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.