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We're a week from Christmas, how about some last minute Transformers savings for gifting or as a present to yourself?
This week Target is doing 30% off ALL Transformers online and in store, no codes or limits!
Walmart has reduced the price of their exclusive Deluxe 2 packs to $20! You may have to get store pickup for some of these.
Studio Series Bumblebee Movie Ratchet and Brawn: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Transformers ... irect=true?wmlspartner=FYAGeMjDX6c&=&affs=p&wid=5b6b4213e4b0bcb699adeb9f&u1=&oid=223073.10006940&sourceid=37141976172661509211&affillinktype=3&veh=aff
Legacy Wild Rider and Knockout: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Transformers ... irect=true?wmlspartner=FYAGeMjDX6c&=&affs=p&wid=5b6b4213e4b0bcb699adeb9f&u1=&oid=223073.10006940&sourceid=37141976172661509211&affillinktype=3&veh=aff
Legacy Tarantulas and Elita-1: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Transformers ... hbdg=L1800?wmlspartner=FYAGeMjDX6c&=&affs=p&wid=5b6b4213e4b0bcb699adeb9f&u1=&oid=223073.10006940&sourceid=37141976172661509211&affillinktype=3&veh=aff
Legacy Arcee and Kickback: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Transformers ... hbdg=L1800?wmlspartner=FYAGeMjDX6c&=&affs=p&wid=5b6b4213e4b0bcb699adeb9f&u1=&oid=223073.10006940&sourceid=37141976172661509211&affillinktype=3&veh=aff
Legacy Pointblank and Crankcase: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Transformers ... hbdg=L1102?wmlspartner=FYAGeMjDX6c&=&affs=p&wid=5b6b4213e4b0bcb699adeb9f&u1=&oid=223073.10006940&sourceid=37141976172661509211&affillinktype=3&veh=aff
Studio Series Bumblebee Movie Arcee and Ironhide: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Transformers ... hbdg=L1800?wmlspartner=FYAGeMjDX6c&=&affs=p&wid=5b6b4213e4b0bcb699adeb9f&u1=&oid=223073.10006940&sourceid=37141976172661509211&affillinktype=3&veh=aff
Studio Series 86 Perceptor and Bumblebee Movie Wheeljack: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Transformers ... hbdg=L1102?wmlspartner=FYAGeMjDX6c&=&affs=p&wid=5b6b4213e4b0bcb699adeb9f&u1=&oid=223073.10006940&sourceid=37141976172661509211&affillinktype=3&veh=aff
Walmart also has some of their Transformers: The Movie Retro reissues on sale for under $10!
If you were waiting for a sale for the Rise of the Beasts transforming masks Walmart has the Optimus Primal mask for only $19: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Transformers ... irect=true?wmlspartner=FYAGeMjDX6c&=&affs=p&wid=5b6b4213e4b0bcb699adeb9f&u1=&oid=223073.10006940&sourceid=37141976172661509211&affillinktype=3&veh=aff
And finally, moving over to Amazon they continue to have good deals on random figures:
Greeting Seibertronians! Ready for a blast from the past? The Verge website has reported that Hasbro are to release new four Tiger Electronics LCD handhelds based on the handhelds released during the 90s. These new devices will be modeled just like thd old ones, LCD screen and all. There will be no new features passed on to them, keeping the nostalgic value intact.
The first four releases are Sonic 3, the Little Mermaid, X Men Project X and Transformers Generation 2!
These are set to retail for $14.99 and will launch this fall.
What do you think about these? Do you have any fond memories of games like this? Will you get this one for old times sake? Let us know in the Energon Pub and stay tuned to Seibertron for all the latest news and reviews.
Well, I did it. I awoke from a few months in cryo-sleep just a few minutes ago and the right side of my face has never looked or felt better! The left side is probably still asleep.
Probably.
Anyway, I haven't been completely dormant for the past few months -- in fact, I've never been busier testing, grinding games and theoryforming my way into a few great ideas and a whole legion of bad ones. I'll get into it in later articles, but first, let's go over the newest reveals instead:
CHARACTERS
7.8/10 Doesn't inadvertently kill an allied Optimus Prime.
Hot Rod is -- for the lack of a better term -- super freaking hot. Hot Rod is not only a Car, which means he can take advantage of all of the busted Car support, but he can also take advantage of multiple Action combos as well as having a surprisingly moderate offensive capabilities as well as potent defensive ones as well.
Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself. So, what exactly does Hot Rod do? Well, that's simple enough to explain. You see, we are getting a new keyword alongside Revenge, which is Safeguard. Safeguard is effectively the same thing as Skrapnel's effect, except it only takes effect when they're undamaged (and with a name like "Safeguard 3" on the card, one can only assume that we'll see different numbers like "Safeguard 5", "Safeguard 1", etc.).
Safeguard allows Hot Rod to excel at getting his deck to reshuffle since he lives for so long. But, not just that, since he's a car, you can effectively attack with impunity with him. In other words, you can attack with his car, and then untap him to then attack with another character. But, to make matters even better, you can combo him with W1 Prowl to not only do extra Bold damage, but to use Prowl to heal Hot Rod back to zero when your opponent KOs one of your other, and less important, cars.
This will allow you to take another hit and use his Safeguard effect, and it will also allow you to effectively force your opponent to either side in damaging Actions from their sideboard, but to potentially waste attacks on him. Remember, you can use Prowl's healing more than once, and "I STILL FUNCTION!" can trigger it, too, making Hot Rod effectively invincible so long as you can heal him.
Of course, his Safeguard mode isn't the best part about him. In fact, his robot mode is where you're likely to get most of his value given the fact that you can play multiple Actions during a single turn for effectively free. You can use this to your advantage in many ways. For example, you can use a Supercharge as well as a Reckless Charge at the same time to give him a frankly disgusting amount of damage, or you can use multiple ISF to bring back your entire team -- and heal off Hot Rod afterward. Perhaps, too, you could use him to draw a sinful amount of cards from your deck by using multiple Equipment Enthusiast during the same turn. Perhaps a mixture of both! Multiple Actions means multiple options, and I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of combos people will come up with using him.
As for the downsides, though, he is only 12 HP, and his defense goes down to 1 in robot mode. His damage isn't great to start with, and he's rather expensive for a Car. He's got the same stats as Barrage, but two stars more for not the fastest of value. In fact, it takes quite a bit of time to start getting value out of him, kind of in the same vein as Nemesis Prime or Cosmos, and he doesn't have the draw power of Cosmos or the defense of Prime to get himself there, either.
That said, though, Hot Rod might actually work well with either of the other Reshufflers, so there's that thought, at least. Regardless, Hot Rod has a massive amount of potential and you can get a lot of value out of him if the deck is right. I'm looking forward to seeing where he goes from here.
"Black and yellow, black and yellow, black and yellow... Yellow and black! Let's mix it up a little!"
Nova Storm is here, and she's a she! This shouldn't come as too much of a shock, but I adore female transformers, and I have been kind of sad that the only female Seeker, it seemed, was Slipstream. That said, though, I wish that they had given Nova Storm more visual signifiers to signify the contrast, given the fact that she looks effectively identical to Sunstorm.
Regardless, she's a bit of a wonky character, sadly. She has a lot of synergy with black pips, which aside from making me hope that this signifies a bit of a boost to black pipped cards, also effectively makes her usability a bit... Limited. Sure, at 7 stars, you can use her with Acid Storm and Ion Storm to put the three Rainmakers at 25, but why? Ion Storm and Acid Storm love the inclusion of Flamewar to make their defensive trifecta as bulky as possible, and there's little room for the inclusion of someone who is more of a DPS than a wall, and someone who uses pips that probably won't even be included in the list to be perfectly frank.
So, where does she go, then, if her teammates don't need her? Well, I'd wager that the best place for her is -- aside from a bulk bin -- a plane deck that focuses on Action and Upgrade-based damage, not outright damage. You see, since she can move a damage from herself to one of your opponents, she can combo rather well with Bombing Run. Her moderate to high damage can make her potent in an aggro list that runs Air Commander Starscream from Wave 1, and her damage movement ability pairs well with his. You would need a six star character to pair with them, still, and it would likely be a Micromaster plane like Storm Cloud or a Bravery plane like Fireflight, but the long and short of it is that there is a potential home for her.
Nova Storm's Pierce 3 is nothing to shake a stick at, of course, and orange/black cards are most certainly a thing, but I do wonder if she'll struggle to make her way out of the bulk binder to show it off. Either way, I like yellow, planes and female Transformers so I guess this makes her the best card that has ever been printed. Aside from that, though, I doubt her usefulness.
"It's simple. We, uh, kill the Rat Man."
Ratbat is actually kind of insane. He's not the best in monochrome decks, of course, but in blue/black decks or balanced decks, he's rather invaluable. You see, in defensively-geared decks, healing is kinda busted, and whereas he's going to be Priority Numero Uno on your opponent's hit list when they realize how powerful he is at keeping his friends alive, you're still going to get at least one or two heals out of the guy when you pair him with Major Soundwave.
Major Soundwave in general is full of untapped potential, mostly thanks to Ravage being about as useful as an umbrella made out of toilet paper. But, when you create a colorful deck that caters to the defensive capabilities of Soundwave's massive HP and moderate defense alongside Ratbat's healing and Laserbeak's consistency, you start to realize how potent that they could be as a team.
Soundwave not only boosts Ratbat's "meh" survivability in his starting mode, but untaps Ratbat so that you may use his healing ability a second time before the untap phase and that's without even considering the use of Micro Capacitor. If you build your deck with enough Blue/Green, Blue/Black and Orange/Blue cards, Ratbat will be incredibly consistent in his healing, allowing you to survive far longer than you would have initially thought.
Of course, this is not infallible. You still need to do damage, and on a team with Laserbeak, Ratbat and Soundwave, you're looking at one (maybe two if you consider Laserbeak's Pierce) attacker that you're going to be riding on. You still need to kill stuff, you know! You are also sitting at a cringe-inducing 22 stars, which of course opens up the use of three Fuel Cache to potentially use on Ratbat, but it also means you're lacking the ever-important Flamewar that you should be playing as a defensive deck.
Is it worth it? Probably. Does it have potential? Of course. Is it good?
I have no idea.
How'd he get so strong? "Train"ing.
Powertrain is actually kinda busted when you think about it. Okay, let's be clear, here. Tote and Mudslinger have already been released and they're four and five star Micromasters, respectively, and High Jump hasn't been revealed yet (but they said that he was in the set on Twitter!), but we can make a few assumptions.
Given the fact that every Micromaster Team seems to be made up of one five star Micromaster and one four star Micromaster, we can assume that this release will be no different, with High Jump being a four star Micromaster. With that in mind, we can make some assumptions about Powertrain as well as how you can run him.
So, since Powertrain gives all of your Off-Road Patrol characters Bold 1 (which is insane), we would obviously want to put as many Off-Road Patrols on the same team as him, and assuming that High Jump is four stars, we can fit all four of them on the same team with seven stars left over. This means that you have four characters with room for a seven-star fifth, and in an aggro deck, I could think of no other character that I'd rather have than Lionizer.
Since Lionizer has Bold 4 to be shared with one of your characters, we can stack that alongside Powertrain, or use it on him. You see, that's the best part about Powertrain -- you get to stock him up with some powerful tools because, after everything is said and done and all of your other Off-Roaders are in the KO pile, Powertrain becomes something of a beast. With all three KO'd, he has a base 5 Attack and 5 Defense, making him one of the highest defense characters in the game, tying with Darkmount.
But that's not all that Powertrain brings to the table. Since Powertrain, along with all other Micromasters, has Stealth, you effectively force your opponent to attack Lionizer on the first turn of the game, which is always a good thing in my book.
Unfortunately, that's where his usefulness ends. You see, since he only boosts Off-Road Patrol, you can't effectively use him in... Well, anything. He's an Autobot Leader, yes, but so is Top Shot. You're not going to get the same value out of Powertrain as you're going to get out of Top Shot in anything other than Off-Road Patrol decks. But, in those Off-Road Patrol decks, no character is better.
As a side note, I can definitely see Off-Road becoming something of this game's Night March, which is a deck from Pokemon that was known for being extremely cheap to build and noticeably powerful in the right format. Whether that comes to fruition remains to be seen, but I don't think that this is the last time we've seen Powertrain.
BATTLE CARDS
"Previously on AMC's The Walking Dead..."
Relentless Invasion seems actually busted. Well, at least it seems that way. I'm not going to pretend like I think that this one card that you get to play once in five games is going to change the meta, but, you have to admit that it's kind of insane value.
But more than that I cannot say. Since they're clearly including Trypticon-influencing cards in the main set, I can't make a proper judgement call on how potent Trypticon will be. I'm not super in love with the whole idea, and I rather figured that Trypticon would be more damaging when you considered what kind of character he is. Although, the concept of deploying based on an Action instead of flips does put a smile on my face.
I simply refuse to give any more thought to the matter until we've seen more of the set. As it stands, though, I think Trypticon is unique enough that people will play him regardless of what they actually think of his potency. He just seems incredibly inconsistent, and frail, to me -- but I could be wrong.
CONCLUSION
Siege II reveals are well underway, and the introduction of offensive Micromasters as well as powerful battle cards like Relentless Invasion make me swoon for the reveals yet to come. I'm looking forward to seeing whether Trypticon shapes up, or if he flops like I'm tentatively thinking he might, but I do know one thing: If he can make headway in this aggro metagame, I'll be impressed.
Since Hot Rod revealed Safeguard, however, I cannot help but to be a bit more excited about the pace of the game potentially slowing down with no doubt more characters and potentially Upgrades with Safeguard on them. I'm ecstatic to learn whether or not we'll be getting effectively Force Field 2.0, and I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll get one.
What about you? Are you looking forward to playing Hot Rod? Are you looking forward to figuring out where Nova Storm will fit in to a Rainmaker composition? Let me know in the comments below, and I'll see you next time!
GenCon came and went, and with it, a ton new decks to make a massive splash in the metagame! My predictions were completely perpendicular to what actually happened, it seems, with a ton new aggressive decks to dominate the tournament standings instead of what I had figured, which was an amplified defensive presence. From Lionizer/Optimus Prime: Battlefield Legend, to General Optimus/Barrage to even Quad Cars, the entire format seemed to be catered to the offensive push.
With GenCon behind us, and a new aggressive meta unfolding before us, what are the causes of this paradigm shift? What changed from Origins to GenCon and what made people suddenly stop playing defense, and start playing offense? How will the format change in the future, deeper into the Siege meta? Let's dive in and find out!
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"Lions, and tigers, and bears! Oh my!"
Lionizer is far and away the most obvious addition to the pantheon of aggro support in the Transformers TCG, with an astonishing Bold 4 and a weapon that not only gives Bold 4 as well but also trims the fat in your hand with Plan 1. It's a frankly disgustingly powerful card that is cheap enough to play in effectively anything you want, and powerful enough to never make you think twice about it.
The turn one play is incredibly powerful as well given that you, as Lionizer starts in robot mode, have an effectively free transformation on one of your other characters to set up for combos. You see, since he starts in his most powerful mode, you simply attack with him on the first turn of the game. That means you can devote your transformation per-turn to someone more pressing.
But that's not all that he does. You see, since he's a Battle Master, you can also equip him on an already high Bold character like Wheeljack to swing for even more damage, and since he's an Upgrade, he can also trigger Wheeljack's alternate mode effect, drawing you into better resources. It's a frankly ridiculous amount of value in Lionizer that makes him one of the most prevalent sources of aggression out of the Siege metagame.
Pressure / Pushing down on me
Pressing down on you / No man ask for
Under pressure
A less obvious cause of the more aggressive format is none other than Press The Advantage, a somewhat conspicuous card that deals quite a bit of damage to things that is consistent enough to happen when and where you want it to. But how does this little old card make its presence known so well? That has something to do with factions, and their prowess in certain categories.
If you look at the decks that are played, you can see a few things: First off, Cars are immensely prevalent due to their consistency and offensive prowess, but second off, when you have a defensive deck, it usually either features or is entirely made up of Decepticons. I mean, sure, there are exceptions in Aerialbots of course, but the vast majority of defensive decks either are comprised of or feature Decepticons. For example, Major Shockwave is usually entirely made up of Decepticons, the eponymous Double Primes from back in the day had Nemesis Prime, Tanks had an incredibly defensive (and Decepticon) setup and now Three Wide has both Flamewar and Aimless in it.
What does that tell us? Well, for one, Decepticons are probably depressed because they're blue all the time. But perhaps more importantly, it tells us that the most potent circumstances for Press The Advantage is also the most common, meaning Press The Advantage will deal far more damage to the most common defensive decks than against the most aggressive ones. And the best part? Well, it's a green pip, which means you get it pretty much whenever you need it given the fact that you have a monstrous amount of Bold, usually.
Press The Advantage might not seem it, but it's a huge reason why the meta's growing more orange than blue. But wait, if you notice, Press The Advantage only works for Autobots -- aren't we forgetting something? Huh. This is gonna bug me!
An oldie but a goodie.
Insecticons are and have always been a fantastic deck that refuses to die. Ever since the deck was printed, Insecticons have always been a powerful deck that has only gotten stronger as the days go by, but oddly enough, it uses absolutely zero of those other cards. What keeps these bugs going? Is it that they hold their breath when someone whips out the Raid? Are they juicing on steroids?
