The Energon Pub

I’ve never really had the cash to, but I always thought it would be neat to have a couple extra Scrapmetals or Terrorcons, heck, even a couple more Camera heads to build up a larger Decepticon army. Have any of you guys ever bought duplicate TFs to troop build?

And also does anyone else think a combiner made up of nothing but drones would be one of the best combiners ever?

I thought about that, because Transformers like the one you mentioned don't belong alone. But I would need some extra money, and I'd rather get the major characters first, I like them more than drones or Terracons anyway.

I think about it all the time. I really want a bunch of scrapmetals to make into drone troops either controlled by the Decepticons or by Unicron.

I'd love to be able to "troop build"... but as things stand, I can only do it with knockoffs (most of which I promptly repaint either varying colors, or dull grey shades).

KO troops you say? Not a bad idea at all....

I have several Scrapmetals, they make for great hoards.

I troop build with Mini-cons. Or wait.. maybe I just have too many Mini-cons. I'd probably do it with Movie Scouts, but that would still be alot of money on double

Blurrz wrote:I troop build with Mini-cons.

Let's battle.

Holy bleeping crap. I only have doubles.. you have quadruples.. even freaking quintuples of Mini-cons!

I didn't expect Counterpunch to summon his Mini-Con Army.. I've been soundly defeated.

Blurrz wrote:Holy bleeping crap. I only have doubles.. you have quadruples.. even freaking quintuples of Mini-cons!

I didn't expect Counterpunch to summon his Mini-Con Army.. I've been soundly defeated.

Armada Megatron/Galvatron's aweful soundchip wrote:ThePowerIsMine!

Cp loves the MiniCons.

Cp hates the fact that the boards are still clipping images...

(All the same, it's good to know that there are others out there who not only like Armada, but MiniCons as well.)

Man, I stopped counting CP's horde after about 50 or so, it made me tired!

That's a cool way to build up numbers. Personally, I never did, but I've bough 2 each of Allspark Landmine and Stockade, since there were more than one in the movie (if you count Stockade as having been in the movie).

A swarm of scrapmetal sounds cool.

I like minicons! I need more though....

Nekoman wrote: Have any of you guys ever bought duplicate TFs to troop build?

Before last month, no.

I bought into Transformers as it was presented in G1 (toy and comic).
Whilst other lines, mech or otherwise made an effort to supply a single personalitiless uniform soldier, Hasbro took the opposite route and went out of the way to make even the uniform bots (Datsun and seeker) into individuals.

However, when I started my own take on Classics, I looked at Shockwave and realised that he'd be the one bot who'd love drones.

Nekoman wrote:And also does anyone else think a combiner made up of nothing but drones would be one of the best combiners ever?

I can't see the point.

Drones are basically accessories.

Be it Star Wars, GI Joe, mech shows, etc; the purpose of a drone army is to give the leader character power and reach, make him a threat.

Even in Beast Machines they served the same role, acting as an arm for the seemingly near omnipotent Megatron.

A drone gestalt loses the one point of drones, being strength in numbers, and becomes a single mindless unit without imagination.

They portrayed Devatstator as that at one point. It was dull and it always ended the same.

Smash, smash, outhought, beaten.

Lycantendencies wrote:

Nekoman wrote:And also does anyone else think a combiner made up of nothing but drones would be one of the best combiners ever?

I can't see the point.

Drones are basically accessories.

Be it Star Wars, GI Joe, mech shows, etc; the purpose of a drone army is to give the leader character power and reach, make him a threat.

Even in Beast Machines they served the same role, acting as an arm for the seemingly near omnipotent Megatron.

A drone gestalt loses the one point of drones, being strength in numbers, and becomes a single mindless unit without imagination.

They portrayed Devatstator as that at one point. It was dull and it always ended the same.

Smash, smash, outhought, beaten.

I was thinking something like six drones combine into one bot, but there’s more than just the six drones, a hole army of drones.

Instead of just Devastator and the rest of the decepticon combiners, a hole army of drone combiners to stretch out the decepticon army and have more power when combine. Its kind of hard to explain.

