Gentle Mates is launching Tout Commence Ici — French for It All Starts Here — as a physical trading card game built around the org’s own history, and pre-orders are already open across four tiers from €49 to €349.
The French esports organisation, founded by Squeezie, Gotaga, and Brawks, is not making a generic competitive card game with a team logo slapped on top. It is turning club history into collectible objects: player moments, inside jokes, tournament milestones, and the sort of references that only fully land if you have watched the organisation grow from a streaming-heavy identity into a multi-title esports brand.
What Gentle Mates is selling
The debut set is described as a collection of more than 120 cards, with each booster pack containing ten cards. Every card in this first print run carries a “First Edition” stamp, and Gentle Mates says that stamp will not appear on future reprints. That detail matters because it gives early buyers a reason to care before the cards even hit the table: the first wave is positioned as the version that started the collecting story.
A post from Sinan Koyuncu on July 17 framed the launch as “another milestone” for the org, which is exactly the angle Gentle Mates appears to be leaning into. This is less “buy a game to learn a brand” and more “buy a game because you already know the brand’s mythology.”
That distinction is important. A lot of esports merchandise works because it is simple: jersey, hoodie, sticker, maybe a keychain. A trading card game requires more commitment from fans. It asks them to open packs, chase variants, talk about rarities, and ideally keep coming back. Gentle Mates is effectively betting that its audience has enough attachment to the org to treat its history like a collectible universe.
A club history, turned into cards
The card names already signal the intended audience. Fan resource Matepedia has catalogued 86 of the 123 cards in the set, including entries like “Gotaga Pose,” “Worlds Lyon,” “Marteen Supreme,” and “Reverse Squeeze.” Those are not neutral competitive terms. They are references with memory attached.
The Essential pack includes two starter decks: “Toxic Section,” featuring a promotional Squeezie card, and “Déter Section,” featuring a promotional Brawks promo card. That pairing tells you a lot about Gentle Mates’ identity. The org is not hiding the founders’ personalities behind the team name. It is making them part of the game’s grammar.
The top-tier Founder pack is where the collectible logic gets fully visible. It includes an exclusive sealed holographic display of 24 First Edition boosters, two six-booster bundles, a premium binder, 300 card sleeves across three variants, 50 toploaders, a metal coin, a deckbox, an art book, a necklace, a lithograph, a pin set, a keychain, and a scarf. It also includes two exclusive promotional cards: “The Puppeteer – Running the World” and “Tout Commence Ici,” sealed in an acrylic case.
The scarf is the tell. Not because it is mechanically important, but because it makes the product feel like a piece of club culture rather than a barebones card box. It suggests Gentle Mates is thinking in the language of fandom objects: things fans can display, wear, trade, and use as proof that they were there early.
The preorder tiers
The pricing ladder is straightforward, but each tier seems aimed at a different kind of buyer. The Essential tier costs €49, roughly $53, and is the entry point for people who want to play or sample the set without going all-in.
The Prestige tier is €99, roughly $107. It sits in the middle ground: more than a starter box, but not yet a collector’s statement. The Legendary tier jumps to €199, roughly $215, where the product starts to feel like a serious hobby purchase.
The Founder tier is the big one at €349, roughly $377. That price is not just for cards. It is for the bundle experience: sealed boosters, sleeves, toploaders, a binder, accessories, art, and exclusive cards in a case. For casual fans, that may be a lot. For collectors, it is the kind of premium package that turns pre-ordering into a status move.
There is no confirmed shipping date yet, which is worth keeping in mind if you are tempted by the Founder pack. Physical collectibles can be exciting before they arrive, but delays and packaging questions become part of the experience once the product leaves the preorder stage.
Why a French org is going physical now
The timing makes sense. Esports organisations have spent years trying to prove they are more than temporary rosters attached to whatever game is hot that year. Tournament wins help, but results are unstable. A team can play well for months and still struggle to hold sponsor attention if it misses a major deadline or loses the wrong match at the wrong time.
A physical product gives Gentle Mates something steadier. Cards do not care whether the VALORANT roster just lost a series. They do not expire when a player leaves. They can keep generating revenue after the hype around a specific match has faded, as long as the fanbase remains engaged.