Personally, I think it has something to do with this:
"Cowabunga it is, then."
Reckless Charge is, I think, the source of this extremely aggressive metagame. If you combine this incredibly powerful card with a Grenade Launcher (or any weapon for that matter) you'll be getting around +8 damage on one of your characters, around 2/3 of a character's HP before flips and before factoring in your base stats, not counting what Battlefield Legend can do when playing a free Action.
Doing +4 damage on an orange pip creates an immensely powerful card that doesn't really have too much of a downside when you consider that most aggressive decks are usually pretty fine with getting either one-hit or have enough HP that the 3 damage recoil doesn't affect them too much. Put it this way: If you're using Reckless Charge, you don't care about the recoil effects.
When you consider that Lionizer and Firedrive are Battle Masters and thus don't care about being attacked, or dying for that matter, Reckless Charge creates a practically unparalleled amount of damage with a frankly irrelevant recoil effect. Isn't this familiar, though?
If you think about it, One Shall Stand, One Shall Fall could be regarded as the same card but a little worse in some regards. Okay, yeah, sure, one is direct damage and the other is a stat boost and they're used mostly for different reasons, but consider this: When you're not using One Shall to target a different character, you're using it to target a character that you're about to attack. You could essentially say that you're increasing your attack damage to that character by +3 and taking 3 damage in recoil. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? With that in mind, wouldn't you rather do one more damage and have an orange pip while also taking the recoil damage after the attack instead of before?
That's my point. Reckless Charge is an immensely powerful card; so immense that it is actually better in some circumstances than a blank pipped card. I think that, as a whole, there is no other card in the game that could attest to growing the offensive power of the game more than Reckless Charge. Nothing else comes close, not even Bashing Shield. Sure, Bashing Shield is a fantastic supplement to that power, but not everyone has a Force Field on them or even in their decks, so it's a strong card, but not as strong as Reckless Charge is.
So, what are we gonna do about it? Just have more oranges until we make Minute Maid jealous? Or perhaps we should wait until the next set and hope that things cool off?
Not if I can help it!
This is a little something I've been working on for quite a while, and I've found that it's one of the most powerful decks that I have created thus far. Ladies, gentlemen, all of my discerning fleshbags, feast your eye-holes on SkyStick!
3 Infiltrate (B)
3 Point Defense System (Blk)
3 Take Cover (B)
1 Laser Cutlass (B)
Skywarp from Wave 1 is probably one of the most forgotten characters in the entire game. Sure, he was printed to be the six star, third member of the Seeker trio, but when you consider that he did practically nothing for that entire list, you start to wonder just what kind of list he should be played in.
Here's a refresher on what he does:
His vehicle mode is one of the most useless things in the game, and he'd probably be better off blank. But, when you consider his robot mode, you start to see where I'm going with this. You see, Skywarp defends attacks and stacks his defensive power using Flamewar and Reinforced Plating, but just when he's about to take the far reduced damage, you can instead choose to move it off him and onto one of your patsies -- erm, teammates if you flip a white pip. You play plenty of white pips, so you'll get it effectively every time.
You see, that's what is so amazing about this deck. You reduce your opponent's damage by an incredible margin, and you force them to attack into Skywarp using Hiding Spot, Bravery and psychology in general. You start the game attacking with Nightstick and transforming Flamewar to robot mode, forcing your opponent to attack into Nightstick. They will almost definitely not one-hit him thanks to his effects as a Battle Master (of which can boost Skywarp's defensive prowess even more than it already is) and your defensive list in general. This leaves you to transform and attack with Skywarp, ideally with an Armor, effectively giving your opponent the choice of either attacking into a defensive tank or into a Battle Master a second time.
But how do you win the game? You can't just sit in one spot and do nothing forever. Well, that, my friend, is why you play Blue/Black. Dealing Pierce damage through black pips, Cutlass and Piercing Blaster can whittle your opponent down to nothing, one bite at a time. Your patsies aren't just an effectively extended health pool for Skywarp -- they can pack a punch.
And how will you do all of this? Well, that's where Detour comes in. Being a Micromaster, he has a tap effect. This tap effect, however, involves drawing two cards, which can be extremely useful into drawing into Bravery, which can force your opponent into attacking Skywarp for as long as it remains in play. Of course, you won't always need that Bravery when Skywarp has Nightstick eventually attached to him; your opponent may very well just attack him outright given that he's the largest threat on the battlefield.
Speaking of making him a threat, did I mention that Tote can untap him and allow you to attack with him a second time, scrapping Smoke Cloaks and Hiding Spots from your hand that you don't need anymore? Because Tote can do that thing.
SkyStick is one of my favorite decks at the moment. It's practically invincible, you play enough disruption to care little about what your opponents do on their turn, but if you eventually find that your opponent is simply too Bold for your own good, simply side out Nightstick for Acid Storm and watch them squirm. As it turns out, Lionizer isn't really a threat when he does zero damage. Of course, if it's Aerialbots you're afraid of, simply side in a Take Cover and Point Defense System and watch as they combine for no reason at all, reducing practically all of their damage to nothing.
SkyStick can still be beaten, of course, and it usually happens if you go second against an aggressive deck that can can do upwards of 12-14 damage on their first turn, potentially KOing Skywarp (or coming close enough for him to be KO'd outside of combat through direct damage). In fact, direct damage as a whole is entirely annoying for SkyStick, which is why I play Take Cover. If it ever becomes too much of an issue, however, it is definitely worth swapping out Acid Storm for Motormaster in your Sideboard since he effectively stops that from happening for the rest of the game.
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CONCLUSION
The format has never looked more aggressive, with an influx of powerful decks like Quad Cars, Lionizer Cars, General Optimus/Barrage and Lionizer/Optimus Prime: Battlefield Legend making strong things even stronger. In fact, Aerialbots did make a showing at GenCon, and all of them did rather poorly compared to the aggressive decks around them. Now, what does that say about this format, then? Is it some congealed mass of the same three decks? Is it some monotone, horridly homogeneous metagame?
No, it's not. In fact, this is one of the most diverse character metagames we've ever had, with oodles of combinations to work with. But does that mean that it's also diverse in deck creation? That's where things get a little dicey, with only a little variation in terms of pips, Weapons, Actions and everything in between. This is where the game could use some improvement, and I look forward to seeing what will come in the next set to aid the diversity of deck creation.
What say you? Will you be using orange, aggressive decks for the remainder of this season to try and get your invite to the Energon Invitational? Or will you go against the grain and go blue? Will you take SkyStick out for a spin or does a death from a thousand cuts seem too slow for your taste? Whatever you pick, let me know in the comments below, and I'll see you in the next one!
The shadow that falls before the brightest light can hide the worst of our darkness. And now you can play as that darkness on your mobile device! That's right thanks to the recent news update from Kabam we've learned the naughtiest mirror image ever there was has skipped right on into the Transformers Forged to Fight game, compelling you to betray those closest to you, to turn from the light and embrace the unholy evil that is, hey wait, but it's only a game! ...or is it?
Log in and find out for yourself, if you dare!
Enjoy the stats and images for the new character below, and as always come back here to Seibertron to share your gaming triumphs and tragedies in the forum.
BOT INTEL REPORT – NEMESIS PRIME
Add Nemesis Prime to your ultimate squad July 11th at 10AM PDT
About Nemesis Prime:
Faction: Decepticon
Class: Tactician
Created using a subspace impulse cloner, Nemesis Prime is a dark clone of the heroic Optimus Prime. Although he wears the Decepticon insignia, it’s unclear where his loyalties lie.
Stats and Abilities:
3-Star:
Health: 4,682
Attack: 318
Max Rating: 1,372
4-Star:
Health: 12,169
Attack: 827
Max Rating: 3,666
5-Star:
Health: 29,543
Attack: 2,006
Max Rating: 8,884
Basic Abilities:
Basic Abilities: Dark Energy, Subspace Impulse Cloner
Ability 1
Dark Energy
Increases chance to copy Buffs, effectiveness of Special Attacks and damage of Heavy Attack.
Ability 2
Subspace Impulse Cloner
Whenever the opponent gains a Melee Attack Buff or Armor Buff, Nemesis Prime has a chance to copy the same buff.
Passive
Nemesis Prime gains a Dark Energy charge every 12~10 seconds, up to a maximum of 10 charges.
At less than 50% health, Nemesis Prime gains a Dark Energy charge every 9~7 seconds.
At less than 15% health, Nemesis Prime gains a Dark Energy charge every 6~3 seconds.
+10% critical chance against Autobots
+10% armor piercing against Decepticons
Opponent Gains a Buff
Whenever the opponent gains a Melee Attack Buff, Nemesis Prime has a 10~25% chance to copy the same Buff for the same amount of time. +5% chance for each charge of Dark Energy.
Whenever the opponent gains an Armor Buff, Nemesis Prime has a 10~25% chance to copy the same Buff for the same amount of time. +5% chance for each charge of Dark Energy.
Heavy Attacks
Nullify one Melee Attack Buff or Armor buff from the opponent.
+5% damage for each charge of Dark Energy.
Special Attacks:
Special Attack 1
Dark Energon Chop
This dark clone comes complete with a cloned Energon Axe.
30% chance to copy each Debuff on Nemesis Prime to the opponent. +3% chance for each charge of Dark Energy
Gain 2 charges of Dark Energy
Special Attack 2
Axes of Evil
Reverse the polarity of your opponent’s face.
50% chance to nullify each Melee Attack Buff on the opponent and apply a 5% Attack Down Debuff for 4 seconds. +5% chance for each charge of Dark Energy.
50% chance to nullify each Armor Up Buff on the opponent and apply a 5% Armor Break for 4 seconds. +5% chance for each charge of Dark Energy.
Reduce Dark Energy charges by 3 for each Buff nullified.
Special Attack 3
No Matter the Obstacle
Nemesis Prime is on a mission, and nothing will stand in his way.
After the last hit of the attack, gain basic attacks are unblockable for 7 seconds plus 0.5 seconds per charge of Dark Energy.
Reduce Dark Energy charges to zero.
Signature Ability: Artificial Matrix
Nemesis Prime saps the energy from his opponents, stealing their health.
Special Attacks restore Nemesis Prime’s health for 15~25% of damage dealt.
Synergy Bonuses:
Outgoing – Doppelganger – Nemesis Prime
Nemesis Prime gains 3~6% Armor.
Incoming – Original Model – Optimus Prime GS
Armor Break is 3~6% more effective.
Outgoing – Dark Energy Fuel – Galvatron
Increase Dark Energy gain by 4~5%.
Incoming – Dark Energy Fuel – Galvatron
Increase Dark Energy gain by 4~5%.
Incoming – Intriguing Subject – Shockwave
Increase Power Gain by +3~4%.
Outgoing – Dark Ally – Cyclonus
Increase Dark Burn damage by +5%.
Leadership 5
Acting as a beacon of leadership for the team, all lower tier teammates gain +10% Armor Rating.
With these reveals, the last cards of Siege 1 have come along with them! Oh god, why are there so many!? Now, this isn't going to be the last article I'll be doing -- not by a long shot! -- because I have a lot more to talk about including tournament reports from the larger events. Of course, you can find all of that content and more on my YouTube channel, Nanomachines!
Anyway, enough with this sordid affair! Let us get to the meat of the article!
TO ORIGINS AND BEYOND
Origins Game Fair was just last week, and there was a solid turnout of over 150 unique players over the course of the week, ending with an invitational where the top 32 players over the course of the week play in single elimination rounds to play for a prize pool of $10,000.
On the first day, we had roughly 30 players. I was in a frankly in an unknown metagame, with little idea outside of my own observations, my locals and a few articles to base any meta call on. To that end, I decided to play Insecticons because it is one of the most consistent decks out there with some of the best ability to beat random riffraff outside of the meta. When you play in an event, especially large ones, this is imperative. The first round or two when playing rogue can pit you against another rogue deck that just so happens to utterly dumpster your deck, potentially ruining your tournament.
With my deck chosen and my fate sealed, I ended up placing 3rd with a final record of 3-0-2 after tying against Planes and IDing against mirror into cut! I managed to face off against and meet several fellow content creators like Wreck 'N Rule and a couple of guys from VectorSigma.info, and it was really awesome to put some faces to the names and names to the faces!
With my Top 8 finish on the first day, I ended up more or less a spectator for the remainder of the tournament. To warm myself up to the idea of playing against a frankly absurd amount of hate for my chosen deck after literally half of the first day's Top 8 was made up of Insecticons, and to get a few more tickets for the prize wall, I played a bit on Saturday. This was mostly to test the meta after it evolved over the week, but I then dropped after deciding to stop grinching people like a huge jerk.
The next day, I played in the big finals. After I decided on playing Insecticons again, I was fully expecting to hit a horrible matchup on the first game and then dying instantly. Instead, I faced Cars which is even at its worst and great at its best thanks to their relatively low defense and average HP. I ended up winning and moving on to Top 16, securing my place in the Energon Invitational at Pax Unplugged!
The Top 16 matchup was definitely not as good of a matchup as Top 32, but Aerialbots was something that I expected to face. In fact, I knew that it was such a poor matchup in a vacuum that I decided to devote most of my sideboard to beating it with the most unlikely of cards: Repair Bay and Bad Attitude. Aerialbots deal chip damage to eventually KO multiple characters at once to win, and low chip damage over time gets stopped by Repair Bay and gets dumpstered by Bad Attitude. To make things even better, I ended up sideboarding Chop Shop for his reuse of Bashing Shield, Weapons, his unique draw ability and, yes, his potent healing.
Saying the words "Repair Bay" and "Bad Attitude" in a tournament setting brought tears to my eyes.
But, as I moved on to Top 8, I noticed something: Five out of the eight were all playing the same deck, and it was possibly my worst matchup. You see, Sentinels is a good matchup despite Sentinel's controlly, hand-destruction playstyle. However, their rather awful defensive capabilities and their orange list make them easy pickens for Insecticons to simply play their topdeck and attack.
Three Wide Prime, shorthand for Optimus Prime: Battlefield Legend, Flamewar and (usually) Hot Rod, is an awful matchup because they can both remove your hand as well as reduce your damage.
Reduce it by a lot.
But Insecticons, my list especially, have a habit of topdecking Weapons and Actions that increase your damage by quite a bit. The most important things about the matchup is target priority and saving your resources when you can and blowing them all at once when you need to.
Optimus Prime is a big guy, but so is Kickback with a Grenade Launcher and a Reckless Charge flipping the top ten cards of your deck.
The long and short about it is that Three Wide is your worst possible matchup, but it is by no means an autoloss. For Three Wide, it's an easy matchup to win. But, it's just as easy to lose as well. This is a lesson my Top 8 opponent, Kent Summerour, unfortunately learned the hard way, as I took the match after a hard-fought victory.
As I did, however, I looked to my right in bewilderment. Nearly all of my opponents were Three Wide, and it wss nearly impossible based on bracket position for me to face the winner of the game to my left. This, of course, came to fruition when my next round opponent, Steffon Pinckney, played me with his Hot Rod-based Three Wide. Kent had opted to use Motormaster, and with my Insecticon list not opting to play direct damage outside of Swarm, Motormaster struggled to find value. Hot Rod, however, is frankly disgusting when paired with Flamewar and was even worse to take out because he could ping Skrapnel with his KO Pile Ability to make math worse when it counted.
We ended up going 1-1 after I Swarmed him for the KO. Then, at the final turns of the final game, I misplayed. I ended up playing an Upgrade before using Backup Plan, where I would have drawn into an I Still Function and a Force Field to secure the game against his lone Prime. Without the Force Field, Chop Shop was KO'd and my Top Cut run came to a close.
But the story does not end there. You see, Steffon is a super cool guy (He also runs a YouTube channel, too! Check it out HERE!) and he ended up going into Top 2 with Dan from VectorSigma.info, where the two ended up splitting the prize pool and playing for the title. The mirror match was hard-fought, but Steffon eventually came out on top and claimed the title as the first ever Origins Open winner!
He made out with $1,250 after splitting the prize pool, an invitation to the Energon Invitational, a box of Siege, a fully paid Pax Unplugged badge and a signed crystal cube with Transformers etchings. He humbly accepted these gifts and our champion was crowned.
Me? Oh, I made off with a few things, myself. The Pax badge, the invite, $750 and a full box of Siege all came my way, with the latter being something I opened on my channel in a recent video. But honestly? The experience and the validation is really what matters the most to me; I started playing the TFTCG by myself in my room with proxies before the game even came out, and to come all this way in the first ever tournament? Well, I can't think of a better prize.
Well, that and the money.
If you're interested in the list I used, have no fear! I've included it below, including a deck profile that Steffon did himself on his channel, SDotAkuma:
2 Backup Plan
2 Bashing Shield
3 Erratic Lightning
2 Flame Thrower
3 Force Field
3 Grenade Launcher
3 I Still Function!
3 Improvised Shield
2 Mining Pick
3 Peace Through Tyranny
3 Power Punch
3 Reckless Charge
2 Static Laser of Iron Hide
3 Supercharge
3 Swarm!
Sideboard
Chop Shop - Sneaky Insecticon
3 Bad Attitude
2 Emergency Maintenance
1 Flamethrower
1 Mounted Missiles
2 Repair Bay
1 Static Laser of Ironhide
Speaking of Siege, I daresay that I haven't broken down the rest of the cards yet! Let's jump right in on that!
