One Down, Five To Go

It didn't take me long to realize there was one glaring weakness with Six Heads: Non-combat damage. 

My pal Erik just cut through this deck-not that it was easy, but the chip damage built up fast and I had nothing to do but get lucky. 

However, simple problems use simple solutions: Holomatter Projector can fix this. The best part: I only really need to run one, because everyone focuses on Perceptor as the biggest threat they have to deal with. 

But it isn't. Don't get me wrong; Perceptor late game is a problem, but it's Fangry that is really the issue. I can do so much damage with that character, it occasionally surprises me. Bold 2 against any character larger than it is a massive damage boost, and nobody ever expects it. Add in any bold effect or Grenade Launcher and a lot can get done in a single attack.

Of course if they do go after Fangry, then Perceptor has a chance to become a problem, so that's a win-win.

This picture is from an old game, one when Kup was the middle bot but neither of the abilities were good.  I could manage the extra star for Chromedome-if I cut Monxo. Which as you can tell, I did because Chromedome was so much better. 

Monxo was the more aggressive character, but only in comparison to Vorath. The thing is, at the stage of the game that Monxo is available, the +1 offense doesn't matter. The boost Chromedome provides over Kup is far better and more relevant. 

Still, it was difficult to get my head around that because I wanted this deck to be as aggressive as possible. Once I did, though, playing Six Heads this Thanksgiving showed me I was correct. Chromedome's hand control element have an impact on the game-including the possibility to eat more non-attack damage actions, and make problems for my opponent, while also having better stats to begin with. 

So that's it: it's a good deck with some really brutal abilities and I'd play it all the time if I could. Thanksgivings will have to do.

Six Heads

This post started nearly a year ago. But over the holiday I got to play a TON of the Transformers game with my buddy Jason. So while the Transformers TCG scene has gone the way of fan sets only, I've got one official build in the tank. This was one I was very excited to try when Titan Masters Attack was released: an Orange-Black aggro deck.  

The battle deck:

Combat Dagger	Weapon	OB	3
Escape Capsule	Utility	OB	3
Fight for Position	Action	OB	3
Fusion Borer	Weapon	B	3
Peace Through Tyranny	Action	OO	3
RR Disruptor Blade	Weapon	B	2
Rock Toss	Action	OB	3
Special Delivery	Action	B	2
Wedge Formation	Action	OBG	2
Bashing Shield	Armor	OG	1
Enforcement Batons	Weapon	OG	1
Improvised Shield	Armor	OO	2
Incoming Transmission	Action	O	2
Grenade Launcher	Weapon	O	3
Backup Plan	Action	W	2
Holomatter Projector	Armor	G	1
Heat of Battle	Action	W	1

The characters:

I'll tell you how I chose those characters: I mathed it out. That's right: I looked at star values and maxed out my values. Forget going big; I'm shifting from midrange to wide. 

And every card I could manage had an orange and black pip. Defensive decks had been taking over and I personally like playing aggressive strategies.

So Fangry (with Kreb), Chromedome (with Vorath) and Perceptor (with Parsec) are the crew. That Kreb gives me tough isn't relevant: the important part is that it's a sixth character. 

After the initial testing, Holomatter Projection came in because my meta insisted on builds that did non-combat damage. And then...something weird happened: the game got cancelled, the players took over building cards and many decided that the format was better off if you could only run one Headmaster in a build at a time.

Fans also started producing their own cards, which is why Vamparic Ribbon found a place in this deck. I figure; why not? If I still get to play then let's have some fun. 

And here's the thing: every one of those characters can bring the pain. Nobody wants to let Perceptor do its thing but getting a card with Chromedome doesn't suck and Fangry can always take on their heavy. The automatic bold means that with not much help, a surprising amount of damage can be done. 

Six Heads also includes the trick of using Peace Through Tyranny on a body that is not long for the game, in order to create turns where an overwhelming amount of damage gets dealt. 

I liked this deck a bunch and I'm sorry there's no more game to support it. But we'll talk more about the play patterns next post!

Fandom

 Looks like the first fan-made Transformers content has come up. Looks pretty neat!

On Endings

Well...crap. 

While I cannot say I am surprised by the news that support for the Transformers TCG is ending, it is still a bummer. I got to meet some new, cool people and the game is a lot of fun. 

However, the pandemic and the United States' collective failure to properly manage that pandemic, almost certainly killed this game. It's very hard to get people excited about playing when there is no way to play in person. 

There's a lot to unpack about the failure to manage the pandemic. One of the people I met through this game, Adam, has said to me "I am glad we live in interesting times, but I wish people didn't have to suffer for it."

And the thing is: we're always living in interesting times. The difference between the pandemic the Obama administration had to deal with-and there were two-and the one the Trump administration is dealing with comes down to how each views governance. 

We hired people (via elections, in this instance) to manage things so we could do other stuff, like play card games. In one instance, those managers did a pretty good job with the pandemic. 

