Victory Gundam is a statement pick
Victory Gundam is one of the most divisive entries in the 45-year Gundam franchise. It's bleak, it's mechanically inventive in a way that was ahead of its time, and it's the show where Tomino pushed Kill Em All mode to full throttle. It's also the show that most Western Gundam fans have either never watched or actively dislike.
So when Bandai's GD04 product page showed V-Gundam units headlining the Blue faction, my first reaction was: really? Really, this early? GD04 is only the fourth main Gundam Card Game set, and Bandai is already mining a franchise entry that a substantial portion of the fanbase is going to bounce off of. That's either confidence or indifference, and I don't think Bandai does indifference.
The read is confidence. Bandai is signaling that Gundam Card Game is going to cover the entire Universal Century catalog fast. Not just the crowd-pleasers. If you get Victory in Set 4, you're probably getting G Gundam and X and Turn A in the next two years. That's a commitment to the long tail, and it's one of the reasons I've started taking this game seriously as a collector.
Release date: April 24, 2026 globally
Parts tokens are the first real design pivot
The Parts token mechanic is where GD04 earns its set name. Victory Gundam's core lore is that the mobile suit is modular. It separates into multiple components (the Top, Bottom, and Core Fighter pieces) and recombines. Most card games would write that off as unrepresentable in a 60-card deck format. Bandai built it.
The way it works, based on the early English product-page reveals: certain Victory Gundam units generate Parts tokens when played. Parts tokens sit on the board as attachment-style tokens, not units, and they modify stats or enable activation effects on the host unit. If the host unit is destroyed, Parts tokens persist for one turn. You can re-deploy them onto a replacement unit, representing the suit being rebuilt from its components.
This is the first meaningful mechanical departure Gundam Card Game has made from its base design since launch. GD01 through GD03 were all clean 'mobile suit = unit' designs, with pilots and events layered on top. Parts tokens add a fourth layer, and they're designed in a way that rewards flavor deckbuilding without creating a combo engine that warps the meta. On paper, it's a nearly perfect design.
Witch from Mercury finally lands in the Green faction
Suletta Mercury and Sophie Pulone are both in GD04 as Green faction cards. This is the first time Witch from Mercury has gotten proper representation in the card game. The G-Witch pilots have been notably absent since launch, which was starting to feel like a licensing snag.
Green faction has been the weakest color in the game since GD01, with limited archetype identity compared to Blue's aggression and Red's combo focus. Adding Suletta and Sophie as anchor Champions gives Green an actual story-driven center of gravity. More importantly, Witch from Mercury is the most Western-friendly Gundam entry of the last decade, so this is a clear pitch to the English-speaking player base that Bandai knows which fans are most likely to spend.
What's in the box and when to preorder
GD04 ships with 135 base cards plus 16 SP cards: 50 Commons, 36 Uncommons, 32 Rares, 12 Legend Rares, 6 Tokens, and 10 Resource cards. That's the same distribution as GD03, so preorder math should be predictable. A case gets you roughly 4-5 Legend Rares, which is enough to build out any single archetype.
Bandai is also releasing two companion products alongside GD04: Starter Deck 'Generation Pulse' [ST10] and Extra Booster 'Eternal Nexus' [EB01]. Both are tied into the SD Gundam G Generation Eternal mobile game, meaning the set is part of a cross-promotional push. If you own the mobile game you'll probably find the synergy obvious; if you don't, the Starter Deck is still the cleanest way into the new competitive season.
Release is April 24, globally. I've already got a case reserved. Victory Gundam, Turn A, and Suletta all in the same set is the kind of product drop that only happens when Bandai decides to be generous, and I'm not about to let that go past me.
