Dreadwing Soars In To The Official Transformers Trading Card Game And App Launch

No, No, NO! I don't care what the Steve Miller band thought they were singing, the line is "Big ol' Jed had a lighter"! He had it until the FCC took it away from him! Well, funky sh!t still goes down in MY city! Kicks are for trids!

As for the cards, this was a really nice surprise! Quick 2-bot combiners are a welcome variation for this expansion. Too bad we're a ways off from having cassettes, as I can't think of too many other pairs unless they use Battleslash and Roadtrap, Crash Combiners...or the Multiforce! Now they would be the freakin' bomb in this game!

And just the other day, I was wondering how this game would handle the _______master characters, and our first 'Con powermasters give us the eloquent answer: just ignore that gimmick for now! No, seriously, since western fiction depicts most of those characters as having just been plain ol' TFs prior to entering binary bondage between '86 and '09, treating them as such for now and saving their organic upgrades for later waves makes perfect sense.

Will this game last long enough to see a Masterforce expansion repaint these cards into Buster and Hydra? Let's make it happen! I just need to actually learn how to play, and...

Dreadwind and Blackwing are only 16 stars in total, so you still have 9 stars to use to support the already mightly powerful Dreadwing!

pretty cool

Loot Crate has been advertising a mystery Transformers item in their February crate for a little while now, and thanks to the official Transformers TCG Twitter account we now know what that item is. The "Transformation" themed crate will contain an exclusive Titan-sized Omega Supreme - Autobot Defense Base card. This is going to be a massive card, the same size as Metroplex featuring bot mode on one side and base with tank on the other. The crate containing the card appears to only be available in North America, but fear not, they do say the card will be available "via alternative avenues in EU and APAC regions."



The full tweets can be found below:

Get a double-sided, Titan-sized Transformers Trading Card Game card featuring OMEGA SUPREME - AUTOBOT DEFENSE BASE in this month's ‘TRANSFORMATION’ themed Loot Crate! Sign up by 2/19 at 9pm Pacific: https://loot.cr/tfwotc

OMEGA SUPREME - AUTOBOT DEFENSE BASE will be available via alternative avenues in EU and APAC regions. Please consult your preferred card game retailer for availability and more information. Stay tuned for more information!

The crate will also contain items from Marvel, the Alita: Battle Angel movie, Adventure Time, and Naruto Shippuden. This standard crate runs $19.99, but be sure to keep an eye out for working discount codes to get the best deal possible!

How do you feel about the Loot Crate exclusive? Sound off in the Energon Pub forums below!

Well I'm a sucker and will sign up for the cards. I have Metroplex already, might as well get Omega.

I love the TCG but I hate Loot Crate. Hard pass.

What's Crackin'? wrote:I love the TCG but I hate Loot Crate. Hard pass.

As soon as those cards are in my hand, I'm cancelling.

I'd imagine ebay will be the place to look for the cards once the crate hits (wonder how the rest of the world will get them as this is America only)

Toy Fair is taking place right now. Directly from the floor at New York Toy Fair 2019, site owner Seibertron is sending us images of the Hasbro display showroom as we prepare the galleries for the site. The Transformers Trading Card Game is there and we can see the pack for Devastator and the packs for Predaking. Devastator's pack features the combiner cards making up the combiner. You can see them below and keep an eye out on this site for more Toy Fair news, galleries and videos.

If you want to know more about these cards and strategies, we have breakdowns here.

Well as we get closer to the release date of the first expansion for the Official Transformers Trading Card Game, Wave 2:Rise of the Combiners, the official Facebook page has now released all the pictures for you to feast your eyes upon! This news came to us by fellow Seibertron user, and voice of both Soundwaveand Shockwave in the hit Bumblebee movie, Jon3.0.

Thats not all though, as fellow Seibertron user and contributor, #Sideways#, has sent in his In-depth analysis of Omega Supreme and a new Bumblebee card!

Over to you #Sideways#!

_____________



If you hadn't guessed already, today... I have a rather large reveal to bring to you guys. Oh yes, my friends, it's Omega Supreme. Now, as a preface I do have to mention that you can technically buy this guy right now, but there is a catch. You see, not only is Omega Supreme a promo card found in this month's Loot Crate, but it is currently only in Loot Crate. Now, say what you will about that, but something that I definitely recommend is that you use the Valentine's Day code -- LOVE50, or in some cases LOVE35 -- to get a solid 35%-50% off your order.

Basically, you get the stuff in the Loot Crate as well as a confirmed Omega Supreme for about $15. But that's not all that's special about this guy -- notice that his set code states "P2", meaning quite literally "Promo 2". What, then, would Promo 1 be? What could possibly be on-par with Omega Supreme?

Nobody knows, but me personally? I wager Trypticon will be stomping his way to the battlefield shortly.






This Bumblebee is really, really good, and it's easy to see why. First off, you have great stats with a considerable HP stat and a very respectable attack stat in both modes, but you're also a Car Leader, which is very neat when you consider Matrix of Leadership's existence. Perhaps even moreso, you can play him with the Starter Bumblebee to do some Matrix Stacking which is an interesting thought if you don't mind not having a slot to use Turbo Boosters or Agility of Bumblebee with.

But those are just his innate effects; I haven't even touched on what really makes him good. You see, the best part about him is his ability to combo Actions. For instance, in his robot mode, you have the ability to scrap an Action to draw two which nets you a lot of cards (considering) without using your Action for the turn. Of course, this is something that happens essentially at the end of your turn, but any draw is generally good draw.

But that's not all.

Not only does Bumblebee draw using Actions, but he also allows you to play a "free" Action during your turn when you Transform him to vehicle mode, the same ability that Mirage has. So, that being said, when you play a Roll Out or a Start Your Engines and have both a Bumblebee and Mirage in robot mode, you have the ability to play two free Actions, then untap one of your Cars. That's monstrous value, and when you consider playing him with other Bumblebee to abuse Agility of Bumblebee, that value gets even higher.

Now, that being said, he won't be in every car list thanks to his 10 Star cost to play him, but standard Car lists might want to make use of him. It would mean dropping the Super Rare Bumblebee, who is rather incomparable to Common Bee outside of having the name "Bumblebee" given that SR Bee can attack untapped characters and at the end of the game turns into something of a beast, but as a cheap alternative, I don't see why you wouldn't want to play him.

There are already debates regarding whether or not it's better to play him over SR Bee, but I find myself on the Super Rare side of the fence after playing Predacons. Being able to attack untapped characters is immensely powerful, especially against decks like Insecticons, Combiners and even Double Prime because you can potentially remove a character that has not attacked yet from the field. Doing this essentially wins you the game, so to say it's powerful is a bit of an understatement.

That being said, being able to draw more and play more Actions certainly makes me swoon. You're likely to have more early game usefulness with Common Bumblebee, while at the end of the game SR Bumblebee will be a monster. I don't really know for sure, of course -- this is all just theorycraft -- but it cannot be denied that a case for either could be made and made quite well.

I suppose it's all up to your personal preference which Bee is for you, but I think it should go without saying that you should probably be playing one in your Car list.





Something that I've noticed about promo cards from the Transformers Trading Card Game is that none of them seem wholly unplayable. Slipstream has her uses in Planes, Cliffjumper has his own version of Cars to consider, Devastator seems extremely strong out of the gate, Metroplex turned into a top tier deck and even Ironhide, who is oft regarded as one of the worst characters in the game, has a home in the Truck archetype. Or at least he did before Motormaster likely took his spot, but that's another discussion for another day.

Basically what I'm saying is this: Just because they're a promo, don't discount them. Too often promo cards have turned into shiny proxy backs, or even the esteemed position of bulk. Not here. Not with Omega.

Omega seems to have some of the most janky potential in a promo card I've seen yet, and when you consider that he has 19 stars, it's easy to see why. Having 19 stars means that you can play him with a small partner, someone to either help keep heat off him or perhaps increase his damage. Where he has only one defense, his HP and attack are both quite high indeed, and on top of that he's a Tank, where you can abuse Hunker Down to attach everything from a Force Field to a Reinforced Plating. That, and when you consider playing him with Flamewar in an all blue setting, you begin to realize that Omega will begin to have a monstrous amount of staying power.

He won't be the only one to stay on the field forever, though, given his ability in robot mode to take two damage off your opponent's attack directed at your smaller, softer character you play him with. This is an incredible ability, which essentially makes it to where he can let his partner last a lot longer in the battle. I mean, imagine: Your opponent swings at your partner for six. You defend three, and then you move off two with Omega. Your opponent did effectively one damage. Omega is insane at keeping his partners alive, and it really shows.

Omega also has his vehicle mode, which is both a Tank and a Spaceship -- which would be nice if being a Spaceship actually meant something given the decided lack of support for them. Omega also has the neat ability to either deal one damage to something when you flip to his vehicle mode or to draw a card. Drawing a card is usually better, but depending on the partner you chose you might want that extra damage. In fact, that ability pops Skrapnel for enough damage to turn him into a 2HKO instead of a potential 3HKO. Being a Tank and using Hunker Down and Flamewar on the same team, you can start to defend quite a bit of damage.

But that's honestly not my favorite way to play him, even though I am and always will be a fan of Flamewar. Not to betray my Decepticon waifu, I actually like the idea of playing Omega with either Warpath or Acid Storm. Since these anti-keyword characters are both six stars, playing either one with Omega Supreme seems obvious. On one hand, one could dedicate an extremely defensive list with Acid Storm, using Omega Supreme and high blue cards to keep Acid Storm alive and keep Dinobots depressed, but on the other, one could use Warpath in the same way to try and beat Double Prime.

So let's talk about that for a moment. Which one is better, and in a way, isn't playing one redundant if the way to play Omega is defensively?

Well, on one hand Acid Storm seems to lend himself extremely well to that defensive playstyle. Acid Storm turns off Bold, which means your opponent will be doing even less damage to your blue-driven deck, decreased even further given your recycling of Armor with Hunker Down. That, and when you consider that Omega will be doing his part to keep Acid Storm alive by taking two damage for him, you realize that Stormy can pretty well keep himself alive from there with his healing ability. Dinobots will then be dead drawing into their Bold Stacking cards all game, while Insecticon players will be considering dropping Barrage from their list altogether, but there's a problem with that:

Acid Storm sucks against defensive lists.

Against anything that's offensive, Acid Storm chews through like butter, but when you run across something that's going to be trying to outlast you, he falls apart. Conversely, Warpath -- who turns off Tough -- is something approaching the same thing for offensive lists, or at least he should.

You see, Warpath's ability prevents your opponents characters from using Tough, and that also means that these extremely defensive lists like Double Prime, Planes or similar lists are going to be taking a lot more damage than normal. All of their armor in their deck essentially turns into dead cards in their hand, and when you consider that Warpath is a Tank as well as being on the same team as Omega, you realize that he will be able to stay on the field forever to keep it that way.

Double Primes also becomes even more inconsistent given that they will be potentially drawing into dead armor cards all game, and their deck cycling effects won't come into play, making Nemesis' ability even slower than it already is. Simply put, Warpath is priority number one on their list of KO candidates -- so it's a good thing that in a defensive Tank deck with Omega Supreme on the battlefield, your opponent won't be able to do anything about him.

This is why I like Warpath. He doesn't help you "win harder" against Dinobots, which should still be a good matchup given your "Tank"y ability and blue list, but he also helps you against Double Primes which is the best deck in format at the moment. That, and he's a Tank, which means that you can Hunker Down with him as well as Omega, cycling Force Fields and Reinforced Plating all game. He might not have much offensive power -- at all, actually -- but that's what Omega's job is. With an Energon Axe, Omega Supreme has a whopping 10 Attack, which can deal even more damage with Leap Into Battle and other boosting cards.

I definitely think that Warpath is the way to go in terms of six star teammates for Omega, and as for Omega as a whole, I look forward to seeing Omega be the anti-meta pick he was always destined to be. Of course, his smaller friends should always watch out for any Aerialbots on the horizon, but Omega fears nothing but the strongest of foes.







Jar Ja-- Erm, Wheelie gets his debut in the Transformers TCG by being on a Battle Card, and it's just about as terrible as he is. Fling is just outclassed by pretty much all of its peers. It's a bad healing card, as MEDIC! straight heals more, and even Field Repairs allows you to Plan while still providing an orange pip. Even Emergency Repairs is better because it has a pip and the ability to repair three damage from one of your characters, and Emergency Repairs isn't that great.

So, if its medical license is revoked, then how about its offensive potential? Well, it's not good either. Shall we look at some examples? Plasma Burst deals two damage while still having no pips, "One Shall Stand, One Shall Fall" deals three damage and while having recoil damage you can also use that to your advantage through Energon Axe and Slipstream-esque abilities. Even Inferno Breath deals three damage and has a pip. Sure, it taps one of your characters, but a lot of lists don't really care about that given the new Brave mechanic.

So on all fronts, Fling is lackluster. It just isn't a keeper. It's just a fling; not really marriage material.




Press The Advantage is a keeper; definitely marriage material.

You might say, though, "Now, wait a minute, this only matters with Autobots VS Decepticons!"

You could say that. You could. But when you consider that pretty much every deck plays at least one Decepticon with Metroplex being one of only a few exceptions, and with Wave 2 adding even more good Decepticons, Press The Advantage becomes quite the good card. Let's quickly dive into why.

So, this card both increases your Autobot damage while decreasing Decepticon defense which, mathematically speaking, is essentially another increase in damage. When you consider that most defense stats average out at 2, you end up seeing a boost of essentially +4 damage against Decepticons and a standard +2 against Autobots. That +4 is insane when you consider Optimus Prime -- Battlefield Legend. Not only does he have the ability to flip this card and boost his damage with the orange pip to nine, but he also gets that solid +2 bringing his damage to 11. Worse yet, whomever he attacks will have their defense lowered to zero, making their demise on likely the first turn of the game something of a done-deal.

But that's not all. What, you thought that confirming an OHKO on the first turn of the game without any repercussions like Reckless Charge or One Shall Stand was good enough? Ohohoho, you might want to sit down: This is gonna make you weak in the knees.

Press The Advantage has a green pip so the turn after you use it with Battlefield Legend, you get to use it again. But Optimus is tapped! You can't use him again, right? Well, the whole "choose an enemy Decepticon" thing doesn't have to be with an Active Autobot present, so you get to use it with Nemesis Prime or perhaps an Autobot partner to Battlefield Legend, making them deal more damage as well.