CHARACTERS
"Top of the Shot to you!"
Top Shot is the little Micromaster that could. He has a surprising amount of value for a 4 Star character, and he has a solid amount of value to be seen out of his innate traits. He's a bit of a wonky type of Micromaster, where he gets more use out of his innate abilities than his tap effect. This is a good thing, given that -- by not using a tap effect to get value out of him -- you're essentially opening up more options in terms of other Micromasters on your team. In fact, one could even say that you could perhaps play Top Shot as the main support of a Micromaster/Small Guys team!
Allow me to explain. Top Shot is the leader of the Battle Patrol, and that carries over into his innate effects where he is a Leader. This, plus his Autobot nature, opens up the option to use him along with the Matrix of Leadership. The Matrix of Leadership gives all of your characters +1 and Pierce 1 so long as it's attached to an Autobot Leader; in other words, Top Shot. That way, you can give your team of smaller characters a way to deal more damage instead of, well, none at all. Being able to boost the damage of your team with a Matrix can be surprisingly potent given the fact that Top Shot is only 4 Stars, and a Tank no less!
Speaking of which, you can also run him alongside Flak, Demolishor, Starter Megatron and have plenty of room for three star cards, like Full Loadout. You can do a ton of damage with Demolishor and Megatron, and Top Shot adds his layer of power to that to create a formidable combination. Since they're all Tanks, Demolishor can draw three cards for his transformation effect, and perhaps more importantly, Hunker Down allows you to play a frankly disgusting amount of Armor on the field.
You can even use a Force Field on Top Shot, thanks to the fact that he has 5 HP, not 4. Meaning, he can take a solid amount of punishment as a "meat shield" if that's what it comes down to. Why a sacrificial lamb and not an offensive character? Unfortunately, even with his good utility, his offensive stats are not the best and thus if you're going to do anything with him, tapping him is the better option.
Besides, his draw + plan effect is still not bad no matter how you look at it, and that utility still translates well to a solid damage boost to your next attacker when you have a double orange in your hand. That being said, there are better draw options, but not at that cost and not for that pip color -- pretty much, if you're looking for a "universal" orange Micromaster, look no further!
"I'm here to kick gum and chew butt and I'm all outta butt!"
Triggerhappy is interesting. On one hand, I would say that he'd make a defensive plane list happy being a Pierce attacker. On the other, I would say that he would make an aggro deck happy given that he can recycle the used Grenade Launchers for later use. The question is, which one suits him best? To answer this question, we need to take a look into his stats.
With Triggerhappy's high Pierce, he seems to be quite formidable, yes? No, that's not quite the case, now is it? You see, when you have a high Pierce, you can assume that you're able to deal all of that damage. Usually, that assumption would be true. This is not a usual case. With Pierce 4 and only two attack, you need an offensive boost to make use of him offensively, and his defense is not high enough to warrant too much investment on that front, either. So in defense, it's a rather awkward thing to put him in there because he necessitates the weapon in order to be effective.
So, if not the defense, then perhaps the offense? Well, let's decipher that for a moment. On one hand, his weapon recycling effect is always welcome in any list. But, his offensive stats are abysmal, and whereas you'll be more or less confirmed to swing for your Pierce 4, there are just better offensive options to run on that end. At that point, you're just a weapon reanimator -- which is fine -- but you need to balance the rest of your team to support him just as much as he's supporting you. The question is, can you really afford to devote that many stars to occasionally getting a weapon back?
I don't think so.
Triggerhappy is just too expensive for what he offers, and I think that there are just better options to run. Even using Reclaim and a small character with draw like Dead End seems to be the same value with more flexibility. I mean, sure, using Bombing Run in a defensive list seems good to keep him and his friends alive, but I just don't see Triggerhappy being that solid in defensive or offensive comps. I just can't justify him compared to the other options.
"Lemme axe you a question..."
Pteraxadon is kind of great, not gonna lie. His cheap points only add to this, and he really fits well in a sideboard to fight against highly defensive decks.
Now, being a Battle Master, his stats are going to -- I'm just gonna say it -- suck. It's just the way the cookie crumbles in terms of Battle Masters, of course, with his awful defense and just "meh" offensive capabilities, but the general shtick of Battle Masters is that they don't have their value in their robot modes anyway, so this should not be a deal breaker.
As for his alternate mode, it is honestly one of if not the most powerful Battle Master effects I have seen. Reducing your opponents Base Defense (the defense printed on the card, for those who needed clarification) to 0 is a very, very powerful effect that crushes a lot of characters. For instance, Demolishor, who has his 4 Defense that he normally uses to keep himself alive suddenly becomes an easy target. Headstrong, Darkmount, Inferno, the list goes on with who Pteraxadon can counter. Now, that being said, it does not reduce whatever blue pips your opponent flips -- but really, who cares? It's more damage!
He's splashable, his effect is solid, and on top of that he still gives you a +3 attack boost! To be frank, I can't think of many Battle Masters I would rather put in a list. He's got a lot of value in an aggro list -- especially with Quartermaster allowing you to reuse him -- and you don't really lose much for tossing him in.
They say "you have to save the best for last". With Pteraxadon, I can't think of a better phrase to describe him.
BATTLE CARDS
A double-edged sword.
W5 Gyro Blaster, despite not having any pips whatsoever, is honestly one of the nuttiest cards I have ever seen. Remember, it doesn't just stop Bold -- it stops Tough, Kickback, Demolishor, white pips and everything in between.
Gyro Blaster allows you to play both offensively and defensively with it, dealing higher damage to characters with Tough and taking less damage against characters with Bold. Take Devastator for instance. You, for example, might play him in a blue list with a really slow, grindy playstyle and eventually you build up enough Tower to combine and have a really massive amount of HP. That's when you attach a Gyro Blaster to him and sit promptly on your 2 Defense and 10 Attack (or 11, rather, with the Gyro Blaster) not even counting any Armor you've attached prior.
Your opponent can't deal with that without using high base attack, and even then they have to deal with your defensive flips. Their Bold won't work, and when you swing at them, their Tough won't work either. The power of the W5 Gyro Blaster is just too massive to ignore, and when used in conjunction with Secret Actions like Infiltrate and Blue pips... Well, let's just say that any aggro deck in your area is going to have a bad time.
Like, a really bad time.
Thicker than a bowl of oatmeal.
Point Defense System is a neat little Armor that deals with a very, very specific problem.
So let me give you a quick recap, yeah? Siege 1 introduces black pips, including blue/black cards that can create a surprising amount of damage potential in blue decks, all without sacrificing that defensive power. In fact, black pips actually make Bold not horrible. Remember, certain characters have Bold innately, like Superion, and it would initially mill your deck and your resources. Black pips make that Bold actually worthwhile.
That's where Point Defense System comes in.
In the mirror blue/black matchup, your opponent is going to have roughly two to four Pierce at any given point in time through their Upgrades and through their black pips. This means that, even with your powerful defensive capabilities, you won't be able to block them when they have their Pierce. With Point Defense System, you're able to reduce that potential damage by a surprising amount given the nature of Pierce Upgrades, potentially tipping matchups like Aerialbots in your favor.
That being said, it really does depend on whether or not your local meta is more defensive or aggro-focused to whether or not you mainboard this card. If you want my personal opinion, I would probably just sideboard it in most cases -- three cards from your sideboard aren't too likely to be drawn when you need them, and I can only assume that most decks won't be as reliant on Pierce as Blue Black is.
Be that as it may, you should definitely sideboard Point Defense System if you're afraid of Pierce-heavy matchups. You'll find no stronger counter than this!
"Must have been my imagination." ~ Whiterun, Decepticon patrol. Last words.
Going invisible seems pretty fun, but it's all fun and games until a Specialist loses an optic.
There are three of these kinds of armors, and nearly all of them are honestly pretty fantastic. I can tell where they were going with all of these with each of the innate triangle (Specialist, Melee, and Ranged respectively) defending against a different member of the triangle. In this case, it's Melee against Specialists and unfortunately we have to start off with the weakest link.
Covert Armor is a Melee armor that defends against Specialists, which, so I can preface, is not that great because Specialists seldom have enough offensive power to threaten other characters and if you're playing armor in a list, you more than likely playing it with a primary and secondary Armor cards already. This means that Covert Armor is so niche that it will only really counter Motorcycles, the only real Specialist-focused deck, which might not even be that popular given their low stats.
The point I'm making is this: It's kinda useless to have an Armor that only protects against a very niche thing, and it probably won't be able to make it into your Sideboard given the plethora of other options and probably worse matchups to fix.
That being said, though, it is a very consistent card being a green pip, and it blends very well in a blue list given that it is, well, a blue pip. There are a lot of benefits to these cards, and getting +2 defense is frankly stupid good on many different levels, which is why the others have such good power in them.
"Might as well jump! (Jump!) / Might as well jump!
Go on and jump! (Jump!) / Go ahead and jump!"
As I said, there are definitely good cards in this trio. Reflex Circuits are definitely one of these, having the ability to get a freakishly good +2 defense against the rather prolific Melee class. The fact of the matter is, this has every bit the power of Covert Armor but in a more meaningful way.
I mean, when you consider how powerful this could be attached to someone like Superion (or just the Aerialbots in general, to be fair), things get a little gross especially with how players afraid of the Aerialbots can sideboard in Warpath to stop you from using your Tough abilities. Reflex Circuits allow you to defend through Warpath, Stunticon Swagger or whatever else they throw at you, like Gyro Blaster. The simple fact that you can get +2 defense on an Upgrade should not be ignored, especially for the normally defensive Ranged character roster.
The best defense is a good defense.
To be perfectly frank with you, this is another miss for me, but at least not as much as Covert Armor.
Let me explain. When you have a Specialist, you expect to put one of two things on it: Field Communicator and Multi-Mission Gear. Multi-Mission Gear is still as powerful as it was in Wave 1, and it's still just as dependent on Specialists to... Well, work. The best part about that card is that it still gives you +1 Armor, and when you put it on a character like Skydive or someone similarly as defensive like Flamewar, your opponent is going to have a tough time clearing them from the board.
Whereas Sturdy Armor seems like a great inclusion on these characters, I wouldn't put Sturdy Armor anywhere near my mainboard and instead hold it on the side as a big maybe. Why? Well, let's dig in to that.
You see, Ranged Characters normally have quite low attack, save some outliers like Optimus or Megatron. The simple fact is, the Tank or the Plane is the best "average" Ranged character baseline: Defensive, middling attack stats and relying on Pierce and direct damage to do their dirty work for them. When you have a card like Sturdy Armor, you're trying to defend against something that doesn't even do high base damage that instead deals its damage through Pierce -- it's not possible.
Pierce is getting another big buff in Siege 1 thanks to the introduction of black pips, and Ranged characters are the big winners of that thanks to their already high reliance on Pierce to do their damage. Again, there are outliers that don't, but the "base" Ranged character normally does, and adding defense just doesn't matter when, well, it doesn't matter.
That being said, it is a nice counter to Optimus Prime -- Battlefield Legend amongst other things, but I would only include this if you're really, really afraid of him.
"Oh, that's a little Bobby Dazzler! A real top-pocket find!"
Metal Detector is a great little engine that will definitely benefit lists like Blurr, Cars, Motorcycles and pretty much anything else that really likes playing extra Upgrades and can attack multiple times. When you have a Metal Detector on a character that attacks, you get to look at and play any Upgrade on your topdeck, and when you build your list accordingly it effectively makes that a done deal.
Blurr especially gets a load of value out of Metal Detector, as he untaps and attacks twice in one turn, effectively turning Metal Detector into a Brainstorm or Leap of Faith but for Upgrades! Of course, this doesn't confirm just what you'll get on the top of your deck (though you can try rigging that with Plan effects), but I often find that playing pretty much any Upgrade is generally a positive with few exceptions, like playing an Improvised Shield instead of just scrapping it.
Either way, Metal Detector doesn't give any stat boost, just a utility boost, making playing it somewhat of a "feels bad moment" like playing a Data Bank or your first Cargo Trailer. But, I think it'll offer much more value than one might expect, much like Scrounge. Anything that extends your hand can powerful, but it necessitates a list to support it.
The question is, is it worth the effort?
I think so.
"Michael Knight, a lone crusader in a dangerous world. The world... of the Knight Rider."
Similarly to Metal Detector, Anticipation Engine is like a Multi-Mission Gear but for everyone and I love it to bits. I truly and honestly think that it's one of the most powerful Upgrades out there for Cars, Motorcycles and honestly just about anything else that plays a billion Actions in their decks and wants to play more of them. You can imagine someone like Blurr being able to play a tremendous amount of Actions during your turn including cards like Marksmanship, Leap Into Battle, Leap of Faith and loads more.
The fact that Actions have and always will be more powerful than Upgrades makes Anticipation Engine thus more powerful than Metal Detector. I could go into just why Actions are better than Upgrades, but to be perfectly honest I think I go over that in every article to be perfectly frank with you, so I don't think I'll go over it again this time just to save my sanity.
Unfortunately, with that power there must also be something to rein it in and Anticipation Engine has its fair share. Whilst you have a powerful effect, it's still a Weapon that takes up any other spot for weapons. That means that whatever you're attacking with, you won't be able to deal too much -- or any -- damage at all when you use it on a lesser powered character. That, and it's a white pip, not a green pip like Metal Detector. Unfortunately, this makes Anticipation Engine far less consistent than its Upgrade sister card and thus less powerful.
It's an odd balance with Anticipation Engine. On one hand, the effect of playing multiple Actions in one turn while not needing a Specialist in order to do so seems extremely powerful. On the other, though, you'll effectively be crippling yourself in terms of damage output. In that case, I don't think it'll see much play given that it doesn't give any stat boosts. The Weapon slot is so imperative to winning the game, that I struggle to justify taking it up with something that doesn't really give you anything in terms of power. That being said, perhaps you could fill your deck with damaging Actions to make Anticipation Engine essentially do more damage than none at all.
I dunno. It's a bit tin-foil-cappy, to be sure, but I'm confident that the list made to support this card would be so niche and oddly built that I'm not quite sure that it could function normally.
"Extra Padding"? Same, Red. Same.
Extra Padding is simply not that great at being an armor, but it is great at getting more of itself in play which can be quite the boon to certain cards. So, let me explain.
You see, since Extra Padding is a stacked Upgrade, Equipment Enthusiast can draw a net more cards than normal. Three upgrades in one slot can give you essentially more potential value for Equipment Enthusiast. But, that's not all. You see, Armor is a potent yet fragile slot thanks to Bashing Shield. Being that Extra Padding is a stacked Upgrade, Bashing Shield can only remove one layer of Armor.
This makes Extra Paddimg an effectively invincible Armor, since playing Bashing Shield to simply remove one layer of Extra Padding would be a frankly abysmal expendiature for extremely little value. That said, Extra Padding is also a lot of effort to play during your turn, and it also has little payoff for the required resources.
I mean, think about it. You're almost never going to get all three, and if you do, you'll find that it's simply just as potent as a Reinforced Plating or Body Armor with double or triple the effort to play. That said, having an invincible armor isn't a bad thing, even if your opponent can play a Security Checkpoint and prevent you from playing it to begin with.
Either way, I think there are just better cards to play during your turn, but it's a cool little card regardless.
It's like half of a Flamethrower. So, like, a Smokethrower?
Basic Combat Protocols is a worse Flamethrower. I realize that, as a Utility, you're essentially adding on more Bold than you would normally, but you're losing that Utility value while also potentially losing weapon value.
Consider my Insecticon list. Did you see any Utilities? It's because aggro decks don't have the time to attach something that only gives them Bold 1. In fact, Tandem Targeting System is straight better because it attaches multiple Upgrades at once for effectively the same amount of damage.
Further, if you're playing Aggro, you'll find that when everyone untaps, they'll be unlikely to have any Upgrades whatsoever. Many aggressive decks use Upgrades like Grenade Launcher and Power Punch to deal damage, and this is no different. The simple fact is that Basic Combat Protocols is just a worse Flamethfower, making it a "feels bad" card that simply gives no value in the short run.
Problem is, Aggro is the only kind of deck that'd really benefit from this outside of Metroplex and Aggro decks live in the short run.
"You are an idiot! Do you need a second opinion? You are also ugly!" ~ The Medic, Team Fortress 2
You know, I've learned to consider all the options. I learned that certain cards are way better than they might seem. I learned that certain things just take the right matchup. I mean, this even replaces itself!
Under normal circumstances, I would tell you to move on. I would tell you, "A single damage counter isn't worth it" and just go on to the next card.
These are normal circumstances. A single damage counter isn't worth it. Just go on to the next card.
"YEET!"
Frag Toss is... Actually really solid. It reminds me of Swarm to many degrees since your opponent chooses where the damage goes, which is not necessarily a bad thing per se. Because of this consistent damage output, you can assume it will almost never go where you want it. That said, it is actually a very solid Decepticon card to play in Shockwave because that's kind of his whole playstyle.
Something else I'd like to point out is that this card is actually kind of amazing in Insecticons. Not only is it essentially "baby Swarm", but it is also a white pip instead of One Shall Stand's zero pips. It's honestly a very good card to look into when it comes to Insecticons and Shockwave, and I think this isn't the last time we've seen Frag Toss.
