Transformers:
TCG Wave 3, 4, & Blaster/Soundwave Set Review
Siege 1 (Wave 3) Booster Pack Release
Date & Price: June 28, 2019; $4 U.S.
Blaster vs. Soundwave Set Release Date
& Price: September 20, 2019 for $40 U.S. (mass "normal" release);
SDCC 2019 for $50 U.S. (SDCC-exclusive "35th Anniversary" release)
Siege 2 (Wave 4) Booster Pack Release
Date & Price: November 9, 2019; $4 U.S.
Both the third and fourth
series/"Waves" of the Transformers Card Game focused on the Generations
toy series at the time, "Siege", Part 1 of the "War for Cybertron" trilogy.
Wave 3 was titled "Siege I", and Wave 4 "Siege II". Like the previous wave,
this series built off the previous versions of this game. For a review
of the basic mechanics of the game, see my review of "Wave 1" here.
For a review of what was added in "Wave 2", see my review here.
For "Siege I", the biggest
change was that each booster pack came with TWO Transformers cards; 1 "normal"-sized
card and 1 "miniature" Transformer. Regardless of any other changes to
the game, this to me is a BIG deal. One of my biggest complaints with the
game up to this point was that you only got one Transformer card per expansion
pack, and there weren't nearly enough battle cards to justify that, as
you'd have to get MANY multiples of even the rarest battle cards before
you'd end up with a complete set of all the Transformers in the wave. To
a certain extent, that's still true; there has been an annoying expansion
of the number of "Super Rare" Transformers cards in each wave, without
a corresponding increase in the number of battle cards. Several of the
battle cards from previous waves have also been "re-issued" for this Series,
albeit with new art to help differentiate them for collectors. There's
also fewer smaller Transformers cards than "normal" Transformers cards,
so you're going to wind up with multiples of those two if you're going
for a full set (and none of the smaller ones are Super Rare, either-- though
that's a positive for me)!
There are two types
of smaller Transformers cards introduced in Siege I-- Micromasters and
Battle Masters, which correspond to the same types of Transformers in the
Siege toyline. Micromasters operate like normal Transformers, but only
costs a couple of stars-- 5 or less, usually. For the most part, in their
alternate mode they have "Stealth" ability, which means that if Transformers
are legally able to attack any other TF on your team, they must-- it essentially
buys the Micromasters some time to do something, as given their low star
value, that also means that they have pretty weak stats. However, the beauty
of Micromasters has to do with their ability to do certain special things
if you have a select number of cards pulled in your deck. In robot mode,
most Micromasters would activate a special ability if you would "tap" (but
not attack) with them. Sometimes all you have to do is tap them, but other
times you have to tap them and scrap a certain number of a type of cards
from your hand (such as those with blue pips) and they would help out other
characters. To give a specific example, Storm Cloud's ability in robot
mode, if you tap him and discard 3 cards from your hands with green pipes,
one of your Transformrers gets Bold 3 (they draw three more battle cards
when attacking) until the end of your turn. If you're lucky enough to scrap
3 cards with the exact same name, that character gets Bold 6 instead. This
is a typical special ability, with most Micromasters having some variant
of it-- giving other TFs Stealth, or extra damage, if you scrap 2 cards
with blue pipes or 3 cards with orange pips or whatnot. They help essentially
modify/buff your bigger guys a bit.
As for the Battle Masters,
they're a bit different. When they're first put on the battlefield, they're
in robot mode, and they can NOT transform. They're typically slightly stronger
than a Micromaster (though not as strong as a "normal" Transformer) and
cost a few more stars. However, when they die, instead of you putting them
in the KO area, you turn them to their other mode, which is a weapon upgrade
of some sort which you can then immediately equip on one of your other
Transformers if able. These weapons tend to be better than your average
non-Battle Master weapon, giving a pretty good boost to one of the "host"
TF's stats and giving them a special ability to boot. It's a pretty ingenious
way to get this gimmick to work in terms of a card game.
Another big change made
for Siege I is a new type of card-- "Secret Actions". Basically, during
your turn, in play a Secret Action face down on the board (instead of playing
a regular Action card). Each Secret Action has a certain criteria to "activate"
during your opponent's turn-- perhaps your enemy does more than 3 damage,
or simply plays an upgrade, or the like. If this happens before your next
turn, you reveal the Secret Action card and it then takes effect, which
usually either helps you out or hurts your opponent in some way. It's then
discarded. (If the Secret Action card is NOT triggered during your oppponent's
next turn, it is discarded when it's your turn again regardless.) This
helps add a bit of mystery during your opponents' turn, as they're not
quite sure what you've got up your sleeve and it helps you do something
during the earlier phases of your opponents' turn as well, instead of just
passively waiting for them to do their various actions and attack.
On some lesser notes, a
new color pip has been added to the game-- a black pip with arrows. Just
like with other pips, these normally don't matter if you play the card
from your hand as an Action/Upgrade during your turn, but if you flip up
a card with a black pip when you are drawing cards for attacking, your
character gets Pierce 1 until the end of the turn. (You do at least the
number of pierce damage to your opponent when you attack, regardless of
how many defense they have.) This generally makes really buff Transformers
a bit weaker and is especially helpful if you're trying to get weak Micromasters
to do damage to larger Transformers, though the fact that TWO different
color pips now activate when you're attacking-- compared to just one color
pip when you're defending-- makes it more likely you're going to do more
damage when attacking overall, now. Additionally, much of the art for the
Transformers in earlier Waves and all of the art for the Battle Cards used
pre-existing art, for Siege I and Siege II cards, all of the Battle Cards
and most of the TFs use original art. I definitely appreciate this, as
it helps make the card game its own "thing" with beautiful, unique art
for nearly every card.
