The Energon Pub

[o.supreme]

I have a very similar list. Except mine I am trying to create an all-unique group of individuals with virtually no duplication. Since Hasbro decided not to do a G2 Defensor, and since their G2 Bruticus was half-arsed I decided to bow out of the G2 sets (sold my Menasor and Superion)...but thankfully I have collected most of the ones I want... Here is my ultimate 10 vs 10 list:

Superion vs . Menasor
Defensor vs. Bruticus
Convoy Grand Prime vs. Grand Galvatron
Optimus Maximus* vs. Grand Scourge**
Lynxmaster vs. Liokaiser
Betatron*** vs. Baldigus
Magnaboss vs. Predacus
Computron vs. Devastator
Victorion vs. Megatronia
Wreckage vs. Thunder Mayhem

*(composed of BC Optimus, Rook, Alpha Bravo, Smnokescreen and SG Starscream)
** (Composed of UW Grand Scourge CW Blastoff, CW Vortex, Offroad and BC Terrorsaur)
*** (CW Computron)

Also each Combiner has a Legends Class 6th member sans Devastator

Superion-Powerglide
Defebnsor-Groove
Convoy Grand Prime-Rodimus
Computron- Cosmos
Lynxmaster-Wreck Gar
Victiorion- Rust Dust
Betattron- Scrounge
Optimus Maximus- Dogfight
Wreckage-Override
Mangnaboss-Windcharger

Menasor-Blackjack
Grand Galvatron-Runamuck
Bruticus-Shockwave
Grand Scourge-Runabout
Predacus-Bombshell
Thunder Mayhem-Viper
LioKaiser-Ion Scythe
Megatronia-Flash Sentry
Baldigus-Reflector

Currently I have been able to collect all of these except the last 3 members of SS 5.0 (which hopefully I should be getting soon), Megatronia and Baldigus I am holding off on because they are still well in stock at BBTS and to give my finances a chance to recover...Flash Sentry is going to be the real tough one...I may never get it, but that's fine, there are 3 reflectors and once can substitute for the time being

[Va'al]

Back in 2013, artist Emiliano Santalucia was working on concept art for the then yet to be announced Transformers: Generations Combiner Wars line. The piece he shared today on his Facebook page is one of those, featuring some very interesting takes not only on the figures we then got, such as Menasor, Superion, Alpha Trion, Ultra Magnus and more, but also on Transformers lore in general! Check out the image below, showing multiple faction symbols from multiple generations of Transformers fiction, along with Quintessons, Masterpiece Shockwave and Sideswipe and more!

[Cobotron]

WONDERFUL!

[Zeedust]

There's some faction symbols on those flags that I never expected to see again. Though I suppose since this picture is from 2013, it pre-dates the point that I never expected to see them after.

It's an odd effect. The battle is pure 80's guys with their 80's look, but above this throwback, Alpha Trion sits, in his new and vastly different Titans Return body, surrounded by sigils that have come and gone over the course of the franchise. It's like one picture using another, vert different picture as a frame. It's not a bad picture, it's just... a little strange.

[Sabrblade]

Looks like Alpha Trion's the only one whose design is directly affiliated with a recent toy.

Everyone else looks like, well, Dreamwave G1.

[Towline]

What Alpha Bravo is a background charecter and not a part of Superion While Off Road isn't even a part of Menesor. No Rook, No Jet mode Blast Off.
NOOO combiner wars is ruined.

[Kurona]

Everyone else looks like, well, Dreamwave G1.

Well that's just mean. The characters have correct proportions and there's an actual background

[Hydrargyrus]

Umm... why is Sky Lynx so menacing?

[o.supreme]

Everyone else looks like, well, Dreamwave G1.

Well that's just mean. The characters have correct proportions and there's an actual background

As someone who actually liked DW I take it as a compliment...Oh what could have been...This one drawing alone is better than that awful Machinima series that was released.

[Sabrblade]

Everyone else looks like, well, Dreamwave G1.

Well that's just mean. The characters have correct proportions and there's an actual background

As someone who actually liked DW I take it as a compliment...Oh what could have been...This one drawing alone is better than that awful Machinima series that was released.

I mean, like, Superion, there, looks like he stepped right off the page of his Dreamwave MTMTE profile:

[Kurona]

Everyone else looks like, well, Dreamwave G1.

Well that's just mean. The characters have correct proportions and there's an actual background

As someone who actually liked DW I take it as a compliment...Oh what could have been...This one drawing alone is better than that awful Machinima series that was released.

I mean, like, Superion, there, looks like he stepped right off the page of his Dreamwave MTMTE profile:

Aw c'mon man, I just got finished with all of Dreamwave's stuff; don't make me look at the artwork again
Still, I do get what you mean. Hyper-accurate to the original toys and such. Thankfully this looks way better than whatever War and Peace was supposed to be.

[o.supreme]

For years I've wanted updated profile books for characters that have not been done, especially for Original Series Japanese Transformers. I know a lot of fans would rather have an updated profile books with personalities more conforming to IDW, but I'd rather get something we haven't seen before than just an update to appease fans of the personalities constructed by IDW.