"Go ahead. Make my day."
This card is very bad.
However, since it is a Decepticon card, you will be able to use it in Shockwave, especially since it has a black pip for the undoubtedly blue/black list.
That said, those are really the extent of the rewards you'll find with it. I think this one is niche at best. Move along!
You know, I think I'm beginning to understand why Shockwave is "hand" control.
Shockwave kinda needs a hand.
Heh.
But truly, any Shockwave composition seems a little lackluster when compared to others, especially when you consider how hand destruction is usually a secondary effect rather than a full game plan. Shockwave usually deals a lot of damage at once through a burst of hand destruction, at least according to his Wave 1 iteration and the theme of LV Gamma Disruptor Launcher. With that in mind, we can pretty well assume that Major Shockwave and W1 Shockwave are going to be played in the same list because Gamma Disruptor is both a Decepticon card as well as a defensive hand destruction card.
But there's a problem.
When you consider the fact that hand control is a kind of "all or nothing" burst effect with often not a lot of payoff, this card gets a little worse. Consider Sentinels, for example. Sentinels really enjoy discarding your entire hand on the first turn of the game, and it works very well. However, when you consider that now that your opponent has no hand, you realize that you won't be able to discard any more cards to get any more value out of W1 Shockwave. That makes LV Gamma Disrupter Launcher just a tad bit worse, as well.
But is it bad?
Oh heavens no. Discarding a card from your opponent's hand while giving Shockwave a much-needed damage boost to the point that it reaches a permanent Grenade Launcher after two are attached? That's amazing. Especially when you consider the fact that, usually, after a Security Checkpoint your opponent is going to have only one card in their hand, an Action. When you use LV Gamma Disruptor, you can discard that last card and still boost your damage by quite a noticeable margin. Since it's also a Decepticon card, Major Shockwave can also effectively dig further into your deck to pull it out and use it against your opponent, making it a far more consistent card than most especially if you happen to use Reclaim to rig your topdeck to use any accidentally flipped ones.
Will this make Shockwave suddenly a nutty composition? I don't think it will, at least not particularly, but I do think that LV Gamma Disruptor is a necessary and welcome step in the right direction for Shockwave. I think it'll be a fantastic boost to Shockwave compositions, and I can't imagine a future without more to come.
Even Soundwave must pet the kitty cat. All must pet the kitty cat.
Micro Capacitor is a kind of, well, very good.
You see, in a team with Micromasters (or in certain cases a team full of Micromasters) you will have a lot of options when it comes to tapping effects. Sadly, you'll find that your opponent will often target down the most useful of these effects. With that in mind, we either simply had to bite the bullet and let it happen, or use Stealthiness or Bravery to attempt to redirect that damage. Micro Capacitor effectively forces your opponent to attack where you want them to, while also giving you the added bonus of untapping your Micromaster for later use.
I think that any deck that values its Micromaster will love this card more than life itself. I mean, imagine getting to use Red Heat twice before he's KO'd, or even Detour or Flak! You can get a lot of value out of your Micromasters when you use them at the right time; you can get even more value out of them if you get to use them twice.
Mark my words, Bolster will be of one of the best cards in the set.
Allow me to explain. In a defensive list, you have one big enemy that you will fear until the end of time, and that card is named Bashing Shield. Bashing Shield can remove your armor and make your characters take way more damage than they initially would (or should) and effectively deny your Armor upgrade for the turn. In fact, most defensive lists play cards like Espionage just to remove Bashing Shield when they see an opponent pick one up using its green pip.
That's where Bolster comes in.
You see, when Bolster activates, your opponent will not have the chance to remove any Force Field, Reinforced Plating or any other powerful Armors that you might have. But perhaps more than that, you can get ahead on the Upgrade arms race or use to disrupt your opponent, including using cards like Scrapper Gauntlets to remove potentially awful weapons before they have an effect.
In fact, I actually quite think that will be a very good use for Bolster. But just imagine all of the potential you can use with it! If your opponent overinvests into an attack, simply Force Field and deny them that play. If they underinvest, then you can use cards like Multi-Mission Gear to play more Actions or Scrapper Gauntlets to punish their board state.
Bolster is honestly one of the best cards I have seen in Siege, and I am ecstatic to see where it goes from here.
Defensive Formation is a less hand-based version of Bolster, at least in the defensive respects. Think of this like playing an Armored Plating on one of your characters with a Bolster -- it's just not that strong as a defensive card when compared to Bolster. But, when you consider that it is markedly better against hand destruction-based lists like Sentinels... Well, I guess you could find a place for it in a sideboard.
But in a mainboard? I mean, sure, it makes all of your characters have +1 defense, but why? This isn't like Battle Ready where it makes all of your characters have +1 attack for each Upgrade on them -- this is just straight +1 defense on an orange pip no less.
I'm confused, disappointed and I'm ready for the next card!
RIP Viewfinder
It's basically Vaporize that can't target Utilities. It's at least good for decks that want to play a lot of black pips, but more than that I can't say I'd see using it over Ramming Speed, Vaporize or any of the other anti-Upgrade cards -- even Device Virus is better.
Either way, it's a middling card that will likely see play in black lists. More than that I cannot say.
However, it is worth noting that Reflector is actually featured on this card artwork! Plus, with a coy response from game designer Ken Nagle when I asked him at Origins about possible character inclusions, I'd wager that we'll be seeing a card or two based on everyone's favorite camera-based trio coming out next set. After all, why make new artwork to feature a character that will never come to be?
Skywarp quickly realized the easiest way to win in a Battle Royale game was to hide -- earning him the ire of his friends and the anger of his opponents.
Hiding Place is a very, very good card for Tall decks.
So, lemme explain. You see, when you have a Tall deck, you're only sitting there with two characters. It's easy -- especially for aggressive decks like Insecticons -- to focus down one of your characters with mass attack. So, with Hiding Place, you can effectively force your opponent not to do that by giving the character they wish to focus down Stealth. This is an incredibly good effect for a powerful composition like Double Primes or even Three Wide Prime, as redirecting your opponent's attacks in a defensive build is never not good.
Now, in most other lists, this won't help much. But, in lists like Sideswipe, Tall decks and various defensive compositions, you'll find that Hiding Place is invaluable.
Drawing a blank.
Being a +3 attack weapon, one could say that EM24 IR Laser Launcher is a good weapon -- one could even say that it has no downside like Erratic Lightning!
One would also be super, super wrong.
You see, being a blank pip effectively cuts back on that value by quite a large margin. You're effectively losing consistency in your list in terms of pip strength, something I am not a fan of. In fact, I cut One Shall Stand, One Shall Fall from my Insecticon list simply because it had no pips to flip during Kickback and other, equally as Bold characters' attacks.
The same could be said here. Laser Launcher still has a bit of power in it, sure, but I would never put more than one in a list that already had cards without pips like I Still Function. Even if I were to put this in a list, I would be far more likely to play One Shall Stands simply because of the out of combat damage that it could provide instead of the in combat damage that Laser Launcher provides.
One thing that Laser Launcher has over One Shall Stand, of course, is the lack of recoil. But is that truly a reason to play a subpar weapon over your other options?
I just keep "droning" on.
This card is a not great card, much like its two sister cards. Aside from Device Virus, Chop Shop and, well, dying, there really isn't many ways to scrap this card from one of your characters to scrap an already usually unimportant Utility from your opponent. Plus, you're not getting any healthier as the game goes by -- there just isn't time to play and scrap this card.
Of course, Personal Targeting Drone does have a green and white pip, so at least you can put a white pip into your hand if you desperately need one for Red Heat, Stakeout or other, similar effects. There's not too much reason to play this, otherwise, though.
Well I guess I need another name to roast Basic Combat Protocol with.
Think about Flamethrower, and then put a black pip on it, and then you have Smokethrower.
In orange/black decks, you're effectively able to play six copies of Flamethrower while still not losing any of your orange or black cards. In fact, in white/black lists like Omega Supreme/Jazz, you're going to be needing something like Smokethrower in order to actually deal a relevant amount of damage. It's not exceptional, no, but it does it's job and I think that's pretty much as much as you could ask for.
"I have mastered the ability of standing so completely still that I become invisible to the eye. Watch."
Urban Camo is actually much better than Basic Combat Protocol.
So, Tough 1 is super small, yes, but when you consider that you can use it in tandem with Flamewar, General Optimus and an Armor, that Tough 1 can stack very quickly. Keep in mind, Urban Camo is a Utility -- not an Armor -- so you can play it alongside other cards like Reinforced Plating or Body Armor. Plus, being a Blue pip, you can still flip it and not feel awful about yourself.
It's kind of a feel bad card to play on your turn, but if you're playing defensively you're able to have enough time to take full advantage of Urban Camo, unlike Basic Combat Protocol in aggro lists. Either way, I think it's a great card for defensive lists in the highly underutilized Utility slot -- and I couldn't be happier.
CLOSING
Origins was a dream for me. I drove down with a friend of mine and ended up staying in an Air BNB with a great group of friends, having one of the first vacations I've had in a matter of years. Escape Rooms, literal knights in shining armor, film festivals and interesting eats all made the tournament at Origins not just any tournament, but an experience. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed my time at Origins -- and I think the best way to explain it is simply to tell you to go to the next tournament, yourself, and see. If you'd like to hear more things about my thoughts on my placement and my run, you can check out an interview with me that Cameron Ehteshami did on his channel, Arbitrary Hero!
I had an utterly awesome time at Origins, and it was even better to meet all the people that I have spoken to online about this card game we all love to play, and meeting new friends was even better. Plus, winning third was a nice bonus -- it was far greater than I had even hoped to place! I had hoped to get this article out beforehand, which is why it's so long, but I ended up running out of time and had to put it out after I got back from Columbus a week after. Sorry about that!
Speaking of those reveals, what do you think? I think that Bolster is one of my favorite cards in the set, and I think that the abilities that Bolster is bringing will be far and away one of the most impactful cards to be added to the game.
Or maybe I'm wrong. Who knows? Lemme know in the comments below what you think!
We have more reveals today, and I would like to preface this by stating that this is one of the most game-changing reveals that I have seen in this game thus far. I won't spoil what's ahead, but the implications of this reveal is massive. If you've read my previous article content, you'd know how much I've been begging for something like this for a while now.
But that's not all! Courtesy of ScreenRant.com, we have scans of both Generals of the Autobots and Decepticons -- Megatron and Optimus Prime! Without further ado, let's jump in!
CHARACTER CARDS
“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.” ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
The reason I chose that quote from The Art of War wasn't because I was being pretentious -- well, I was being a little pretentious -- it was that it really epitomizes what this Optimus Prime really is. His strength is not overt like Optimus Prime: Battlefield Legend, or value-based like Optimus Prime: Autobot Leader; his is a subtle strength that's passed to his allies, not hoarded like his more expensive Wave 1 iterations.
You see, Prime gives all of his partners Bold 1 and Tough 1. You can use this in combination with a Matrix of Leadership to give them +1 Attack and Pierce 1 as well, giving your characters essentially a flat boost across the board. This flat boost comes at a cost, however, seeing as Optimus is an 11 Star character, your partners become somewhat limited in their availability. However, I think the one thing that should be in every General Optimus list is Flamewar: Veteran Decepticon. Her ability to give each of her allies Tough 1 in robot mode is actually nuts when combined with General Optimus, who gives a combined Tough 2 to all of your characters without even playing an Upgrade. That, and if you're playing Balanced or Aggro in terms of pips, you can always flip her to her Motorcycle and combine that Bold 1 with Prime's Bold 1 and give all of your characters a cumulative Bold 2.
With Flamewar as a partner, Prime has 14 HP, 3 defense and an innate Tough 2 -- but that's without playing Upgrades. If you play an Ion Blaster of Optimus Prime on him, you can give him 4 defense and an innate Tough 2 with potentially even more defense as your Armor Upgrades can give him more Tough and even more defensive power. You're looking at potentially massive tanking potential with just Flamewar and that's not even counting other potential partners to fill up your other slots.
Frankly, that's amazing, and it leaves a solid 9 Stars for you to play with in terms of smaller characters. For one, you can play Detour for 4 Stars and Skydive for 5 Stars -- I mean, who wouldn't want Tough 4 innately, right? Or, you could play a 9 Star character to centralize the list and try to give yourself more survivability in your raw stats. Whatever you choose, you can rest assured that Optimus is going to be able to spread that love as much as he can.
His robot mode is less useful, sadly. Having Focus 1 in robot mode is fine, but he lacks he power of many of his previous iterations. Sure, he has Bold 1 and Tough 1 in his robot form as well, but if that was a major selling point we wouldn't have left his alternate mode. In fact, his defense goes down in robot mode as well, despite his Tough and Focus. His attack is really the big reason you'd be transforming him, but it also exposes your team to potentially more damage than you would otherwise given that his vehicle mode effect goes away when you transform him.
So, is it worth it to transform him? Probably not in many cases, as the safety of your team -- and yourself -- is worth more than doing slightly more damage to your opponent. After all, if you're playing him defensively you're likely to be giving him a number of Pierce as well. So, at that point, what does that slightly more damage matter?
My guess? Not a lot. General Prime's defensive capabilities are frankly astonishing, and I cannot wait to see where he'll go.
"Who'd want to ignite things one at a time?" ~ Chandra Nalaar
In the Transformers Trading Card Game, there are a lot of "burn" cards. Now, just in case you don't know what that means, in Magic there are cards that deal damage to your opponent's cards and/or the player themselves. These cards are usually red in color and usually involve fire, and the color of red is represented by fire, which is probably why those cards are called "burn cards".
Transformers has plenty of burn cards, but sadly the characters never really wanted to cooperate with that playstyle. Either their stats were too low to give you enough time to burn through your opponent's HP with cards like Armed Hovercraft, Plasma Burst and other similar cards. That's where General Megatron comes in.
This beefy Megatron has the unique damaging abilities to consistently put out damage that affects not just one of your opponent's characters, but all of them as well. You see, if you upgrade him with three separate upgrades (which includes cards like Attack Drones), he has the impressive effect to slowly chip down your opponent's HP at every start of your turn. And, when your opponent's characters eventually fall to just close enough to being KO'd, Megatron can flip to his alternate mode and deal damage to it equal to the amount of weapons you have on the battlefield, including cards like Attack Drones.
Megatron may seem like he takes a lot to set up, but with cards like Swindled, Callous Leadership, New Designs, Attack Drones, Full Loadout along with a few Specialist cards like Multi-Tool, your "arms race" gets a lot easier. To make things even easier to get everyone upgraded, General Megatron has monstrous stats, like his high defense and HP, he can combine with Flamewar to be as defensive as possible. Plus, since he's a Tank, he can use cards like Hunker Down to attach free Armor to make it even easier to get him fully upgraded as well as hit those magic damage numbers with his flip ability.
As it happens, Megatron's biggest weakness -- despite his impressive stats -- is that he'll be quite alone in many respects. His 13 stars make his options for partners... A bit limited, shall we say. With Micromasters, this becomes slightly easier; however, with Full Loadout being so powerful in the list, I wonder if playing three of those would be necessary even though it would cost you another three stars. Perhaps, then, one could play Detour and Breakdown alongside three Full Loadout to make the full 25 stars?
Just a few ideas. But, keep in mind that you're going to be filling your deck with burn cards alongside your weapons. It's a weird balance between the two lists, but I think that General Megatron might have a lot of potential, especially in the low HP-dominated meta we are currently in.
Up for a game of darts?
Blowpipe is not a great, but niche, card.
First off, let's take a look at his practically vanilla robot mode. His stats are not that great, and neither is the Focus 1 -- but it at least makes him a little better at dealing damage, and in a list where you're no doubt playing all the colors of the rainbow, there's a lot of need for Focus with a character whose attack is that small, same with his defense. Focus as a whole isn't the best, but it certainly is way, way better than nothing.
The weapon mode -- the real reason one would play a Battle Master to be frank -- is also a bit lackluster. Dealing +1 for every kind of color you flip, Blowpipe is a fan of as many colors as possible -- a total of five at the moment between blue, orange, green, white and black -- to give a possible total of 5 damage if you flip all five colors not counting any orange pip damage. Whereas that sounds great on paper, it requires a high amount of Bold to work out. Remember, you have to flip all of those cards if you want to get their damage effects. Sure, there are combo cards like Scrounge, Smoke Cloak and Fuel Cache to name a few, but there are only a handful of cards that can take advantage of that.
Such as?
Well, Grapple for one can definitely make a lot of use out of Blowpipe especially given that his lists want to play literally every color in existence, and in many cases, the same could be said about Slipstream. Even Megatron: Living Weapon can take advantage of him simply because he's a cheap, Decepticon Battle Master. That being said, his usefulness only goes so far as your list is built to support him, and to be frank, I'm not convinced that he's someone you should build a list around. I could be wrong, of course, but I'm just too skeptical of him to think otherwise.
"Bring the rain."
First Acid Storm, and now the second Rainmaker is here! No, Sunstorm doesn't count (it's actually Nova Storm that's the final Rainmaker, commonly misinterpreted as Sunstorm). Which means, we could very possibly be getting a Nova Storm either in this set or the next. With that being said, let's get to the matter at hand: This scrub.
