Last week, we talked about our most anticipated Siege II characters. This week, let’s focus on battle cards. First up, Upgrades!
Kyle – Point Position
Wow, I finally have a minute to do one of these articles. Well better late than never. So my upgrade I’m most excited for is Point Position and it’s purely because I’m a degenerate Aerialbots player. For Aerialbots, this is a god send against any match up because it’s black/blue for starters and you get to force your opponent to overkill one of your guys to mitigate the damage they are able to do before combining. I know I’m going to have some challenges on what to get rid of for it but I would definitely recommend this card in your main board.
I would say my runner up is Multi-Missile Pod and that’s also because of Aerialbots (I told you I’m a degen from up country, anyway pitter-patter) because it’s an Armed Hovercraft without any restriction for the team. Yeah you lose it and it doesn’t give you plus 1 ATK but there might also be something to be said on being able to put it back in your deck to be more likely to draw another one. Could I be wrong on that mindset? Maybe but I’m definitely testing it out.
(P.s. I panicked because I saw all the other guys blod stuff so I bolded some random words don’t tell the others )
Editor’s Note: I cannot confirm nor deny that Kyle was drunk while writing this.
RJ – Erratic Cannon
I struggled with this choice only because there are so many upgrades that I am truly excited for. Erratic Cannon, to me, is especially fun. With so many different ways to plan, or stack the deck, Erratic Cannon can really be surprisingly powerful. It’s a weapon, and while it doesn’t add any attack right off the bat, it says when you flip at least one white pip, your character gets +3 attack until end of battle. Now, it’s not as good as something that gives you plus attack until end of turn, but in the correct deck it will be easy enough to trigger consistently. Not only that, but getting it until end of turn would be too powerful in turns where you could untap and attack again multiple times in a turn (looking at you, Anticipation Cars).
Pairing this with something like Incoming Transmission lets you draw cards, and stack the deck in your favor so that you are flipping a white when you need it most. Wave 3 General Optimus Prime (sidebar: I motion that we call this Prime “General Prime” and Wave 4 General Prime as “Galaxy Prime” – it is just so much easier) lets you focus cards away that you don’t need in order to dig for those white pips. Captain Jetfire, who I spoke about in length in our last article, can make GREAT use of this weapon with his ability to draw cards when he battles and stack the deck in your favor, in addition to giving you bold on top of that. At worst this card is something like Anticipation Engine in that when it doesn’t trigger it gives you zero benefit, though at its best it’s a better Erratic Lightning (I see what you’re doing with the naming conventions, WotC) with zero drawbacks on the defensive end. This card is on color and there are enough ways to ensure it triggers that I think it will definitely see some play. I know I am pretty excited to try it out!
Kevin – Conversion Engine
We’ve all been in that position. You have Blitzwing in bot mode with a Flamethrower or Supercharged, and then you flip and get nothing but blue pips. Now he’s stuck in bot mode with 0 defense, and judging by all the blue that just went by, about to take some damage. Worry not! Now you can miss your trigger and still get to a more useful mode (whether that mode is plane to stealth and hide or tank to bravely draw fire is up to you).
I think Conversion Engine is going to be vital for almost any deck running a triple changer for the simple fact that free transformations are great. And with the exception of maybe Apeface, all of the soon to be released triple changers can take great advantage of this card.
Be it Sergeant Springer bouncing from alt mode 1 to alt mode 2 to scrap an upgrade to draw 2 cards, or Astrotrain switching from the more attack oriented alt mode 2 back to the more defensive alt mode 1; there exists some great opportunities with this card. The only explicit downside to this card is that it is a mandatory flip at the end of your turn; which means you could have already been in a mode you wanted and now you are forced to change to one that might be less situationally useful.
Being forced to switch from Specialist Sandstorm‘s more defensive alt mode 2 (at least against ranged) to another mode (especially if they don’t have a Specialist to use his bot mode ability against) could spell trouble. But still, all in all a great card that I hope to see used a lot in the coming set.
Brian – Shoulder Holster
As I’ve said a lot recently, my favorite deck to play lately has been a heavily blue-focused General Optimus deck. I’ve been pairing him with Hot Rod and Fireflight and just vomiting out blue pips like crazy, blocking as much damage as possible while searching out for a Noble’s Blaster, or preferably, an Ion Blaster to put onto Prime. There are a lot of games where I have Prime loaded for bear with 1x Ion Blaster, 3x Extra Padding, and a Matrix.
With Shoulder Holster, I can suddenly get General Optimus dual-wielding those Ion Blasters, sitting at 10 ATK and 4 DEF before worry about whatever flips might pop out. The blue pip is even better, since it’s on-color for characters that want to hold out until the late game and build up their upgrades over time. Speaking of which…
Shoulder Holster has the potential to do some extremely dirty things with Galaxy Optimus…
One last thought for now: Shoulder Holster also has an interesting place with Wave 1 Jetfire, who can reliably pull it from the scrap pile. With a little bit of luck, you can quickly get him loaded with two weapons, or a weapon and armor (flip to bot mode, pull Shoulder Holster from scrap, equip a weapon from top of deck, play a second weapon or an armor from hand).
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