Sometimes, the built-in armor stat is so vital to the survival of the character they have a low HP stat. Just look at Tanks for example. Demolisher has four defense but only seven HP, Darkmount has nine HP but a whopping potential five defense against ranged characters, and so on. That defense is their lifeblood, and when you strip it from them, things start looking dire for them very quickly.

Now, it should be noted that simply doing more damage is essentially what's happening here. Reducing defense is the same thing as doing more damage since more damage "ignores" the armor, but most highly damaging Actions like Reckless Charge have some sort of drawback. This one does not, and that's what makes it so good at dealing that damage. The fact that it has a green pip makes it even better.

As a whole, this card makes me more terrified of being one-hit on turn one by a Battlefield Legend than I already am, and it begs the question about Battlefield Legend: Is he too good? Nothing can compete with the amount of utility Battlefield Legend has, and very few things can compete with the amount of damage he can do out of effectively nowhere. I think it remains to be seen if he will continue to keep that crown given that we haven't seen all of the characters from this set yet, but I don't think he's going anywhere any time soon.




Tackle is surprisingly good, I'm not gonna lie. Being able to tap your opponent's characters to either open them up to attacks, trigger the "end of turn brawl" where your characters all get to gang up on one of your opponent's characters or deny them the ability to attack is pretty fascinating.

Cars, for one, can make especially good use of this card given their reliance on Turbo Boosters. You can transform Bumblebee -- Trusted Lieutenant and play Tackle to tap one of your opponent's characters, then Turbo Booster him and then still have your Action for turn. Perhaps even moreso, you can use Start Your Engines to transform him, use Tackle for free, then use the Start Your Engines untapping effect to untap the character you just tapped.

Tackle gets kind of crazy when you use it in conjunction with characters that can either untap or in wide lists that have man advantage over your opponents, but something I would also like to touch on is a potential lock combo with Battlefield Legend.

You see, when you flip this card on an attack with Battlefield Legend, you can tap your Nemesis Prime to tap your opponent's Nemesis Prime. If this is the first attack of the "round" with no characters tapped, you're essentially denying your opponent an attack with Nemesis.

And, when everyone resets, you can transform Battlefield Legend and reuse it -- this time tapping Battlefield Legend to tap your opponent's Battlefield Legend. Of course, you're also denying yourself an attack, but it's an interesting thought for the mirror in Double Primes, though to be perfectly honest if you're that worried about the mirror you should probably be playing Enemy Combat Analysis and try tipping the matchup that way.

The Battlefield Legend combo seems interesting, but I don't know if it's any good. Just a thought.




Omega Supreme -- outside of the card himself -- might be one of the weirdest promotional ways to get a trading card I've ever seen, and I am still not sure how I feel about it. I mean, on one hand it's promoting the game, but on the other hand it's a goofy way to get a single card. I dunno, it's strange. But hey, you can't deny that getting a bunch of other cool stuff in your Loot Crate isn't a bad thing.

I'm just sad that I literally just bought a real-life loot box. Curse you, Activision for setting the industry standard! Curse you EA for making it worse!

But in all seriousness, the cards revealed so far have had very few bad cards among them. From Omega Supreme to Devastator to Dreadwing, I can't believe how competent that these decks are. I think that we're about to enter a very diverse metagame, but I don't know if any of them can beat Double Prime at the top.

As always, you can catch me uploading more competitive discussion and deck profiles on my YouTube channel, Nanomachines regularly. If you want to see some of my deck lists, check out my deck profiles!

What do you think? Is Omega Supreme good? Is Bumblebee? Is Press The Advantage as good as I think it is, or am I just living in Narnia? Is Battlefield Legend too good, or does he create a centralized meta approaching some of Pokemon's best years during the SP era? Let me know in the comments below, and as always, I'll catch you next time!

__________

Don't forget to check out our photographs of the TCG products at Hasbros display at this weekends Toy Fair New York 2019!

What do you think of these cards? Will any of these end up in your deck? Let us know in the Energon Pub and stay tuned to Seibertron for all the latest news and reviews!

But you can fling potentially 5 and 10 damage counters, healing and damaging at the same time

LootCrate just sent out an email saying February is delayed!

New estimated arrival dates:

I will ignore promotional card,so,i replace Cliffjumper with Hound and Splitstream with Dirge.
First,i want to rewrite the seekers deck.
Scream11 and Thundercracker or Sunstorm and Dirge +Skywarp\Metroplex

1 X photon\crash\strafing
rollout(scream11 magic with that)
fog(+Rascent)
backupP\surprise\forceF
armedH
Rascent
Areckon\protected
Eaxe thanks to skywarp\grenade
nullray\powerP\height
collatteral\M swapM
trasure
swapP(it reset the side effect)\M escape
bombing\M TBTA
Eenthusiast\rally

THE ADJUSTING:2O\1W\2B\1W\rollout every ten

Very bad against truck\tank,the trucks has recieved a buff with Novastar instead of optimus12,bumpers instead of blast,she attack first and recieve every teamup and cargo,kup in second,he is the only one who flip and use the cybertronium.
Scream13-blitzwing and springer-grapple are duos,nerfed version of the previous ones,yes they are nerf,i will ignore dreadwing.
Bolt X 1
Dcrown\espionnage
rollout
drill
scrapper
Sconsole\crushing size(perfect on springer + noble)
disruptive
disrupt
collatteral
ramming
ancient+unleashed
scoundrel\noble
nullray\shock

THE ADJUSTING:1O\1B X 2\1W

The third magician is acid storm with trhust and mega2
ECA X 1(anti grimlock,sludge is more irrationnal,there should be a limit on his absortion)
tech+supierior(the cannon is out of place)
bravery
evasive
fusion
heavyhand
TBTA
vaporize
handheld
pep
scoundrel
system

4B\1W\tech every ten

A reminder of the two others,they have recieve buff
rollout
escape
grenade
Shockwave-bomb8-ransack
plasmaburst X 1
underhanded
brainstorm
backupB
swarm
computerS
repair(+ransack)
multimission
scrapper
system
debiliting

cosmo-chromia-redalert
salvage X 1
teamup
pep
leap
intelligence
datapad for chromia
leap
thermal
confidence
reinforced
blast

3O or B\1W\rollout every ten with the minority
You may get +3 regulary instead of 2

A new anti combiner deck,very aggressive
bomb11-venin-old kickback\blurr-old optimus7-warpath
the focus fire is very important for the final KO,one every ten with one extra cornered
scrounge+erratic+stealth
always put the scrounge behind upgrade that aren't green
inverted
swindled\confidence
powerP\supercharge
bashing
reckless
pace and improvised+secretD
testify

for every combiner:the enigma every ten and the Rconversion

predaking\superion
they use magic damage
steamroll X 1
piercingB
surprise
intelligence(enigma draw or close)
bodyA\powerP(+I)
trasure
tooth\Areckon
enforcement\cooling
inferno
Eslingshot\Aformation
underhanded\markman
scoundrel\noble

2O\1W\2B\1W

devastator\volcanicus
they are agressive and draw fast,the first will have 4 extra card,so,i write only the second.
? X 1
scrounge+electrified+mining for sludge
spare
testify
new design
confidence
databank
pep
master
bravery

3O or B\1W

menasaur\maximus
they use healing
? X 1
bravery
teamup
pep

piercingB
surprise
defensive
turbo
repair
powerP
ancient
unleashed


tackle(it can ruin grimlock9)
static
fieldR(+Rconversion in particular)
press
ancient
unleashed
Ccommand
ion

maximus use a 1O\1B deck,it took me longtime to understand that.

This wave is not completely usable without the first one,i find that bad but maybe it's capricious.

How are the pulls going for everyone so far on wave 2? I'm 72 packs in and on the struggle bus for Super Rares and have more duplicate Rares than I'd care to, but at least those will be good trade bait. Very oddly, I still don't have one Common - Breakdown.

I can say that there's no way I can keep up doing 4 cases or the equivalent for each wave only to end up without a full set. It feels excessive, like a mobile game that milks the microtransactions as hard as possible because it will only survive by creating gambling addicts, which isn't necessary here imo.

ScottyP wrote:How are the pulls going for everyone so far on wave 2? I'm 72 packs in and on the struggle bus for Super Rares and have more duplicate Rares than I'd care to, but at least those will be good trade bait. Very oddly, I still don't have one Common - Breakdown.

I can say that there's no way I can keep up doing 4 cases or the equivalent for each wave only to end up without a full set. It feels excessive, like a mobile game that milks the microtransactions as hard as possible because it will only survive by creating gambling addicts, which isn't necessary here imo.

I thought that, like with hockey cards, one case would give you everything albeit with loads of doubles. This sounds pretty intense.

william-james88 wrote:

ScottyP wrote:How are the pulls going for everyone so far on wave 2? I'm 72 packs in and on the struggle bus for Super Rares and have more duplicate Rares than I'd care to, but at least those will be good trade bait. Very oddly, I still don't have one Common - Breakdown.

I can say that there's no way I can keep up doing 4 cases or the equivalent for each wave only to end up without a full set. It feels excessive, like a mobile game that milks the microtransactions as hard as possible because it will only survive by creating gambling addicts, which isn't necessary here imo.

I thought that, like with hockey cards, one case would give you everything albeit with loads of doubles. This sounds pretty intense.

The last actual trading cards I did were some Legend of Zelda cards from Enterplay a couple yeaes ago and a case pretty much guaranteed a full set outside of gold foils and box toppers. For whatever reason Transformers cards can't seem to get this concept down. Armada took years to finish off. Despite hundreds of free packs from Robot Kingdom and four ultra cheap clearance cases from BBTS, I still don't have 8 DotM cards. These aren't much different. I get it on the Super Rares and Rares but it feels like "Common" and "Uncommon" mean totally arbitrary things with these particular sets.

They say that all good things must come to an end. They say that life is not beautiful because it lasts forever, but because it comes to an end. Well, unless you're a Highlander, but I already opened with Queen so I'm pretty sure all of them left the room. But like the existential dread-inducing realization that things are finite, so too must we realize that card spoilers must eventually come to an end.

It just so happens that the aforementioned "end" is a cataclysmic, explosive dump of card spoilers on the Transformers TCG Facebook page with an amount of reveals coming in at a solid 33 freaking cards.

And I'm going to do all of them.

Every single one.

So strap in -- you're in for a wild ride.





Skywarp is actually very competent, and I am extremely excited about his potential with an Aerialbot team backing him up. You see, this Skywarp may have lackluster stats on the surface, the thing you have to realize is that beauty is rarely skin-deep. You see, when you have this Skywarp in his Robot Mode, he has an affinity for "pipless" cards that don't have a colored pip on them.

When you flip a pipless card, you gain a sizable offensive and defensive boost, making his lackluster attack and utterly abysmal defense stat actually useful for something. If you recall a few days ago, we saw the Super Rare Starscream who has a very similar ability to this except that he deals with the Decepticon Crown. The difference being, Starscream is both more powerful when he works and more expensive. It's for this reason that I can't help but to consider the two to be extremely similar, and I wonder if that wasn't by design. Food for thought.

You can use this defensively, chiefly, with an emphasis on Tough to give him an extremely competent defensive capability. His offensive stats are too lackluster to capitalize upon, it would seem, which is slightly unfortunate. But then again, the best part about him, at least in my opinion, isn't his robot mode.

You see, when you transform Skywarp you get to put a pipless card from your Scrap Pile into your hand. Skywarp, of course, can put any pipless card into your hand, not just Actions, which means that certain cards like Stunticon Swagger could get even better given that you could play him with a team of Stunticons (though I am not sure why exactly you would choose to deny yourself combination in that regard). But let's think about this in terms of Action Cards for the moment, hm?

So, let's say for instance that you have three Aerialbots along with him. Remember that kinda nutty Bombing Run combo I was talking about where you could do 8 damage to something in total without attacking? If not, let's recap: You start with four Planes, then you play a Brainstorm. Brainstorm will then play a Photon Bomb, damaging all characters on both sides for 2. The second card comes, and it's a Bombing Run, which moves a damage from each of your Planes to a single target. This turns the 2 damage from the Photon Bomb into 6 given you have four planes in play. But that's not all. Next, you get to transform Silverbolt into Robot mode and put another damage counter on something, then you get to attach an Armed Hovercraft and spread another 1 damage on your opponent's characters. This brings the total damage you've done to a single target -- not counting the other spread damage on your opponent's other characters -- to a whopping 8.

And you haven't even attacked yet.

Skywarp helps make that combo way more consistent. Being a Specialist, a Plane and having the ability to return the Photon Bomb from your Scrap to your hand, he allows yourself the ability to confirm a part to the combo in your hand as well as potential Multi-Mission Gear plays. You have a lot of potential value out of Skywarp from his vehicle mode ability alone. I just wish that his offensive stats were a bit more than lackluster.

All in all, he's great utility. He'll never come close to either Battlefield Legend or Starscream, but he has a very nice niche in spammy Aerialbot-based lists.




Why?

No, really, why?

I mean, sure, seven attack is actually kind of big in Ruckus' robot mode, and being a Car allows him to swing more than once, but almost everything else about him is just... Vanilla. His Car mode has a nice 3 Defense, though, so there's that, but at 11 points there are just better options.

Like, a lot of better options like Wheeljack, Cliffjumper, pretty much any Bumblebee... You get the picture.

Cool artwork, better name, bigger pass.




So! If you couldn't read Chinese, let me transcribe it for you courtesy of Alex Brock from the Transformers TCG Facebook group:

Robot Mode: "When this character has 5 or more damage counters on it, it has Tough 2."

Alternate Mode: "When flipping to this mode, this character has has Bold 2 until end of turn."

So, if you couldn't tell, this card is P1, the other Promo coming out for Rise of the Combiners! I had a quick conversation with the official marketing team on the Facebook team about its availability and as it turns out, it's only available in China to celebrate the Lunar New Year as a Buy-A-Box Promo, shown HERE.

Sadly, this means we won't be getting this card at all in the United States or in the United Kingdom, and they were quick to state how they didn't want to distribute it outside of Asia so we can't get our hands on it outside of simply importing one likely at a premium.

Bumblebee himself is excruciatingly mediocre in the stat category -- I mean, 8 HP for as many stars! -- but when you consider that his Bold ability in his vehicle mode stacks with Wave 1 Prowl, Power Punch and Supercharge, you're going to be flipping a whole lot of cards coming in at a Dinobot-level Bold 10. That's more than Wheeljack can pull off, and all Bumblebee needs to do is play a Start Your Engines to do that combo.