It's a small, silly thing, to want to continue to play games under the circumstances. But that small, silly thing would probably have continued, if we had people who cared about the citizens of this country in charge right now, instead of enhancing their own pockets. 

Still, I'm sorry to see this game go: it really was a fantastic to play and I hope that the people I've met will still play games from time to time.

The online experiences aren't terrible but they also aren't amazing-OCTGN has a real issue with card art being far too small, and almost no one has a proper camera and lighting setup to make paper games visually adequate via an online meeting service. I don't blame Wizards for not having an online platform to play: the game was too new to invest that kind of resources.  

Still, this was a good thing to be a part of. Plus, I still have my "Six Heads" aggro deck to talk about! So that'll happen-I think I've got a pretty good beatstick there.

The Stratagem Lesson

I always enjoy these looks into how games are designed and this window into Stratagems for Transformers is no different. It's an interesting solution to a problem, even if I think they missed the mark on execution, especially with power level. Better put: The idea is good, but the cards don't do anything interesting enough for me to want them.

However, what I want to talk about is this section:

In this case, we asked ourselves how players would feel if they opened a pack that had a body but no head, or a head with no body. We have all different types of players and we need to make sure that they all have a positive experience (or as many of them as possible). ... many players just buy a pack or two looking for something new and different to add to one of their decks. To them, half of a Titan Master is an unplayable card, and that’s a negative experience we want to avoid, so we decided to do our best to make sure that every pack that has a body also has a head, and vice-versa. ...Packs that don’t have a Titan Master now have an unfilled slot that needs a card. What can we put in there?...We considered “nothing” as an answer. You get six battle cards and then either large regular character card or a large Titan Master body and a small Titan Master head. We chose not to do that because we felt that that could be a letdown where people felt disappointed that they got fewer cards than another pack from the same set.

Then I'd like to contrast that with this card:

Reasonably, one might be asking: What does this card have to do with Stratagems? 

To answer that, I need to tell you that the way that WotC is pushing the Transformers game is as "Turbo Sealed" where players open two packs of cards and play with what they open. Setting aside my opinion that it should actually be three packs-because the problem I'm about to discuss remains no matter how many packs you open. 

This is a dead card. This is a moment where a player will feel bad about having this card in their sealed match.

There are three colors on this card, and yet there is a near zero chance that this card will ever produce a color for you during battle, because to produce Blue you need to flip it on defense and flip it for a melee character, or flip it on offense and flip it for a specialist for orange, or a ranged character for black. 

This card is useless in Sealed unless you draw it. 

Now, I'm not saying that every card should be good in every format. That isn't reasonable, nor it is how CCGs work. 

What I'm saying is that in a format WotC wants to push, it is producing cards that are terrible for that format. Sure, it's a rare so it won't appear often but when it does, jeeze is it disappointing. 

I don't like this for Constructed, either, to be honest, in part because it's got no unifying theme. This card wants you to min/max and be run in a deck that cares about colors and has at least 2 of the 3 types of character classes. It's incredibly narrow and becomes less helpful as the game goes on and your characters get KO'd. 

That said, if you play the card as an action and subsequently flip a copy of the card, it's a +3. Which is The Glory of Cool Things if every I saw it, but I do have to acknowledge Master of Metallikato's use. But it doesn't feel very good to open. It feels like a blank.

So what I'm wondering is; why did they catch the letdown in packs that lead them to create Stratagems, and not catch this? Perhaps there's a deck for this card that hasn't been discovered yet? I suppose it's worth considering. 

Low Flying Jets

Alright, let's finish this up. Sorry for all the delays-things have been, uh...well let's just admit there's a lot going on.

So it turns out, three Escape Route is too many. Because Starscream draws so much attention, I can confidently use Escape Route once and if I'm smart and lucky, twice.

But that third time means that something has gone very wrong for my opponent and I'm winning anyway. What is most likely to happen is that I'm going to draw or have the third copy available and Starscream will be dead.

So, two copies of that seems to be correct.

Now, I don't know that Starscream and the Raiders can hang with the best of 'em. I've been playing this deck against a decent range of stuff but there's been a lot of prototype decks, ideas in evolution, that sort of thing and that just doesn't give me the same kind of data that practicing against Bugs or OPBL decks might.

That said, I've done well against those prototype decks, so maybe call this one a Tier 1.5? Good but  not great, and with skillful play and smart sideboard options, a winner. (Although I am not sure how one sideboards this deck.)

I have heard some rumblings about how Tripwire is going to be the end of patrol decks like this but I don't buy that argument.

It's true that Tripwire is a good card and its stock goes up against the 4-5 wide decks. But they still have to draw it and then have to decide that it's the most important action they can take. I will take those odds.

