Newbie Issues

I present: two articles on draft picks for the Transformers TCG.

Character cards.

Battle cards.

Let's go through these really fast because there's some unhelpful stuff here and that's a real shame-but it also comes out of a) a new format being new and b) possibly someone who hasn't done a lot of drafting.

First, mentioning rare cards isn't extremely helpful. In a TCG, rare cards are supposed to be good, better than the common ones. That's why they're rare. So informing your audience that Private Hot Rod is good isn't exactly guidance-because of course your top picks should be powerful cards. This is like telling us that Lord Megatron or Pocket Processor is good: Yes, we know, that's why you pick those as soon as you can.

What we need to evaluate, especially with Battle Cards, are the common rarities because that's what we end up using to execute our strategies. 

So are there enough actions in the format for us to build around Private Hot Rod? Is the ability actually worth something? No case is made.

Contrast this with the argument for Raider Spinster-at Uncommon, you're pretty likely to see one and while there are only four Battle Masters in the set, you have a decent shot at snagging one of those too, as they are also Uncommon.

This happens a couple times: Mirage is sold as a top pick but if you contrast that with the Battle Cards list, 3 of the 8 have the black Pierce icon, which Mirage does nothing for and zero Secret Actions on that list, of the mere two secret actions at common, only one of which has a blue icon. So where is Mirage getting any of it's power from? Heck, there are only three cards with blue icons in the entire set! With all those black icons, why isn't Raider Nova Storm getting more attention?

And it's important to look at this as a whole: of the battle cards suggested there isn't a single blue icon on them. So how does that mesh with the character recommendation of Mirage? Showing Off is sold as a high pick, but not a single recommended character has a great flip ability! Why would you pick that card unless you had a character like Sergeant Springer or Raider Chop Shop?

Another example: Kinetic Converter and Kinetic Whip need to flip to be really great-where are the Characters that mesh with this, since everyone's going to get a chance to pick those commons?

Where is the analysis of the format at large? It doesn't look like there's much Upgrade removal in this set and this seems incredibly relevant when Captain Astrotrain-at common-is available.

There seem to be some important, overlooked themes from Siege II and I'm not saying that these articles are easy to write. Clearly the author is going of his own experience-same as me. However, it isn't my experience that says there are only three common cards with blue icons: That's just me looking at the set and telling you a fact. Compare that to ten common cards with black icons, three of which have double black! I think you can see how the set is tilted.

And I chalk all of this up to the game being really new, and people still trying to get a grip on how drafting works. Because it's different in this game than in Magic. Character cards and battle cards have to work together, so generating a plan is extremely challenging-as I learned a couple weeks ago.

Hopefully, as more experience is gained, articles with sharper focus will emerge.

Klaxions

I took out the Kari Zev cards because the creature didn't seem aggressive enough and the Expertise would, in the case of the Abbot and the Daredevil, leave me with needing mana to pay for whatever they do, after already paying 3 mana.

It's possible I'm wrong about Kari Zev as a creature: Menace is a relevant ability and could mean getting a point of damage in on attacks that otherwise wouldn't happen, allowing me to take advantage of Light Up The Stage. However, I wanted to try another card to help clear pathways to my opponent, Satyr Firedancer.

This didn't work out as much as I wanted it too and a couple days after the fact, I'm thinking it was because of the matchups: Jason decided to treat me to a night of "all mill, no creature" decks, which, yes: Satyr Firedancer isn't going to do much against, and a RB reanimator deck and again, direct damage isn't as helpful as I'd like it to be against Griselbrand.

While Jason's decks are part of my metagame, though, they are not all of the metagame and most of my opponents use smaller creatures to get where they're going. At the very least, Satyr Firedancer seems like excellent sideboard material. I'd like to try them against some other opponents though, to see if they'll be useful in non-reanimator/mill matches.

Siege II Impressions

After a weekend of drafting cards and starting to poke at decks I can rebuild or explore, here are some first impressions.

The heavy black element means games will inevitably grind to their conclusion. That's good, because it means games continually work to the end, but it also renders blue meaningless. Likewise, what orange there is becomes incredibly powerful because you can guarantee hits-Fight For Position is a rockstar and by that same notion, Stable Cover might become one of the more important cards in the set. Tough, unfortunately, is frequently rendered meaningless by this set and I'm not sure what to do with that.

In the bigger picture, I like this: we didn't have enough black pip density to make that something decks could really use. Now that we do, I am hoping for some developments in different decks-people have been talking Blue/Black since Siege I but they never really materialized, even with the Soundwave deck giving people a template.

However, with that black pip density comes a better question: Can Orange/Black decks be a thing now? Because if they are, then what does defense have to offer anyone? Deck diversity is a good thing and what I appreciate is that at least the answers aren't clear to me, yet. I have some concerns, but I'm hopeful that the environment will be an interesting one.

The correct way to do combiner characters: Omega Supreme. The incorrect way: Brunt and Six-Gun. Half-characters are awful and should not be there. Nobody should open half a character: as an adult I can say that's a bummer but for a child? How disappointing is that? Deliberate feel-bads are not good looks.

