Bandai has still not announced an official release date for the game, but they have just announced a way to get your hands on some of the miniatures early. Let’s check it out!
Gundam, the wildly popular Anime that has been going for decades and spawned countless plastic kits for all levels of hobbyists is coming to the tabletop… in 2026. Bandai, the makers of the extremely excellent and popular Gundam model kits, announced GUNDAM ASSEMBLE, a tabletop wargame back at the beginning of January, but very little since. Then in February it was announced that some of the new miniatures will be packaged with starter decks for the upcoming Gundam TCG, and now we have a release date for those decks: July 25th, 2025.
Gundam is a somewhat generic term for a very large universe of stories, most of which take place in the same or similar worlds. Honestly, I am not an expert in the different Gundam stories, having been raised on Robotech, which is like a Frankenstein’s Monster of Gundam’s parents. I won’t explain what that sentence means, but here is an hour and a half Secret Galaxy video on it in case you’re interested, and here is a handy What is Gundam? website linked from Bandai’s GUNDAM ASSEMBLE website.
Gundpla (the plural of Gundam) kits come in a wide variety of scales, but since they all represent giant robots even the smallest is quite large for a tabletop game. The new kits will be approximately 2 inches tall and come with hexagonal bases. Unfortunately, unlike all their counterparts, these will be monopose miniatures, however if there is one single thing Bandai is known for it is quality, and these will likely be some of the best machined plastic kits any tabletop gamer has ever touched.
As for the game itself, we know almost nothing. The miniatures have been shown on game boards made of hexagons, as well as more traditional tabletops covered in terrain. They have also been pictured with D6 and D10, but not both together. It’s anybody’s guess what the game will be like, but the success of BattleTech shows that there is plenty of interest in tactical games featuring giant robots, and Bandai already makes the most popular giant robots in the world. Are you interested in GUNDAM ASSEMBLE? Let us know in the comments!
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GunPla is a shortening of Gundam Plastic Model, not the plural version of Gundam
I always thought GunPla meant Gundam Play like the hobby of making the kits, etc.
Thanks for letting me know, I guess I could have asked the internet, but my hubris assured me I was correct.
Robotech is not the bastardized version of Gundam’s grandparent. Robotech is the bastardized version of Macross, which is Gundam’s child.