His robot mode is pretty to look at, but abysmal to play with given he's more or less vanilla until he's almost dead, in which case he has an innate Tough 2. That's fine, but when you consider that he only has three HP remaining it becomes a whole lot worse. If you want my opinion, just run him in Wheeljack and hit really hard with him -- it's easy enough to do!

No Loot Crates here, just cold, hard, disappointment. Not that the card is bad or anything, I just hate that I'm going to have to spend a premium to get it. Where does it get that value from? Well, it's pretty to look at, it's actually startlingly competent in a Car list and it's exclusive. What else do you need?






Fog of War is a fantastic card for hand control lists, and it's easy to see why. Discarding both players' hands down to two cards not only makes it extremely easy to control your opponent's hand from there, but also extremely easy to simply discard the other two. Take for instance Shockwave, who is both a Specialist and someone who abuses effects like these.

Using Shockwave, you can use Multi-Mission Gear to play a Disruptive Entrance, leaving your opponent with only a single card in hand. If you have a Brainstorm, you could even use the Disruptive Entrance without using your Upgrade for the turn, instead using a Rapid Ascent on a Ranged ally to Scrap your opponent's last card. Now, whether this is good in a game that requires very little hand commitment in order to deal damage or not is simply reliant on the power of characters and the power of played cards from the hand.

In a game where the characters are extremely powerful and less reliant upon their hand to deal damage, this combo isn't as great. But with the advent of more powerful Action cards and Upgrades in this game, the more I begin to realize that hand destruction might be better than I give it credit for.

Maybe.



This card isn't that great, not gonna lie. It's good, don't get me wrong here, and it will definitely replace The Bigger They Are in Double Prime, but the problem is this: When you're markedly bigger than your opponent, your attack is usually far higher than their defense. In other words, in all likelihood you won't need Pierce to deal damage unless you're facing down an extremely beefy Demolisher.

Let's be fair here, though. There are certain things that can make use of this against lists like Aerialbots, Trucks, Stunticons and similarly defensive lists with smaller characters. Most of them have five stars and a small set of HP, and when your own damage output is low you might want to make use of this card.

Again, I don't really think that this card will see wide use. But it will probably see niche use in the terms of Double Primes and Tanks.




Surprisingly, I do like this card. In terms of most lists, you won't really find much use for it, but with Brave Combiners you most definitely will. You see, in terms of standard lists you simply don't have the resources to tap one of your characters outright and open them up for attack, but in wider Combiner lists (preferably with a Brave character on-board) you have a startlingly good draw card.

Again, it's situational, but to be perfectly frank there are uses for this card. In anything else, I would say that it's bad. I mean, you're effectively removing an attack from the field when you tap a Specialist -- and that's not great, especially since your Specialist is now open to attack. However, when you have a Brave character on the field like certain Combiner lists, you can use this card with relative impunity.

I don't know how much this will see play if at all, but I do think that it's worth a try in Combiner lists to put some solid draw in the mix.




So, I don't know how to feel about this card. On one hand, it seems like a much better Plasma Burst given that it has a pip instead of Plasma Burst's lack thereof. But on the other, it seems like a less consistent Plasma Burst given that your target has to be in Robot Mode. Regardless of its requirement to have a Ranged character on the field, you can't ignore that your opponent can just transform one of their characters into vehicle mode to avoid this card altogether.

Although, there could be a case to be made that the threat of this card forcing out one of your opponent's transformations for the turn or perhaps changing the gameplan from the start of the game to avoid the card altogether. But at that point, wouldn't you rather just play a Plasma Burst and punish them anyway?

But therein lies an interesting thought: Redundancy. You see, Aerialbots use Photon Bomb, Armed Hovercraft, Bombing Run and other damaging cards to make plays -- this could just be another one of those to make their combos more consistent. In Pokemon, it's wise to play multiple search cards not because you have more Pokemon to search, but because you just need to find them quickly. In the fast-paced Transformers TCG, you will definitely need to find your combos just as quickly.

So, I pose this question to you: If you're already playing Plasma Burst, why not add this guy in to make that just a little bit more consistent? Just a thought.




Hm.

Plan 6.

So, in other words, you can put your entire hand on the top of the deck to not only rig what you're going to flip now, but on your defense as well. This effect is fascinating, and I am extremely interested in it. I mean, imagine using it with Mining Pick which gives you +1 each time you Plan, a card that already gives you Plan 2. You'd be giving yourself Plan 8, and if you happened to have that many cards in your hand, you'd be giving yourself a monstrous +9 attack including the +1 the Pick already gives you. Not to mention the cards you already put on the top of the deck to increase your damage further.

But the problem is this: You need a massive hand to make use of this, and that is a bit of a problem given that you're constantly decreasing in hand size. But, if you happened to have a deck to support such a massive hand, this might be a potentially game-winning maneuver.

Put it this way. Say for instance you have a hand with several double pips of varying colors, a white pip and a standard orange. Normally, this would likely be a bad hand. I mean, bad enough to draw one of your double pipped cards, but drawing that many would be a severe handicap. With Master Plan, you can put all of those on top of the list in a very specific order. If you're playing a balanced list, you can rig your next attack with orange pips and your white pip, leaving double blues on the top of your deck to rig the optimal defensive cards for your defense flips.

Rigging both offense and defense is a surprisingly good effect, and flipping the right cards at the right time can be kind of insane and put you extremely far ahead. It also makes Metroplex swoon, given his effect requires a certain combination of potentially six cards on the top of your deck.

All in all, I think this card has a ton of potential. It will most likely become a staple in Metroplex, but other than that I don't quite know what else would play it. Perhaps balanced combiner lists, or any balanced list in general, but otherwise if you're playing mono-color, stay as far away as possible unless you're wanting to make a Energon Pick shenanigans deck.




Hey, it's Pot of Greed! And it's good in this game too! Whodathunkit?

Like, actually, Pep Talk is pretty good, I'm not gonna lie. Nothing quite like adding cards to your hand, especially early game. Whereas I don't know if this would replace Inspiring Leadership, which may just be the better blue draw card given that it shows you more cards from your deck and you can get pesky Handheld Blasters out of your hand, it might be a good supplemental draw card. I mean, what's wrong with Pot of Greed, right?




R & R is bad. No, seriously, there are so many better cards that do other things that can also heal your characters while you're doing them. Take for instance Fling or Salvage for Parts. Fling can damage an opponent while Salvage for Parts can scrap their Upgrades. Thing is? Both of those cards are more or less unplayable and they're both better than R & R. So what does that tell you about this card?

Hey, at least it's better than Underhanded Tactics!




Security Console is so good. Oh my god this card is so good.

Okay, lemme calm myself down. So, basically, in the first set, there was Data Pad, which was an offensive Plan effect that doubled as a draw card. It was pretty darn okay, but there were usually better cards to play during your turn. Good utility, but still worse to attach than a Weapon.

Now we have an Armor, and I couldn't be happier.

So, what makes it so different? Well, Data Pad wasn't that great because you could only effectively use it once. Since you're going to wait an average of three more turns to attack with the Upgraded character again, and there's a chance that your opponent has focused them down in that time and you don't exactly reap too many benefits for its existence.

Security Console is different in that it works in the opposite way. Upon defending, you can rig your topdeck to not only be defensively inclined but also draw a card. Whenever your opponent attacks you, you get another card. It's a great draw effect that -- depending on the value of the target -- can net you way more cards over the course of a game than Data Pad.

I'm extremely excited to use this with Starscream -- Decepticon King, constantly reusing Decepticon Crown and putting it on the top of the deck. You constantly spam the crowns during a game, but the problem was getting them on top of the deck during your defense. Now you can, and that makes me super spooked because Starscream is kind of super good, and this kind of pushes him into a really good potential spot in the meta. I mean, it even states "Plan" on the card, so you can use Starscream's effect to return it to your hand if you need it immediately.

All in all, with defensive decks, I couldn't be happier. Though, then again, it is a card that just makes Double Primes just straight up better. But hey, it kind of makes everything else better, too, so it balances itself out.




Sonic Scramble is actually, in all honesty, the best card for hand destruction decks in the game, and I firmly stand by that statement. Computer Sabotage is good and so is Fog of War, but Sonic Scramble takes the cake. The fact that Sonic Scramble not only discards up to three full cards from your opponent's hand, but that it refunds your expenditure by drawing three cards (when all three are played at once) is actually fantastic.

All other disruption cards have no such bonus, let alone a positive effect for you at all. I mean, Security Checkpoint discards cards from your hand along with your opponent's, Salvage For Parts scraps your Upgrades as well as your opponent's... You get the picture.

Speaking of disruption cards with a drawback, Sonic Scramble definitely has its own and it's that you need all three of them in your hand at once. Remember, you can only put one green pip into your hand per battle, and if you ever happen to flip multiples of this guy without using Wave 2 Swoop, you'll be up the proverbial river.

But, if you can manage to get all three in your hand, you can use effects like Bumblebee -- Trusted Lieutenant's where you can use a free Action, then using them in tandem with a Computer Sabotage to completely discard your opponent's entire hand. Now, again, hand destruction isn't the best strategy in the game, but it should definitely be noted that your opponent having zero options during their turn is always a good thing.

Sonic Scrambler is a definite inclusion in every hand destruction list, but the question remains on whether or not hand destruction belongs in the metagame outside of key Action-scrapping turns.




Backup Beam is not good.

No, seriously, just play Scoundrel's/Noble's Blaster instead of this thing. It's a Blue pipped Bold card, which isn't inherently bad given Power Sword's current competition with Flamethrower in certain lists, but it's only Bold 2.

Now, you might say "Wait, aren't you going to be doing more damage with Backup Beam than Scoundrel's/Noble's since you're Bold?"

Well, yes, but actually no. First off, with the advent of Acid Storm, pretty much all Bold is on constant shaky ground given Acid Storm's splashability, but even moreso, since you're playing blue cards in your Bold deck now, you're more likely to whiff on that key offensive power when you need it. If you play any blue cards at all, at least S/N's Blaster deals confirmed damage.

Worse yet, Flamethrower is often included as a redundant weapon to offensive lists. Of course with Power Punch and Erratic Lightning likely to replace it, you can imagine how that affects Backup Beam's chances.

Just play Power Punch.




Sparring Gear is sort of okay, but in the same boat as Backup Beam.

Sure, they both have green pips and another pip that is the antithesis of what decks that play them hope to use, but there is a silver lining: Warpath, or rather, the lack thereof.

Warpath will likely not be played as much as Acid Storm is going to be, making his ability far less common and as such, making Tough more likely to stick than Bold is. But, still, being an orange pip in hopefully an all blue deck, you have to be pretty darn good to be included, and with something as mediocre as Sparring Gear... I just can't justify it in most lists, with perhaps the only exception being Balanced Tanks.

Either way, I don't think that either card will see play outside of sealed events.




Oh my god.

Steamroll is insane.

Okay, so let's say you're playing a late-game match between Double Prime versus some scrub from your local tournament. Basically, it doesn't matter who you're facing because this has always happened to everyone: The dreaded one-damage-off, the victory so close from your grasp, the sweetness of triumph so near your lips, but it's tugged away from you at the last moment when your opponent's useless Headstrong is left with a single HP and you have no choice but to attack into him a second time. More resources, more attacks... Basically an all-around horrible trade.

That's where Steamroll comes in. Remember Grimlock and how good he was with his innate ability to use that bleedover damage? Well, now you can have that on an Action. Now, instead of wasting another attack on that 1 HP Headstrong, you can instead swing for however much you like into him and let the bleedover damage deal considerable damage to one of his allies.

Steamroll allows an over aggressive deck to abuse its firepower to its fullest extent, and in a game where a single Force Field can stop an offensive push from KOing the smallest of characters, you'll find the value that Steamroll gives is definitely useful to a lot of lists and I think its play will be something but an inevitability.

Something tells me the value of Wave 1 Grimlock might be going down, too...




Huh?

Uh... What?

This card seems horrible. I mean, it's literally just a green pip! It's an Action that does nothing! What could possibly ever come of this?




Oh. Well, that would explain that.

So, this card is okay, but let me ask you something: In an all offensive list with very little staying power, do you really need your weapons to stick? I mean, you're going to be attacking with that character once, maybe twice before they go down, so lemme reiterate, will you have a chance for your weapon to stick? The answer is unequivocally "no".

So, let me pose this question to you: Why not just attach a Power Punch instead of going through all that rigmarole? To be perfectly honest, I can't justify this card or...




... Or this one.

Seriously, if you know me you know how little I care for Pierce, so when you see a card with that keyword on it, you can guess how I feel about it.

That being said, of the Pierce cards we have, this is probably the best one. As I said, high Pierce is actually good, but the amount of effort you have to put into this card is simply too much to make it viable. That being said, if you are playing a Tank deck that enjoys high amount of Pierce that will already be playing the card below... Well, I could see saving a seat for Jetpack. I can't see it that well -- like a seat at the very back of the movie theater that you're really unsure of why it's there -- but I can definitely still see it.




Superior Plating is what happens when Reinforced Plating does a line of cocaine and washes it down with three cans of of Four Loko. It's a spastic card to play that could end up clogging your hand down with several unplayable copies of a card, or explode your field with nigh invincible characters.

What makes this card even more interesting is that both Jetfire and Hunker Down can play it from your Scrap Pile more or less for free. This means that you can circumvent the normal rules of Tech Research + Superior X to get this busted card into play with less risk than its counterparts. The fact that you can use this in Tanks makes me extremely interested in their possible ability to defend against pretty much anything.

Seriously, this card can tank -- no pun intended -- a ton of damage for you, essentially giving your character a +4 on defense at all times, with variation to give you likely way more than that given white pips and double blue. Naturally, you could end up flipping blank cards, but I wager you'd be playing more of the former to raise the average defense you're getting off it.

I cannot wait to see how this card plays out. The biggest problem I see, though, is the necessity of playing Tech Research to at least declump your hand mid to late game after inevitably drawing into these guys instead of discarding them off an attack. But, seeing as it has a green pip, it's at least easier to do than not at all. Not the best card to be playing on your turn, for sure, but it's at least nice to have the option to play them from the hand.

All in all, the entire combo is fascinating and I think that it will definitely see play. Dreadwing, Tanks, Double Primes, pretty much anything that uses Tough will like this card. Where the others fall behind compared to alternative cards in the game, this one really stands out from the pack as being an immensely powerful Upgrade.