There are a few things to talk about with this guy. First off, Ramjet can eat his heart out. Sure, Ion Storm is somewhat more expensive than him, Ion Storm has a startlingly high HP, defense and attack in his alternate mode. Sadly, he's vanilla -- but hey, this is actually a lot of value if you're a fan of Ramjet. He's far less punishable than Ramjet, and even though he's more expensive, he also has far more value in his robot mode in Ramjet could ever dream of.
With his seven attack and still moderate defense, Ion Storm has pretty much the same value in his robot mode than he has in his alternate mode, but with a twist. Ion Storm bounces an Upgrade to your opponent's hand, and when you consider playing him with Debilitating Crystal, you can bounce two Upgrades at once. When you consider that your opponent could be playing Battle Masters, his effectiveness against them goes up, too. Since he can bounce multiple upgrades with a Debilitating Crystal, he can bounce both the Battle Master as well as the upgraded character's Armor.
Now, this is not to say that I think that Ion Storm will be a sudden mainstay in the meta or something like that. He's very expensive, and whereas he certainly has carry potential, I can't help but to think that he'd just fall apart against more aggressive decks. To stave this, you can play him with Acid Storm as well. You can play the Bold reduction to keep Ion Storm alive, while still devoting your pips and cards to offense. Remember, you don't need to worry about your opponent's defense -- not really -- because you can keep their armor off them effectively forever. In fact, it makes me wonder if Blue/Black Rainmakers might be the better way to play them.
Who knows? Maybe Nova Storm will be the final piece of the puzzle.
BATTLE CARDS
"Ah, Laserbeak! Unlike my other soldiers, you never fail me."
YES. YES. YES. YES. *Breath in* YES.
I can barely contain my excitement. When Secret Actions were revealed, I had a gut feeling that they were eventually going to print a Counterspell or a Power Spray. Although, I think I might be getting a little ahead of myself, here. What do I mean by this card being a "Counterspell", anyway?
Okay, to explain that, let's take a look at what the card actually does. So, when you use a Secret Action, you place it face-down in front of you. Your opponent takes their turn, and unless they do something that triggers it to flip face-up, the card is discarded at the end of your opponent's turn. In the case of Infiltrate, if your opponent plays an orange Action card. This means that your opponent, when they play their orange Action card, that it is negated and discarded instead of activating.
Infiltrate is so incredibly powerful. Remember Supercharge? Reckless Charge? Treasure Hunt? Roll Out? Scrounge? All of those cards will be negated if you play an Infiltrate. But perhaps the biggest card that will be negated out of all of these, creating a massive amount of counterplay to Infinite, is Peace Through Tyranny. Peace Through Tyranny -- if you didn't know -- is the engine that makes the infinite combo possible. When Infiltrate is played, Peace Through Tyranny is negated. That means that your opponent won't be able to begin their infinite combo (that turn, at least). Remember, Multi-Mission Gear, Brainstorm and other, similar effects still count as "playing" an Action -- Infiltrate will still flip and negate it regardless of where it came from.
Something else that I'd like to mention is, if you read last article, I stated that Sergeant Skywarp would be incredibly powerful with a negate card. Now that we have one, Skywarp is going to be an absurdly powerful character with it. When you play a Secret Action with him, you get to draw a card. Better yet, you get to return two different Secret Actions from your Scrap to your hand! It's an extremely powerful effect, and Skywarp will definitely have a fascinating playstyle with it.
Regardless, I can't wait for Infiltrate to come into the game. I have no doubts that it will slow down the game to make more defensive decks more viable. When you turn off your opponent's aggressive cards between Infiltrate and Dampening Field, your opponent won't be able to make too much headway in terms of damage. With Peace Through Tyranny decks being as they are as well, you can imagine how powerful Infiltrate will be.
Is this the part where they pick up a truck for no reason only to get shot?
Simply put, Take Cover is a bad card. There is not usually enough direct damage that deals a meaningful amount of damage to someone in order to warrant playing Take Cover. However, with that being said, the format might shift in favor of General Megatron and the direct damage ability in his alternate mode is frankly nutty -- but, is he alone enough to warrant you putting in a card that is going to be useless against most matchups?
No. The answer is no.
Shockwave always was good at RTS games.
Battlefield Scan murders Micromasters, but that isn't as simple as saying so. So basically, consider for a moment, the Micromaster. Micromasters have Stealth in their vehicle modes when they are untapped -- when they are tapped, they no longer have Stealth. This is just to confirm at least one turn of their use, and it's a great mechanic.
However, in the case of Red Heat, entire decks can be based around that single Micromaster. When doing so, you leave yourself open to potential punishment by cards like Tackle or Skrapnel. This isn't the only time that Stealth comes up, however; in the mid-game, your opponent's characters and yours are both entirely untapped, meaning you have your pick amongst your opponent's characters. With Battlefield Scan, you have the opportunity to ignore their Stealth and take out their Micromasters before they have a chance to use them.
Of course, you can also combo this with cards like Razorclaw or Bumblebee: Legendary Warrior, who both can attack untapped characters. This way, you can attack important Micromasters like Red Heat, Detour, Flak or other, similar characters. This card isn't for everyone, but it certainly has potential in decks that can attack untapped characters like Cars or Predacons.
"Oh, don't worry! You won't bleed out! The fire cauterizes the wound. You'll die of internal bleeding, not external bleeding."
The Firecons just got better.
So, remember Matrix of Leadership? How would you like that, but for Bold and for all of your Firecons? Sound good? That's because it is. Remember, Flamefeather adds Bold 1 to each of your Firecons when you flip him -- and when you combine that with Firecon Flame, it begins to add up quite a bit. Remember, it stacks amongst itself, too -- for each Firecon Flame you have in play, you're adding another layer of Bold 1 to each of your Firecons. With all three in play and Flamefeather, you'll have Bold 4 on each of you characters and you haven't even played an Action yet!
Now, again, you're only likely to ever have one or two in play at any given point in time, but the power of Firecon Flame should not be understated. You get a lot of value out of a single Upgrade attachment, and I think it pretty well confirms the usage of Firecons in a competitive sense. I really can't wait to see how they evolve over time, and I can't wait to see how they pair up against characters like the Dinobots and Insecticons.
"Well, this backpack isn't sentient, it's not purple and it doesn't speak Spanish, but it'll do."
Backup Bag is a weird, weird card. As far as I know, Salvage For Parts and Device Virus are the only cards that you discard an Upgrade on your own field with. Unless Grenade Launcher, Power Punch, Evasive Actions or similar card effects work on it (which I'd doubt), Backup Bag is quite possibly the most niche card I have ever seen in this game.
I'm actually quite confused. I mean, sure, Device Virus is a great card and it'll see play, but I really don't think Backup Bag is worth the spot just for Device Virus, y'know?
CLOSING
In short, these new reveals are some of the most exciting reveals I have seen out of this set. From Infiltrate paired with Skywarp to both Generals and their strategies, I can't wait to see where they're going. I've already playtested with a few next format decks, and it's been a really interesting experience. Red Heat is as good as people fear him to be, and Ultra Magnus is like a baby Metroplex.
Will these cards make them better or worse? Well, I would probably say that Infiltrate makes just about everything aggro slightly worse when you consider how easy it is to punish your opponent's overextension. Plus, if you consider what would happen if they printed an anti-upgrade Secret Action, Aggro would certainly start to fall out favor in the meta in favor of a more blue/black or orange/black centered deck.
What about you guys? Ever pick up a proxy or two and try out a deck before release? Are you as exited as I am about Infiltrate? Are you on going to play a General Megatron or General Optimus deck? You looking forward to Ion Storm? Let me know in the comments below, and I'll see you next time!
Below you will find the details for this weekend's Planet Terror event. We also have a new laoding screen to share with you, sent to us by Space Ape.
Here are the event details:
Bah-weep-graaaaagnah wheep nini bong!
New Bots: Blades & Dirge are joining the force! And two long-awaited characters Trypticon and Metroplex are coming soon... Planet Terror
Gather your Alliance members for a chance to win:
- Up to 3,000,000 Energon
- Up to 3,000,000 Alloy
- Up to 30,000 Spark
- Up to 60 Frequency Crystals with a chance to win a 4, 3 or 2-Star Blades or Dirge and lots of Crystal Shards! Event type: Alliance Totaliser Start Date: 24/05/19 10:00 UTC End Date: 27/05/19 10:00 UTC Prestige Allowed: 60 Bonus Experience: Triple XP How to Participate?
Reach HQ Level 4 and Join an Alliance!!
Tap the Event button!
Select an Event Battle Zone to fight in!
Win your battle and gather Battle Points!
Collect prizes!
Event Battle Zones Totaliser Prizes
*Each Frequency Crystal contains one of the following rewards: New Bots: Blades & Dirge
Two Aerial bots are joining the Earth Wars this weekend!
Despite his aerial proficiency and high-altitude targeting dexterity, Blades is a 'street-level' kind of 'bot, preferring to look his foe in the optic and get down and dirty like the streetfighter he is. He considers long-range attacks unsporting and cowardly, and would rather detach his rotor blades and slash through the enemy ground forces. But most times Blades concedes he was built for the skies, and his twin rocket launchers and dazzling photon bursts make him a highly effective aerial asset. Something his fellow Protectobots deeply appreciate.
Safe Zone: Drop a hack bomb dealing damage in an area. Confuse the targets for seconds (reducing their attack speed to 40% and making them attack your foes).
It's fair to say Dirge is a tank half-empty kind of 'con. His mournful, silent manner unnerves even his fellow Decepticons, and the sound of Dirge's engines has an uncanny effect on friend and foe alike. The chilling overture is merely the prelude to the petrifying fear they induce in whoever's in audio range, the unique combination of frequencies inducing acute, paralyzing fear and disorientation. However, if Dirge's concentration slips, he can fall prey to his own engine noise. But then he always has his air-to-air missile launchers and machine gun ports to fall back on.
Fear Inducing Signal: Drop a hack bomb dealing damage in an area. Confuse the targets for seconds (reducing their attack speed to 40% and making them attack your foes).
Check out Dirge in battlefields in Skywarp Greer's latest video!
DIRGE : First Look. New Bot: Transformers Earth Wars Dawn Of TITANS
The Prime Core struggle has woken from their slumber the towering behemoths Metroplex and Trypticon. It will take the combined might of a whole Alliance to take them down before they ravage through Cybertron.
You can soon fight the Titans Metroplex and Trypticon in Raid battles and win cool new rewards...
More powerful than even the strongest combiner, these two Titans are coming to Earth Wars to fight against you in Raids!
Stay tuned for more details. Under investigation
Here is the issue reported that we've been investigating:
Slash & Rippersnapper change targets and prioritise enemy outpost bots even though they are far away
This is just an example of the reports that we've received from you and we continue to work hard to improve your experience with the game every day.
We would like to thank you for your time and patience, and if you have any issues to report, please get in touch with us here: support@transformersearthwars.com. Alternatively, you can reach out to us in game via Menu > Community > Contact Support. Updates / Improvements
The following Updates/improvements are coming to the game soon!
Improvements in Raid Battles
You will get much more ability points and XP for each destroyed health stack in Raid Battles. This update will go live in the next version update.
Combiner Lock Camera
The camera will not be zoomed out when combiner is deployed. This change will be live in the next version update.
Bots getting stuck running on walls
There were a few issues causing this problem, a fix will be coming with the next version update.
And the following update went live last Thursday
G1 Arcee Core & G1 Skywarp Core
The retreat distance for both of these cores has been significantly reduced. The rest of the effects will remain the same.
I have a wide array of new reveals for this article! Including one revealed by some guy's YouTube channel by the name of Nanomachines... Wait, that's me! You read that right! Wizards saw fit to send me a character card to show off and dive into on my channel, with a link I'll put below if you'd like to literally hear my thoughts on it. But, until then, let's dive into the reveals!
CHARACTERS
"The name's 'Warp. Skywarp."
Sergeant Skywarp is another rare coming out of Siege 1, and he certainly has the power to back up that title. Simply put, he has a ton of synergy with Secret Actions, with both of his abilities refunding their use. Of course, the Secret Actions we've seen aren't the greatest, nor are they the most impactful, but Skywarp is just one of those cards that will forever get better in a constant climb of power so long as they keep printing Secret Actions.
Okay, so, why do I feel that way? I mean, sure, his stats aren't that great by any stretch of the imagination, and his cost isn't something that makes him entirely splashable into just any list. But, if you consider his utility abilities creating a fantastic Secret Action engine, you realize that he has fantastic potential. Now, it is currently unknown whether or not you'll be getting much use of him currently given the fact that the Secret Actions we know of are limited in use, especially with how Actions work in this card game, but I can definitely see him being a huge mainstay in certain future archetypes if the Secret Actions we get will allow.
I mean, consider: What if we got, essentially, a Counterspell or a Power Spray? A Secret Action that says, "Negate your opponent's next Action" or "Scrap the Upgrade your opponent attaches" or even "Negate the next character ability your opponent activates"? Skywarp would not only be able to refund your playing of that card, but also return them to your hand at any time. Plus, you can play him in a Tall list alongside Shockwave to extend your hand even further to play even more Secret Actions.
Now, again, this is all speculation. If you couldn't tell, I am wearing a tin-foil cap. But, it isn't too far-fetched that any of those could be printed. I'm just saying, but Skywarp might just be the engine that makes a lock deck go around.
"I'm blue / Da bo de da bo die
Da bo dee da bo die / Da bo dee da bo die"
I was about to say that Chromia is like the weird, estranged daughter of her Wave 1 iteration, but that wouldn't be entirely correct, now would it? This Chromia is entirely unique, especially with her robot mode. In fact, she's the only character who draws you cards when you are attacked so that you may use them on your next turn like a Security Console.
Of course, her stats are not the best, and she relies upon the armor that you will no doubt be playing through her vehicle mode effect, but sadly her stats are not good otherwise. In fact, a simple Bashing Shield will open her up for massive damage. This is somewhat amplified by he rather awful offensive stats, and even worse defense. Her HP is good, and she is a Specialist, but that's pretty much the end of her usefulness.
That being said, her armor ability is pretty alright, but I can't see her being played that much. Although, every ounce of me wants to build a full "fembot" team. How would I do that, you ask? Well...
That's a car? She turns into a car? Sure. We'll go with that.
There are so many things to unpack with Elita, much like my previous girlfriends.
First off, let's look at the obvious: Her stats. Her offensive stats are somewhat middling, and her defense stats are about as bad as you can get, but her HP is one of the highest in the game outside of Combiners. In fact, outside of larger characters, I believe she is tied with Magnus as having the highest HP in general. She's also a 12 Star Specialist, which means she can do Specialist things as well as use Car-based effects including Start Your Engines. But that is not her strongest suit.
Well, let's look at her vehicle mode. She has a "Sludge" effect, where you can move as much damage from one of your characters to her as you want as long as it doesn't KO her, making her a fantastic partner to smaller characters. But, even that is not her final form, her strongest ability.
What is her strongest suit, you ask?
Well, let's take a look at her robot mode for a clue. You see, her robot mode has the effect of whenever she's KO'd, you essentially activate a "free" Leap of Faith, playing the top two cards of your deck. So, if you look closely, it also turns "I STILL FUNCTION!" and Peace Through Tyranny into Leap of Faith added on to their already powerful effects. So, in a Car list based around Elita, you can use her as a sort of "sacrificial lamb" where you can let her soak up a ton of damage through her vehicle mode, and once you're done doing that, you can use her to play more cards out of your deck.
I think you can guess where I'm going with this. Elita is a Specialist Autobot who is over 6 Stars who also plays a bunch of free cards when she's KO'd. Infinite can go infinite very easily with this effect, and with the right partners, you can force your opponent to attack into her massive HP. Now, with Red Heat, infinite has a practically confirmed comeback into the metagame, albeit with quite a bit of clunk given the current partners. With Elita, there is 100% another infinite archetype with her as the centerpiece.
Now, whether or not Red Heat is nerfed by the existence of another anti-Micromaster character or upgrade remains to be seen, but regardless, Elita will definitely be a mainstay in that archetype. Regardless of that, I still think that Elita can definitely see a lot of play in a Car list that wants to build around her. Something else you can pair her with is -- unsurprisingly -- Optimus Prime: Battlefield Legend, or in a twist of fate, Megatron: Living Weapon, essentially acting as a battery to her larger friends, essentially increasing their HP to a staggering level.
There's a whole lot to love about Elita, and I don't think this is the last we've seen of her.
"RED A-LERT! WEE WOO WEE WOO WEE WOO!"
This reveal is brought to you by... Wait, it's brought to you by me!
That's right, Wizards sent me an exclusive reveal so I can show it to you on my YouTube channel! I'll drop the link below so you can hear my rather long-winded thoughts on him:
Tote the GOAT.
Tote is surprisingly interesting in decks that play a lot of cheap attackers, being a "free" untap effect for one of your other characters. I mean, sure, he's effectively useless on the stat front, but you're never going to play a Micromaster for their stats.
Now, when I say, "you'd use him in a cheap attacker list", I really mean lists that play cards like Demolishor or Ransack. A cheap, five or six star attacker who swings for way more than they should. You deal a whole lot of damage with certain characters, and you have characters like Tote as support to keep them swinging. The fact that Tote is only four stars makes this idea even better, making it possible to cram as much value in your list as possible.