After the Siege I expansion,
a special Blaster vs. Soundwave set came out. As with the special Metroplex
set, both Blaster and Soundwave "deploy" their cassettes by flipping between
their modes, and they each come with three cassette Transformers that are
of the same card size as the Micromasters/Battle Masters cards. Both also
come with pre-constructed decks, which mostly consist of Transformers battle
cards introduced in previous expansions, though each one does have a few
unique cards specially designed for Soundwave and/or Blaster and their
minions, such as a special card for Soundwave that gives him more bonuses
the more of his cassettes he has deployed. As another example, both decks
come with a special card, "Recover Cassette", that completely heals a cassette
and partially heals the main deployer TF if you but the cassette card back
under Soundwave or Blaster. Both decks are pretty evenly matched and a
recommended buy.
For the "Siege II" Wave,
because it's more of a continuation of Siege I, not nearly as much has
been added to the overall rules as with previous waves. (Which, honestly,
I don't mind, as adding too many rules just makes the game needlessly complicated).
The main new addition for Siege II is the "Mercenary" faction, which are
neither Autobot nor Decepticon Transformers cards, and instead have as
their primary color gray. Additionally, each Mercenary has a "Bounty" ability,
wherein it gains a predefined bonus each time it kills a Transformer. For
example, whenever Mudflap KOs a transformer, you reveal the top card of
your deck and may play it if you wish. Usually Bounty abilties are decent,
but they're hardly game-changers unless you're an absolute genius combining
cards (which I certainly am not). Triple-changer cards also make a return
with Siege characters like Apeface, as well as just new characters to the
card game like Sandstorm.
The other major new
addition to Siege II are multi-part Transformers. These are different from
combiners in that each card is not a fully-functional Transformer, and
each card is also the "normal Transformer" card size, not a smaller size
that's folded in half or anything. There's basically two types of these
new multi-part Transformers; first off, you've got some of the Weaponizers
toys from the Siege toyline like Brunt making their appearance here. In
the toyline, in addition to forming a vehicle and robot mode, each Weaponizer
toy could detach into multiple weapons and armor for other Siege toys to
wield. For the card version of these toys, each robot mode is made of two
normal-size cards, and they cannot transform. However, when they die, they
become two weapons that can be used by other Transformers cards,
not just one; essentially, they're "double Battle Masters". The other type
is consists of multiple different vehicles that combine into one robot
(see: Skytread, Omega Supreme). They consist of multiple different regular-sized
cards that are the different parts of the alt mode. Each have their own
hits and abilities and all that, and when certain conditions are met, you
combine them by flipping the cards around and then arranging them-- similar
to Combiners, but without having to unfold the cards. On one sense, it's
nice to have a new kind of Transformer cards, but as a whole I really despise
these new multi-part TFs. Why? Because if you don't have all parts (remember,
you only get one of these cards per pack), they are literally useless.
At least with Combiner cards, you still had a functioning Transformer card
even if you didn't have all the Combiner members; not so here. If you don't
get both parts of Brunt, you can't use him; (or worse, you get two of the
same parts without getting the other half). Omega Supreme is particularly
bad, as ALL THREE of his parts are rare-- opening an entire case, I only
got one of his parts. This is super-annoying, as essentially they make
the "main draw" of a particular booster pack useless. I really hope they
don't use this gimmick again.
As opposed to a special
set for Siege II, instead if you buy a whole case, you get a special Trypticon
Titan card (same size as Metroplex) packed in the bottom of the case, along
with three regular-sized TF cards he can deploy-- Brunt (the G1 drone version,
non-transformable), Full Tilt, and oddly enough "Wipe Out", essentially
a Tailgate redeco character. Compared to Metroplex, Trypticon doesn't deploy
his little buddies just by flipping back-and-forth between modes; instead,
you have to play cards-- found in the individual booster packs-- to deploy
them. By releasing Trypticon this way, instead of him getting his own special
deck there's instead a couple of Trypticon-specific battle cards spread
throughout the booster packs. The battle cards are common enough where
it's highly likely you'll have enough of them by the time you open the
whole case required to get him, though, so that's not an issue. However,
I don't like how much his core functionality is now based on drawing the
right card---
Overall, Siege I and II
add some interesting twists to the core card game. I LOVE that an extra
"mini" Transformer card has been added to each booster, as this helps make
each booster a bit more valuable (though having 3 TF cards-- or a better
balance between the number of regular-sized TFs, small TFs, and battle
cards in each expansion would have been better). The way the small TFs
work is a nice addition to the game, and Mercenaries are a nice addition
as well. That said, the addition of yet another color pip-- and the way
more and more of the battle cards work-- is pulling the card game more
and more towards a "make a new deck for each play" kind of game. General
decks-- which I personally prefer to build-- don't work that well anymore.
Building a "jet deck" or a "truck deck" isn't nearly as effective as building
a "Apeface, Sunrunner, and Thundercracker" deck or the like. Of course
this was always the case with the card game to some extent, but with the
addition of more and more abilities and types of Transformers this is becoming
more and more obvious. I personally don't enjoy building a deck for each
game and use slightly more "general decks" even if they're not as effective
because I just have fun playing whether I win or lose, but it is a minor
annoyance and worth noting. Also, Wizards of the Coast-- NEVER use multi-part
Transfomers again. It's just dirty pool and feels like a special way of
screwing over buyers.
Overall Rating:
8/10
Great
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