GD05 Freedom Ascension released on July 24. Across the twelve tournaments played since, including the GenCon, Rotterdam and Sydney regionals, 74.2% of registered decks run at least one GD05 card as a signature card. The archetype that led the format in June and July is gone from the top, replaced by one built entirely from the new set.

This report reads 4,031 tournament decklists across 198 events, from March 11, 2025 to August 10, 2026, measured on August 11. Every list is a real registered deck.

The top of the format turned over completely

Gundam identifies a deck by a combination of signature cards rather than a single champion, so each archetype below is named by the cards that define it.

The format from June 1 to July 23, the seven weeks before the set landed, across 851 decks and 22 tournaments:

• Gundam Barbatos 1st Form / Gundam, 13.4%
• Victory Gundam / Unicorn Gundam 02 Banshee Norn / Gundam, 6.3%
• Zeong / Gundam / Char's Zaku II, 5.5%
• Kshatriya / Neo Zeong / Sinanju, 3.1%

The format since July 24, across 163 decks and 12 tournaments:

• Master Gundam / Shining Gundam / Master Asia, 13.5%
• Nu Gundam / Gundam, 9.2%
• Victory Gundam / Strike Freedom Gundam / Aile Strike Gundam, 3.7%
• Unicorn Gundam 02 Banshee / Kshatriya / Strike Freedom Gundam, 3.1%

The new leader is a pure GD05 deck: Master Gundam, Shining Gundam and Master Asia are all from Freedom Ascension. So are Nu Gundam and Strike Freedom Gundam, which anchor the next two entries. Gundam Barbatos 1st Form, the card that defined the previous leading deck, is from GD02, released nine months earlier.

Note that the share at the top barely moved, 13.4% then 13.5%. The format did not become more concentrated. The same amount of the field simply switched to a different deck.

The ban that landed the same day did not do this

July 24 was also a ban list update. Anksha was banned outright and Corsica Base restricted to two copies.

It is tempting to connect the two, and it would be wrong. Neither card appears as a signature card in a single tournament deck in this dataset, before the ban or after: both sit at 0.0% on either side of the date. Whatever those cards were doing in the format, they were not defining archetypes, and their removal is not what moved the top four.

The set is the more likely driver, but more likely is as far as these numbers go. They show what changed, not why.

The events behind the numbers

The post-release window is twelve tournaments:

• July 25, The Joker’s House BO1 Ranked, 20 decks
• July 30, Eagle’s Nest S6GW3.0 GD05 Webcam Locals, 18 decks
• July 31, GenCon Regional, 32 decks
• August 1, Hobby Games Bulgaria Newtype Mission 4, 1 deck
• August 1, Newtype Mission 4 at Hobby Games, 9 decks
• August 3, MOKI Toys Shop GCG MSA S3 W2, 8 decks
• August 6, Eagle’s Nest S6GW4.0 GD05 Webcam Locals, 25 decks
• August 8, Newtype Mission 4, 4 decks
• August 8, NEWTYPE Challenge 2026 Mission 4, 5 decks
• August 9, Rotterdam Regional, 16 decks
• August 9, Sydney Regional, 16 decks
• August 10, MOKI Toys Shop GCG MSA S3 W3, 9 decks

Two regionals on the same day on two continents, and they agree with the locals. That is worth more than the raw count suggests.

What this does not tell you

One hundred and sixty three decks is a thin sample. Every figure in the second list could move several points on one large event, and the 74.2% adoption rate will look different once a full month of regionals has been played.

None of these numbers are win rates. They count what players registered, not what won. A deck can be everywhere and still be beatable, and that gap is where a good choice lives.

The dataset is also still growing as past events are entered, so these figures describe August 11 and will not match a later reading exactly.

The next real checkpoint is the first full month of GD05 regionals. If Master Gundam is still leading in September against a field that has had time to prepare for it, the set will have reset the format rather than merely arrived in it.

Based on 4,031 tournament decklists across 198 events, March 11, 2025 to August 10, 2026, measured August 11, 2026. Figures update as new results are ingested.