This card is really bad.

Well, let me clarify: It's not bad per se, but it's almost certainly not good by any stretch of the imagination.

So basically, Spare Parts is there to prevent your Force Field from being Scrapped by your opponent before you can use it, or your Superior Plating that you worked so hard to achieve. An admirable goal, if it did anything for you. You're essentially wasting an attachment just to say, "Ha ha! Now you really can't get rid of the card you could have gotten rid of last turn!" and feel extremely happy about yourself when your opponent gets the shocking idea of simply attacking you.

When I say that they could have simply gotten rid of your Force Field last turn, I mean it. They actually could have simply attacked into you with a smaller character to pop its effect, or use a Ramming Speed or a Drill Arms, and now even Smelt and Vaporize have been printed. It's just a bummer to play on your turn when you could be playing either another armor or another weapon and I am extremely disappointed in that regard.

This card doesn't do anything. Don't play it.




Testify is a pretty good card. Coming off the first set, there were only two cards that left you with more cards in your hand after playing them (Team Up Tactics and Equipment Enthusiast, respectively), and the only orange draw card amongst them was Incoming Transmission that simply replaced itself. Not a bad effect, and putting a pesky Improvised Shield on top of the deck is always useful, but more often then not you're simply putting a card you don't really want to Scrap on top of your deck.

Testify seeks to remedy that by simply giving you access to Pot of Greed for both players. Now, whereas you will be giving your opponent two cards too, you can use this to your advantage in certain decks that abuse hand size. As an example, Shockwave.

Now, I don't exactly know if this will replace Incoming Transmission or not, but when you consider that most orange decks have a constantly decreasing hand size, you start to get the picture that drawing more cards is pretty good to help mitigate that. After all, what's better than card advantage?




This card isn't good.

I get it, you see a card that says, "Draw three cards" and you begin to lose your mind, but need I remind you: Universal Network Access is a Star Card, and that means you're going to be playing one, maybe two Star Cards in your deck depending on the list. When you realize that, and when you realize that Leap of Faith is actually kind of insane in terms of value, this measly draw effect pales in comparison.

There are just better options out there, man. Don't spend your deck space on this.




Vaporize is actually really good for Double Primes, and the big reason is Battlefield Legend. I've spoken in the past about how good Battlefield Legend is, and one of the best things to do about him was to bait him into wasting the monstrous 8 attack that he gets on something that he can't KO -- likely something with a Force Field on them.

Now, sometimes Double Prime played Ramming Speed, which is literally the same thing as this but with an orange pip, but the orange pip sometimes made their defensive abilities less consistent. This is a more consistent version of Ramming Speed for Double Primes, and I can't really see any reason why you wouldn't play this card.

Again, I've spoken in the past about how bad Ramming Speed is in non-Prime decks with few exceptions, but this really takes the cake in terms of being "just for Primes". Fantastic in Primes, but not anywhere else.




No.

Don't.

Well, maybe.

That's the entire thought process I had when writing this segment of this article. I first thought about in Planes, then I remembered that you'd rather be attaching something like an Armed Hovercraft or something similar. Then, the thought struck me: Tanks! Tanks are almost entirely Ranged, and using an Armor to heal on top of your Medics can't be bad.

The only problem is, it's an orange pip. I suppose you could still play it in an already tight list in terms of pips, but I guess it always balances itself out by healing off whatever blue you missed on your defensive flip!

All in all, I don't think this thing will be played in anything else other than Tanks. There just isn't anything that would really make use of this bar maybe a heal-focused Plane list, but when has that ever happened?




First off, can I just say that if a flying sauropod happened to crash land in front of me on a Sunday Stroll, that I would probably never go outside ever again? I mean, you never know what other flying dinosaurs are out there, ready to fall on you -- big risk!

But in all seriousness, Crash Landing is a freaking insane card that I am in love with. It makes Ramjet actually an extremely appealing deck, it makes Sunstorm an extremely satisfying prospect and it makes the Aerialbots even more powerful than they already seem. Seriously, this card enables all of them to be potentially extremely oppressive.

I mean, let's take Ramjet for example. He starts off at 7 attack. You play a Swindled and you happen to attach an Erratic Lightning to him. You then attach a Crash Landing for turn and you swing at someone for somewhere around ten damage to Nemesis Prime. Your opponent then turns around, miffed that you hit them so hard with a vanilla common, and straight one-hits him with a very angry Battlefield Legend.

That's when the real magic happens. Now that you have an Erratic Lightning on Ramjet, he has a base attack of 10. That means Crash Landing activates and deals a solid 10 damage to a tapped target -- in this case, Battlefield Legend -- either softening them up for another swing with one of your partners or just killing them outright.

Just think. You can even play Ramjet with Skywarp to more or less confirm the Crash Landing will be attached to him using Skywarp's vehicle mode ability. Instead of Skywarp, you can also partner him with Thrust to deal even more freakishly high damage to your opponents' characters.

I for one welcome our new Plane overlords.




Hey, a double blue pip! Much like the Mounted Missiles card revealed earlier, Energized Field is the third double pipped card you can put in your mono-color deck, effectively making it more consistent and more defensive. The effect of its sister Star Card, Mounted Missiles, was a welcome one with its ability to essentially "keep" its double orange effect on the field through Upgrading, so how does Energized Field stack up?

In terms of effects? Not that well.

Well, let me explain. On one hand, Mounted Missiles allowed you to keep the pressure coming by attaching it alongside a weapon if you ever happened to draw it. This almost offensive double blue does the same thing where you expected it to do the opposite. Where you would expect it to have a similar effect (for instance, attaching it in your Utility slot and giving your character more defense), it instead relies on orange pips to activate, dealing damage to attackers if you flip an orange.

That's fine, but when you consider that you're going to be almost entirely blue, this is an extremely rare effect. I can't help but to wonder at what could have been, how good it would be if it had the effect of, perhaps, turning all non-blue pips -- even non-pipped cards -- into blue pips, or perhaps a +1 Armor that also gave you some degree of Tough, then you could definitely justify attaching it. But as it stands at the moment, I just can't.

Good in your deck, but not in your hand.




This card is a straight up worse Armed Hovercraft. I mean, I get it, you get to use it on a Melee character, but when it has a blue pip, how can you justify it in aggro lists that most Melee characters find themselves in? Okay, I get it -- Double Primes are both Melee, but they just don't need to place a single damage counter. I mean, if swinging for 11 on average wasn't enough, right?

So, I struggle to find a use for this card except maybe -- and I mean, big maybe -- Stunticons to try getting some poke damage in while trying to combine or set up a big Motormaster play. I'm sure that this card will make a great proxy back, though!




Espionage is a pretty cool card, I'm not gonna lie. When you consider that all Enigma cards are green, and the fact that your opponent is not likely to have more than one in their hand, you can scrap that Enigma before they get a chance to combine and essentially deny them their combiner for the game. How you know that they have an Enigma in-hand is easy: You know that your opponent put it into their hand when they flipped it since it's green, and if they don't put any into their hand from their flips it becomes pretty obvious that they have one in-hand.

That is something I love about this card especially: Reading your opponent. Bluffing your opponent. Interplay. Too often cards can boil down to "deal damage, but harder this time" and that is unfortunate. I really enjoy how much damage you can deal with this card, not to your opponent's characters, but to their strategy. It's a very strong thing to take what your opponent has when they need it, but the fact that it technically can't take cards that are pipless is a bit of a downer. It makes it balanced! But it's a downer nevertheless.

Something that makes this card even more powerful is the fact that it's green. You can pretty well find it more or less whenever you want through Bold or Tough numbers, and you can pretty well dominate less than experienced Combiner players by abusing the fact that you can pretty much get it at any time.

All in all, I absolutely adore this card. It's so strong at so many things, and it can cripple your opponent's hand outright. The fact that it's a green makes it even better, and when you consider that you can deny your opponent a Combination for the entire game, you begin to realize that this -- not Cornered -- is the real Combiner Killer.




So Enforcement Batons (and Bashing Shield down below) is kind of the antithesis of Drill Arms and Scrapper Gauntlets. The pips are swapped, the effects are swapped and the draw is gone, instead gaining a green pip for added consistency.

As for Enforcement Batons, I have never liked weapon scrapping effects given the abundance of Grenade Launcher, low defense attackers and now the advent of Power Punch which is basically just more Grenade Launcher at this point. The same rule applies here. You don't really gain anything other than +1 attack, and at that point, why even play it? You aren't punishing your opponent's weapons all that much, and you're not drawing a card like Scrapper Gauntlets does.

So, why play this?

The answer? You wouldn't. Unless you're terrified of Superior Blaster, of course, then this card becomes a pretty alright answer to it. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it's still a competent niche card to counter that niche card.

But again, niche is niche, and I wouldn't recommend filling your deck with niche techs against something you may never see lest you want to tank your own consistency against everything else.




This is something that I can get behind more. Getting an Armor that scraps other Armor in offensive lists is a pretty interesting idea, and when you consider that you can put Bashing Shield on an already high defensive character like Headstrong or Thrust to amplify their survivability in an orange list, you can't really go wrong with it.

Normally, I would start into a speech about Power Punch or Grenade Launcher, but when you consider that this is an easy, surefire way to get rid of Force Fields when you need them gone, I can't say too many bad things about Bashing Shield. I honestly really like it, and I can't think of too many offensive decks that wouldn't like to play it if for no other reason than to get rid of the almighty Force Field.




Attack Drones are a poor man's Erratic Lightning, which is weird given that Erratic Lightning is a Common.

No, really, this card deals a solid +3 damage for a three card investment, compared to Erratic Lightning or literally any other weapon that gives similar numbers for only a single card's investment.

Okay, so there has to be a reason to play Attack Drones, then, right? It's not all doom and gloom here. Well, not usually. So, what are the positives here? Well, for one you can play all three from your hand instantly instead of waiting three turns to attach all three like Cargo Trailer, and they have green pips which is pretty neat, but I think the most important reason to play them is for cards like Chop Shop and Equipment Enthusiast.

Equipment Enthusiast refunds you for all your Upgrade expenditure and then compounds that into massive draw later, but I think Chop Shop comboing with that makes for an even better draw effect. Something that Chop Shop does is, for every Upgrade on him, you can scrap them and both heal one damage for each and draw one for each. When you have three Drones and an armor, for example, you can scrap all four of them to heal him by four and then draw four cards.

You can use Equipment Enthusiast to essentially refund your Drones, then Transform Chop Shop to effectively double the amount of cards that you had initially. It's a niche use, of course, given that Chop Shop sees limited use in the first place, but that is a lot of draw to burn through your deck with and I can't wait to see how people are going to use it.

(*cough* Sunstorm *cough*)




So, basically, this is a Combo Card that deals heavily with the next card, so I won't go too much into that combo just yet. But, I do think that Ancient Wisdom in a vacuum is rather mediocre, to be perfectly frank.

Of course, used on its own, Combo Cards are always going to feel like a bad play. Sometimes, though, you might have to use it for its pseudo-draw effect. It's not the best, but at least it gives you something, unlike Tech Research. There really isn't too much to write home about this card outside of the combo. I mean, it automatically replaces itself with one of your two cards on the top of your deck at worst, and increases your hand size at best, but it's kind of hard to get excited about the idea that you can't just draw them unlike some other Actions.

But anyway, on to the combo!




Hoooooo boy, what a brain teaser. So, Unleash Potential is a card that pulls things out of your binder to put into your hand. Unfortunately, you can't put anything into your hand, but putting a Star Card into your deck regardless of whether or not you have 25 stars already is a pretty cool thing.

I mean, you won't really do anything with it other than take a Leap of Faith out of your binder, but it's an interesting concept. You see, you could take Bolt of Lightning and use it the next turn, but at that point, why aren't you just using One Shall Stand and just bite the bullet on the recoil damage? Instead of putting a Universal Network Access in your hand, why not just play a Pep Talk? Instead of going through a massive amount of rigmarole to pull something out of your binder, why not just play a similar card in your deck?

I simply cannot answer that question, and for that reason I cannot recommend this combo. I realize that putting a Leap of Faith into a list that couldn't before sounds good, but when you realize all the effort it took to finally use it, you'll start to see what I mean. I mean, imagine, fighting through the inconsistency of getting both Unleash Potential and Ancient Wisdom in your hand, finally getting a Leap of Faith in your hand to use the next turn, only for your opponent to play a Disruptive Entrance, transform Mirage or use Espionage to scrap it before you can even play it.

That's crushing.

That's reason enough not to play it.

Inconsistency can be surmounted through superior draw (like Cars), but when you consider the fact that your opponent can just scrap the card you took forever to finally get through an Action of their own, I can't justify playing this at all. I mean, you can always use Recon System or Energized Field, but why go through the effort at all at that point?

Sadly, the most interesting card combo is also one of the hardest to justify in a list. I realize what the guys at Wizards were trying to do with this, but it just didn't pay off. At least, not yet.




I lost count of how many cards I have done.

I'm not kidding. I legitimately do not know how big that was, but all I know is that it was worth every moment of writing it. I love this game quite a lot, and I love how fun and engaging it is to play. Rise of the Combiners takes that to a whole new level and brings in some of the most fascinating card combos I've seen to date and some of the most interesting physical card mechanics I've ever laid eyes upon in terms of the Combiner cards.

March 1st is approaching fast, and my wallet is already screaming a high pitch, "No, daddy, please!" as I make plans to buy a box of product. But the cool part about all of this is knowing that Wizards of the Coast sees how well this game is doing, and how Competitive is right around the corner.

But... That's it. That's kind of everything we have until Devastator comes out with his exclusive Battle Cards and Wave 3. As always, it's a pleasure to write for Seibertron and it's even more of a pleasure to know that people actually read what I pour a frankly inordinate amount of time into!

In all seriousness, though, I will be frequenting my YouTube Channel, Nanomachines to upload more coverage of new decks and competitive updates. I haven't been able to recently thanks to some hectic work schedules, but I've been really enjoying putting out content for you guys.

What about you? What has been your favorite part of this set? Triplechangers? Combiners? Green pips? Omega Supreme? Let me know in the comments below, and as always, thanks for tuning in!