The MTMTE series done by Dreamwave was a really nice update to what was done by the Marvel 4-issue Transformers Universe series back in 1986. Armada MTMTE was pretty good too, as was The Beast Wars Sourcebook from IDW. I would like to see more Profile/Sourcebook from other series, and the remaining original series characters that never got one.

[Sabrblade]

as was The Beast Wars Sourcebook from IDW.

Including all of its errors, lies, contradictions, and selective bad artwork?

[william-james88]

Aw c'mon man, I just got finished with all of Dreamwave's stuff; don't make me look at the artwork again

[o.supreme]

as was The Beast Wars Sourcebook from IDW.

Including all of its errors, lies, contradictions, and selective bad artwork?

Like I said it was pretty good, not perfect. Besides, I've never read any 3P fiction, so I have no idea what's -what in BW anymore. I haven't read Gathering or Ascending since their original release. I tend to stick to what was in BW the animated series, BWII, and BW Neo -Botcon & club fiction I haven't really read, or even consider.

Also I've never understood all the hate DW gets. Yes Pat Lee is a criminal, we all get that, but The Transformers ongoing they had, as short-lived as it was, was for me, by far the most entertaining and excited I have ever been for Transformers in Print. It figures, the one story I actually fully invest myself in gets cancelled....

[Kurona]

Aw c'mon man, I just got finished with all of Dreamwave's stuff; don't make me look at the artwork again

I can physically feel my soul trying to tear itself from this mortal plane. Thank god CW Devastator doesn't look like this monstrosity; there's better proportions and sense of art direction in the friggin' G1 Boxart.



The worst part is? That's a joke, but I looked at the picture I just linked again and I think it's actually true. I feel like crawling into my grave 70 years early.

[Sabrblade]

as was The Beast Wars Sourcebook from IDW.

Including all of its errors, lies, contradictions, and selective bad artwork?

Like I said it was pretty good, not perfect. Besides, I've never read any 3P fiction, so I have no idea what's -what in BW anymore. I haven't read Gathering or Ascending since their original release. I tend to stick to what was in BW the animated series, BWII, and BW Neo -Botcon & club fiction I haven't really read, or even consider.

BotCon and Club fiction is barely a blip on the radar of the Sourcebook's inaccuracies and failings. The Sourcebook deliberately set out to trample all over the source material of BWII and Neo by completely rewriting nearly all of those series' characters from the ground up, willfully ignoring the Japanese characters' cartoon portrayals/personalities and instead making up near-entirely new ones that went against how all those characters originally were. In other words, virtually every single one of the Sourcebook's profile entries on the Japanese BW characters was a lie.

[Kurona]

as was The Beast Wars Sourcebook from IDW.

Including all of its errors, lies, contradictions, and selective bad artwork?

Like I said it was pretty good, not perfect. Besides, I've never read any 3P fiction, so I have no idea what's -what in BW anymore. I haven't read Gathering or Ascending since their original release. I tend to stick to what was in BW the animated series, BWII, and BW Neo -Botcon & club fiction I haven't really read, or even consider.

BotCon and Club fiction is barely a blip on the radar of the Sourcebook's inaccuracies and failings. The Sourcebook deliberately set out to trample all over the source material of BWII and Neo by completely rewriting nearly all of those series' characters from the ground up, willfully ignoring the Japanese characters' cartoon portrayals/personalities and instead making up near-entirely new ones that went against how all those characters originally were. In other words, virtually every single one of the Sourcebook's profile entries on the Japanese BW characters was a lie.

To an extent though that does make sense. Even if we ignore cultural differences in regards to plot and character and how character portrayals have historically varied wildly in different material in Transformers (Cartoon Blaster vs. Marvel Blaster; Headmasters Chromedome vs Rebirth Chromedome), you've got the fact IDW was coming out with their own new Beast Wars comics that followed their own continuity coming out as well as the fact that Japan's G1 continuity by then had grown to be veeery different to Hasbro's. If you're going to include the Japanese-original characters in this context, they're likely going to have to be rewritten to some extent. I think calling it a 'lie' is a bit dramatic when we have much greater examples of characters differing depending on the source material.
And that's even before we get to the fact there are no official dubs or subs for Takara's original BW series. The book's error-ridden and has choices that border on the bizarre, that much is true, but calling new characterisation for imported characters that have to be made to work in a new continuity especially when this franchise has practically made differing characterisation tradition is something I highly disagree with.