Now, you do need to play black pips in order to make use of him, but there are several good black pips that I could see you playing to use for both their effects and for his, like RR Disruptor Blade or Device Virus.
The thing is, he's a one and done -- your opponent is likely to KO him or his target, and then you're left with nothing. You really need to ask yourself one question: Is he worth the point investment?
"Nani?! Kansei dorifto?!"
Detour is a very good card.
For starters, he is a four star Specialist Car, meaning that he can use all the Car cards that can untap him. This means that you can use something like Start Your Engines to transform him, untap him and reuse his tap effect next turn. Played in Cliffjumper, you can draw a card for transforming him, tap him to draw two more cards, then use a Field Communicator to potentially draw even more cards.
Speaking of Cliffjumper, you can pretty much guess that Detour is going to be targeted by your opponent for a cheap KO. Cliff especially makes playing the tiny Micromaster well worth it, that when Detour is KO'd, he can fuel Cliffjumper's offensive stats. This makes Detour one of the best car Micromasters not only for Cliffjumper lists, but also one of the best for regular Car lists. Roadhugger may still be on the top of that proverbial ladder in terms of power, but it's good to know that there's a lot of value to be found elsewhere, too.
Detour has a lot of value in a tiny package, and whereas you can at least use him as a nice point filler in other lists, Cliffjumper is the one who will find Detour the most appealing because of his point cost and Specialist nature. Detour is definitely not going to survive any damage whatsoever, but you can pretty well see the value -- like Roadhugger -- that he's going to give you until that happens.
He's pretty fire.
The...? The Firecons? Jinkies, that's a deep dig. Revealed in a recent article by Kotaku, the Firecons, i.e. Sparkstalker, Flamefeather and Cindersaur, have each been modernized by the guys over at Wizards who even got to spearhead their modern redesign! The article is an interesting tidbit into that development, and you should definitely read it if you'd like a peek behind the curtains.
But, let's go through them one by one and see what they're made of!
First off, Sparkstalker is a moderately costed character with moderate stats, but there are two fantastic things about him that make him a very interesting partner in aggressive decks. The first of these is his impressive draw effect in his robot mode, effectively refunding whatever cards you played on that turn with a Draw 2 when you flip three orange pips. Now, if you haven't played much aggro, you should know how easy it is to flip three orange pips between Bold effects, white pips and double orange pips. In fact, I'd be shocked if you didn't hit the Draw 2.
Sparkstalker's second form of value comes from his great vehicle mode transformation effect, scrapping an Armor so that his teammates can continue to pop off. He isn't the best outside of Firecons, but he's certainly playable in aggro lists that needs just a bit of draw power. Plus, his vehicle mode effect is quite a bit useful in other aggro lists that don't already play a few Bashing Shields. You can't really go too wrong with him, especially with his powerful draw. That being said, of course, the Firecons love him the most, but it's good to know that he has a home elsewhere.
You'll find that all three of them have a great alternate mode effect that fits well with the archetype, with the potential for a nutty amount of power with the playing of a Roll Out. But don't just take my word for it! Let's dive in to the next two:
Ah, I see he's a Ravenclaw.
Flamefeather is an extremely thick boy and I love him.
So, let me explain what he does real quick so there's no confusion. Basically, when defending, he turns all orange pips into blue pips to a cap of five of the converted pips. This does not include any blue pips you flip (from a Roll Out, for example), making his potential defensive capabilities astronomical. I mean, consider: You fill your deck with orange, double orange and half n' half cards, you could potentially deny a massive amount of damage through Flamefeather.
But that's not to say that he lacks offensive power. Even though he has a mediocre offensive stat, you are playing aggro, and that means that you're going to be able to do a massive amount of extra damage with your weapons and your heavy orange deck. You're not going to be doing the most damage with him, but it isn't like he's an invalid target for some of your resources. Plus, when you have Sparkstalker refunding that expenditure with his draw during the next turn, you're free to use him how you please.
And, when you're done with that, you can flip Flamefeather to his vehicle mode, using his ability to add just that much more Bold than you're already going to be adding with your Supercharge and Power Punch. Unfortunately, this bird-brain doesn't have too much potential outside of Firecons even with his damage denial effects and his Bold, something that's amplified by the stipulation in his vehicle mode that his Bold is only applied to Firecons.
To be frank, I don't think he'd be played all that much outside of Firecons anyway unless one wanted to pair him with Flamewar or something similar to that composition. Although, there is nothing stopping you from doing that, anyway, it's just that he won't be as effective as he could be in a pure Firecon list.
"Oh, no, they say he's got to go / Go, go, Godzilla!
Oh, no, there goes Tokyo / Go, go, Godzilla!"
Cindersaur gives you free damage and Actions and I literally can't think of many things better than that.
So, if you couldn't tell, Cindersaur really likes orange pips and high Bold. When you attack with him with a Bold card having been played, you have a chance to deal a massive amount of damage between the flood of orange pips you'll be flipping and the free damage you'll be getting when you do. In fact, if you only flip the base four orange needed to activate his ability, you'll be dealing a total of nine damage when you count the two direct damage you'll be dealing. Since you can flip that without a weapon through a lucky white pip, you can imagine what kind of damage you'll be dealing when combined with a weapon or an Action.
Cindersaur's value doesn't end there, however -- in fact, his best value comes from his vehicle mode! Playing a free orange-pipped Action is impressively powerful given that cards like Supercharge or Reckless Charge both have their respective pips. But, I'd like to point something out: When you flip to Cindersaur's alternate mode through the use of Roll Out, it effectively refunds your Action for the turn with the ability to use a damage-boosting Action to boost your damage more than Flamefeather already will be boosting you.
With all of this in mind, Cindersaur is a lot of value for the Firecons in one package. In fact, you might even play him in other aggressive lists to make use of that free Action that he provides in the late game and the offensive power when properly equipped. But that being said, wouldn't you rather just play the whole of the Firecons to work with their synergy? I mean, just consider: Flamefeather is very good for Firecons, and you may as well take him along because you're playing one already. After that, you could always play two smaller characters to take up Sparkstalker's slot, but why? Wouldn't you rather keep that draw power and Armor-scrapping in your aggressive deck?
I think we might be seeing the rise of a standard-sized Insecticons in the Firecon strategy. They're thick enough to take a hit or two in order to take them down (especially in the case of Flamefeather), and they're powerful enough offensively to make their opponents... Ah, feel the burn if you will. Now, their stats across the board could be just a little higher to make me comfortable saying that they'll be a meta mainstay, but that being said, they are a full team of themed characters with interesting and potentially powerful abilities; I'd be surprised if we didn't see them at a tournament or two!
BATTLE CARDS
Another day, another time I wished we had more Flamewar figures...
Remember when I said that playing all Motorcycles had no real point to it? I've never been more glad to be wrong.
So, in case you needed an explanation on what Pop A Wheelie really does, basically think of it like a baby All Out Attack. You can attack twice that turn, but only if the extra one was a Motorcycle, put simply, in their vehicle mode. This is both very good and very mediocre, and I'll tell you why.
First off, it's fantastic because there are going to be many points where you have to attack twice in order to get a KO on a very important character, or on a character that has a Force Field or a similar effect. Further, in matchups like Insecticons or Combiners where the characters are notoriously fragile, you can potentially score two KOs in one turn, sometimes being able to KO an untapped character after KOing the only tapped character. To make things even better, you can play a Bravery and attack with that character to potentially save a damaged teammate, forcing your opponent to attack the newly tapped character. Furthermore, in the Motorcycle list, W1 Flamewar has the ability to give all of your characters Bold 1 until end of turn, and when you get to attack multiple times in a turn, you're going to start seeing that effect pile up.
Now to the down side. Remember how you have to be in your Motorcycle mode to get that spare attack? Well, if you remember, many vehicle modes have a middling to mediocre attack stat with few exceptions. Meaning, the attack you're going to get is not likely to do much without weapons and high orange counts in your deck. This is not to say that playing an all orange is a necessarily bad thing, it's just that it limits your options. Plus, Pop A Wheelie somewhat necessitates the extra character to be upgraded, and that can be a difficult balance to strike.
But that being said, I think it should go without saying that getting another attack during your turn is a very good thing that can swing entire games. Even more than that, imagine when all characters are untapped and you're able to KO one of your opponent's fresh characters out of nowhere before they can use it to attack you. Or perhaps just eke by a KO on a character that will certainly demolish whomever they're about to attack, like a Cosmos or a Nemesis at the end of their deck.
All in all, I love Pop A Wheelie. It's a great boost of power to the Motorcycle archetype and it adds a nice layer of synergy between the 'cycles. Even Chromia can get in on the action by returning Pop A Wheelie from your Scrap to your hand to be used on that turn or the next. Whether or not Motorcycles will be next in line to try and dethrone Insecticons as the premiere aggro deck remains to be seen, if aggro is even the best way to play Motorcycles (though if I recall correctly it was mentioned offhandedly by the developers that it is), but I know one thing: More attacks = More damage, and that's always a good thing in my book.
"For the last time, Arcee, use the seats! I said, 'USE THE SEATS'!!"
Heroic Team-Up is the best Autobot Action. There; I said it.
It may be a Star Card, and that innately limits how many decks you can play it in, but its effects are so good that it makes me want to play it in almost every deck. First off, half-n-half pips are always welcome no matter what, and it being an Action in an Autobot list makes it easy enough to pull off in a turn through Confidence and other Autobot Action love. There are plenty of decks that love the extra damage that Heroic Team-Up can give them, but I think the one that can make the most of it is Cars.
For your consideration, Cars. You have access to high draw, meaning you'll be able to draw into your Heroic Team-Up, and the Car character pool is deep enough for you to shave off enough points to play a good portion of them. But perhaps the greatest reason of them all is that you have access to Turbo Boosters, an untapping effect in an Upgrade instead of the normally Action-based untapping effects. This allows you to use a Heroic Team-Up to tap a character, then Turbo Booster them to untap them, then use an extra Action effect like Mirage's alternate mode ability to use a second one and tap that same character a second time, adding even more damage to one of your characters.
Now, this is not going to happen all the time, of course. But it is nice knowing that a crazy combo like that can happen, and the mere presence of Turbo Boosters will save you a lot of heartache by refunding the tap effect and preventing your opponent from punishing your overextension.
Cars, of course, is just one of several different archetypes that would love to have Heroic Team-Up, including decks that play Battlefield Legend, Alpha Trion or other characters that would like an extra boost in damage. To be perfectly frank, the only bad thing I have to say about Heroic Team-Up is that you can't play it in everything. Will it trump Leap of Faith as the best Star Card? Not likely, but that's like asking "Will any movie series ever come close to the success that Marvel has?" -- some hurdles are just too high to leap.
Be that as it may, Heroic Team-Up might just give Leap of Faith a run for its money in Autobot lists, especially with ones with fewer stars to spare. You can't beat half-n'-half pips and their value, after all.
"Power flows to those who know how to use it. Desire alone is not enough."
Finally, Decepticon Leaders get their day!
Callous Leadership is a shockingly powerful "healing" card that can be used to help your larger, more important characters online. For instance, Shockwave, Soundwave or Megatron -- Living Weapon; all necessitate a list being built around them, and all would very much like to stay alive. Living Weapon takes up a lot of investment to swing with effectively, and Soundwave kinda makes the entire Cassette archetype go around. Using Callous Leadership, you can move that damage to a squishier character to make the damage meaningless or to transfer it to a character that you managed to I STILL FUNCTION! to wipe away the damage entirely.
This massive amount of healing can be compounded with cards like Cooling Vents that heal one when you attach them or characters like Red Alert or Arcee who heal your characters when you Transform them. As I spoke about in my Red Alert video, healing can stack in the same way that damage can. It's usually not as powerful as simply damaging your opponent because there is so much burst damage in the metagame that it becomes a bit irrelevant to heal anything.
But, Callous Leadership allows you to heal off your more important characters with a huge burst of healing, much better than the healing over time effects that we've been accustomed to. I realize that it's technically not healing per se, but when you move damage from an important character to an unimportant one, you can effectively call it "healing" from there. I can't wait to find out how much this will be played, especially when you consider the power that large Decepticon Leaders like Starscream or Megatron hold -- and how frustratingly unkillable they're going to feel when you heal off over half the damage that your opponent dealt to them.
"This is Major Tom to Ground Control / I'm stepping through the door
And I'm floating in the most peculiar way / And the stars look very different today"
Unconventional Flying Object -- UFO for short -- has probably the most hilarious artwork of anything in the game. Just the mental image of Alpha Trion just supermanning it through the atmosphere gives me a good chuckle.
But, anyway, UFO itself is a pretty neat little Action that literally every Spaceship will love to see. Whereas Rapid Conversion was a good little card that most Spaceship lists like Cosmos played, it always felt lacking because you still needed more Transformations in a turn than you were given. Further, you can use UFO in Cosmos to burn through your deck even faster, then to use his robot mode's ability in the same turn. With Alpha Trion, you can use it as a sort of "junk hunt" effect where you can simply replace it with a card from your Scrap Pile. With Shockwave -- Cybertron Commander? You can essentially use it as a Testify, then still having the transformation to flip him to robot mode in order to punish your opponent's large hand.
Now, does this make Cosmos or Shockwave suddenly good? No, I don't think so. But, does it make them better now that you can use their flip effects more effectively? Oh, absolutely. I think Cosmos in particular has to get a second look after Siege comes out -- his value it simply too high to ignore, and I think UFO will make that obvious for all to see.
"You did it, Scoob! You caught those spooks!"
And just like that, the Firecons were captured and hauled away. No one saw them again!
Anyway, just in case you wanted another card other than Acid Storm to utterly demolish Dinobots or Firecons, look no further than Dampening Field. Dampening field, Secret Action 2 of apparently 8, is a doozy for Bold decks or other aggressive archetypes because it effectively turns off their Bold or other flipping effects like Kickback or Demolishor.
Even better, it's a white pip -- meaning, you don't need to force yourself to play blue pips in an orange deck or orange pips in a blue deck to tech in Dampening Field. In fact, I can see playing this in Insecticons for the mirror matchup just to effectively confirm one of my character's survival without taking up an Upgrade attachment for the turn in Force Field, their Bold notwithstanding. Of course, Grenade Launcher and Reckless Charge can both be used regardless of Dampening Field, but it's an interesting thought regardless.
I can see a lot of decks playing Dampening Field to slow down the meta, forcing their opponents into moments of weakness, potentially forcing them to whiff KOs that they normally would have been confirmed. I am extremely excited for it, in fact, and even moreso when you consider all of the Secret Action support we have in this set in Laserbeak, Shockwave and Skywarp to name a few.
Could Dampening Field slow down the meta through its presence alone? Maybe, maybe not. I think aggro decks are still going to be the best kind of deck out there at the moment, purely because they chase the win condition the fastest. Plus, it's always fun to flip half of your deck and look at all the pretty colors as you blatantly murder your opponent's characters. However, I have a feeling that Dampening Field might just have something to say about that.
The three most important words in the Cybertronian dictionary: Wheeljack, Wheeljack and Wheeljack.
Ever get one of your Battle Masters scrapped by some scrub and their Enforcement Batons? Ever sit down and wonder, just why was your opponent playing Scrapper Gauntlets of all things to scrap your hard-earned Battle Master? Have you ever been attacked by an Air Raid, like, at all? Then Quartermaster is for you!
Quartermaster allows you to reuse Battle Masters from the grave, drastically improving their overall viability and usefulness, but also allows you to move upgrades, reactivating Put effects and allowing you to move a Battle Master from one location to another. If you're like me and you're constantly on the lookout for things that can be broken, you're getting some alarms right about now.
If you remember Swap Parts and how oppressive that card was in the infinite combo deck, you see the words "move an upgrade" and you start to sweat. No worries here, though -- it's only one Upgrade, and unless the upgrade is the most broken upgrade on the planet (Hello, Cog) you won't be winning any games off the back of this card in that way at least.
That being said, cards like Lionizer or Aimless will get much better now that they have the power to come back from the scrap heap and reequip themselves. Now, every one of your characters have the potential to use Lionizer multiple times, and with his effects of Bold 4 and Plan 1 being as they are, I can't wait to find out how much he'll be played. Aimless, too.
Battle Masters in general were a bit inconsistent in the amount of value they give, but now? Now there's room for their power to spread to other characters, and that's about as good as you can imagine it to be and I, for one, am extremely excited about it. Plus, if your area is flooded with them, you can even tech in anti-weapon cards to potentially make your opponent whiff attacks with their Battle Master. You never know!
Not Leap Into Battle, rather, a light saunter.
For blue/black, Steady Aim could not be better. Trading out one of the extra damage for a black pip, Steady Aim has nearly all the power of Leap Into Battle and maybe even a bit more power given the Pierce. Blue decks usually need Pierce in order to do much damage unless they have a high base attack like Optimus Prime -- Battlefield Legend or Nemesis Prime, making the Pierce that one would get from playing blue/black extremely effective at keeping damage from falling too low.
The damage boost isn't going to be as high as Leap Into Battle, but it's definitely going to be just as useful. Put simply, there's really no reason not to play Steady Aim in a blue deck -- it's just one of those cards that will nearly always be good.
"If you are looking for the weak spot, just aim for the glowy bits and you can't be far from wrong."
