Wreck ‘n Spoil Week: Episode 2

We are pleased to continue with our reveals. If you haven’t already done so, make sure you check out our post from Monday, where we revealed three of the battle cards in the upcoming War for Cybertron: Siege II wave. As always, we’re tremendously thankful to the TFTCG crew at Wizards of the Coast for allowing us to share these cards with you. Today, we’ll be showing off a new Secret Action, which is also a double pip card, which is also a star card! Tomorrow, we’ll be taking a look at a new Battlemaster!

Let’s take a look at HEROIC RESOLVE!

By the Celestial Spires! This is card is pretty bonkers. On top of that, the artwork is gorgeous. On top of the top of that, it’s an Uncommon, so you’re extremely likely to pull it from your box. It seems that from here on out, any cards with double orange, double blue, or orange/blue will be star cards (mostly to keep Metroplex from becoming too insane). So far, the only double pip card star card from Wave 2 or Wave 3 to see significant play has been Mounted Missiles. The only other star card seeing frequent play is Leap of Faith.

Essentially, when you play this Secret Action, you have insurance that one of your Autobots will survive an attack that would otherwise KO it, with one point of health remaining. A few important notes:

• This does not protect them against direct damage cards like Zap or One Shall Stand, One Shall Fall.
• Like we saw with Recover Cassette from the Blaster vs Soundwave set, once you reveal this card, it’s effectively out of the game.
• This will only protect you from ONE attack. If your opponent has more characters than you do and gets to attack multiple times, Heroic Resolve will only protect you against the first attack.
• So far, the most commonly seen Secret Action in main decks is Battlefield Report, since you’re almost certain that you’ll be able to activate its effect. If you have a good understanding of the game and are able to accurately predict what your opponent is capable of, you should also be able to play Heroic Resolve and be relatively sure that you’ll be able to reveal it to use its effect.
• Conversely, if your opponent recognizes that you have at least one star card to play with (and if you have at least one Autobot in your lineup), they now need to be concerned about going in with a potent attack when you play a Secret Action. For that reason, it might be wise to supplement Heroic Resolve with a copy or two of Battlefield Report to keep your opponent guessing.
• If you run a mixed team of Autobots and Decepticons, you can use the threat of this card to possibly encourage them to attack into an available Decepticon target instead of a juicier Autobot target, if they think they’ll be able to use that attack to get the Decepticon character off the board. You can get even more use out of this strategy if you’re able to “bluff” with a different Secret Action (although this is dependent upon your opponent not being able to use your scrap pile to figure out what might be in your hand, if all your copies of Battlefield Report are in your scrap, they’ll be much more likely to know that it’s definitely Heroic Resolve that was played).

We also initially were wondering how the card would interact with an opposing Wave 1 Grimlock swinging in.

Interestingly enough, the exact text on Grimlock doesn’t specify that the target enemy MUST be KOed, just that there needs to be more than enough damage to KO it. We were essentially wondering if Grimlock would attack, Heroic Resolve would reveal itself to protect the targeted character, then the defending character would still have to transfer the extra damage to another character. We checked with the folks at WotC and received confirmation that it DOES NOT work that way. We’ll wait for the official site to cover it in an FAQ or Rules Roundup, but the basics of the answer involve Heroic Resolve activating first, thus Grimlock never gets the “more than enough attack damage to KO an enemy” clause of his ability.

Up until now, the only options for a double blue star card have been Energized Field and EMP Wave, neither of which have seen a ton of play.

• 

• 

From here on out, if you’re playing a team with at least one important Autobot, if you have at least one star remaining in your line-up, and you don’t mind at least a tiny bit of blue in your deck, you will almost certainly be playing Heroic Resolve.

With that said, some of the characters that might best be able to utilize this card include…

Optimus Prime (Battlefield Legend) at 13 stars is automatically going to be the centerpiece of your team. It’s a guarantee that your opponent is going to be attempting to KO him in as few attacks as possible. OPBL is well-suited to use Heroic Resolve in either mode. His flip into alt mode allows him to retrieve it from his scrap pile. In bot mode, you might end up being lucky enough to flip it while attacking, automatically protecting yourself on the next turn if you choose to play it from his native ability.

Even though Sergeant Skywarp and Raider Needlenose can’t use Heroic Resolve on themselves, they’re both options for an alternate way to reliably retrieve it from your scrap pile.

It is no secret that I’m a huge fan of using characters with inherent Brave. Being able to dictate where your opponent attacks is a huge advantage, even more so when the Brave character is able to stay around for multiple turns. If your opponent is banking on being able to KO your Brave character in order to be able to start attacking your more important characters, Heroic Resolve will throw a spanner into their plans, forcing them to expend either additional resources or additional turns to get past your Brave stumbling block.

In the traditional Hot Wheels lineup, your typical strategy is to alternate untapping Prowl and Bumblebee as blockers in order to ensure that Wheeljack can get a massive swing into your opponent’s most important character. One of the main ways to slow down an opponent playing Cars is to eliminate one of their characters, accelerating the time when they’ll have all of their characters tapped. Obviously, the traditional Hot Wheels lineup comes out to 25 stars, so you won’t be able to run Heroic Resolve. However, there are some versions of Car lineups that dip down below 25 stars that could get use out of it, AND we’re seeing some interesting new Autobot Cars in the early reveals from Siege II. With Hot Rod, Smokescreen, and Greenlight all featuring Safeguard 3 (meaning that they can’t take more than 3 damage if they’re undamaged), forcing your opponent to waste even more attacks could be powerful. Coincidentally (or not?), that lineup comes out to 24 stars.

Orange Blaster has been making a big splash lately, generally with two Cassettes, which means you can sneak in some star cards if you don’t decide to use his bonus stars to squeeze in a 7 point character. Mounted Missiles is an obvious choice, but Heroic Resolve could also be a consideration here, to either keep Blaster or one of his teammates alive for one more turn.

General Optimus from Siege I has been showing up a lot since the set released. His relatively cheap cost allows him have a large selection of possible teammates, especially since you can take the team in a heavy orange, heavy blue, or mixed color deck. If you can keep a star slot or two open, Heroic Resolve can be a valuable addition.

---

Thank you for reading! Make sure to look out tomorrow when we drop another reveal!

As always, keep your eyes on the Wreck ‘n Rule YouTube channel for our usual shenanigans. Also consider supporting us on Patreon, since the proceeds go toward helping us upgrade our recording set-up AND toward throwing some sweet custom swag your way!