Final listing:

1x Starscream - Air Commander
1x Raider Nightflight - Air Strike Patrol Spy
1x Raider Tailwind - Air Strike Patrol, Strategist
1x Raider Visper - Infantry, Patrol Leader Deck

2x Reprocess
3x Head-on Collision
3x Cooling Vents
2x Repair Bay
3x Improvised Shield
3x Reactive Armor
3x Aerial Recon
3x Bombing Run
2x Dismantling Claw
3x Inspiring Leadership
3x New Orders
1x Personal Targeting Drone
3x Force Field
2x Disassemble
2x Sharpened Talons
2x Escape Route

Titan Masters Attack Thoughts

The new Transformers set finally arrives in physical form on Friday! I got thoughts and I think you want to hear 'em.

Stratagems
This is a new and strange card type that was meant to add dimension and/or playability to characters both new and old, but I'm not convinced by them. People weren't not playing Sergeant Kup because they were wishing they could untap it. The character is not good, and the star cost plus the hoops to satisfy the condition to get the Who's Next effect isn't worth it.

That's true for most of them: Jurassic Punch sounds amazing! Except that Bold 10 wasn't what the Volcanicus deck cared about or wanted, it's just the glory of cool things. Most stratagems just don't add something to those characters that they were missing, they instead eat at star values you'd rather put into your deck or characters.

The ones that have potential are the ones that add star value back to your deck: the Spotlights, Science Officer and Stealth Mission, Weapons Cache. Cards that let you cycle through your deck faster, like Systems Enhancement, or offer tempo value like More Guns might have potential but this is not very exciting for a new mechanic that the set wants to highlight. It's generally very, very clear: you don't want them, so there isn't a tension between adding that star card or putting in a stronger character/battle card.

Characters
The clear highlight of the set. I've been reading it for weeks and although I was initially reluctant to believe it, my playtesting has born out the statement: Headmasters are going to change the game.

If two-wide teams are actually three or four, three wide teams actually five or six, that is going to give those decks a lot of wiggle room to outlast the tempo machines of decks that are just naturally two or six wide.

And against natural three or four wide decks, I think they're going to establish a pretty strong advantage. Plus, there are so many mix and match options that deckbuilding really will come with some choices-is it worth running the star cost of 3 for 5 health, instead of just 1 for 2 health? Those kinds of questions make for good play.

The bad characters are still bad-no one is going to convince me that Gears is a good character- and others, like Wingspan, are probably waiting for a time to shine, since having high defense right now really isn't the hotness. But Wingspan fits with characters to keep my eye on, in case the metagame shifts.

There are outstanding characters overall: Wolfwire, Windsweeper, Fangry, Nightracer, Brawn-I mean there are even some not super rare characters in the mix! You can play without having to spend $70+ for a character!

It'll be exciting for people to open a super rare, of course, and I'm glad that big name characters like Optimus or Megatron aren't super rares in this set. It's important to give kids a chance to play with their favorites without breaking the bank.

Battle Cards
Where the soul of the set lies, the battle cards tell us what's possible, and what isn't anymore.

What's interesting is that the designers have talked about how Upgrades seem inferior to Actions, they don't seem to be doing a lot of serious upgrades to Upgrades in TMA. The cards people are talking about are all actions: Tripwire, Belligerence, and End Hostilities are the talk of the day and for good reason.

I'm also looking at Hand-to-Hand Combat, Hold the Line, Hit and Run, Last Stand, Reflect Damage-there are a BUNCH of good actions in this set, including secret actions and characters that interact with them.

By way of contrast, Fusion Borer, Paralyzo Box, and then...maybe Laser Scalpel? Master Sword is great if you can get it to trigger, and Holomatter Projector will probably be a sideboard role player. Regenerative Core has my interest, doing something that hasn't been done before, and it looks like there's a subtheme in this set about damage mitigation, not prevention. But the Upgrades are not as important as maybe they should be, or at least as much as WotC claims they want to emphasize.

The only thing Actions have going against them, is that there are pipless cards, or cards that have conditions on color contributions to combat, making them virtually pipless. No Upgrade has this drawback (unless I overlooked something!).

Which leads me to the one thing I dislike about TMA: the "hybrid" cards. There are memory issues here that are messy, there are rules interactions that are un-intuitive, and visually it's just ugly. I don't like this mechanic and I hope they find a better way to execute this idea.

But there's plenty to dig into, I think, that will reward players for trying new things!

The Suggestion Box

After a few games this weekend, Jason gave me a few suggestions. We had a long chat about this, because balancing the tension between the cards and the pip requirements is a challenge. The green cards don't add to anything Starscream does but I need them to keep the ASP in business.

Jason pointed out how much damage I was getting off of Starscream's flips, in one game getting six damage from flips alone and suggested Rapid Conversion and Escape Route.

Rapid Conversion seems less useful: I really only want to funnel my transformations into Starscream and there's no way to reliably ensure that I'll draw it. Escape Route, as a one of though? That I can get behind. So long as I have an active Starscream it's likely useful and when I don't, it's a white and green pip to add to the Air Strike Patrol attacks or defense. It has the potential to do a lot of work in this deck and maybe even worth adding a second?