Gentle Mates has built enough multi-title recognition to make that strategy plausible. Its VALORANT squad beat Natus Vincere 2-0 at VCT 2026 EMEA Stage 2, and Paris Gentle Mates faced OpTic Texas at CDL 2026 Champs. Those are not small moments for brand visibility, and the social conversation around them still runs through players, sacrifices, and shared history.
2-0 vs @natusvincere ggwp We went through some important days to become a ‘team’ in real. We’ve been prepared extra hard in marteen’s absence, and everyone was so supportive. He reciprocated by co
View on X →That kind of shared context is exactly what a history-based card game needs. If the cards only referenced “Team Name Wins Match,” the product would feel thin. If they reference the messy parts of being a fan — the players who carried moments, the losses that became legends, the jokes that stuck — then the product has a much better chance of becoming part of the org’s identity.
The broader esports collectibles push
Gentle Mates is not alone in seeing the value of physical collectibles. Fellow French org Karmine Corp already has its own tactical trading card game, Blue Rising, which also leans into club identity, players, and iconic moments. Riot Games has also experimented with physical collectibles through Riftbound, including a limited collaboration set with T1.
The T1 release has been reported as generating more than $10 million in revenue, which is the number that makes esports executives sit up. It shows the ceiling for this kind of product when a brand has a loyal fanbase and a strong story to attach to the cards. But it is also an easy number to overread: T1 has scale, legacy, and global recognition that most orgs do not have.
The bigger trend is not just “esports teams selling cards.” It is the industry trying to build assets that survive beyond match schedules. Teams want revenue streams that do not depend entirely on sponsor renewals, player transfers, tournament prize money, or the volatile attention cycle of a single game. Physical collectibles can fill that gap, especially when they create reasons for fans to return after the initial launch.
This also fits a wider shift in gaming culture, where physical goods have become more than merch. Collectors want numbered items, sealed variants, display pieces, and first-print markings. Fans want proof that they participated early. The card game format gives Gentle Mates a way to turn fandom into a repeatable system: open, collect, trade, chase, display.
The collectible bet
The “First Edition” stamp is borrowed from the oldest playbook in the trading card world. It gives early buyers a sense of distinction without needing to invent a complicated rarity system from scratch. If future print runs do not carry the stamp, then the first wave becomes the one collectors remember, compare, and potentially chase later.
That is a smart move for a new TCG because it gives the product a timeline. The first print is not just the first print; it is the origin. That matters for a card game based on history, because Gentle Mates is using the same language it is trying to preserve: this is the beginning of something with a record.
Still, the bet is risky. A trading card game needs more than nostalgia to stay alive. It needs players to open packs, build decks, trade intelligently, and feel that there is something to do after the first box. For Gentle Mates, the cards may be the easy part. Keeping the community invested in the game itself will be the harder part.
The risk in the hobby
The physical collectibles market is crowded, and not every fan wants to buy another product from an esports brand. Some fans are already stretched across jerseys, digital cosmetics, card games, and premium bundles. Others may love the org but have no interest in collecting physical cards at all.
There is also the problem of accessibility. If the card names depend on obscure history, new fans may feel locked out. That is not automatically bad for Gentle Mates, because the product appears aimed at existing supporters. But it does mean the TCG is unlikely to become a broad competitive game for casual players. It is a fan product first, and probably a competitive format second.
Esports collectibles can also create their own volatility. The sticker economy in Counter-Strike 2 has already shown how quickly team-linked revenue can shift when rules change. A TCG can build excitement, but it can also become speculative, expensive, and hard for ordinary fans to enter.
That does not make Gentle Mates’ launch foolish. It just means the product needs discipline. The first print should feel special, not predatory. The cards should reward long-time fans without making newer supporters feel like outsiders.
What comes next
The most important thing to watch is what Gentle Mates does after the preorder rush. If the org treats Tout Commence Ici as a one-time collector’s box, it will probably make money and then fade. If it uses the cards as a foundation for events, reprints, community challenges, and future storylines, then it could become one of the more interesting attempts by an esports org to turn its history into a living hobby.
For now, the launch is a clear signal: Gentle Mates wants to be more than a team name on a jersey. It is building a physical archive for fans, with cards, sleeves, display cases, and scarves attached to the story. Whether that becomes a durable business or a flashy first chapter depends on what happens after the boosters are opened.
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