Tuesday, April 2, 2019

Devastation

The designers of the Transformers TCG had a post on the design of the new Devastator pack that came out last Friday. There's some interesting detail that goes into how they approached making this pack and the challenges that it represented. It's a short post, so I don't feel the need to repeat anything said about that.

What I found really interesting though, was this tidbit:
We generally shoot for a game to conclude in 5-8 turns. Fast decks can make that more like 4, slower decks can push to 9 or 10.
Five to eight turns? That is not a lot of time! Having played just enough of the game, I think it's wise to conclude that this means in 5-8 turns per player. Still; that doesn't seem like much, does it? One of the things that the Transformers TCG does well is keep players involved even when it isn't their turn, so that engagement sticks around, so it feels like a longer game than maybe it is.

My takeaway from the Devastator article is that the Combiners themselves, at least for now, mine the 'glory of cool things' vein, more than they do winning strategies. I think that's why I've shied away from them so far.

Is it worth it to build the dedicated Predaking deck? It certainly doesn't look like it, so far. I think I should maybe spend some time trying to figure that out, mostly for the fun of it, but I haven't seen a large combiner team that will really be a force to reckon with. And I say that after having been beat down by an Aerialbots deck a couple weeks ago: I think that once I learn the matchup, it becomes one that is far more difficult for the combiner team than for me.

To that end, on Sunday I had a chance to play the Devastator deck, straight from the box, three times. It felt...clunky. Part of that was about my inexperience playing the deck but part of it had to do with the build.

The deck is action heavy (20 cards! That's half the deck.) and does not have a Brainstorm, which meant that my hand was clogged with cards I couldn't to anything with.

It also wants to reward slower play: Building your tower is a critical element of successful play and you want to hit 3 counters on it ASAP, so you can use Reclaim to get important upgrades and Heavy Landing to do extra damage.
Builder's Tools is vital to the deck, in much the same way that Height Advantage helps the Metroplex deck. It's also important to transform Scrapper first so KO'd characters add to your tower and this puts an automatic limit on your first turn; there is zero point in transforming any other character. That isn't a killer but it does restrict my options.

That might have been a deliberate choice in order to make the deck more accessible to new and younger players: Devastator does have bunch of stuff going on. It was certainly a deliberate choice-Wizards of the Coast has been doing this for far too long to make thoughtless choices. And since it's a small drawback, along with the one where five of the six Constructicons have the same alt mode ability, they probably decided that the cool factor outweighed anything else. More play will tell me if that cool factor works.


Finally, while a Pretty Big Deal was made out of the card Work Overtime, it seemed underwhelming. While a card like that is vital to the Constructicons' game plan, so they can build their tower and second, usually I was casting it as a Pep Talk. And while that isn't terrible, it isn't bonkers either.

You know what might change that? Brainstorm.

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