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.

The Retired: I Hold Grudges

A new series!

I have a LOT of Magic decks. Too many, to be honest, because I cannot dismantle a deck.

That changes today. I own too many decks that are trying to fill niche mechanical ideas instead of being interesting or fun or good. Does the world need a G/W vigilance deck? Maybe not, but I've built one.

Is that deck interesting? No, it's pretty linear. Is it good? Maybe. Is it fun? Sure: I get to use older cards and mess with opponent's combat math.

So 1.5 out of 3 isn't bad. But failing that fun factor or engagement is a good reason to leave an idea behind. Plus, I have spread so many good cards out into bad decks, I barely have good decks now.

The point is: here's a deck I don't need around anymore. I'm going to talk about it a little and hold a tiny memorial for it here, then I'll dismantle it for parts, like building a new gun in a videogame.

I Hold Grudges:

4 Cerodon Yearling
3 Bull Cerodon
4 Flame-Kin Zealot
4 Suq'Ata Lancer
4 Duergar Hedge-Mage
4 Flickerwisp

4 Seal of Fire

4 Heal
1 Death Spark

10 Mountain
9 Plains
4 Arid Mesa
1 Drifting Meadow

2 Ajani Vengeant

2 Austere Command

There's the hint of a theme here; hasty creatures with goodstuff but...what exactly was I thinking? How does Flickerwisp assist this deck? What does Death Spark do for me? Why play Heal at all? (For the card draw but...) And this deck has Arid Mesa! A good card.

So, I'm going to put Arid Mesa in a deck that needs it: Flickerwisp, Ajani Vengeant and Austere Command can all find places-Austere Command alone is a rockstar in Commander. Seal of Fire has always been a card I like, since it can just stay out there as a potential threat, so there's bound to be a better deck for that card too. Death Spark is weird and that's interesting to me-but I didn't do anything with Death Spark aside from toss it in the deck.

Others cards just need to spend time in the binder, waiting for an opportunity to shine. Or are draft cards that I just need to let be draft cards.

No central theme, not nearly powered high enough: time to let it go.

When In Doubt

So I went with the Planeswalker. Why not? Giving my creatures spells flash could be really good against any control deck, and it does allow me to dig into my deck. Card draw is something that I know is important, and in Devastator is especially useful since I have a lot of lands and can hit those 2 land-1 creature or even 3-lands-in-a-row blocks.

Hexdrinker, I'm happy to say, has been doing exactly what I want it to: early turn play, mana sink, card that opponents swing their resources towards dealing with. When one opponent says "fuck that card" I notice. When three oponents say that, I'm allllll in. Nobody likes Hexdrinker but me and that's a good thing.

I have to say, this deck has felt strong when I've been playing it, and one exceptionally useful thing is how it can come from out of nowhere to combo out a win. That win can be done at instant speed if Vivien is out, because I can cast God-Eternal Rhonas in response to blocks.

That's a spicy way to victory, I'll tell you that.

I've also learned a few lessons about where Devastator has issues. Would you believe that green creatures that my opponents control creates problems for a deck that uses Verdant Succession? I bet you would!

So I'm going to add in a sideboard to Devastator. I've been wanting to start doing sideboards for awhile now, both as a good thought exercise and a way to improve my skills as a player and deckbuilder.

The issues I've had with Devastator are: other green creatures, fliers, and Humility.

Gah. Humility sucks but Naturalize exists. Second: Fliers are a problem, which makes Cloudthresher a great target-it can be evoked in for four mana, then sacrificed to Greater Good! If Verdant Succession is out, I can even get another to do four damage to all fliers and have a 7/7 creature with reach. Obstinate Baloth is there to gain life against red-based decks and maybe it's a reach but I'm hoping it'll be enough.

Against the green decks, Nylea, God of the Hunt can work in combination with God-Eternal Rhonas: Trample/Deathtouch should be enough to take out my opponent in the case of ground stalls. This might be good enough to try running maindeck. Finally, Hunt the Hunter. I'm proud of this idea: even with Verdant Succession out, if I'm taking out one of their creatures while keeping mine on the board, then attacking and forcing them to maybe lose another creature, I can still come out ahead.