I'm so used to just adding in three copies of any effect that I need that trying to come up with the best configuration is a challenge. What's become very clear, however, is that adding 3x cards with green pips is not always going to be correct. In the case of Espionage, sure, because the build of the deck is going to skew towards use of discard effects, either via Major Shockwave or other battle cards.

But that isn't necessarily true of Enforcement Batons or Bashing Shield and that's the stage I'm at right now.

As I Say

I'm fairly sure that 'irony' doesn't apply here but it's certainly something that the day I make the statement

"Now, the upside is that the flip economy is concentrated mostly on Starscream. The level of complication is kept to a minimum but that doesn't mean I can let my attention lapse,"

I do just that.

In two of the three games I played with Jason, I skipped a transform with Starscream and in at least one of those two games, it would have changed the outcome from a loss to a win. The third game I can't be assured of a win, but missing three damage is a big deal.

Part of it is about practice; Both with the deck and with the pause, to make sure I'm taking one last consideration before acting. It takes a little practice because I've been Magic for so long that I'm used to being able to take actions after an attack, because you can still take actions after you do so.

In Transformers, once you attack, your turn is over. Which means that in Magic the strategy is that you want to hold everything back until the last moment-including, potentially your opponent's turn. In Transformers you want to stage everything correctly before an attack, trying to project which attacks will be the most effective, because you're locked in once that happens.

It's a long way of saying: I am making a habitual mistake carried over from another game entirely.

Better keep practicing.

Seekers

This started off as a "classic" Seekers deck, with Thundercracker and Skywarp, but the thematic elements of each of those characters all went in different directions.

So I thought that instead, it would be neat to have Starscream lead his own army of planes, doing chip damage with his flips, with the Air Strike Patrol swings in for extra damage with green pips.

Starscream 11*
Raider Visper 5*
Raider Tailwind 5*
Raider Nightflight 4*
Head-On Collision 3
Cooling Vents 2
Repair Bay 3
Improvised Shield 3
Reactive Armor 2
Aerial Recon 3
Smelt 3
Bombing Run 2
Dismantling Claw 3
Inspiring Leadership 2
New Orders 3
Frag Toss 2
Personal Targeting Drone 2
Force Field 2
HV Electron Breacher 3
Reprocess 2

The hope is to send Starscream Air Commander in first, using it's Bold 2 effect to get a solid hit in on an important character, then use Cooling Vents, Repair Bay and Reprocess to keep it alive long enough to get in multiple flips for damage, while attacking for 5+ with the Air Strike patrol. A Starscream flipping for 3 damage every other turn is a Bolt of Lightning on the regular and that's pretty good. In addition, sending one of the Air Strike Patrol in to take some damage means that Bombing Run can do quite a bit for you.

However, I don't want to pass up the greatness that Raider Tailwind can provide, attacking for base 5 with a defense of base 3 in the late game. Remembering that is a tool to use can be critical to close a game.

With Titan Masters coming out soon, and already testable online, cards like Sharpened Talons, Regenerative Core and High Five might but worth considering to help increase the density of green pips.

As it is, the Seekers deck seems to require savvy play to use your actions and upgrades for maximum impact. Dismantling Claw being scrapped by Reprocess to heal two and take out your opponent's best weapon is a heck of a move and this deck can help you pull it off.

I'll be getting some games in this week to tweak and improve it.

0-6

I took Omega Supreme to the event last Saturday; I felt that the 'draw all the cards' plan would allow me the flexibility to overcome multiple challenges that I might face from a Titans and Combiners field.

The field was only comprised of Combiners: Aerialbots, Sentinels and a clever Six-Gun/Dreadwing deck. I lost to all of them, and in short order-not even winning a game.

On the upside, my opponents all told me that they thought I played well, making good decisions, and the games themselves weren't lopsided.

But the weaknesses of Omega Supreme pops up here, too: outnumbered, the team takes a lot of extra damage, with numerical advantage, the combination trigger doesn't happen in time. And, whether I like it or not, the strength of Omega Supreme-drawing all the cards so I have answers, well that's very fortune-dependent. If I get a Pocket Processor or a Universal Network Access, I'm in good shape! But if I don't then those weaknesses get glaring, fast.

In the end, I wasn't able to overcome the other builds. I was good but I wasn't good enough and the deck was strong but aligned badly against the field.

In retrospect, I think I would've liked to have combined the discard element of Predacons with Omega Supreme. I don't think many decks are ready for losing their best action, and that strike at their tempo might have helped me get to where I was going. 

Finally, this was the last gathering that I'll probably be able to attend due to the COVID-19 virus. It's pretty challenging to write about games you play with people when people should not gather to play.

I think I'll be putting up some videogame content as I can. Hopefully I will still be able to play Magic online via Cockatrice: I wish I could play Transformers that way but alas, it isn't possible via Mac.

