is deployed (3-2-6-3).

What happens when your deck runs out?

You lose. An empty deck is one of the two defeat conditions, alongside taking battle damage from a Unit while your shield area holds no cards (1-2-2-1, 1-2-2-2).

Do you lose a Shield or a Base first?

The Base, if there is one. While a Base is present in your shield area, damage dealt to that area goes preferentially to the Base, and only once there is no Base does it reach the Shields (8-5-2-4, 8-5-2-3).

Sources

Sources and further reading

GUNDAM CARD GAME Comprehensive Rules, version 1.9.0, updated 11 September 2026 (Bandai) — the rule numbers printed in brackets on this page are that document’s.
GUNDAM CARD GAME official card database (Bandai) — card types, colours, rarity labels and the counts used on this page. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
GUNDAM CARD GAME official rules page (Bandai) — the formats listed under “Formats beyond a single game”, and the language-usage rules for the Japanese, English and Simplified Chinese printings.

Card data is quoted from the official card database at the date cited and is subject to change. This page is rules and identification, not valuation: we publish no price for Gundam cards, because there is no sales source we can stand behind for the game.

Where to go next

The CardSpicy card index — every card we track, with its PSA 10 population and market history (195 cards).
The illustrator index — every artist behind those cards, card by card (110 artists).