Thank you so much for the hard work and time you out into this article, and all articles. I'm a bit behind on the game but a green PIP? What the heckle-bots that about? This game is great. The basic play is great for my dive year old and it has been teaching him basic math. I look forward to getting more into competitive play but there are not a lot of players in my area as of yet. Heck, if anything I'll just collect some awesome TF cards and play basic with my

Thanks for reading! I put a lot of work into this one. I'm tired. lolol

Some cards, like Scrounge, Backup Beam, etc have a green icon. This icon can be swapped after a battle is over for a card in your hand once per battle.

It's a fantastic way to build your hand. The general way to describe them is either "icon" or "pip" colloquially.

I want to get into this game but I feel overwhelmed. ThT said, I am loving rhe artwork on some of these. Especially Steamroll. WHAM!!

Wow! Seeing the tech cards here makes me want to bust out the eight packs of Rise of the Combiners I picked up from one of my Walmarts and see what I've actually got in 'em.

Flashwave wrote:I want to get into this game but I feel overwhelmed.

That's because it is. It's difficult to collect even ignoring the side sets like Metroplex and exclusives like Omega and the gold Bee above. Two boxes (edit: fixed, first version of this post was unintentionally wrong) will run ~$200 and you won't end up with all of a wave after, even ignoring "Super Rares"! That's insane.

The rules already had what felt like one layer of complexity too many, and the new pips and combiners are just a line too far. I already wasn't enjoying it with the rule structure, now there's too much to follow to keep me invested in the gaming aspect.

I'm not sure I'm going to keep up with it after Devastator. It's fun to flip through a binder of what really are nice looking cards after the fact, but I'd rather assemble the 419 out of 421 Power of the Primes cards that I have all over again than one wave of these things.

ScottyP wrote:That's because it is. It's difficult to collect even ignoring the side sets like Metroplex and exclusives like Omega and the gold Bee above. Two boxes (edit: fixed, first version of this post was unintentionally wrong) will run ~$200 and you won't end up with all of a wave after, even ignoring "Super Rares"! That's insane.

Actually, it's rather easy to collect most cards from the set for a pittance, especially after the set has been out for a while. Just look at wave one cards -- some of the character cards are around 10 cents! Of course, Nemesis Prime is still around $70 because he's a bit nutty, but there are always exceptions.

If you'd like to build a deck, buying boxes is never a good way to do it. Instead, you should be buying singles from TCGPlayer or other online vendors that have the single cards up for sale. Plus, it's an easy way to finish off a few pieces of combiners!

Flashwave wrote:I want to get into this game but I feel overwhelmed. ThT said, I am loving rhe artwork on some of these. Especially Steamroll. WHAM!!

It really can seem that way from the surface -- the rules even took me a bit to firmly grasp after watching their instructional videos! But I do recommend that you check out some gameplay on YouTube to get a good idea on how the game plays. Heck, if you want to, you could pick up Metroplex and play with him to a competent degree right out of the box!

For all the fans of the Official Transformers Trading Card Game, we have a special treat to report, as one of the designers shared a little bit of what went into making the Battle Card Espionage, as featured in Wave 2: Rise of the Combiners.

The piece was uploaded onto the Official Transformers Trading Card Game Facebook page

For a reminder, here's the Battle Card Ken talks about below:



Here's the text of the piece for your convenience:

Ken Nagle wrote:I’m Ken Nagle, Design Lead for Transformers TCG.
Today, I have a battle card from Rise of the Combiners I’d like to take a closer look at: Espionage.

Espionage is a disruptive Action that I had designed and playtested in Wave 1. However, it felt like it fit much better in Wave 2 after introducing the green battle icon (After a battle, you can swap a card in your hand with one of your flipped green cards).
1. Since Espionage is a situational card, the green battle icon helps you find it when it’s effective or ignore it when it’s not.
2. Your opponent might have green icons as well, so you’ll often know a card in your opponent’s hand.
3. Adding another color to the game gives choosing a color with Espionage another wrinkle that we like.
4. Multicolor cards in Wave 1 like Matrix of Leadership and Roll Out! are just better because they are both orange and blue. We like that Espionage is better against these multicolor cards.
5. Rise of the Combiners introduces many Combiner teams, but some players will want some way to fight against their friend’s combiner deck. Since a Combiner can’t flip or uncombine (the rules would be just too messy) we know that once a combiner combines there’s no going back. However, since a big combiner needs an Enigma battle card, there is often a chance to use Espionage to scrap your opponent’s Enigma just before they want to combine. It’s not foolproof, but it can do the trick!
6. Finally, playing Espionage has a high skill cap. You’ll have to decide when to play it, what color to name, which card of the opponent’s to take, and when to use the green icon to put it into your hand.
Initially Espionage was just a green icon, but it wasn’t strong enough for a situational card that also requires skill to be effective. Espionage can’t do anything about an opponent’s Bolt of Lightning or other card with no battle icons. For those reasons we added a white icon since we liked the text box as is.
Until next time, may your opponent be holding the right card at the wrong time.

Did you find this helpful? Let us know in the Energon Pub and stay tuned to Seibertron for all the latest news and reviews!

WreckerJack wrote:

chuckdawg1999 wrote:Does anybody know if there's a one player option, like solitaire?

I'm sure you can do that if you have 2 decks. I have done that with MTG and Yugioh back in the day. It's good to find holes in your strategy or weaknesses in your deck.

im with chuck on this

I disagree with everything Sideways said.

Physical adjusting is very important in this game(do 3 identical cycles).

I ignore Optimus13,Mega13 and Nemesis,because they are too strong,as for the Sludge absorption.

The new workO can make the backupP obsolete.

The old quadrio deck which i can rename white equipement
Jazz-hound-prowl-arcee/scrapnel-barrage-chop-kickback
I still function X 1
Turbo/swarm-battleR-atackD-start/bug-TBTA-piercingB-grenade-newD-forceF-rollout-blast-teamup/pep-dataB

Melee
Grimlock-sludge-snarl/bee10-slug-swoop/bee6-wheeljack-jetfire
One shall fall X 1
Dinojaw/agility/matrix-dinochomp/start/vaporize-incoming-powerS-Scheckpoint-workO-bodyA-Eaxe-shock-heroism-rest-peace-secretD
Alway put the healing close to armor(triple individual rest)

I wrote leap twice for cosmo,i wanted the inspirationnal.For maximus,the Scheckpoint may be better than the pep.Acidstorm make Flamewar obsolete,the antibold can be a waste but there is two other magician.

This sightings news comes to us from fellow Seibertron user Omega Scoopreme, as she has wrote in to us to let us know that she's found a mighty beast out in the wilds of Eugene, Oregon. For there at a Barnes and Noble, sat the latest addition to the Official Transformers Trading Card Game by Wizards of the Coast, the Devastator Combiner deck!

As the name suggests, this deck is centered around the powerful Decepticon combiner Devastator and is playable right out of the box. The deck was available at the store for $24.99.

Omega Scoopreme has kindly sent us pictures of the sighting, including the receipt showing where they purchased it. As this was due for release at the end of March, it's more than likely that you may have a Devastator Deck lurking on shelves near you now!















Will you be picking up this deck to add Devesator to your collection? Let us know in the Energon Pub and stay tuned to Seibertron for all the latest news and reviews!

It's spelled "DEVASTATOR!" You misspelled it in the title and repeatedly in the article.

Not sure how new this is, or how long they have been but ironically in Richmond, Virginia I saw 6 of these at a Barnes and Noble. Neat packaging for sure.

SGM

I got mine there on Saturday. Was looking for the Metroplex box online, and stumbled across it to my complete surprise, as I forgot the Constructicons even came in a box.

I believe those were my first ever bought-online picked-up-in-store purchases (Metroplex at Gamestop), and I got each at nice discount: 15% off coupon at B&N, and Metroplex was only only $13 and change! As usual, just assumed I was the last to know.

I didn't wrote the Devastator deck in page 15.
badA X 1
Peace-scrounge-builder-dataB-Improvised-Testify-scrapper-Rconversion-pep-enigma-HeavyL-reclaim-workO

He's completely ruined by the Predaking and his permanent anti heal,menasaur has zero chance to stop him.The extta KO?Just put the damage on low HP dude(brave attack in second).

I rewrite the anti combiner
Venin-Bomb11-Kickback/Blurr-Optimus7-Warpath
Cornered X 1
Testify-Scrounge-Erratic-Stealth-Improvised-inverted-Bashing-Swindled/Confidence-PowerP/SuperC-Emergency/Reckless-Sonic/Focus-Peace-Intelligence/SecretD.

The idea of the sonic is to prevent the use of the enigma without loosing card for Bomb11.

Looks like the card game will be adding elements of WFC: Siege to the mix:












Here's the source: https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/04/08 ... 517d0019b5

You'll need THREE of this armor.

What's a micro master? Not that card as that's clearly a battle master...

ZeroWolf wrote:What's a micro master? Not that card as that's clearly a battle master...

Basically a normal TF but on a normal-sized game card instead of a larger one. The original IGN article has one. Look for "Private Red Heat".

Thank to IGN, we have new card reveals for the Transformers Trading Card Game. These are part of wave 3, which is set for a June 28 release. It introduces two new card types: Battle Master and Micro Master cards. The new Battle and Micro Master cards will be much smaller. They will be 88mm tall by 63mm wide. This is part of adding the Transformers Siege theme to the card game. that also comes with new art based on the leader class toys Shockwave and Ultra Magnus.

Here is what Drew Nolosco, Transformers: TCG Brand Manager had to say:

Each War for Cybertron: Siege pack will have two character cards in it: one large character and one small character.

We will see some characters never been shown before in their original Cybertronian incarnations.

Transformers is 35 years old this year. The age of youngsters being raised by the original generation of Transformers fans is such that they're at the point where parents are teaching them games, bringing them up as geeks and gamers.

Each generation can enjoy this game at level that's appropriate for that age.

We also have an image of the Warpath card:

These look great. The art work is incredible. A bit odd that the micromaster option is represented by a battlemaster but hey it is what it is.

Okay, I'm not a big card gamer, so maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong here, but does the Ultra Magnus Armor card basically translate to "-1 damage from a non weapon attack"

The bonus's on the bottom look nice, but the text just seems wordy.

Rodimus Knight wrote:Okay, I'm not a big card gamer, so maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong here, but does the Ultra Magnus Armor card basically translate to "-1 damage from a non weapon attack"

The bonus's on the bottom look nice, but the text just seems wordy.

They have to be wordy because:
-people are dumb/won't read things properly and don't understand unless it's wordy
-people are smart/sneaky and try to misinterpret things in their favor (cheat), unless it's wordy to eliminate any wiggle room or grey area

Half of he cards here are already out. The Warpath and all the Battle cards are from older sets.

I know you guys are into this type of stuff, so when I saw that IGN was mentioning about it, I had to share this with Ya'll.

Sorry I'm late! My computer restarted mid-article and erased a good deal of work. But here's an article going over the previously revealed Wave 3 cards as well as a few new ones!

____________________




Oh, hello there! Fancy meeting you here. What have I been doing since the last set? Oh, you know, the usual. Work, sleep, ritualistic sacrifice of virgins to Sergeant Kup to bring bountiful offense and defense flips.

Yeah. The usual.

But unlike me, the guys over at Wizards of the Coast have been hard at work! This time, they started a new set with plenty of new mechanics including Targetmast-- Erm, Battle Masters and Micromasters! All of this information comes thanks to an exclusive article by IGN and a startlingly adorable Facebook note by the TFTCG page, in which they reveal juicy details about the next set -- from Secret Actions, Wave 4 announcement to several new cards!

Of those cards that they revealed, none could size up to the astounding shock, excitement and anticipation than the announcement that Soundwave will not only be in this set but that he will incorporate the new mechanics held within. My guess -- since we don't have a card of him to show just yet -- is that he is going to incorporate the new Battle Master mechanics with his cassettes. There is good reason for this, and I think the best way to tell you why is to show you.







Targe-- Battle Masters, rather, are fascinating and are seemingly infinite value. You start out in robot mode, and whereas at least Firedrive's stats leave something to be desired, you can at least deal chip damage with him before Firedrive inevitably becomes a powerful weapon to whomever you attach him to. You're more or less confirmed to get that value out of a Battle Master as your opponent can -- in a vacuum -- only KO one character per turn. This more or less confirms that you will have access to their weapon modes, and if Firedrive's weapon mode is anything to go by, they look like they're going to pack one heck of a punch.

An interesting thought to think about is using Firedrive with Thrust and another nine star partner. You can eventually attach Firedrive to Thrust, discard several cards from your hand to give Thrust a boost in damage and then pass that damage on to another threat for potentially massive damage.

Now, my favorite part about Firedrive in particular is that he's a Weapon. There is plenty of Armor scrapping nowadays, but there is virtually zero weapon scrapping cards that are played enough to threaten Firedrive, meaning that if you're careful, you can get several uses out of him once he's a weapon. That's fantastic value, to be perfectly frank with you.

Something else that I would like to touch on is that Firedrive is partnered -- in-universe -- with Hot Rod as his Targetmaster ally. I mean, even Firedrive's name is a sort of wordplay on Hot Rod. It would surprise me greatly if we did not see a Hot Rod card in Siege, just judging from WOTC's track record.

All in all, I love the idea of Battle Masters. More importantly, I love the idea that Soundwave's cassettes also being Battle Masters that turn into Cassettes to synergize with Soundwave once attached. They're really quite impressive, and I can't wait to play with them.




Micromasters! Oh, goodness me, why didn't I see this coming? It seems so obvious in hindsight. So, for those who don't know card measurements, these Micromasters and Battle Masters are both the size of a standard Magic The Gathering card. This means that you pull them not as a replacement of a standard character, but alongside your battle cards. That's a good thing, too, because sometimes the Battle Card unpacking was a bit underwhelming compared to the character reveal.

Now, as for Red Heat, we can see that he has some rather interesting traits that can make him an interesting addition to a team. For one, he's a five star Truck which means he can use Truck-based support like Cargo Trailer, but perhaps more importantly he's a Specialist that is virtually untargetable by your opponent on the first turn of the game thanks to his innate Stealth whilst he's untapped. Even moreso, his utility in robot mode is some of the most fascinating abilities for a five star character I've seen to date. You have a fantastic -- and somewhat disconcerting given recent meta developments -- ability in your robot mode: A pocket Swap Parts.