Still, I've been playing some Life is Strange lately, and I've been noticing how it's narrative continually butts up against my notion of gameplay, and Doom Eternal comes out on Friday.

And I loved the 2016 Doom. So I'll do my best, and hopefully we'll get through all this together.

Two Choices

The next Transformers event at Red Castle (this Saturday!) has a Combiners or Titans theme. I decided to look into Predacons and Captain Omega Supreme as my possible deck choices. (I've included screenshots of the decklists, because converting Excel tables into HTML tables is a pain.)

These are both fun choices, and I'm not sure how to work them against the possible field. With Predacons, I want to focus on having the best weapons I can, while making my opponent discard their actions. That should be really good against other combiner decks and hopefully put a dent in the plans of Metroplex. Trypticon might well make an appearance and Disruptive Entrance can help slow them down, too.

With Captain Omega Supreme I want to draw all the cards with and always have an answer in hand, while also attacking for a lot. The ability to move into the midgame and then become a powerhouse that doesn't rely on my getting lucky enough to draw a card to do so, seemed far more advantageous.

Both decks need strong sideboarding plans, I think. With Predacons, The Bigger They Are is going to be useful against any Titan deck. There's also a possibility it would be good with Omega Supreme, too; even combined, Capt OS has fewer stars than the other Titans and the other Combiners, once they've combined.

A card I'm not sure about for Predacons is Enemy Combat Analysis. Against every combiner team except Constructicons it should be really good! But I expect Constructicons and Aerialbots and I don't know that ERC is worth the slots when I need pierce protection from Stable Cover, Point Defense System and W-5 Gyro Blaster. 

Squish Them Like Bugs is definitely a possibility with Omega Supreme: it's going to be useful almost every time against Combiner teams. Armed Hovercraft also has a place here; at worse it does one damage, at best it will do five. That's pretty helpful and I may have to create space for that maindeck.

But the devil's in the details, right?

At the moment, I'm tilting more towards playing Captain Omega Supreme: I like drawing a bunch of cards and getting to make choices. The Predacons are just a little too vulnerable, unfortunately, even with a lot of blue pips to shore up defenses. I need to be able to attack with +3 or +4 every time but I also need the disruption that Disruptive Entrance provides. The best weapons having blue or black pips on them, save Grenade Lanucher doesn't play nice with the need to aggressively boost the damage I need to do.

Still, it offers me some interesting choices and some more flexibility than Captain Omega does. But I don't know that this flexibility means a better game plan.
 

Wave 5: Titan Masters

Finally, the next Transformers set has been announced. Explanations of what the new cards types gets a deeper dive here.

The first thing I notice is that of the 46 characters, 43 will be new to the game. That is exciting to me, because it means that we aren't condemned to set after set of Megatron and Optimus Prime. The stable of characters in the Transformers universe is deep and I'm glad they're taking advantage of that.

They're also repeating what they did with Trypticon, adding a Fortress Maximus character to every box. So long as there are no Maximus-only battle cards to deal with, I can get behind this, since it won't mess with the sealed or draft games.

Along those lines, I hope that since one can mix and match head/body types, this means there should be less feel bad moments in Titan Masters than there were in Siege II with the Sixgun / Brunt cards. I hope so, anyway, as they forced things in draft or left players in sealed high & dry.

There's a lot of moving parts involved, though and that I'm a little less enamored with. Still, I'm willing to see those cards in action before dismissing it.

Stratagems are an interesting twist: I've never seen a game that allows you to effectively overwrite characters like this. The star cost is cheap, at least in the preview card, but is the value provided enough? I don't know that people were dropping Cosmos out of their decks because it couldn't hit 21 star characters. Still, the possibilities that open up are interesting.

Plus they start on the battlefield, which means you don't have to get lucky to give your character an upgrade, or dilute your battle deck. That's a big persuasion to use them.

It does seem odd to have them debut in a set with mostly new characters but I do appreciate the boost that those cards might give to older or previously unloved characters, and the acquisition of those sets. It's clever and provides some nice connective tissue, and at rare it shouldn't muck up limited environments much. But I won't know more until...well, everyone does!

Skittles

"Grenade Launcher isn't a common," my opponent said during testing.

Why sure it i-oh no. No it is not.

So that happened.

Fortunately, since this happened during testing and I didn't have to worry about having an illegal deck at the tournament. I tested with Crowbar but I wasn't entirely happy with that. Not unhappy but it's no Grenade Launcher.

So after a few more adjustments, this is what I went with:

Upgrades
3 Escape Plan
2 Kinetic Intensifier Whip
3 Improvised Shield
2 Basic Combat Protocol
3 Enforcement Batons
2 Erratic Lightning
1 Bashing Shield
2 Kinetic Converter

Actions
Repurpose 3
Ready For Action  2
Frag Toss 2
Head-On Collision 2
Defensive Formation 2
Battlefield Report 2
Brainstorm 3
Leap Into Battle 3
Escape Plan 3
Surprise Attack 3
Swindled 3

And I went 1-3.