[o.supreme]

^I kind of get it. I can see both sides of the argument. Of course my 10 year old self was writing letters to Marvel Comics Transmissions any time the characters portrayals were counter to the animated series, amazingly none of my letters were ever published LOL! But it is an opinion I still hold to this day, but I've come to accept that unlike most heroes who have an established comic-book origin, and animated series which followed after, The Transformers will always have "dueling origins" between animation and comics, neither of which is more legitimate than the other since they started at pretty much the same time. (I know the first issue of the comic came out in may 84, and the first episode of the series aired in Sept, but when you consider production time is much longer for animation than print, you can easily understand both mediums were developing around the same time)

[Kurona]

It's always frustrated me as well. While I can easily understand dueling origins like Blaster and Ratbat and Fortress Maximus - all of which later re-interpretations try to reconcile - I always hold to the idea of "why use the character and/or name if they're gonna be a completely different character". Armada Blurr, Movie Bonecrusher, TFP Smokescreen; a billion other examples. None of these are necessarily bad characters - tell a lie, no movie character is good - but it just confuses me why they have these particular names attached to them if they're not supposed to be a new version of the character(s) previously called that.
Still, once I get past it, I can finally just look at it from a pure story and character perspective and not care.

Smokescreen should have been red and yellow with a spoiler and called Hot Rod. He is so clearly a Hot Rod how did they miss that


REGARDLESS, Combiner Wars thread! Not the let's-debate-about-Dreamwave-and-sourcebooks-and-characterisation thread! Let's get back on topic before Burn hires a hitman.

[william-james88]

I thoguht that G1 box art looked pretty good

[Sabrblade]

as was The Beast Wars Sourcebook from IDW.

Including all of its errors, lies, contradictions, and selective bad artwork?

Like I said it was pretty good, not perfect. Besides, I've never read any 3P fiction, so I have no idea what's -what in BW anymore. I haven't read Gathering or Ascending since their original release. I tend to stick to what was in BW the animated series, BWII, and BW Neo -Botcon & club fiction I haven't really read, or even consider.

BotCon and Club fiction is barely a blip on the radar of the Sourcebook's inaccuracies and failings. The Sourcebook deliberately set out to trample all over the source material of BWII and Neo by completely rewriting nearly all of those series' characters from the ground up, willfully ignoring the Japanese characters' cartoon portrayals/personalities and instead making up near-entirely new ones that went against how all those characters originally were. In other words, virtually every single one of the Sourcebook's profile entries on the Japanese BW characters was a lie.

To an extent though that does make sense. Even if we ignore cultural differences in regards to plot and character and how character portrayals have historically varied wildly in different material in Transformers (Cartoon Blaster vs. Marvel Blaster; Headmasters Chromedome vs Rebirth Chromedome), you've got the fact IDW was coming out with their own new Beast Wars comics that followed their own continuity coming out as well as the fact that Japan's G1 continuity by then had grown to be veeery different to Hasbro's. If you're going to include the Japanese-original characters in this context, they're likely going to have to be rewritten to some extent. I think calling it a 'lie' is a bit dramatic when we have much greater examples of characters differing depending on the source material.
And that's even before we get to the fact there are no official dubs or subs for Takara's original BW series. The book's error-ridden and has choices that border on the bizarre, that much is true, but calling new characterisation for imported characters that have to be made to work in a new continuity especially when this franchise has practically made differing characterisation tradition is something I highly disagree with.

Think of this way. Those books didn't just serve as a representation of the continuity that was created for The Gathering and The Ascending, but also served as a means to introduce all of the characters formally to the average layman who was unfamiliar with all of the characters, both American and Japanese, of the Beast Era. And instead of presenting each of the characters in a fashion that was true and respectful towards their original depictions that had been set in stone and in effect for nearly a decade at the time, they instead made several arbitrary changes to many of the Japanese characters for little good reason at all.

I get that they wanted to tone down the inherent goofiness of the Japanese series to better fit the tone of the American BW cartoon, but there was literally no reason to invert several characters' personalities into being the opposite of who they were (i.e. - making the cowardly Diver brave and fearless, the fiercely loyal Guiledart distrustful and scheming, the dimwitted and humorously bad swordsman Hardhead into an intelligent leader-type and master swordsman, the grumpy psycho loner Mantis into a super happy "friend-to-all" type, or the lighthearted and fun Moon all grim and humorless).

[Kurona]

I thoguht that G1 box art looked pretty good

I kinda like it too, but its charm does come from the very odd and off proportions and body movement. It's not quite right but in a way that's very appealing?


Anywho, toys! What's the best Legends class from this line in you guys' opinion? Excluding Shockwave, he wins by default.

[DedicatedGhostArt]

Personally, I think the combiners pictured there look better than the CW toys. Especially Menasor. This makes me so sad.

Also, was this done way before TR? Cuz that Alpha Trion looks surprisingly accurate to the toy!

Also, Burn hires HITMEN?

Anywho, toys! What's the best Legends class from this line in you guys' opinion? Excluding Shockwave, he wins by default.

I only have Warpath and Huffer because Minibots, and I like both of those. Not sure at this point which I like better though because both are fun for different reasons. They work well though even with some of their G1 cues missing.

[Sabrblade]

Also, was this done way before TR? Cuz that Alpha Trion looks surprisingly accurate to the toy!

Yeah, that Alpha Trion design was done ahead of TR. It was adapted into the toy design later.