So, here's a little context as to why I'm a bit disconcerted about this otherwise mediocre ability. Normally, Swap Parts is a slightly "meh" effect where you can perhaps move a weapon or an Armor. But here's the thing. Swap Parts and other "move" effects reactivates the "put" abilities of Upgrades, including things like Rapid Ascent, Cooling Vents, Drill Arms, but chiefly in recent days it was discovered that when you have a team of Specialists, you can move Field Communicators and Multi Mission Gears to play a stunning amount of free Actions and Upgrades from your hand and deck.

This playstyle promotes an infinite combo, where you can play both I STILL FUNCTION! and Peace Through Tyranny in the same turn to essentially gain a free turn, and with potent draw, you eventually begin taking infinite free turns. Using Swap Parts, you can pull this combo off consistently enough, but something that is astonishing to think about is how consistent it makes the combo when you can use Swap Parts more or less whenever you want using Red Heat. His ability to avoid all damage on the first turn of the game is extremely powerful given the deck's fragile disposition, and when you consider that he's also an Autobot Specialist to cap off a team of Autobot Specialists... Well, you can tell where this is going.

The only thing that I would say is a deterrent of playing Red Heat in Infinite is the fact that he is only five stars, not the minimum of six that Peace Through Tyranny requires. If you are certain that your other Autobot Specialist can take a hit, then by all means. In fact, you could try building your list around that concept and you might find that you become even more consistent.

I digress from the main point. As a general whole, Private Red Heat isn't the best card for most lists. You won't be getting the full use of his Swap Parts effect, and in a lot of lists White cards are far fewer than other colors. But, that being said, there is a silver lining -- we know that he is part of the "Rescue Patrol" as per his trait, and that means that his Micromaster partner, Stakeout, will also be printed. We can assume the same about other Micromasters that will be printed, and perhaps more importantly, possible synergy. But until then, I can only see one list to play him in and one alone: Infinite.

Something else worthy of note is that you can only use one "tapping" effect during your turn, like Red Heat's. This means that you can't untap him through Ready For Action and use him a second time in the same turn. Of course, this is neither bad news nor good news -- it's just news. Make of it what you will!




Shockwave is a Major in this prequel set, and he is majorly interesting. If you notice something about him, you'll notice that his cost is titanic -- just like his stats. He has the highest stats of any non-Combiner Decepticon, and the highest point cost as well. This high point cost definitely limit the potential partners you can play him with, but interestingly enough, if you play him with Shockwave -- Cybertron Commander, you get 25 points on the nose.

The synergy isn't just skin-deep, either -- Major Shockwave can "dig" farther into your deck to pull out Decepticon cards and/or Secret Actions. Certain of these cards -- Bad Attitude foremost of these -- can be used to facilitate your playstyle. If your playstyle is to deal damage outside of combat, then Bad Attitude will be your best friend with both Shockwave. But here's the thing about that -- other than Bad Attitude, Swindled and Scoundrel's Blaster, there aren't that many uesful cards that Major Shockwave can use.

I mean, sure, you could make the case that Decepticon Crown could be in certain offensive builds, but look at it this way: If Decepticon Crown was on top of your deck, it would end up in your hand anyway thanks to its green pip, and you could say the same about Scoundrel's Blaster. The Decepticon-only side of this guy seems a bit mediocre, to be perfectly frank, especially since they still take up your turn plays.

To be perfectly blunt, he just isn't good enough on his own to warrant too much investment of time into Double Shockwave. But that being said, there is a silver lining.

Secret Actions are something brand new to the set, and whereas I won't go into too much depth on their intricacies here, I will tell you that they breed a very disruptive playstyle that no doubt will eventually have discarding effects. At the time of writing, we have only seen one Secret Action, and it's included in the Battle Card section of this article.

But to close things off, Major Shockwave has a little potential, but his expensive nature is going to be a major turnoff for a lot of people looking to make decks out of him.




Major Magnus is, on the surface, extremely mediocre. His ability damages himself, his stats are lackluster save his monstrous HP and he's expensive to boot. He has Brave, which is cool, but with only one defense, he'll be toast, right?

Well yes, but also no.

His vehicle mode ability sucks in an Ultra Magnus Armor from the deck, and as a little spoiler alert for later on in the article, UMA is an armor card that gives him +2 attack and +2 defense and reduces all non-attack damage dealt to him by one. Sounds insane, right? Well, it would be if it also didn't cost two stars to put in your deck at all and even better if it couldn't be popped by Bashing Shield, but that's a discussion for later.

So, with these innate boosts to his stats, he deals a considerable amount of damage and has a considerable amount of tankiness. I mean, at three defense and eight attack with added effects, he just seems like a better Inferno. Now, say what you will about Inferno and his viability, but his attack of eight is still monstrous, and his survivability is also still extremely high. So, think about that but imagine if Inferno actually did something other than damage. In fact, imagine if your opponent had to attack into him turn one instead of one of your squishier teammates!

That's the power of Ultra Magnus. Your opponent effectively wastes an attack on the first turn of the game while you opt to go second, forcing your opponent to attack him with no response for his powerful armor. I realize he comes at a premium, but I can't help but to like this guy for that reason. Well, that and his spreading effects.

But I fear that if your opponent has Bashing Shield or other removal effects, he'll just fall by the wayside. After all, without his suit, he's just a worse, more expensive Inferno.




Aimless is a Battle Master with a flair for the defensive. Coming from VectorSigma.info (or at least, that's where I got the picture after I couldn't find it online) we get our first look at Aimless! With an innate Tough 3 and a powerful ability in his weapon mode, he makes a strong first impression. Even with his mediocre innate defense, he still puts out a good amount of defense with his Tough 3. The only problem I see with him is his lackluster offensive power in his robot mode. Without Pierce, a Blue deck with attack numbers that low would be better off trying to defeat their opponents by boring them to death. He makes a good meat shield, but the trouble is getting value out of him other than that.

But there is a silver lining.

What he lacks in his offensive power in robot mode, Aimless more than make up for it with his powerful weapon mode. With the frankly silly ability to deal three damage regardless of attack damage or defense before dealing damage for his attack, completely bypassing Force Field, Skrapnel or other similar effects, he can make even the weakest character seem powerful. For instance, consider Demolishor in a balanced list -- he's not going to do anything on his own, but with Aimless attached, he can do a startlingly potent amount of damage given he will almost always trigger Demolishor's effect.

In closing, Aimless is a neat character that is tough to find early value with outside of being a meat shield. But, mid to late game, if you partner him with a character that has innate Bold or flips extra cards, you'll love him to death.

No, really, kill this guy quick to get his weapon!






Two stars.

Two stars and this is all you get?

Magnus' armor seems really powerful when placed on Magnus, and its pips are always welcome in any deck, but when you realize that the frankly ridiculous cost of putting it in your deck followed by the fact that you can't even attach it to non-Autobots makes its usefulness extremely limited. Okay, I get it -- having an Armor that adds both offense and defense as well as reducing incoming non-attack damage by one seems really good, and it is, but for those two stars, would you not just rather take a Leap of Faith or similarly priced star cards?

Remember, Bashing Shield is kind of everywhere in offensive decks, so you'll get to use this card on Magnus on the first turn of the game, but without Spare Parts you can kiss this suit goodbye. It's for this reason that you can't use it on non-Magnus characters as easily as you could, say, on Magnus who attaches it to himself at the start of the game. You don't have time to attach a Spare Parts when you have weapons to worry about, as well as your opponents disruption.

Heh. It's almost like the developers only wanted Magnus wearing Magnus' armor! Who'd have thought it?

Anyway, it's way too expensive for what it offers outside of Ultra Magnus builds. Only take it if you happen to have way too many stars to burn.




Ever just want to play a totally harmless card face-down and make your opponent panic as to what horrible machinations you're planning? Ever wish that Incoming Transmission could rig cards defensively? Ever want to do both of those things at once?

No? Just me then? Well, uh... You're missing out, then!

Well, Secret Actions seem to be a weird mix of Trap Cards from Yu-Gi-Oh and Action Cards. Obviously, we can assume that Battlefield Report will be one of many Secret Actions in this set, and with the mechanic of triggering on your opponent's turn, we can assume the disruptive nature of the cards that you can use to mess with your opponent's turn.

But speculation aside, Battlefield Report seems to be a defensive Incoming Transmission that you can use after your opponent devoted resources to attack a character. This is good, too, given that you can opt out of putting more valuable double Blue cards on the top of your deck if your opponent is merely attacking a nearly KO'd character anyway. It helps you avoid wasting resources.

But, that's kind of it. It's not that great, to be perfectly frank. Drawing two then Planning one seems good, but there are just better draw cards out there. The only thing I can say to this is that it's good to see defensive Plan effects to make King Starscream even more viable than it already is.

It most certainly will not see play in many offensive decks, but in extremely defensive ones like Double Shockwave, Tanks or similar lists, I don't really see why you wouldn't play Battlefield Report unless space is an issue. It's not like they won't trigger the Secret Action effect, unlike I'm sure plenty of other cards we haven't seen yet. That said, I cannot wait to find out what other Secret Actions there are, and what they'll do! Imagine if there was a counterspell and how you might play around it! Well, a boy can dream.




You want to know a secret? I've always fancied myself a bit of a detective. I'm not going to lie, when I wrote a detective into a novel of mine, I ended up gleaning a few things from her. The first of which is to read into every detail, which is both a gift and a curse, and the second is to notice everything that's hidden in plain sight. So, when I saw the box that Siege is being carried in, I put those skills learned from a fictional character I created to good use.

From there, I happened to see a few figures on the side of the box. Intrigued and with a bit of a rush of adrenaline, I investigated a bit further. When I opened it up in GIMP, I did my best to scale, stretch and shear my way to answers, leaving me with a few clues on whom else is going to be printed in this set, character-wise:



From this picture it's pretty clear that we are going to be getting not just Hound, but it seems to be Sideswipe standing directly next to him! As it stands, we have no idea what they'll do. But, we at least know what they'll look like and that they're in the set!

Another thing that I noticed is that these characters have a peculiar naming convention. No, I'm not talking about "Major" Shockwave or "Private" Red Heat. I'm talking about, in the past, cards used to be "TITLE -- SUBTITLE" like Shockwave -- Cybertron Commander, or Optimus Prime -- Battlefield Legend. Now? Now they have multiple secondary names with Ultra Magnus -- Infantry + City Commander.

It's odd that there are multiple characters with "Infantry" in their subtitles, as well. It makes me wonder if this is a name at all, or if they're extremely well-hidden secondary traits for cards that state "for every character with Infantry in their name" or something similar. I dunno, I guess my tin foil cap is showing again, but I can't help but to see a pattern.




Boy howdy, do we have some nutty things happening. I'm not exaggerating when I say that this dwarfs the changes that Rise of the Combiners brought forward. Battle Masters and Micromasters both, Secret Actions and even more interesting mechanics from there. Whether or not Battle Masters will shift the meta is yet to be seen, despite their hype. Armor is easily removed, but so too are weapons. The problem was, no one really played cards to remove them because weapons were either discarded or they weren't as pressing of an issue that armor was.

Now that we have incentive to play anti-weapon cards, what will become of the metagame? Do you think that the age of Battle Masters and Micromasters are fast approaching? Will Erector ever get a card? I mean, I'd be happy with a promo card, even! Let me know what you think in the comments below, and I'll see you next time!

Via their Twitter, the Transformers TCG peeps at the Wizards of the Coast have revealed info regarding their upcoming launch event for the next wave of cards including a launch-exclusive card, and a new card for Wave 3. The former, a retailer exclusive, is “Private Smashdown” and “Airquake Hammerclaw”, are only available through an exclusive promo-kit, features both the robot and weapon modes of the upcoming weaponizer Smashdown from the War For Cybertron Siege line. The latter card, presumably available through usual means, is "Special Ops", featuring Soundwave ejecting his cassetticons that allows players to perform two consecutive secret plays.

According to the their page, these promo kits are only available for purchase through local WPN stores and those wishing to purchase them must contact their preferred retailers to have one ordered. For more details on the launch day event and the cards announced, check out their Twitter page at https://twitter.com/TransformersTCG?s=09

The fog from the second wave is combinable to the Rascent for the seekers in wave 1,i can already say it fit this new Shockwave,as the bravery on his ally,this wave is not independant either.How to get 3 blue?By flipping a white in a 3B/1W formation,i usually put a minority but not with them,apparently.

The spare can protect your new weapons.I rewrite the deck for Volcanicus,variant of Devastator.

Fling X 1
Cofidence-Scrounge-Mining for Sludge-Spare-Testify-Stealth-Electrified-DataB-Pep-Enigma-Master-Bravery-Rconversion.

The authors has said they ban swapP because of an infinite,no more armedH+that,it's a nerf for the seekers.They really want to ban that?

Metroplex do armedH+sixshot+swap MISSION next turn instead,i suppose his special tap negate the opponent next attack ,so,it should be limited at one per game.

Right now,Redheat is the only character who can use the pierce icon cards.It's gonna be a 2P/1W/2B/1W formation.

Got a news roundup article!

__________



Well, it happened. We lost a comrade. He burned bright, hot, and far too fast. If you don't know what I'm talking about, or have been keeping up with recent events with the metagame in the Transformers TCG, let me brief you on a little thing I like to call "Infinite Combo", or just "Combo" for short.

But first, let's talk a little about how the card game works to refresh your memory on this subject. Once each turn you can do four separate actions: Transform a character, play an Action, play an Upgrade, and then attack. There are certain cards that get around those rules in order to play more cards in a turn, such as Multi-Mission Gear from Wave 1 that allowed you to play a second Action when you attached it to one of your characters. Field Communicator is another example, which scraps the top of your deck, where you can then choose to play it if you would like.

But here's the thing: Whenever you swap or move Upgrades between characters, their "Put" effects reactivate. So, for instance, if you played a Field Communicator and flipped a Multi-Mission Gear, you could use that Multi-Mission Gear's effect to play a Swap Parts, reactivating both the Field Communicator as well as the Multi-Mission Gear.

To what end, you ask? Well, eventually you ramp up your upgrades and you begin to spam both Peace Through Tyranny and I STILL FUNCTION! in the same turn, being able to take infinite turns. You would then be able to play one Plasma Burst in the list, dealing chip damage over your effectively infinite turns to eventually win the game after your opponent has ideally only taken one or two turns in total.

Well, that's what could have happened. Earlier today, Wizards of the Coast made a Note on their official Facebook Page banning Swap Parts from Tournament Play effective on the 19th. This is the first time the game has been broken by the community, and the first time that Wizards has had to ban a card in the Transformers Trading Card Game.

