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Bayformers Spoilers - A Little Pell Mell

2020.10.23

Transformers come in all shapes and sizes - spaceships and planets, bugs and artillery pieces, but more often than not, they seem to like to descend into a complex mass of close-combat chaos, a pell mell battle, an intermingled crunch of cybertronian chassis - a Melee.

The Ranged and Specialist traits have outshone the Melee traits, so our friends over in the Bay have put together a series of cards to help your characters when push comes to shove, and punch, and probably a kick or two.

Our first card, CNA-Encoded Armory [1], helps Melee characters hunt for their specialized upgrades. There are only a few of these in the classic game, Covert Armor, Body Armor, and Power Sword. Of these, the latter two are very potent, and rarely played - typically because they have the opposite icons for their ideal decks; an orange battle icon to gain Tough 3, and a blue battle icon to gain Bold 3. Playing the CNA-Encoded Armory allows you to increase your draw changes for these cards at the cost of a damage.

This card has a white battle icon, but only for Melee characters. I like this touch, a gentle encouragement towards an all-Melee deck. I, of course, also like that this encourages Body Armor and Power Sword to be included in decks. By having this, you're basically creating a clone of those Body Armor/Power Sword cards so you can effectively increase your best chance of picking one up from 3-in-deck to 6-in-deck. It's an Action, so after you pick up the card you can immediately dive straight in to setup your Bold or Tough 3.

Very noticeably, our CNA-Encoded hunt was only picking up a Weapon or an Armor. That's where Polydermal Graft [2] comes in, giving the discerning Melee customer a Utility option. Again you can see that the Bayformers folk have kept to a cost of 1 damage, harkening to the chaos of the classic melee, to get the value from the cards. Here a slightly more powerful Enhanced Power Cell, at a cost of not being able to play it on a character with only 1 health left. The orange battle icon shows a slight lean towards an Aggro-Melee, which is probably a good thing. One of the core themes of TFTCG was quick games, having blue battle icons with repair or health leans the wrong way to keep those quick games.

Having 4 more health is a lot; though increasingly being able to scrap Utilities is crucial and the discerning player keeps Personal Targeting Drone, Crushing Size, and Reprocess to hand nowadays. Our upgraded Melee friend may find that the extra health is painting a big target on their Graft to be scrapped, however, CNA-Encoded Armory could put it right back on.

What else can a Melee character ask for? It's a Secret. As in... yeah, you get it. Whipped Into Shape is a big card. An Orange battle icon, that nice pell-mell 1 damage before you get the effect, and then a big +4 Defence. That's huge. Yes, Pierce is big and might make the defence worthless, but in many cases, especially for an Aggro deck, +4 defence out of nowhere is going to make your opponent's attack distinctly whiffy; even if it's really only +3 health being spared due to the initial damage.

This one could be a game changer in my opinion.

Here me out......FireCons! Two of them are Melee. Pretty snazzy eh?

"No. Those overgrown tadpoles will stay on the endangered list. "

Yes sir, Mr Peacekeeper sir.

Our last battle card, I know, all good spoils must come to an end, our last battle card, Angolmois Surge [4], is a blue battle iconed Action. Regardless of the blue, it'll be at home in any Melee deck, giving a whopping 4 Attack until end of turn for the cost of a damage. That's not all though, in a nice touch, tying to the theme of the card, Bayformers have also linked it to the Powered by Primus Unicron Raid deck, giving Unicron, Chaos Bringer, an extra Chaos Counter. Add a few of these to Unicron's deck to spice up his attacks.

When compared to Reckless Charge, the classic attack boost for cost card, this one has some distinct advantages with only the 1 damage being taken instead of 3. On the negative side, the damage is taken before the attack, and it only works for our friends, the Melees. If we compare it instead to Leap into Battle's +3 attack, we see that it is not as 'Wow' as it first seems. In fact, its strength is probably more in being played with Leap into Battle for an effective six attack boost cards, than it is as a supplement for Reckless Charge. That said, the CNA-Encoded Armory action means that you can play just the one blue-iconed Power Sword, leaving lots of room for three Angolmois Surge in a predominantly orange deck.

The real power here might be that 'until end of turn'. Who do we know who likes to do multiple attacks and is Melee? Yes, I'm looking at you Blurr. Let's say you go second with an Angolmois Surge in your starting hand. Blurr takes 1 damage and gets to make two base-7 attacks. Windcharger, who needs you?

So that's it. Those were our battle cards. Melee decks will rejoice, the reign of Ranged and Specialists is finally at an end.

"Stop it with the drama and show me the Stratagem already!"

*gulp*

Not content to provide a slew of new battle cards, Bayformers have also given us a Stratagem for your Melee characters: Brutal Conditioning. You only need one Melee character in your deck, and, per the Spotlight cards, you can even play a different Stratagem for that character. This Stratagem ties directly into the Bayformer Melee theme of value gained for the cost of a damage.

It all kicks off when you take a damage. If you wish, you can decide to move Brutal Conditioning next to the character. If you then do self-inflicted damage to that character 3 more times, you get to flip the Stratagem over and reveal:

Power Ups! Your character now has three +2s! Two more health, two more attack, two more defence. Raargh, time to unleash some of the pent up fury all your self-inflicted damage has caused.

I love how the stratagem ties into the themes of the battle cards. It's a bit of a white whale in that you will need to do damage 4 times to a character; along with at least one likely hit from your opponent; but the pay-off is pretty decent and it can't be scrapped. I also like that it's not tied to a particular character. This gives us a lot of options to try, though the weakpoint is having to identify the character you're suiting-up early on.

All told, I like the work Bayformers have done here. They've identified a weak set of decks (Melee characters), have come up with a theme (self-inflicted damage), have rewarded that theme with some cards just a tad past the norm, and tied it together with a quest to fulfill.

Now it's on us to achieve that quest - has anyone seen my Ultra Magnus Armor?

As always - thank you for reading :) To hear more about the Bayformers project, or to get involved with the next stage of the Beta testing, Follow them on Facebook and Join their Discord.