This is just Steady Aim but with more words and less colors. I think, between the two, Steady Aim is slightly better because of the blue pip. You're far more likely to flip a card than draw it, and for that reason you're going to want the pips instead of the slightly more Pierce.
There's really not much else to say since the two cards are so similar. However, if you have room for both, I don't see why you wouldn't want to play both.
What a gas!
Similar to Combat Dagger, Smoke Cloak is a slightly less effective Reinforced Plating with a black pip. There really isn't too much to note on about it, other than the fact that it makes blue/black just slightly better. Pretty much, so long as there are blue and black combo cards, the better the deck archetype becomes and the more playable it will be.
I'm extremely excited at the notion of slower decks that would play cards like this because it diversifies the meta. It makes plenty of the more niche rogue decks better (especially because they aren't being one-hit every attack) and more combiners can be played. I'm ecstatic about the prospects of that notion, and thus, I am ecstatic about this card; not because of what it does per-se, but because of what it represents.
Hit or miss, I guess they never miss, huh?
Emergency Defense Field is a funky, funky card. On one hand, it's a worse Force Field. On the other, it's completely busted and makes certain archetypes way better.
Let me explain. You see, Force Field is usually better in most circumstances. The higher HP you have, the better Force Field is. If your opponent has to wade through fifty Force Fields to finally get the killing blow on your Nemesis Prime, you're probably winning that game. That being said, the lower HP you have, the better Emergency Defense Field is. For instance, you could attach it on a character that has less than 4 HP remaining to potentially defend them, or you could attach it to a character who has 8 or less HP in an attempt to force a two or more hit KO.
Now, the big problem is that EDF is not surefire. You see, if your opponent just so happens to hit an odd number at the wrong time, they totally dunk on you. You always run the risk of your opponent playing a Bashing Shield or something similar, but here, you run the risk of your opponent just attacking you through your shield just anyway.
For instance, if your opponent can easily hit 13 and up damage, and you have 12 HP characters, wouldn't you rather just attach a Force Field and avoid that high damage altogether, take your 4 and move on? Kinda thought so. I find the small damage that Force Field affords you is way better than essentially flipping a coin and seeing how well or how poorly your opponent flips cards. In fact, Force Field even has a white pip, and EDF doesn't have any pips whatsoever.
Either way, it isn't like you can't play both in lists that either really don't value their opponent's sanity or just like looking at pictures of Trailbreaker. It's a funky thing, but I'm really quite middling on Emergency Defense Field. You could probably play it in lists with small characters like Combiners (Devastator especially), but outside of that, I doubt it will be played all that much.
"Look out! She's got a sword!"
"You idiot, we all have swords!"
This card is an over(under?)glorified Fusion Cannon of Megatron for small characters. There are good things about it, of course, but I just find it hilarious that a sword has the same destructive power as Megatron's Fusion Cannon.
Anyway, as to the playability of Laser Cutlass, you may find that certain Combiners really adore this card. For example, Aerialbots deal their damage through two means: Direct Damage and Pierce. They are a very defensive list that loves their blue pips, and I can see them absolutely adoring this card.
However, we have two very interesting cards for low damage Combiner teams that were printed in Rise of the Combiners that are way more consistent than Laser Cutlass: Noble's Blaster and Scoundrel's Blaster, both of which are Blue, deal more damage and have similar levels of Pierce. Oh, and they have green pips, too.
It really depends on what you're planning on doing. Sometimes you need redundant Upgrades or Actions to make things just that much easier to draw into them, but other times they can just end up making your deck inconsistent. I would say that Laser Cutlass as a whole is in the same niche as Scoundrel's/Noble's Blaster, with the only noticeable differences being that the Cutlass can be attached to anyone, not just a specific faction, and that the Blaster has a green pip.
Which one you play really depends on the deck you're playing and what you want to do with it, but until then my money is on Scoundrel's/Noble's for their consistency alone.
"Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back."
Energy Pack is kind of nutty when you think about it in certain cases. I mean, think about it. Nemesis Prime has 16 HP; slap one of these bad boys on him, and he has a frankly disgusting 20 HP. Metroplex? Oh, he just has a tiny, teensy weensy 39 HP. Dreadwing? You can attach two of these things, giving him 32 HP in total. Jetfire can attach Energy Pack from the Scrap Pile and grow his HP whether your opponent likes it or not, and he has 15 base. Big characters get bigger, and smaller characters weep in jealousy.
I've oft thought about HP and defense as one in the same in most circumstances. If you're going to one-hit Kickback, you'll need to hit 10 damage, even though his HP is only 9. That's because his defense is only 1, and if you're going to OHKO him, you'll need to factor that number in. However, when your HP is higher -- for instance, Nemesis or Metroplex -- that defense is going to reduce a lot of damage over time because nobody is going to be able to one-hit you unless they're Predaking or Volcanicus.
So, when you add to your already titanic HP, you're also effectively adding on to your defense as well. The longer it takes your opponent to KO you, the more your defense is going to defend you. You're not going to always want it, of course; sometimes a Data Bank, a Field Communicator or something similar is going to give you more value in certain scenarios. But, that being said, you can't tell me it's ever bad to have more HP.
CLOSING
First off, sorry this article took so long to put out. It seemed like whenever I was just about done with it, more cards were revealed. I guess that's a good thing -- it helps keep me up-to-date and it keeps me honest!
As for the cards themselves, I am convinced that the Firecons are going to be a meta deck. I'm not quite sure what tier they are particularly, but I am convinced that they belong on the list. Motorcycles, too, have quite a bit of potential with Pop A Wheelie -- a "boost" they've been needing for quite some time now. I also can't wait to see where Elita goes from here; whether she's only playable in Infinite or if she's going to be a bodyguard for her partners is beyond me, but I just can't wait to see what people do with her.
Revealing a card for Wizards, as well, was definitely a highlight of my run in this community. I've been ecstatic to work with Wizards on it, and I've been super thankful that they allowed a tiny channel like mine to show off a reveal, a character reveal at that. I am constantly impressed by the transparency and openness that Wizards has been gracing the community with, and I am proud to help with that. I even got to flex on my Red Alert figures! Even the one that wasn't named Red Alert!
Of course, the grown video player shows my shoddy thumbnail work, but you can't win 'em all, right?
What about you? Are you fired up for the Firecons? Elated for Elita? Pumped up for Pop A Wheelie? Let me know in the comments below, and I'll see you next time!
'Cause I'm a cowboy / On a steel horse I ride
And I'm wanted / Dead or alive
So many reveals so little time. But before we get into them, I think we should probably address the elephant in the room -- or to be more specific, the cassette player in the room!
If you couldn't tell from the teaser up top, we're going to be getting Soundwave as well as his cassettes this wave! Now, it is currently unknown what they're going to look like given the line "drastically altered their appearance", but we can guess that they're going to look something like their Siege incarnations. We also have literally no idea how they're going to work given that the guys at Wizards have stated that they had a specific playstyle that was unlike anything we've seen before.
My mind is reeling this early in an article? Criminey Christmas! Someone, start the spoilers, quick, before I start speculating... And hey, what's with this cassette deck on the table? I thought those were out of style since... Bah. Let's get to the reveals!
CHARACTER CARDS
I, for one, look forward to the Robo-Smasher card.
Arcee is an interesting, and a surprisingly competent, character. This is the second Arcee card we've gotten, with this form being in the form of her G1 design. With her comes Focus, a new type of keyword-based ability. Let's dig into that, shall we?
Focus, when used, is a pre-attack ability similar to Plan where you look at the top card of your deck and decide whether or not to keep it. Basically, just think of Aerial Recon where you can Surveil the top card of your deck to hopefully make your next attack better. But here's the thing. I've said this time and time again, even with Recon System: Focus and other attack-based effects like it, if you really think about it, are just worse versions of Bold.
Put it this way; which of the two would you rather do?
Focus: Look at the top of your deck, decide you don't like it and scrap it. Then, you flip the next two cards, with the end result being you seeing the top three cards of your deck with the standard two flips.
Bold: Flip three cards. The top card of your deck wasn't what you wanted, but the other two were. The end result is that you see three cards off the top of your deck with Bold 1 and and the standard two flips.
If you think those things are anything other than exactly the same, then you're fascinatingly wrong.
But here's the thing: If they're the same, then what makes Focus worse? I must have been exaggerating, right? Well, let's take a look at that same scenario again but let's change the top of the deck to something we want to keep instead of something we want to scrap. Let's see what happens:
Focus: You look at the top card of your deck and you decide to keep it. This means you won't be seeing another card off the top card of your deck, and this means you're only seeing two in total and you're doing the damage that would entail.
Bold: You flip three cards, including the card you wanted to keep, dealing more damage than Focus would allow.
Empirically speaking, Focus is worse than Bold. Now, this is not to say that Focus in itself is bad per se, in fact, I'd much prefer Arcee to have Focus instead of being vanilla, but you have to understand that unless it's in extremely high numbers, Focus won't do much for you outside the first turn or two.
Now, where does that leave Arcee? Well, since we know that having Focus is better than nothing, we can safely say that her vehicle mode lands solidly in the "somewhat mediocre" slot. Hey, it's better than "bad" or "unplayable", right? I may be harsh but I'm not heartless!
But what of her robot mode? Well, my friends, that's where I'm actually slightly excited. Now, I am an excitable person, but in balanced builds Arcee might actually see value. You see, we're in an anti-Armor meta with Bashing Shield making aggro decks extremely powerful against their more defensive opponents. It's why Force Field isn't as powerful as it could be.
So, when I saw that Arcee could retain Tough with only a weapon, I was intrigued. There is no anti-Weapon cards that are played to any notable degree with the innate lack of permanence that many of the most powerful weapons have. So, you could make whatever armor you have on you far more potent, or you could play her in an all-blue list to make her mediocre defensive stats higher.
But here's another reason to be excited for Arcee in aggro lists, as well: She makes every weapon attached to her provide Bold 1. You could use a Power Punch to give her Bold 3, stacking with her innate ability to give her a thick total Bold 4. Which reminds me, if you manage to put a Superior Blaster or Lionizer's weapon mode, you can give her a monstrous Bold 5 not even counting any Actions you've played.
Of course, one could make the argument that one could just play Wave 1 Wheeljack. He has Bold 3 innately, after all. Naturally, I agree. If it's one or the other, Wheeljack is definitely the better option. However, I wonder if she won't have a claim to a spot alongside him instead of Wave 2 Prowl thanks to her Tough and higher HP adding to her survivability?
Who knows? I just write here.
All in all, she's interesting. I can definitely see her getting played in certain balanced lists for her Bold/Tough split, but I can also see a case for her use in Cars. I wouldn't count on it, of course, but she certainly has potential.
Can we please get more Flamewar toys? Other than BotCon exclusives, that is.
Flamewar has as many cards as her toys. I really don't have that much to follow that up with, but I just thought it was an interesting point at how we have a hilarious lack of Flamewar representation in the toyline. But, is her card just as dismal as her representation?
Well, not really. Somewhat. Kinda. That'll take some explaining.
Firstly, I've spoken at length about low numbers of Focus and how it's basically just Bold but with more steps and less payoff. Now, with Flamewar's Focus 2, you can still look at the top of your deck to arrange them however you want or scrap them. Something about Focus that I didn't exactly touch on is that the high number of Focus (say, for instance an Upgrade gives you Focus 3 plus the innate Focus 2) you can potentially arrange not just the next attack but potentially the defense afterward. I'm not saying that this is confirmed to happen, but it would be fascinating if it did.
I mean, you could pair it with Plan 2 to put two cards for Flamewar's attack on the top of your deck after arranging the next two cards for defensive purposes. I don't know if that's viable given Flamewar's... Rather dismal defense to say the least. Arcee could get away with it with her Tough 1, but Flamewar isn't so lucky. Of course, you could always try out the Plan combo I was talking about to hopefully rig the topdeck to your defensive purposes, but that only goes so far.
But enough about Focus! Let's talk about the stats of everyone's Decepticon waifu: Flamewar! If you couldn't tell, Flamewar is a cheap-ish Motorcycle, which means she can finish out a full team of Motorcycles worth 25 Points with Chromia at 8, Wave 1 Arcee at 5, Wave 1 Flamewar at 5 and using those 7 points, Specialist Flamewar to round out the whole list.
Now, is there any point to a full Motorcycle list other than the novelty of saying that you, in fact, have four Motorcyles on the field?
Not anymore. You remember Swap Parts, right? The banned card? Yeah, that card was kind of important for the Motorcycle's explosive playstyle given the Specialist support that the archetype relied upon. It kinda stinks because Motorcycles were seemingly about to get their hayday with a fourth Motorcycle Specialist to join their ranks and more cards to use in their combo. Now that Swap Parts is banned, who knows if they have the power to be viable anymore?
Who knows? Either way, I just know that Specialist Flamewar will be played in the list. Will she be played anywhere else? Probably not. She doesn't have the amount of power that other seven starred characters have, and despite her Stealth in vehicle mode, not that much bulk to back up the opposite end of the spectrum.
Let's just agree that Ironhide is basically the Doomslayer but with a Southern accent.
Something about Infinite Combo being uncounterable?
Let's be honest, here, this is the epitome of a hard counter to the Infinite Combo. Ironhide can't take non-attack damage, which is kinda the entire win condition of the Combo deck, and his stats are high enough that we can pretty well say that Combo can't pull off the KO on him pretty much no matter what. Remember, Combo is not dead -- it's just more complicated. Red Heat makes it a competent composition, albeit a more counterable one.
But Ironhide? Ironhide counters it in the same vein that Acid Storm counters Dinobots. His very existence means that, in all likelihood, you will be able to punish their flimsy composition. This is not to say that it's an autowin, but you're guaranteed to at least have Ironhide alive and likely at nigh full HP when their combo inevitably ends. When it does, Red Heat is going to be tapped, and as such, you can more or less annihilate him and his flimsy stats, likely ending the combo for good.
Ironhide can also do a good bit of work against Aerialbots and similarly geared direct damage decks. These aren't played as much as other decks, but it's nice to know that Ironhide is roughly impervious to their entire deck in the same vein that Motormaster makes the rest of his team effectively invincible to direct damage.
Of course, there is more to Ironhide than his vehicle mode. His robot mode is something of an interesting novelty. With the weapon trading effect, you can retrigger weapon effects like Armed Hovercraft, or swap an Armed Hovercraft for a more potent weapon like Energon Axe. Sadly, this happens before flips, meaning you can't swap a Bold weapon with a damaging weapon after the Bold triggers.
Regardless, the Armed Hovercraft combo is something that I'm fascinated by. I've always loved Armed Hovercraft and cards like it such as Photon Bomb, and his synergy with them is titillating. I just wish that it could be with any weapon, not just blue weapons. That way you could put a Superior Blaster on him, bypassing the Tech Research stipulation.
Either way, Ironhide is an interesting little Rare card. I'm not quite sure if we'll see him out in the field thanks to his middling stats and above average cost, but in his own deck or maybe partnered with Ultra Magnus? Now you're cookin' with gas.
Contrary to popular belief, he's not much of a hugger.
Roadhugger is basically baby Thrust and I love him.
I know, I know, I said the same thing about Storm Cloud, but let's be fair here. What you lose in a single point for playing Roadhugger, you could say that you're gaining consistency. Instead of requiring you to discard three green pips (in some cases three of the same green pip), you need only to discard a single blue pip to get roughly the same value. If you consider that most of the time Bold is just +1 damage (not counting extra white pips, blanks or double orange cards), you're effectively getting the same value for a much more manageable cost.
Roadhugger, however, does require you to play blue cards in an orange deck and I am not super in love with that. However, there is a silver lining. There are cards like Matrix of Leadership or Roll Out which have one of each, as well as playing Backup Beam or Scoundrel's Blaster to have a green pipped green that doesn't really make you lose out on damage with their being weapons.
Plus, he's a Car, which means that you can untap him in a car deck rather easily to be used again (if he survives)! All in all, I think Roadhugger might replace Storm Cloud in most lists that don't care about alternate modes. In decks that want to field a lot of planes, Storm Cloud's your guy, but if you don't care about that single point and you don't mind having a car... Well, look no further.
Can we all just agree that Laserbeak was the main antagonist of DOTM?
Hey, wait a minute! Laserbeak? Where's your...? Ah, nevermind.
Laserbeak is both amazingly good and amazingly worrying at the same time. On one hand, you have Laserbeak's horrible stats in both modes. On the other, however, you get to play a "free" Secret Action during your turn as well as a little extra draw support with his neat little draw ability in alternate mode. Now, this would be even better if we knew what kind of things we could look forward to in terms of Secret Actions. But, as it stands, we have no idea other than a simple Draw + Plan card as to what we're going to have access to.
But, to be perfectly frank with you, Laserbeak was probably not meant to be played alone. Even though he actually could be competent in terms of his Secret Action engine, he's basically just a slightly worse Micromaster at that point. Why do I say this, you ask? Well, look closely: He's a Micromaster in all areas except the most important: Stealth.
On the first turn of the game, Laserbeak has a great many chances to get annihilated by any and every aggro deck you ever have the displeasure of facing. I gripe, of course; with proper blue support, you have just as many chances at survival, as well, but I can't help but to be worried about the little guy.
In closing, Laserbeak may be frail, but he brings unquestionable utility with his Secret Action ability. We don't know all of those Secret Actions, or any beyond the first to be exact, but playing free Actions never hurt anybody.