What do you think? From my playtesting, Combo was effectively a hit or miss deck that could either be punished early into oblivion, or stomp things that weren't able to outspeed it. Insecticons had a good shot at it, same with Battlefield Legend. But, that being said, it rather ate Combiner decks alive other than Predacons. I realize the deck isn't exactly "interactive", as stated in their note, but I can't help but to think about how the deck might have been received by an older community, one with more cards at their disposal and a more established metagame. It's a controversial opinion, I know, but liking total control decks always is.

But, that's not all the news that we have today: The official Facebook Page, along with a Battle Card, revealed that all Battle Card artwork in Siege is actually original artwork made by the team, which is fantastic news!

This means that the guys at Wizards aren't just comfortable enough with their profit margins to put out their third and fourth set but also to use artists to add to their own stock of artwork instead of reusing comic artwork. I can't wait to see how that plays out with both potential stories to be told through the serialized artwork as well as what other projects might hold with that influx of funds by Wizards of the Coast!

But that's not all the information that we have. In fact, one might say that there was more to these reveals than meets the eye...





Black pips are here, and now that they are, I can't help but to be excited for the prospects that they bring. If you didn't know already, here's a recap on black pips: Whenever you flip a Black pip, your character gains Pierce 1 for each instance of black pips that you flip, stacking on top of other instances of Pierce that you have. So, if you have a Noble's Blaster on one of your characters giving him Pierce 2, and during your attack you flip two black pips. That character would then gain Pierce 4 in total, combining the Pierce 2 you gain from your black pips with the Pierce 2 you have on your Noble's Blaster.

Now, whether or not RR Disruptor Blade is good given its reliance on black pips remains to be seen. Put it this way: In a blue list -- which one could say has one of the chief usage of Pierce in the game -- any pip that is not blue is one less defense that you're going to be able to flip. It's the whole reason playing a "balanced" list is usually frowned upon, with both orange and blue pips clogging the other's flips with the wrong color. So, with that ideology, would you not say that black pips belong in their own colored list? Or that playing the proverbial "Orzhov" black and white combo would be the way to go?

Well, that remains to be seen. I can definitely see it, especially in decks with Jazz, Mirage and similarly white-focused lists. But regardless of that, there is one thing for certain. If you are playing black pips, I don't see why you wouldn't want RR Disruptor Blade as an inclusion. Its damage output is high, and at worst case scenario, you can at least say that it's a slightly worse Grenade Launcher.

Oh, and one last thing, what on Earth does "RR" stand for? Rest and Relaxation? Are you killing your opponent with a blade that makes them tired? I am so confused.




I heard this card was the bomb!

Oh god.

Anyway, Erratic Energy Grenade is in the same vein as Bug Bomb is for Insecticons, but unlike the dud of Bug Bomb, Erratic Energy Grenade actually has a potential place in certain decks. It's wonky, and many lists will find its appeal discordant with their playstyle, but I think that a few decks will definitely like to have it on-board.

Now that I mention it, I'm actually really glad that Combo is now being pushed out of the format, because Erratic Energy Grenade would have likely been a great boon to its already high power level. I mean, think about it: During your turn, you would sometimes have to pass on playing a Plasma Burst because you ran out of Actions to play. With EEG being an Upgrade, you could play it easily on your turn, and since you're constantly KOing your own character through Peace Through Tyranny, you're able to deal a high amount of spread damage instead of Plasma Burst's "death of a thousand cuts" playstyle.

Of course, since Combo doesn't exist anymore, we have to ask ourselves if Erratic Energy Grenade is worth it in other lists. Well, in mainstream aggro lists, I can definitely see a case for it. Take, for instance, one of my favorite decks: Predacons.

I'm a sucker for their aggressive, yet nuanced playstyle, and their frailty is a natural side-effect of that. Their health pool is so low that they simply do not care about the damage over time that the EEG gives them, and Razorclaw certainly loves the concept of softening other targets for elimination. Insecticons could also make this case, as their similar glass cannon playstyle as well as their reliance on I STILL FUNCTION! to return to the field -- and to subsequently KO -- their characters could open up a consistent way to use EEG.

Now, with those examples aside, do I think that Insecticons or Predacons have the time to strap a grenade to their faces, or that enough space to force it into a list, especially when black pips do virtually nothing for them otherwise?

Frankly? Not really. Lists are very tight, and you'd have to be certain that Erratic Energy Grenade is worth it to put into your list. But that being said, I can definitely see it as an early game play, especially as an anti-Combiner tool.




This card might be good one day when we have more Secret Actions!

See, the problem with seeing what is essentially Brainstorm for Secret Actions is that we don't have any more Secret Actions revealed other than a simple draw and Plan effect in Battle Report. Of course, you could make the case that you could simply play two Battle Reports and draw more cards, but at that point, you're drawing the card you Planned, so what's the point?

Special Ops Mission will probably be as good if not better than Brainstorm is depending on the power of Secret Actions, but that's the thing: Unlike Brainstorm, Secret Actions only activate when your opponent does something. We can assume there will be other triggers than your opponent declaring an attack, but if there's not? Well, why not just play a similar Action card on your turn and use Brainstorm on your terms?

All of these speculatory questions won't receive much in the ways of answers. Yet, I can't help but to be optimistic. The prospects of disrupting your opponent on their turn has always appealed to me, and I look forward to seeing how Special Ops Mission helps with that.




This artwork really is fantastic. If you had told me that this wasn't from a professional comic or something similar, I wouldn't have believed you. You can really tell that this is a passion project for the guys over at Wizards, and I love what I'm seeing so far. Black pips, Secret Actions, Micromasters, Battle Masters... Well, what can I say, I'm a sucker for cool stuff.

Spoiler season is like Christmas for me -- and it can be for you, too!

What do you guys think of the black pips? Good? Bad? Almost virtually invisible on the card background? Let me know in the comments below, and I'll see you next time!

P.S. What does "RR" Disruption Blade even mean? Reid Richards? Rock n' Roll? Rainbow Rare? You're killing me, smalls!

Fellow Seibertronian #Sideways# has made a rundown of the latest strategies and techniques in the Wizards of the Coast Transformers Trading Card Game with the addition of the Siege specific cards like Ultra Magnus along with the new classes/mechanics like Targetmasters.

You can read it below.




Oh, hello there! Fancy meeting you here. What have I been doing since the last set? Oh, you know, the usual. Work, sleep, ritualistic sacrifice of virgins to Sergeant Kup to bring bountiful offense and defense flips.

Yeah. The usual.

But unlike me, the guys over at Wizards of the Coast have been hard at work! This time, they started a new set with plenty of new mechanics including Targetmast-- Erm, Battle Masters and Micromasters! All of this information comes thanks to an exclusive article by IGN and a startlingly adorable Facebook note by the TFTCG page, in which they reveal juicy details about the next set -- from Secret Actions, Wave 4 announcement to several new cards!

But, that's not all the news that we have today: The official Facebook Page revealed that all Battle Card artwork in Siege is actually original artwork made by the team, which is fantastic news! But not just that, several characters have completely original artwork making their debut in this set!

This means that the guys at Wizards aren't just comfortable enough with their profit margins to put out their third and fourth set but also to use artists to add to their own stock of artwork instead of reusing comic artwork. I can't wait to see how that plays out with both potential stories to be told through the serialized artwork as well as what other projects might hold with that influx of funds by Wizards of the Coast!

Of those cards that they revealed, none could size up to the astounding shock, excitement and anticipation than the announcement that Soundwave will not only be in this set but that he will incorporate the new mechanics held within. My guess -- since we don't have a card of him to show just yet -- is that he is going to incorporate the new Battle Master mechanics with his cassettes. There is good reason for this, and I think the best way to tell you why is to show you.

CHARACTERS

Targe-- Battle Masters, rather, are fascinating and are seemingly infinite value. You start out in robot mode, and whereas at least Firedrive's stats leave something to be desired, you can at least deal chip damage with him before Firedrive inevitably becomes a powerful weapon to whomever you attach him to. You're more or less confirmed to get that value out of a Battle Master as your opponent can -- in a vacuum -- only KO one character per turn. This more or less confirms that you will have access to their weapon modes, and if Firedrive's weapon mode is anything to go by, they look like they're going to pack one heck of a punch.

An interesting thought to think about is using Firedrive with Thrust and another nine star partner. You can eventually attach Firedrive to Thrust, discard several cards from your hand to give Thrust a boost in damage and then pass that damage on to another threat for potentially massive damage.

Now, my favorite part about Firedrive in particular is that he's a Weapon. There is plenty of Armor scrapping nowadays, but there is virtually zero weapon scrapping cards that are played enough to threaten Firedrive, meaning that if you're careful, you can get several uses out of him once he's a weapon. That's fantastic value, to be perfectly frank with you.

Something else that I would like to touch on is that Firedrive is partnered -- in-universe -- with Hot Rod as his Targetmaster ally. I mean, even Firedrive's name is a sort of wordplay on Hot Rod. It would surprise me greatly if we did not see a Hot Rod card in Siege, just judging from WOTC's track record.

All in all, I love the idea of Battle Masters. More importantly, I love the idea that Soundwave's cassettes also being Battle Masters that turn into Cassettes to synergize with Soundwave once attached. They're really quite impressive, and I can't wait to play with them.




Micromasters! Oh, goodness me, why didn't I see this coming? It seems so obvious in hindsight. So, for those who don't know card measurements, these Micromasters and Battle Masters are both the size of a standard Magic The Gathering card. This means that you pull them not as a replacement of a standard character, but alongside your battle cards. That's a good thing, too, because sometimes the Battle Card unpacking was a bit underwhelming compared to the character reveal.

Now, as for Red Heat, we can see that he has some rather interesting traits that can make him an interesting addition to a team. For one, he's a five star Truck which means he can use Truck-based support like Cargo Trailer, but perhaps more importantly he's a Specialist that is virtually untargetable by your opponent on the first turn of the game thanks to his innate Stealth whilst he's untapped. Even moreso, his utility in robot mode is some of the most fascinating abilities for a five star character I've seen to date. You have a fantastic -- and somewhat disconcerting given recent meta developments -- ability in your robot mode: A pocket Swap Parts.

So, here's a little context as to why I'm a bit disconcerted about this otherwise mediocre ability. Normally, Swap Parts is a slightly "meh" effect where you can perhaps move a weapon or an Armor. But here's the thing: Swap Parts and other "move" effects reactivates the "put" abilities of Upgrades, including things like Rapid Ascent, Cooling Vents, Drill Arms, but chiefly in recent days it was discovered that when you have a team of Specialists, you can move Field Communicators and Multi Mission Gears to play a stunning amount of free Actions and Upgrades from your hand and deck.

This playstyle promotes an infinite combo, where you can play both I STILL FUNCTION! and Peace Through Tyranny in the same turn to essentially gain a free turn, and with potent draw, you eventually begin taking infinite free turns. Using Swap Parts, you can pull this combo off consistently enough, but something that is astonishing to think about is how consistent it makes the combo when you can use Swap Parts more or less whenever you want using Red Heat. His ability to avoid all damage on the first turn of the game is extremely powerful given the deck's fragile disposition, and when you consider that he's also an Autobot Specialist to cap off a team of Autobot Specialists... Well, you can tell where this is going.

Think Swap Parts is insane? Think it needs a nerf or a ban? Well, you might want to trudge around the latter part of the article for some good news on that front.

I digress from the main point. As a general whole, Private Red Heat isn't the best card for most lists. You won't be getting the full use of his Swap Parts effect, and in a lot of lists White cards are far fewer than other colors. But, that being said, there is a silver lining -- we know that he is part of the "Rescue Patrol" as per his trait, and that means that his Micromaster partner, Stakeout, will also be printed. We can assume the same about other Micromasters that will be printed, and perhaps more importantly, possible synergy. But until then, I can only see one list to play him in and one alone: Infinite.

Something else worthy of note is that you can only use one "tapping" effect during your turn, like Red Heat's. This means that you can't untap him through Ready For Action and use him a second time in the same turn. Of course, this is neither bad news nor good news -- it's just news. Make of it what you will!




Shockwave is a Major in this prequel set, and he is majorly interesting. If you notice something about him, you'll notice that his cost is titanic -- just like his stats. He has the highest stats of any non-Combiner Decepticon, and the highest point cost as well. This high point cost definitely limit the potential partners you can play him with, but interestingly enough, if you play him with Shockwave -- Cybertron Commander, you get 25 points on the nose.

The synergy isn't just skin-deep, either -- Major Shockwave can "dig" farther into your deck to pull out Decepticon cards and/or Secret Actions. Certain of these cards -- Bad Attitude foremost of these -- can be used to facilitate your playstyle. If your playstyle is to deal damage outside of combat, then Bad Attitude will be your best friend with both Shockwave. But here's the thing about that -- other than Bad Attitude, Swindled and Scoundrel's Blaster, there aren't that many uesful cards that Major Shockwave can use.

I mean, sure, you could make the case that Decepticon Crown could be in certain offensive builds, but look at it this way: If Decepticon Crown was on top of your deck, it would end up in your hand anyway thanks to its green pip, and you could say the same about Scoundrel's Blaster. The Decepticon-only side of this guy seems a bit mediocre, to be perfectly frank, especially since they still take up your turn plays.

To be perfectly blunt, he just isn't good enough on his own to warrant too much investment of time into Double Shockwave. But that being said, there is a silver lining.

Secret Actions are something brand new to the set, and whereas I won't go into too much depth on their intricacies here, I will tell you that they breed a very disruptive playstyle that no doubt will eventually have discarding effects. At the time of writing, we have only seen one Secret Action, and it's included in the Battle Card section of this article.

But to close things off, Major Shockwave has a little potential, but his expensive nature is going to be a major turnoff for a lot of people looking to make decks out of him.




Major Magnus is, on the surface, extremely mediocre. His ability damages himself, his stats are lackluster save his monstrous HP and he's expensive to boot. He has Brave, which is cool, but with only one defense, he'll be toast, right?

Well yes, but also no.

His vehicle mode ability sucks in an Ultra Magnus Armor from the deck, and as a little spoiler alert for later on in the article, UMA is an armor card that gives him +2 attack and +2 defense and reduces all non-attack damage dealt to him by one. Sounds insane, right? Well, it would be if it also didn't cost two stars to put in your deck at all and even better if it couldn't be popped by Bashing Shield, but that's a discussion for later.