4 Werebear
3 Blastoderm
2 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
2 Gurzigost
2 God-Eternal Rhonas
3 Fangren Firstborn
3 Caustic Caterpillar
3 Steel Leaf Champion
3 Hexdrinker
1 Rhonas the Indomitable

 4 Greater Good
4 Verdant Succession

 24 Forest

2 Vivien, Champion of the Wilds

Sideboard
3 Nylea, God of the Hunt
3 Obstinate Baloth
2 Cloudthresher
3 Naturalize
4 Hunt the Hunter

How Many Pips

I've found this really cool (but definitely math-heavy) series on how many white pips one might need for a Transformers battle deck, but also the affect of double-icon or blank cards.

Part one is here, part two, and finally part three. These can be some helpful guidelines for building decks! Battle Cards play such a critical role in deckbuilding, having a better notion of what kind of holes to fill in is going to be important to understanding how to make a better deck.

This is especially true with Siege II coming out soon: new cards tend to open new strategies, so having a grip on the baseline is a great way to know what concepts you want to explore!

Format, Variance, And Rarity

The design lead for the Transformers TCG posted this article on what the job is for common rarity cards.

No surprise; they're there to make limited (Turbo and Draft) environments work. That's just how TCGs are.

There is good content there, and I really do appreciate the lengths to which Wizards is going to to try and be transparent about how they build the game. Heck, I think there's interesting data there for anyone who plays a trading card game and is fascinated by the process.

However-and you had to know this was coming, right?-there is one big, big questionmark for me. From the article:

We feel Turbo is a strong selling point for our game that we’re starting to build sets towards it. If we can make the Turbo format more varied and fun without sacrificing the Constructed format (I think we can), it gives Transformers TCG an advantage over its competitors on the market. The common slot impacts Turbo the most so any innovations for that format go there.

So, there's just one problem.

Turbo isn't fun. I played two-and-a-half boxes of Turbo from Siege 1 and it wasn't fun. It wasn't fun in Rise of the Combiners, either-it was actually impossible to play, due to the Engima cards.

What was fun? Opening three packs, count stars only for characters, build the decks, go.

The reason Turbo isn't fun is because your battle deck is twelve cards. (Note: the link describing Turbo is incorrect, because the 7th battle card has been replaced by a second character card).

That just is not enough cards! Before your first turn even ends, you will have seen one third of your deck, at minimum, possibly half! That is in a set that has only 64 battle cards to begin with, so it's unlikely that you've got 12 unique cards, and the rarity is dispersed between both the battle cards AND the character cards, so the power levels are going to be wildly off. A rare character is far, far more powerful than a rare battle card and the rare battle card, if you get one, is unlikely to make it to your hand. Instead, it's far more likely you'll see the same common rarity cards flipped over and over.

If those common cards aren't helping you, that's incredibly discouraging, because you're going to see all of them, repeatedly.


By way of contrast, Draft has you making decks of 25 cards, and Constructed 40. Your first turns have you seeing just under 1/6th or 1/10th of your deck, which means there are a lot of surprises and choices left.

There isn't enough variance in your cards in Turbo to make play decisions matter. The power levels have been too flat, and with so few choices to make, games don't feel engaging. It is quite possible to have a bunch of cards in your hand that you cannot play, making your battle deck more and more consistent, meaning players already know the outcomes of the battle. That takes away from the most dynamic element of sealed!

However, at three booster packs, my experience was that games developed tension and my decisions mattered. I couldn't auto-play every character I got, which is good because it meant I was making choices about my game. Plus, the likelihood of my battle deck being blue-dominant and thus useless to me in a game that emphasizes attacking, is mitigated by the presence of those extra 6 cards, or by matching the best characters I could to the cards available to me!

That said, when I read Nagle's statement it's worth nothing he says, "If we can make the Turbo format more varied and fun without sacrificing the Constructed format (I think we can)".

So one of two things could be meant here: Either he knows that the format needs improvement and believes that they are making those improvements with Siege II, or he believes Turbo is fine as a format and they will continue to keep it 'varied and fun' as he groks those concepts.

I am really, really hoping for the former, not the latter. The Transformers TCG is a great deal of fun and I really do appreciate their attempt to keep the "on ramp" format as cheap as they can. As someone who is acutely aware of the costs of TCGs, I think they'd just do themselves a solid by recommending three packs to build the sealed deck instead of two. If I pay $8 and am miserable, or $12 and am entertained, then it's worth the four bucks to be happier.