First things first: I had a lot of fun in the games I played and I very much have a notion where to take this in the future. Just because I lost, doesn't mean I didn't have a good time! I learned a bunch and that is the most important thing.

Round One:
I was facing 5-wide team lead by Captain Impactor, with a heavy emphasis on bold. Game one I got run over. Game two I was able to stabilize but when even Private Tote is attacking for 11, that's just trouble.

Round Two:
I was facing a Dreadwing deck, supported by Bombshell! That was super cool and the matches were quite grindy, both of us eking out damage against the other. But I was able to hold off Dreadwing and eventually get the win. It was in this game that I was able to do things like one-shot Bombshell, something I couldn't do against the...not very defensive wide deck?

Sometimes, I do not understand this game.

Round Three:
This player was using Captain Astrotrain for damage and Sergeant Springer to draw a ton of cards. Against a two-tall team, I thought I had a shot, but I couldn't draw the cards I needed to heal, and I couldn't press any advantages. I figured out by game three that I had to take out Springer to keep the card engine from taking over, but the flips were not in my favor. Twice I flipped blues on attack, leaving my team vulnerable on the counterpunch-and leaving Springer with just one health left. One more orange pip and we untap with my two characters to his one but alas, that was not to be.

Round Four:
Another three wide team, this time using Optimus Prime-Freedom Fighter's innate bold ability to hit for a lot. Bold is a heck of a thing and it's helping me re-think how I build this deck. I was able to hit Optimus for eight in game two, letting me pull the victory out, but in game three I just couldn't get my deck going.

So what did I learn? In a big picture sense: I got distracted by shiny new cards (Reprocess, Defensive Formation) and forgot some basics that would've been a help. My biggest oversight was not including Forcefield in the deck, at least as a sideboard card. Bold attacks for 11 become a lot less scary when they hit for only four and I can heal one the next turn. But there were some specific things that I learned, too.

First: Repair Bay should've been in this deck, instead of cards with only black pips; as an orange card that heals the entire team, it fits perfectly. Second: I think I had too many white pips in this deck! Which is weird-the numbers say that generally one wants 9-11 white pip cards but I couldn't get consistent attacks and that might contribute. Third: more card draw (Incoming Transmission would've been fine) to assist Swindled could have helped, too. Finally, if there had been a way to incorporate New Designs, that would have been ideal. Card draw is huge (Kinetic Converter is excellent) but it needs to be followed up with pressure.

And that's it! Congrats to the winners and I'll have something better next time.

Beastmode

Here are the upgrades I've made to the deck for the tournament (updates in bold):

Upgrades
3 Grenade Launcher
3 Escape Plan
2 Kinetic Intensifier Whip
3 Improvised Shield
2 Basic Combat Protocol
3 Enforcement Batons
2 Erratic Lightning
1 Bashing Shield
1 Kinetic Converter

Actions
Repurpose 3
Ready For Action  2
Frag Toss 2
Head-On Collision 1
Defensive Formation 2
Battlefield Report 2
Brainstorm 3
Leap Into Battle 3
Escape Plan 3
Surprise Attack 3
Swindled 2

I leaned towards an aggressive build, eliminating Handheld Blaster for Grenade Launcher to increase the strength of the flips I would be making. Head-On Collision is there because I don't ever flip Raider Tailwind and Runabout's strongest attack mode is its bot mode, and a fourth copy of  Leap Into Battle is pretty good.

I also increased the green pip density for Raider Tailwind. Every little bit of offense or defense will help and while there isn't a ton of green pips, seven is still more than one.

The Sideboard is going to be
1 Stable Cover
1 Defensive Formation
2 Vaporize
2 Crushing Size
3 Crowbar

Motormaster, Stunticon Leader

Here's my reasoning:

Motormaster meets a critical point for my support character: it doesn't transform. Again: all the focus is going to be on Runabout and Runamuck for my flip actions, so the support card has to be solid as is.

And I chose Motormaster because of Private Sunrunner. Of the other Patrol teams, this is the only one who can do non-combat damage, which I think is a strong ability. While I expect the Air Strike Patrol to be a thing (they're the best Patrol at the moment) there aren't any real counters for what it does. I'm hoping to use the healing flips of Runabout to keep me in the game long enough to make an opponent's Raider Tailwind not matter.

But Motormaster takes a definite cut at Sunrunner's ability and that's what the sideboard is for.

Defensive Formation comes in vs the 4-5 wide decks, and if I can play it as my final action before they attack with two characters that would be ideal. Extra Stable Cover comes in against the black pip decks-I fully expect there to be a two-tall, heavy pierce deck. The characters and cards are there to support it, Raider Nova Storm can hit hard and I feel like it would be foolish to ignore the strategy.