So, with these innate boosts to his stats, he deals a considerable amount of damage and has a considerable amount of tankiness. I mean, at three defense and eight attack with added effects, he just seems like a better Inferno. Now, say what you will about Inferno and his viability, but his attack of eight is still monstrous, and his survivability is also still extremely high. So, think about that but imagine if Inferno actually did something other than damage. In fact, imagine if your opponent had to attack into him turn one instead of one of your squishier teammates!

That's the power of Ultra Magnus. Your opponent effectively wastes an attack on the first turn of the game while you opt to go second, forcing your opponent to attack him with no response for his powerful armor. I realize he comes at a premium, but I can't help but to like this guy for that reason. Well, that and his spreading effects.

But I fear that if your opponent has Bashing Shield or other removal effects, he'll just fall by the wayside. After all, without his suit, he's just a worse, more expensive Inferno.




Aimless is a Battle Master with a flair for the defensive. Coming from VectorSigma.info (or at least, that's where I got the picture after I couldn't find it online) we get our first look at Aimless! With an innate Tough 3 and a powerful ability in his weapon mode, he makes a strong first impression. Even with his mediocre innate defense, he still puts out a good amount of defense with his Tough 3. The only problem I see with him is his lackluster offensive power in his robot mode. Without Pierce, a Blue deck with attack numbers that low would be better off trying to defeat their opponents by boring them to death. He makes a good meat shield, but the trouble is getting value out of him other than that.

But there is a silver lining.

What he lacks in his offensive power in robot mode, Aimless more than make up for it with his powerful weapon mode. With the frankly silly ability to deal three damage regardless of attack damage or defense before dealing damage for his attack, completely bypassing Force Field, Skrapnel or other similar effects, he can make even the weakest character seem powerful. For instance, consider Demolishor in a balanced list -- he's not going to do anything on his own, but with Aimless attached, he can do a startlingly potent amount of damage given he will almost always trigger Demolishor's effect.

In closing, Aimless is a neat character that is tough to find early value with outside of being a meat shield. But, mid to late game, if you partner him with a character that has innate Bold or flips extra cards, you'll love him to death.

No, really, kill this guy quick to get his weapon!

BATTLE CARDS

Two stars.

Two stars and this is all you get?

Magnus' armor seems really powerful when placed on Magnus, and its pips are always welcome in any deck, but when you realize that the frankly ridiculous cost of putting it in your deck followed by the fact that you can't even attach it to non-Autobots makes its usefulness extremely limited. Okay, I get it -- having an Armor that adds both offense and defense as well as reducing incoming non-attack damage by one seems really good, and it is, but for those two stars, would you not just rather take a Leap of Faith or similarly priced star cards?

Remember, Bashing Shield is kind of everywhere in offensive decks, so you'll get to use this card on Magnus on the first turn of the game, but without Spare Parts you can kiss this suit goodbye. It's for this reason that you can't use it on non-Magnus characters as easily as you could, say, on Magnus who attaches it to himself at the start of the game. You don't have time to attach a Spare Parts when you have weapons to worry about, as well as your opponents disruption.

Heh. It's almost like the developers only wanted Magnus wearing Magnus' armor! Who'd have thought it?

Anyway, it's way too expensive for what it offers outside of Ultra Magnus builds. Only take it if you happen to have way too many stars to burn.




Ever just want to play a totally harmless card face-down and make your opponent panic as to what horrible machinations you're planning? Ever wish that Incoming Transmission could rig cards defensively? Ever want to do both of those things at once?

No? Just me then? Well, uh... You're missing out, then!

Well, Secret Actions seem to be a weird mix of Trap Cards from Yu-Gi-Oh and Action Cards. Obviously, we can assume that Battlefield Report will be one of many Secret Actions in this set, and with the mechanic of triggering on your opponent's turn, we can assume the disruptive nature of the cards that you can use to mess with your opponent's turn.

But speculation aside, Battlefield Report seems to be a defensive Incoming Transmission that you can use after your opponent devoted resources to attack a character. This is good, too, given that you can opt out of putting more valuable double Blue cards on the top of your deck if your opponent is merely attacking a nearly KO'd character anyway. It helps you avoid wasting resources.

But, that's kind of it. It's not that great, to be perfectly frank. Drawing two then Planning one seems good, but there are just better draw cards out there. The only thing I can say to this is that it's good to see defensive Plan effects to make King Starscream even more viable than it already is.

It most certainly will not see play in many offensive decks, but in extremely defensive ones like Double Shockwave, Tanks or similar lists, I don't really see why you wouldn't play Battlefield Report unless space is an issue. It's not like they won't trigger the Secret Action effect, unlike I'm sure plenty of other cards we haven't seen yet. That said, I cannot wait to find out what other Secret Actions there are, and what they'll do! Imagine if there was a counterspell and how you might play around it! Well, a boy can dream.




Black pips are here, and now that they are, I can't help but to be excited for the prospects that they bring. If you didn't know already, here's a recap on black pips: Whenever you flip a Black pip, your character gains Pierce 1 for each instance of black pips that you flip, stacking on top of other instances of Pierce that you have. So, if you have a Noble's Blaster on one of your characters giving him Pierce 2, and during your attack you flip two black pips. That character would then gain Pierce 4 in total, combining the Pierce 2 you gain from your black pips with the Pierce 2 you have on your Noble's Blaster.

Now, whether or not RR Disruptor Blade is good given its reliance on black pips remains to be seen. Put it this way: In a blue list -- which one could say has one of the chief usage of Pierce in the game -- any pip that is not blue is one less defense that you're going to be able to flip. It's the whole reason playing a "balanced" list is usually frowned upon, with both orange and blue pips clogging the other's flips with the wrong color. So, with that ideology, would you not say that black pips belong in their own colored list? Or that playing the proverbial "Orzhov" black and white combo would be the way to go?

Well, that remains to be seen. I can definitely see it, especially in decks with Jazz, Mirage and similarly white-focused lists. But regardless of that, there is one thing for certain. If you are playing black pips, I don't see why you wouldn't want RR Disruptor Blade as an inclusion. Its damage output is high, and at worst case scenario, you can at least say that it's a slightly worse Grenade Launcher.

Oh, and one last thing, what on Earth does "RR" stand for? Rest and Relaxation? Are you killing your opponent with a blade that makes them tired? I am so confused.




I heard this card was the bomb!

Oh god.

Anyway, Erratic Energy Grenade is in the same vein as Bug Bomb is for Insecticons, but unlike the dud of Bug Bomb, Erratic Energy Grenade actually has a potential place in certain decks. It's wonky, and many lists will find its appeal discordant with their playstyle, but I think that a few decks will definitely like to have it on-board.

Now that I mention it, I'm actually really glad that Combo is now being pushed out of the format, because Erratic Energy Grenade would have likely been a great boon to its already high power level. I mean, think about it: During your turn, you would sometimes have to pass on playing a Plasma Burst because you ran out of Actions to play. With EEG being an Upgrade, you could play it easily on your turn, and since you're constantly KOing your own character through Peace Through Tyranny, you're able to deal a high amount of spread damage instead of Plasma Burst's "death of a thousand cuts" playstyle.

Of course, since Combo doesn't exist anymore, we have to ask ourselves if Erratic Energy Grenade is worth it in other lists. Well, in mainstream aggro lists, I can definitely see a case for it. Take, for instance, one of my favorite decks: Predacons.

I'm a sucker for their aggressive, yet nuanced playstyle, and their frailty is a natural side-effect of that. Their health pool is so low that they simply do not care about the damage over time that the EEG gives them, and Razorclaw certainly loves the concept of softening other targets for elimination. Insecticons could also make this case, as their similar glass cannon playstyle as well as their reliance on I STILL FUNCTION! to return to the field -- and to subsequently KO -- their characters could open up a consistent way to use EEG.

Now, with those examples aside, do I think that Insecticons or Predacons have the time to strap a grenade to their faces, or that enough space to force it into a list, especially when black pips do virtually nothing for them otherwise?

Frankly? Not really. Lists are very tight, and you'd have to be certain that Erratic Energy Grenade is worth it to put into your list. But that being said, I can definitely see it as an early game play, especially as an anti-Combiner tool.




This card might be good one day when we have more Secret Actions!

See, the problem with seeing what is essentially Brainstorm for Secret Actions is that we don't have any more Secret Actions revealed other than a simple draw and Plan effect in Battle Report. Of course, you could make the case that you could simply play two Battle Reports and draw more cards, but at that point, you're drawing the card you Planned, so what's the point?

Special Ops Mission will probably be as good if not better than Brainstorm is depending on the power of Secret Actions, but that's the thing: Unlike Brainstorm, Secret Actions only activate when your opponent does something. We can assume there will be other triggers than your opponent declaring an attack, but if there's not? Well, why not just play a similar Action card on your turn and use Brainstorm on your terms?

All of these speculatory questions won't receive much in the ways of answers. Yet, I can't help but to be optimistic. The prospects of disrupting your opponent on their turn has always appealed to me, and I look forward to seeing how Special Ops Mission helps with that.

SOME EDUCATED SPECULATION

You want to know a secret? I've always fancied myself a bit of a detective. I'm not going to lie, when I wrote a detective into a novel of mine, I ended up gleaning a few things from her. The first of which is to read into every detail, which is both a gift and a curse, and the second is to notice everything that's hidden in plain sight. So, when I saw the box that Siege is being carried in, I put those skills learned from a fictional character I created to good use.

From there, I happened to see a few figures on the side of the box. Intrigued and with a bit of a rush of adrenaline, I investigated a bit further. When I opened it up in GIMP, I did my best to scale, stretch and shear my way to answers, leaving me with a few clues on whom else is going to be printed in this set, character-wise:



From this picture it's pretty clear that we are going to be getting not just Hound, but it seems to be Sideswipe standing directly next to him! As it stands, we have no idea what they'll do. But, we at least know what they'll look like and that they're in the set!

Another thing that I noticed is that these characters have a peculiar naming convention. No, I'm not talking about "Major" Shockwave or "Private" Red Heat. I'm talking about, in the past, cards used to be "TITLE -- SUBTITLE" like Shockwave -- Cybertron Commander, or Optimus Prime -- Battlefield Legend. Now? Now they have multiple secondary names with Ultra Magnus -- Infantry + City Commander.

It's odd that there are multiple characters with "Infantry" in their subtitles, as well. It makes me wonder if this is a name at all, or if they're extremely well-hidden secondary traits for cards that state "for every character with Infantry in their name" or something similar. I dunno, I guess my tin foil cap is showing again, but I can't help but to see a pattern.

NOTHING LASTS FOREVER

Well, it happened. We lost a comrade. He burned bright, hot, and far too fast. If you don't know what I'm talking about, or have been keeping up with recent events with the metagame in the Transformers TCG, let me brief you on a little thing I like to call "Infinite Combo", or just "Combo" for short.

But first, let's talk a little about how the card game works to refresh your memory on this subject. Once each turn you can do four separate actions: Transform a character, play an Action, play an Upgrade, and then attack. There are certain cards that get around those rules in order to play more cards in a turn, such as Multi-Mission Gear from Wave 1 that allowed you to play a second Action when you attached it to one of your characters. Field Communicator is another example, which scraps the top of your deck, where you can then choose to play it if you would like.

But here's the thing: Whenever you swap or move Upgrades between characters, their "Put" effects reactivate. So, for instance, if you played a Field Communicator and flipped a Multi-Mission Gear, you could use that Multi-Mission Gear's effect to play a Swap Parts, reactivating both the Field Communicator as well as the Multi-Mission Gear.

To what end, you ask? Well, eventually you ramp up your upgrades and you begin to spam both Peace Through Tyranny and I STILL FUNCTION! in the same turn, being able to take infinite turns. You would then be able to play one Plasma Burst in the list, dealing chip damage over your effectively infinite turns to eventually win the game after your opponent has ideally only taken one or two turns in total.

Well, that's what could have happened. Just last week, Wizards of the Coast made a Note on their official Facebook Page banning Swap Parts from Tournament Play effective on the 19th. This is the first time the game has been broken by the community, and the first time that Wizards has had to ban a card in the Transformers Trading Card Game.

What do you think? From my playtesting, Combo was effectively a hit or miss deck that could either be punished early into oblivion, or stomp things that weren't able to outspeed it. For example, Insecticons had a good shot at punishing Combo's frailty, same with Battlefield Legend. But, that being said, it rather ate Combiner decks alive other than Predacons. I realize the deck isn't exactly "interactive", as stated in their note, but I can't help but to think about how the deck might have been received by an older community, one with more cards at their disposal and a more established metagame. It's a controversial opinion, I know, but liking total control decks always is.

CONCLUSION

Boy howdy, do we have some nutty things happening. I'm not exaggerating when I say that this dwarfs the changes that Rise of the Combiners brought forward. Battle Masters and Micromasters both, Secret Actions and even more interesting mechanics from there. Whether or not Battle Masters will shift the meta is yet to be seen, despite their hype. Armor is easily removed, but so too are weapons. The problem was, no one really played cards to remove them because weapons were either discarded or they weren't as pressing of an issue that armor was.

As for the artwork, it's really quite fantastic. If you had told me that this wasn't from a professional comic or something similar, I wouldn't have believed you. You can really tell that this is a passion project for the guys over at Wizards, and I love what I'm seeing so far. Black pips, Secret Actions, Micromasters, Battle Masters... Well, what can I say, I'm a sucker for cool stuff.

What do you guys think of the black pips? Good? Bad? Almost virtually invisible on the card background? What does "RR" Disruption Blade even mean? Reid Richards? Rock n' Roll? Rainbow Rare? You're killing me, smalls!

Now that we have incentive to play anti-weapon cards, what will become of the metagame? Do you think that the age of Battle Masters and Micromasters are fast approaching? Will Erector ever get a card? I mean, I'd be happy with a promo card, even! Let me know what you think in the comments below, and I'll see you next time!

This is flooding at this point.You're paid for that?

Stop being a nostalgic noob also,it's new stuff for new stuff,some reveal are missing by the way.EEG for micromaster,it look like that right now.

Mshock with Nightstick,not Aimless.

No ban for Optimus13 and Mega13 and Nemesis?Why have they done nerfed version?(beginning at page15).

The swapP is originally for the armedH,ban only the infinite combo(the game is full of 2cards combo).

Alpha can use card out of his hand,so he can keep it big and get a strong firedrive+universal and fuel.I'll wait before to write a deck.Needlenose can be a variant of firedrive.