Trypticon-specific cards scattered in the set are awful. Not the cards themselves, but the manner of distribution. Battlefield Incursion and Relentless Invasion coming in packs mean that you automatically have dead cards in Limited. I hope they don't do that again and wish they'd learned that lesson from Rise of the Combiners.

Because RotC was unplayable in 'Turbo Sealed' and didn't get reasonable until you opened four packs! I wouldn't want to try and draft that, ever. While Siege II doesn't have the same number of dead cards, it still repeats this mistake. I don't mind getting a card that says "If you have this theme, I'm playable but if not, I'm weak or not good" but I definitely mind cards that say "I can't be played at all" and the Trypticon cards are constructed only.

Either set up limited environments or don't, but doing it halfway leads to a poor experience.

Trypticon itself, though, invites a different take on deckbuilding since you need Battlefield Incursion to get another character out. Unlike Metroplex, Trypticon wants to get out those characters and then eat them for an edge in the game, which is fascinating to me, because it's a different play perspective while still using the fundamentals of the game to execute its plan.

Mercenaries add an interesting twist on battle card selection: So far, I think those have been really cool and they play well with a challenging risk/reward on their character flips. They're worth considering adding to teams but I'm still not sure if they can stand on their own. I'm interested in giving it a try, though, just to get a better sense of what the Mercenaries can do.

Upgrade removal is extremely lacking. In the bigger metagame this isn't a problem, but in limited it can be a headache. I was definitely surprised by the absence of said removal, when the previous three sets had a lot of it-but again, this is not an issue in the bigger metagame since there's plenty of upgrade removal. It's something to keep in mind for limited, however and it made for some interesting games last weekend. Going forward, I think it's a viable strategy-certainly Captain Astrotrain could be a sleeper hit.

Repair effects are better than you might think! I was surprised by both Safeguard as an ability and any repair card, from Chop Shop to Reprocess, and Medic's Protective Field or Special Delivery and how they helped push the tempo of the game in a way other than untapping a character. The downside: None of these are blue pipped cards, which leads me back to: Will blue or abilities like Tough matter after this set?

I have two major criticisms, however. The upside is that I think they're very easy to address.

First: black pips are still difficult to identify. In a set that wants to emphasize the power of black pips and has them on a ton of cards, asking that they pop out is a necessity.

Second: Star cards do not provide enough signal for Limited. The stars on the Transformers cards is in the lower left corner.

But the things you want to know about a card? Those are the name at the top, pips in the upper right corner, and the text box in middle. There were times in both drafts that I took star cards not knowing I was taking star cards. Talking to people afterwards, I found out I wasn't alone.

With the margin of error being only five cards, I found myself in positions where I either a) didn't have to make any decisions about my deck, because the remaining cards were all starred or Trypticon cards, or b) had to re-evaluate my entire starting character team, because I had too many stared and Trypticon cards.

These are problematic design issues and I hope they address them soon.

3-0 vs 1-2

This was the draft set that took me to to a 3-0 record (5-0-1 in games) on Saturday at the Siege II release event.

24 hours later, I was to go 1-2 (2-5) with another draft, same set.

Wins/losses-these are only the result of chance. But those chances shift if you focus on the process. Did I play to the best of my ability or not? 

So I choose to focus on the process. Saturday, I saw a good plan executed well. I had characters that cared about black pips with a smattering of green, so I tried to make sure I got those. Then, with a little luck and a little skill, I was able to make this deck work.

Sunday I had to adapt more and learn from mistakes on the fly. I had drafted battle cards poorly and not paid enough attention to the star value of them, which lead to me revamping my original character set in a big way, leaving me with a deck that didn't mesh as well with those characters. Still, by the end, I was starting to pick up the tricks that I had, utilize the cards given to me, and play better.

Was it perfect? No; having a clearer vision to start would've helped. Also; stopping to fully read every character I had to rebuild with so I knew what I was (re)doing would've been a good choice-one I will make next time. But I got better and that's what matters.

Feels Bad, Man

I've been alive long enough to have learned that not everything is for me. That's OK: There should be something for just about everyone (except Nazis...well, I guess prison for them) but since I am not the center of the universe, it should not cater to me.

And this is a case where something is not for me: Transformers: Energon Edition.

There are multiple issues for me here: first, at $200, that is a lot of money. For someone like myself, who has been playing the game since it debuted, here are the items from this set that matter to me:

Characters:
Cliffjumper, Renegade Warrior
Slipstream, Strategic Seeker

That's it. That's the list. Bumblebee, the other super rare character I don't have, I could purchase if I needed it: It's retailing for around $30 on the secondary market. Nemesis Prime is going for about $44. With both those cards, however, I have a chance to just open them in a booster pack-that's how I got Nemesis Prime.

