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.