I wouldn't mind having a KO Predaking and a bunch of Energon Terrorcons for Decepticon hordes, but I'd still want a ton of Cybertron Scrapmetals for unicron hordes. Is there anywhere to get KOs of Energon Terrorcons and Cybertron Scrapmetals?

I've thought about it for my Decepticons, but I've been mostly looking for a way to even out the numbers as my Autobots out number my 'Con's by at least a dozen at last count, though may of increased as my most recent purchases have been mostly Autobots. Though I haven't encountered any molds on store shelfs that I want doubles of, accept maybe for the Classics Starscream mold, I would so love to have a Skywarp and Thundercracker version.

Weren't the Seacons portrayed as primarily drones in the Masterforce series?

Nekoman wrote:I was thinking something like six drones combine into one bot, but there’s more than just the six drones, a hole army of drones.

Instead of just Devastator and the rest of the decepticon combiners, a hole army of drone combiners to stretch out the decepticon army and have more power when combine. Its kind of hard to explain.

I see what you mean, but still have pretty much the same opinion.


The lack of generibots was a huge reason I bought into Transformers, so it's not something I'd really be interested in seeing.
I mean physically, the Aerialbots are very drone like. Whilst the alt modes differ, 4 are pretty much the same bot and transformation.
But the Transformers way is to give them all personality.
If there were 1 Arielbot or 1000, it'd still be that way as it's just more interesting.

To add to that, Transformers was originally pushed similarly to Animated.
The two toy lines had made them hugely imbalanced, so they protrayed the Decepticons as natural "born" warriors with the Autobots more like reluctant soldiers.
Th comic took that route too, so even though they had strength in numbers, they still had the disadvantage.
It was the robot equivalent of watching a group of SEALS going after some civillians who picked up arms for the first time.

Giving the Decepticons an army like that without it leading to instant massacre would need to overpower the Autobots where they're like the SEALS, again making it the complete opposite of what made Transformers unlike your average mech franchise.

I'm not saying everyone bought into those aspects, just that they were there, and are what appealed to me, and from my view, armies of identikit drones with zero personality devolves Transformers on a number of fronts, and they may as well just have pilotted mech and call it Gundam or similar.

Hmm, the closest I have come to troop building TFs is 3 Sharkticons.

I don't really see TFs as being troop buiildable. Unless, ofcourse you decide to buy a mess of KO reflectors and redo the scene from the Orion Pax episode when Megs shows up with a mess of Reflector look alike drones.

Yeah, no. Transformers doesn't exactly lend itself to the whole drone concept, seeing as they are autonomous robots, and robot drones would lack a large degree of that autonomy. Why would sentient machines build ignorant machines to do their work or fight their battles when there are already sentient machines to fulfill both functions? There are a number of molds that I would like to have multiples of, but the only line where I feel it would be applicable would be the movie line. TFs are figures which represent characters, and every TF is largely possessed of an individual character, even if it's a bad characterization. The movie figures have zero personality or character, regardless of whether they are drones or major players. There are a few movie figures I could consider troop building with, but why? It defeats the purpose of a race of sentient robots to have a bunch of drones.
Stormtroopers and Clone troopers and otherwise, while they are all the same, do have character/personality all their own because they represent something, like the Empire. The movie drones are representative of nothing, so more than one is basically pointless.

I do it with seekers.

I use RM Starscream, Skywarp and Thundercracker, and Classics Ramjet as the actual characters. Then I use the 3 RM KO's as drones along with G1 Dirge, Ramjet, Skywarp, Thundercracker, Starscream (orange cockpit reissue), Starscream G1 (clear cockpit), black Starscream, 4-star Starscream, G2 Starscream and Ramjet, spare G1 Ramjet and Dirge.

Would love to get some Insecticon Drone army sets along with Scrap Metals

Oh almost forgot Blitzwing and 2 KO Overcharges I have and Quake with 2 grey KO's and a silver KO, not to mention my 2 sets of KO Reflectors.