But Cliffjumper and Slipstream, combined, are going for around $200. This is because they were exclusive cards to the San Diego Comic Con last year and never made available for purchase anywhere else. They are good cards, and the artificial scarcity of them has driven prices up, conveniently making it possible for WotC to market this product as if it was priced at a reasonable level. It is not; but people compare the prices (and trust me, marketing researchers know that this is what we do) and we think: but we're getting such a deal!

This is the part where I remind people that WotC "does not" (and maybe for legal reasons cannot admit to?) recognize the secondary market and its prices. I repeat: the marketing department knows that we are looking at the secondary market and justifying this $200 price tag based off of two cards.

Now for anyone who missed out on Wave 1 and cannot get it or hasn't invested: this is pretty dang cool. You get a box of Wave 1 boosters, plus a guaranteed six useful, awesome character cards (seriously, there isn't a bad one there) with new art and on plastic instead of paper. That's slick.

If you are in that rare group of people who cannot get Wave 1: awesome, I think this is still overpriced but you could justify it without too much difficulty. A box of boosters is going for around $90.00, so that's a chunk of your costs already.

There are also 18 reprinted battle cards with new art and of those, Start Your Engines is the most useful-but there is a sharp decline from there. I'm not even going to dignify the dice with the notion of being cool: there is nothing interesting or thematic about them.They're colored dice-you can literally find them at any game store in this country. But it's all very weird, because instead of bringing us copies of the San Diego Comic Con battle cards (All Out Attack and Tandem Targeting System) they go with the "thematic" battle cards, yet give us dice we could find in the seat cushion of a gaming store.

Then there's the display box. Because that's what people who play a game want: to put things on display instead of playing with them.

Which is where the rubber meets the road: the display box tells you everything you really need to know. If you've been supporting this game already, then Energon Edition is the glory of cool things. It's to separate you from your money for a "cool" product, but not one that makes the game more accessible or improves our experience as players.

This isn't something to thank people who've been playing and promoting the game, it's priced such that it is not an on-ramp product for people who missed out. It's just expensive, and it feels very much like a treat being waved in front of me that I cannot have. It is for what the industry calls "the whales": people who will spend a lot of money on a game, especially for "premium" product.

I don't object to this per se, what I object to is being manipulated-as whales often are-to spend money. You can see it in the reactions to this product too: everyone is talking about how cool it is, but not how useful or helpful. People talking about how they want to put it on display-to show it off! It's a trophy, not a game. That's what is being sold.

If this product cost $150, then it starts to sound reasonable. If they were just going to sell me the characters, battle cards and dice for $50, I'd be on this in a heartbeat! Hell, why haven't they tiered this product? Why not give people who have been playing since 2018 the opportunity to get characters they were denied for a reasonable price? Why aren't the SDCC battle cards in there to give us more accessible things?

Because it isn't for us. It's for people who want to look cool, not people who want to play a game. That leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Finally: if you are new to the game, $200 will get you not only a box of Wave 1, but a Rise of the Combiners box (Wave 2) and leave you with enough money left over to get the Metroplex box set.

It's up to you if you want this, but it's a hard pass for me.

Red Alert

Red has been an issue for WotC for a while; the color was either too narrow at what it did (direct damage), or unfun (land destruction, randomized cards).

One way they appear to be looking to solve Red's place in Magic is by having players get effects 'blind'. That is: sure, you can draw three cards if you're willing to discard two, but you won't know what you're going to get. Want to play the top card of your library? Fine-but we're not going to help you figure out if that's a good thing before you do it.

It is out of this concept, Red Alert was created, named after the Transformer.

3 Guttersnipe
4 Dire Fleet Daredevil
3 Bedlam Reveler
4 Abbot of Keral Keep
1 Kari Zev, Skyship Raider

3 Samut's Sprint
3 Searing Spear
2 Burst Lightning
3 Chandra's Pyrohelix

19 Mountain
4 Smoldering Crater

4 Chandra, Torch of Defiance

1 Kari Zev's Expertise
2 Chain Lightning
4 Light Up the Stage

I've been pretty excited about this concept! Trying to play free things off the top of the deck to gain card advantage may not seem like much but the randomization of the effect interests me, plus it's a chance to use Bedlam Reveler and who can resist that?

After that, there's a suite of cheap burn spells to help me use Light Up The Stage's Spectacle ability, with the bonus of possibly being able to play them off of a Chandra, Torch of Defiance activation or Abbot of Keral Keep's enter the battlefield trigger. The Prowess on Bedlam Reveler and Abbot encourage me to play my spells, so my hand might empty pretty fast. Getting to use the top of my library as an added "card in hand" could be powerful.

Guttersnipe is just a solid card in a deck with eighteen instants and sorceries and should steal wins for me.

Dire Fleet Daredevil might look weird and it does only fit the theme in a roundabout way. I am getting to play with the instants and sorceries my opponent has used! But who knows what they'll play? I think it's a powerful card and an opportunity to use my opponent's resources against them. I expect Path to Exile, Brainstorm, and Fatal Push, cards Red generally does not have access to. So why not take my opponent's? Still, it's a risk.

I'm looking forward to where this one takes me; I don't know that this part of Red's color pie has been explored much.