"Check out my mixtape, man, it's pretty catty!"
Ravage is surprisingly good, and he makes up for Laserbeak's less-than-stellar offensive power and bulk by being... Well, both of those things. In terms of five star cassettes, he's going to be able to take quite the beating in his alternate mode. But that's not all that this little bugger can do: In his robot mode, he can do a bit of chip damage here and there, and start pounding on some more dense targets.
I do realize that his chip damage makes him a bit lackluster in many (most) compositions, but do keep in mind that his chip damage actually turns out to be a bit useful in certain scenarios. For instance, he can turn Skrapnel into a 2HKO, and he can pop Six-Gun for one damage to negate the Force Field. Sometimes one damage is all you need, and whereas I still stand by Zap being one of the worst Actions in the game, I can still find justification for Ravage's abilities seeing as he's always there and not a constant threat of cluttering your hand.
Now, the down side. His stats are nothing to write home about other than his high defense in cassette mode, and his survivability in robot mode is actually markedly worse than Laserbeak's. In fact, Laserbeak is actually better at attacking than Ravage could ever hope to be with his innate Pierce 2, but with any luck Ravage won't need to be doing any head-on attack damage, anyway.
All in all, I think that Ravage will probably be passed up on in most compositions outside of cassettes. Laserbeak is just better value for his point cost, including the ability to deal two damage to a high-armored target through Pierce. Plus, there are just better Micromasters, including Roadhugger, in defensive lists for the same cost.
Okay but real talk: We can now have just an entire team of cats. Lionizer, Rampage, Razorclaw and now Ravage. There is literally no actual reason to have that team other than the fact that they are all cats, but like... You have an entire team of cats.
The big question is, does he have a good Constructicon matchup?
Soundwave? Wait... Soundwave? Hey, wait a minute... Where'd that cassette player go?
Oh. Well, my own blindness aside, let's peel apart the mystery and see just what Soundwave can really do!
Looking over his stats to start off, we see that he is 11 Stars -- not bad, but still not that great for having three five starred characters paired with him. But there's more to him than meets the eye. You see, he also has two abilities directly tied to another team keyword: "Spy Patrol". These are undoubtedly his cassettes (see below) and both of his abilities are equally as powerful.
First, I think I can safely state that giving passively +1 Defense to your cassettes is absolutely insane. Now, sure, your opponent is probably not going to use much effort in KOing them and instead focus on Soundwave given their high defense (especially Ravage), but it's a very interesting idea to transform Laserbeak to robot mode on the first turn and attack with Ravage, forcing them to attack into his monstrous defense. After all, Soundwave can use his robot mode the next turn to completely refund that entire transaction.
How? Well, when he attacks, he untaps your cassettes. Thus, after you've tried to punch your opponent with a literal cassette tape turn one, you can prevent Ravage or Laserbeak from being double targeted and reuse their tap abilities to boot. You probably don't need me to tell you this, but this effect is extremely powerful.
Something else that is worthy of note is that Soundwave doesn't have any innate effects to force you into playing orange or blue. Thus, I would probably say that the best way to play Soundwave is defensively so that Ravage or Laserbeak can survive their first hit, and Soundwave can get more value. This lower attack in the blue version is mitigated by Ravage being able to put out some surprising amounts of damage on heavily armored targets. Now, I realize that he's not going to be winning any awards or dominating any games, but adding on a little bit of damage on a turn where you can't or don't want to play a Secret Action with Laserbeak can't be understated.
But finally, something that I want to touch on slightly is this: Soundwave and his cassettes are entirely 21 stars. This means that, unless you wanted to play four Star Cards, you could play Storm Cloud or perhaps -- and no, the irony is not lost on me -- a Constructicon. Now, again, we don't have all the facts. Buzzsaw could be revealed tomorrow, Ratbat the next day, or perhaps Frenzy, Rumble or even Overkill. There are so many options to fill that fourth spot, but the big question I want to ask is... Just who could it be, and just what could they do?
I think I'll leave that question unanswered for now. But I for one welcome Soundwave. He might be janky, but you can't deny that his monstrous 15 HP and his cassettes' utility is not to be understated. I worry about his low damage output, but perhaps there could be Secret Actions to save him from that fate? Or perhaps a third cassette? Until we know, there's no way to tell. But that being said... I can't wait to see how Soundwave does in the meta. I think we're going to see a lot of him, jank or otherwise.
STARTER SET
So, I might have forgotten to show off the starter set when it came out, but I figured I might drop them here and share my opinions on them anyway just to get the news out there! Remember, you can buy the starter set in stores now, and it's a good start to teach people how to play the game!
Just as a disclaimer, my opinions below only reflect the constructed competitive mentality, not from a new player, casual mentality. The set is still a good start to get people into the game, but I fear that may be the only use for it.
_______
"Another one."
No.
Just say no.
There are just so many better options, like W2 Prowl, Hot Rod, Sunstreaker... Well, you get the picture. He might make a good proxy back, though!
"Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was: 'Oh no, not again.' "
One day we'll get a good Windblade. One day.
So, I suppose one could make the argument that she is an Autobot Plane who also happens to cost a solid 5 Stars. Now, that's actually quite something, isn't it? Of course, we could try putting her in a five-wide Autobot Plane list, essentially cutting Alpha Bravo from the Aerialbots and making a passing attempt at pulling off the fabled Photon Bomb + Bombing Run combo with five Planes in play. Of course, it's hard enough to pull that off with the Aerialbots on the regular that I daresay that it wouldn't be any easier taking out one of the Aerialbots -- a Specialist at that -- and replacing him with someone who is essentially a vanilla.
To make matters worse, Aerialbots get a lot of power out of Superion, especially on the turn of combination.
I just can't imagine her in anything else, and it sucks because I do love Windblade as a character. Hopefully, one day, she'll have her moment in the sun; but for now, it looks like she'll just have to keep having her moment in the tsun tsun.
Remind me to never make that pun ever again.
"Big things from small beginnings..."
Megatron might actually have some potential. Think about this: Demolishor has 6 points. Flak has 5. Warpath has 6. Those tanks total 17 points, and you know what that means? You can fit a fourth Tank in that list.
Now, quad tanks might be lacking in quite a bit of defensive power, but consider for a moment the idea of running offensive tanks, with Demolishor being the mainstay. You can Hunker Down your whole field with Force Field as well as Bashing Shields to make your life easier, and your spare Armor could be Scrapper Gauntlets to draw even more cards than you already will with Demolishor. You can even play a Full Loadout with your spare Star to make Demolishor hit even harder.
And, backing him up, is Megatron. Megatron can be used in tandem with Full Loadout, Attack Drones or Flak to boost his damage to similar levels that Thundercracker has. Megatron can boost his damage to startlingly high levels for his point cost when you crank out several Upgrades at once.
The Bold in his vehicle mode won't do you much good, sadly, given his measly 2 Attack. But, at least he is a tank. Demolishor couldn't be happier for it.
But, that being said, I could also see playing him alongside Megatron -- Living Weapon. You can use Living Weapon's alternate mode to boost Baby Megatron's damage, with the two Upgrades from that alone boosting his attack to a very respectable 5, not counting the weapons. Plus, you can use Flak to put a third Upgrade on him, boosting his damage to 6, still not counting the Weapons. Fully stocking him with Upgrades certainly sounds nice, though I do worry for his staying power given his mediocre stats otherwise -- I mean, it always sucks to put all of your eggs in one basket; sucks even more to do it twice. But, he might just have the power necessary to have the payoff.
In total, Megatron alone might make this set purchaseable. He can be used as a nice backup attacker, something similar to Baby Buzzwole in the Pokemon TCG in many fighting decks. Good as a one-and-done, but has diminishing returns. Whether he's in as a fourth member to a Tank list or as a backup to someone double his size, Megatron has a lot of value in a little package.
Same song, second verse.
Starscream might have potential. Stop laughing, I'm serious.
Okay, so, remember when I talked about how Megatron could fit into a quad list? Or Windblade in a five-wide? You could say the same thing about Starscream, here, except he has something extremely powerful going for him that Windblade doesn't have, and that Megatron can't take advantage of in the same way:
His name is Starscream.
So if you remember, way, way, way in the past -- around September -- you might remember a Starscream being released that had Bold 2 innately, but more importantly had a very special vehicle mode ability tied to how many Planes you had on the field. Now, back then, the Planes list was something of a misfire. Starscream loved having Planes, but he couldn't get the right planes.
Thundercracker just didn't belong in the list despite his vehicle ability, and Skywarp was... Well, W1 Skywarp was W1 Skywarp. Thus, Starscream rather fell into the wayside for other lists. I still tried to keep the dream alive with more and more variations, but all fell rather flat on their faces.
So, then, how does Baby Starscream help with that?
Well, for one, he has five stars. This means you can play Starscream -- Air Commander at 11 stars, Starscream -- Decepticon Lieutenant at 5, Storm Cloud at 4 and Fireflight at 5 to round off the list with a solid Brave effect to keep both Starscream safe. This means you have four Planes on the field, which means you can use Starscream -- Air Commander's vehicle mode effect to its fullest potential of a good three damage. I don't think you'll be progressing too hard in the direct damage route for this build, though, and that's for good reason.
Reason being, you now have two Starscream in the list. Meaning, you can make full use of Null Ray of Starscream to add a whole mess of damage to Air Commander as well as making Baby Starscream's competent four attack an astonishing 5 base with Bold 2 stacked on. Just imagine Storm Cloud getting involved in that mess with his Bold effect, too!
Now, I realize Baby Starscream is about as frail as one can be, likely being in an all orange list to make your Bold deal the most it can, and his Tough 1 can't make his 7 HP last through a soul-shattering 0 Defense. But that being said, you will likely get a lot of value out of him before he falls, potentially one-hitting many threats out there.
Don't mark this guy up to binder bait just yet. I think he might just have a bright future ahead of him.
BATTLE CARDS
Shortly thereafter, Optimus put together an " Avoiding Sexual Harassment Class", to which Wheeljack was invited.
Full Loadout is kind of nutty. Not only is it a double orange pip -- a blessing in aggro decks with one star to spare -- but it has an effect that is quite ridiculous in many decks.
So, I want you to imagine something. You're sitting there across from a Megatron -- Cybertronian Tyrant and you just went first. You think that your Battlefield Legend is safe, and you decide to swing into their Warpath with just enough to KO them. Not a bad start, and Megatron is too slow to possibly get up enough Upgrades to threaten you on the first turn of th-- Surprise! He is completely powered up with three Upgrades, boosting his damage to 6 base plus a Grenade Launcher and his level of damage and survivability go through the roof with his Force Field and Data Pad.
Battlefield Legend is nearly one-hit out of nowhere.
Now, the effects of Full Loadout are a bit amplified on my cherrypicked Baby Megatron scenario, but playing three Upgrades for essentially free should not be understated in its usefulness, especially if it's on a double orange pip. Now, again, you need to have the Weapon, Utility and Armor in your hand in order to get the full effect of its power and that means you're highly unlikely to get it off on the first turn of the game. But, later on, you can get some shocking comebacks by exploding upgrades on a character out of nowhere.
As for which is better between Mounted Missiles or Full Loadout, I think that should be fairly obvious. Mounted Missiles is neat, but they've never had that powerful burst that you really need to justify playing them on your turn. Sure, you can play it in a Utility or Armor slot, but really, wouldn't you rather just play a regular weapon? Or rather, wouldn't you rather play a Weapon, a Utility and an Armor?
Just saying.
Everyone at the ice cream eating contest was quite confident until the third bowl produced some unforeseen consequences.
This card is lying to you.
EMP Wave taps all characters, both yours and your opponents. So, what happens when all characters are tapped? Everyone untaps. This means that you are untapping all characters on the field going into your opponent's next turn, effectively giving them their choice of whomever they want to attack on their turn. You don't get to attack with one of your characters -- instead, you're forfeiting that last attack to tap everyone.
Now, there is actually merit to doing so if you happen to be behind in the character trade or the untap game. If, say, you face cars and they're -- per usual -- more or less completely untapped during the turn where you would be completely tapped out, you could potentially play an EMP Wave to negate your opponent's trademark Car Dogpile where they get to attack you with all of their characters.
But, to be perfectly frank, is that worth the star? Maybe. I don't really like Energized Field that much, especially given that it flat out begs you to play orange cards in a blue deck, and EMP Wave's limited use is probably better than Energized Field's practical disuse. Regardless, it's an interesting card. Whether or not it'll see play for its effect or just its pip still remains to be seen, but I think we'll probably see it over Energized Field regardless.
Gives a whole new meaning to getting a "Ram Truck".
Battering Ram is not the best at everything, but it does its job very, very well. Now, you might be asking, "Hey, what is that job, exactly?" and that is a good question, and I'm afraid it has a simple answer.
Combiners hate Battering Ram because they really, really like being able to combine during a game. Battering Ram not only slows Combiners down to a crawl, but in some cases outright denies combination in general. I mean, think about it. Every time you attack with your truck, you keep undoing their hard-earned flips and it stalls their combiner for another turn.
Wasting turns combining is the kiss of death for many Combiners, and I can definitely see running Battering Ram for the combiner mirror in many decks. Take Stunticons, for instance, who have two Trucks that can use Battering Ram, with Motormaster being effectively unpunishable in his robot mode. You could also say the same for a control-based Sentinel list, though that is played to a lesser degree.
Battering Ram, however, can also be something of a double-edged sword. Take, for example, Metroplex. People love giving Metroplex a seizure and flipping him multiple times in a turn. With Battering Ram, you effectively give them a free transformation into Base mode, spitting out another one of his smaller characters.
This isn't the only case, either. Like, for instance, Megatron -- Arrogant Ruler can play a free Upgrade when Battering Ram swings into him, or returning a non-pipped card from your Scrap to your hand in terms of Skywarp. A double-edged sword, it is.
But, honestly? I think Battering Ram's usefulness against Combiners more than makes up for its peculiarity against other lists to include it in any Truck-based deck. I could even see a case for it in non-traditional "Truck" decks, like Nemesis Prime. After all, slowing your opponent down is something that Nemesis will always enjoy.
"Yes. My perfect plan. The virus will be on the computer, and the only clue they'll have to the infection is the giant Decepticon logo on the background! I am a genius!"
Device Virus is coming from fellow content creator "TCG Roll Out!" on Twitter, and I have to say, Device Virus is probably the best black-pipped Action we have by a large margin. Everything else is either split colors with a black pip with a lackluster card effect when you play it, but Device Virus is different.
It's basically Super Energy Removal, something you'll remember if you played Pokemon during the fledgling years. Of course, there's a big difference between Energy and Upgrades, but it's pretty much the same effect. But, when you realize that you can combo Device Virus with other Upgrades, things start getting a little interesting.
You see, Device Virus has the potential to remove three Armor cards in one turn when used in tandem with Bashing Shield. You can play a Bashing Shield, scrap an Armor, then Device Virus the Bashing Shield to scrap two more Armor. You could say the same about Weapons with Enforcement Batons or Utilities with Crushing Size.
Of course, such an effect necessitates playing all of those things, so it really depends on what your deck looks like and what matchups you want to beat with it. But, if you're afraid of decks like Predacons which bust out the Upgrades -- usually weapons -- quickly, especially when combined, Device Virus might be for you.
At the end of the day, though, it's a black pip and we still have yet to see how good it is in a blue/black or mono black deck. But, if the black pips we have yet to see are anything like Device Virus, I think we're going to be seeing a lot more of them in lists.
"Thinking quickly, Wheeljack constructs a homemade megaphone using only some string, a squirrel and a megaphone."
Repurpose is the only black draw card we've seen thus far, and I can't mention too much about it because it's nothing too much to write home about. It's a very basic cycling card that replaces itself and one other card in your hand with the top two cards of your deck, essentially.
It's a black pipped card that also happens to draw cards. I mean, in a black deck, do you really want too much else out of it? Let's be fair here. You won't play it in any other deck that doesn't play black pips, but if you play black, then you'll be needing this.
CONCLUSION
Can I just say this?
Soundwave.
That is all.
But in all seriousness, I can't wait to see how Soundwave will be playing out in this meta. Perhaps more than that, I can't wait to see how his cassettes will fare under stress. The whole composition just seems a bit frail from my perspective, but I haven't really touched it in physical form (yet) and I suppose we won't find out for sure how good he is until we see him in action.
The other characters aren't too much to write home about save the Ironhide. Being able to dance Armed Hovercraft makes me happy, and having an effective autowin against Red Heat Infinite is a brilliant thing to have just as an alternate mode.
As for his female compatriots, Focus is an interesting new mechanic, as well. I think, if we get effects for high Focus, we may very well see balanced decks other than Metroplex make a comeback in the game. Until then, however, just give me Bold and call it a day, hm?
As for the Battle Cards, there were a ton of reveals. I can't say that some of them were overtly good or overtly bad, but I can definitely say that many of them had a ton of potential like Device Virus.
What did you like the most? Roadhugger? Soundwave? W2 Starter Bumblebee? Maybe not that last one. Let me know in the comments below, and as always, thanks for reading! If you want to check out more of my content, go to my YouTube Channel, Nanomachines, where I do deck profiles and other competitive content.
You never know... Something interesting might happen there in the next few days. Who knows?
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