Crushing Size and Vaporize are important because there are quite a few good Utility upgrades, especially ones that draw cards, and while Marshawn does a lot, it doesn't hit those very well or easily.

Crowbar is my wildcard at the moment: double pierce pips seem good against a heavily defensive deck. Is that a good idea? I don't know. But I'm not sure what else I should add in: more copies of Bashing Shield? Reprocess? I'm hoping to get a little testing in to help clarify things in time for Saturday.

Marshawn

I'm taking a quick break from Trypticon to write about a Transformers deck I'll be running this Saturday at the Red Castle Games event!

Raiders Runamuck and Runabout: a delightful pair from Siege I and the very first cards I stumbled on when my buddy Adam suggested making pauper decks. They have good synergy together and reasonable stats so I figured that I'd give this a go.

Turns out, just goldfishing the characters feels pretty powerful and I had room for a five star character! But while there are a lot of interesting places to go, I quickly narrowed the field because of two criteria.

First, an all Decepticon team would open up some cards that otherwise wouldn't be available to me. Second, as a flip-heavy deck, having a character that I didn't need or want to transform was important, since I need to spend those actions transforming Runamuck or Runabout.

With the initial build, Raider Road Hugger took the spot, because it has the highest health and power over the other characters. However, with the arrival of Siege II, Raider Tailwind may take that slot, because its health is one more and there are no car-affiliated battle cards at common. 

So I collected the Raiders and named the deck after Marshawn Lynch, because he's awesome.

Upgrades
Improvised Shield 3
EM24 IR Laser Launcher 2
Erratic Lightning 2
Spare Parts 1
Basic Combat Protocol 2
Enforcement Batons 1
Primary Laser 3
Security Console 1

Actions
Repurpose 3
Ready For Action  2
Frag Toss 3
Defensive Formation 2
Battlefield Report 2
Brainstorm 3
Leap Into Battle 3
Rapid Conversion 2
Surprise Attack 3
Swindled 2

As it turns out, using Raider Road Hugger appropriately is important, since attacking with it at the right time can give you more opportunities to flip the Battlechargers. However, there isn't a rule for doing so that I've noticed, yet. Sometimes, it should attack second but this is usually only true once everyone had has a chance to untap. Generally, Road Hugger attacks third because then you can sculpt the hand to provide it with the strongest possible attack, loaded up with Upgrades and Actions.

That said: the big help in this deck is Ready for Action. I am reluctant to add a third, since this is a mixed-pip deck. If it was heavy orange or blue, the piplessness would matter far less. However, without a lot of Bold or Tough, and without a focus on aggro or defense, eking every bit of color out I can matters. 

On the other hand, every time I get to untap one of the Battlechargers I feel as if  Marshawn is in a fantastic position to win the game. The extra turn step is huge. It's possibly worth testing, and definitely worth putting in the sideboard.

The cards with the green pips are in there mostly to swap out, in case I get an Improvised Shield in hand. There are also cards from Siege II to consider, Kinetic Converter and Kinetic Intensifier Whip being highest on my radar.

However, this is the casual version of the deck. There's a tournament on Saturday! That means I need to do two things: shape up this deck for a tournament and figure out a sideboard. Thursday, I'll show off what I came up with.

Bad Ban, No Donut

Multi-Mission Gear was banned this week, as a result of the oppressive effect of the Daring Escape combo deck.

They explain it all here.

What they got right: not banning Daring Escape. Going into depth about what their thought process was.

What they got wrong: the card they banned and the reason for it.

The Specialist Combo deck (one I have a version of and love) works by gradually creating an overwhelming advantage of resources over your opponent.You always have options and you can chain together multiple actions/upgrades for free, in order to slowly overwhelm your opponent.

And this happens for two reasons: 1) You get stuff for free and 2) There's nothing your opponent can do to stop it. The resources that players have to impact their opponent's actions is limited to sideboard cards at best or "well timed" (read: lucky) actions. That's not a bad thing, as I believe that getting to take your turn largely unimpeded is a strength of this game, the downside is that it does little to mitigate the two strengths of a specialists deck. That strength is not an issue so long as it takes time to get to where it's going.

The first point is why the deck is powerful but the second point is why combo decks that have alternative win conditions are and will always, inevitably, be broken. Maybe not at first, but eventually, someone will figure it out, because the opponent has a limited ability to shape what I do on a turn and nobody's cutting the fuel line. 

So long as Upgrades work the way they do, triggering whenever they re-equipped, this will be an issue. It's why they banned Swap Parts: it allowed for so many re-triggers it locked people out of the game so early (sometimes by turn 2!), which meant that aggressive decks didn't have a chance and control never got to step in.

At the time, I thought banning Swap Parts was bad and they should've banned I Still Function. I was wrong: Swap Parts was the thing that enabled the gamebreaking actions by fueling too many triggers, making the deck incredibly consistent. It was too much, too quickly.

So I understand not wanting to ban Sergeant Cog or Private Red Heat: they went for that effect that already and it didn't exactly work. But let's be clear: It worked just fine until an effect was given to the deck to quickly lock an opponent out of the game by turn two or three, in this case by just winning it outright, instead of taking infinite turns. 

I also get why they have decided to move to effects like Anticipation Engine instead. This will also work-until the cards come along to break it again, because of point #1: You get stuff for free.

Free is a very good price.

What this means to me is: as high as they are on alternative win conditions, they are going to need to be a lot more clever and a lot less "play this, you win", IF they want to keep combo as a deck style.

That's very different than Overwhelming Advantage, which can end the game but doesn't outright win it, since there are multiple scenarios where one might get that card to work and the opponent will have a chance to take another turn.

That doesn't happen with Daring Escape, and if it was a slow deck, people wouldn't blink an eye at.

But here's the issue: combo decks, by default, have to be as fast as they can be, because they are trying to win on an axis that nobody else is prepared for, and that often means that they themselves aren't as equipped to deal the standard win method. If they don't rush to the endgame, they frequently cannot win at all. Keeping the speed that they race to that endgame in check is important. It needs to be potentially fast enough to work before an Aggro deck can beat them, but not so fast that a Control deck can't step in a monkeywrench the whole thing.

Heck, one of the designers of the problematic deck replied to me at Reddit that the card that was the problem was Equipment Enthusiast, because of the sheer number of cards that EE gets you: "double digits" was what they said. That card draw is no longer the incremental advantage of Specialist decks, that's a turbo boost. And card draw is the most powerful thing you can do in a game like this.

So, what to do?

Errata the Upgrade cards.
This is a bad idea, for reasons they go into in the article. Adding to this: having upgrades re-trigger is something they've said they want to happen. It's fun and makes the game more interesting. I worry that it will become necessary because so long as one can get something for nothing, then broken things are likely to happen. I've seen this play out in Magic for over twenty five years. For now, however, it's OK.

Ban the Specialist Engines. 
That would certainly do it for a time and it's clearly worked in this situation. The lessons they learned from the Specialist Upgrades have been beneficial but it's still likely that if it isn't one of the other two cards (Multi-Tool or Field Communicator), Anticipation Engine or Brainstorm will be cards players break, because free is a good price. However, it's not inevitable just highly likely. The other downside is that Specialists no longer have an "identity" in the game (Melee characters want to flip a LOT more cards, Ranged characters want to have 'passive' attacks/defenses outside of combat, Specialists now...do what?). That is a pretty big issue.

Slow everything down.
This would mean banning Equipment Enthusiast, at least in this instance, and keeping a tight hold on any effect that let you draw and keep more than two cards for a card played. It tracks, because the last time they had to ban a card from an oppressive deck, Equipment Enthusiast was in that one too.

Drawing cards without any penalty for doing so will inevitably break a card game like this because, I repeat: drawing cards is the most powerful thing you can do in a card game.

Stop making "I win" cards.
No more Daring Escapes. This is a tough one, because the additional design space makes for a more interesting game-but this is a design that I don't think the Transformers TCG is currently equipped to handle. Maybe it won't ever be, but I have trouble believing that.

However, we know they like doing these cards, plus there's going to be players who love alternative win conditions, too. Having a little something for everyone helps games like this thrive.

So: If they want to keep making alternate win conditions AND they don't want to errata cards AND they want to prevent future issues from happening, then what is their best option?

I think the best move is the 'slow everything down' one, honestly. It allows for the most decks, while having the smallest downside. The Specialist deck would still exist, have multiple iterations, but could be beaten. Cards work as they are read. Strange win conditions can continue to be made and maybe even pull out victories from time to time.

But keeping the speed of the game down to prevent combo (or really, any) decks from locking people out by turn two or three is critical and if they don't do that, we'll be looking at bans again.

Which is what bothers me: They went for the smallest option, and while that seems like a good thing, I know that the next problem is lurking right around the corner because they didn't rein in the strongest action you do in these games. Combo decks might be the most likely ones to break the game, but card draw is good for every style of deck, threatening the health of the game.

Their argument against banning Equipment Enthusiast-

If we introduced that constraint on something as ubiquitous and fundamental as card draw, that would prevent us from making dozens, if not hundreds of future cards.

-is terrible, because it suggests that we either have zero card draw or double digit card draw. Which is completely silly, since we already have card draw (Pep Talk, Testify, Pocket Processor), filter card draw (Incoming Transmission, Inspiring Leadership, Repurpose) and card draw + cards (Swindled, Confidence, Secret Dealings) in the game.

So it looks like their argument is that there is no middle ground between getting two cards with zero drawback and ten cards with zero drawback? I don't buy that and no one should: there are clearly ways to have card draw in this game that would give decks a reasonable chance without allowing people to draw and keep 1/4th of their entire deck. 

And I think they should've taken that path, to keep us from having to have this discussion again, when the next cool alternative win condition appears.