Greetings, Cybertronians!

            As many of you may have seen, we had some big news break yesterday. The War for Cybertron is bringing a brand-new faction to the Transformers Universe!

As the fight for control of Cybertron grows more dire, the Autobot and Decepticon forces find themselves turning to desperate measures. Those measures manifest in the form of Mercenaries: dangerous, skilled operatives whose only allegiance is to getting paid.

The Mercenaries will be cropping up across the Transformers Universe, but we had the exceptionally cool privilege of working with our partners at Hasbro to be the first place where fans would get to interact with these characters and see how they are fitting into the War for Cybertron story. It’s an extremely exciting development, and one that’s been particularly cool to see from the inside.

Mercenary Character Cards and Battle Cards will appear in War for Cybertron: Siege II Booster Packs, which release November 8^th. The exception to this is Nightbird, who is part of the Promo Kit that was made available to WPN stores. Please consult your local retailer as availability. We have recommended Nightbird be used as a promo for release events, but it’s up to the individual retailers how to distribute the promos they receive.

As always, we’ll be doing a call for Siege II rules questions closer to the set release, so please hang onto those if the Mercenaries raise any for you.

We’re very pleased to finally get to introduce you to these folks, so here they are. Stay tuned after the gallery for some cool Mercenaries deck lists and a Siege II card reveal from our very own Matt Smith!

 

 

 

Mercenaries Unleashed with Matt Smith!

 

Hello again allies of Cybertron!

As you likely know, we had some very exciting reveals yesterday courtesy of Hasbro’s booth at New York Comic Con!

As the war rages, a new class of Mercenaries have emerged ready to support whichever side they find most beneficial at the time.

I want to get your gears going with a couple of fun deck lists the Mercenaries can enable.

In order to do that, though, I need to spoil one more card, something that should prove exciting for fans of armor cards:

 

Medic’s Protective Field may be the second coming of Force Field, arguably the most important battle card of Wave 1. It requires a little bit more finesse, but it also guarantees at least a little bit of value with its repair ability. This is an Autobot themed card as it has the Siege II Autobot ability Safeguard, but it can be used on any character.

The first deck is an aggressive combo deck looking to abuse Safeguard abilities with the new best repair card on the market, Opportune Repairs.

 

Detritus // Arms Dealer
Private Hot Rod // Infantry • Soldier
Arcee // Skilled Fighter
Medic's Protective Field	3
Force Field	3
Bashing Shield	1
Scrapper's Gauntlets	2
Grenade Launcher	3
Erratic Lightning	2
Flamethrower	3
Stealthiness	2
Work Overtime	3
Treasure Hunt	3
Supercharge	3
Bolster	3
Opportune Repairs	3
Emergency Maintenance	2
Contract Contingency	2
Wedge Formation	2

 

Your main combos are to soak a hit with Hot Rod in alt mode, then refresh him with an Opportune Repairs. Additionally, you can throw a Medi’cs Protective Field on Detritus to increase the effectiveness of his Bounty ability to repair himself 3. Force Field can also be a nice stop gap here as if it leaves 4 on Detritus you can repair 1 with MPF, then 3 with his Bounty. Arcee is an excellent support character than can clear up the damage from Armed Hovercraft which is Safeguard’s worst enemy.

This is one tanky orange deck!

Next up we have a pierce and direct damage focused blue deck for the Decepticons utilizing the powerful Opportune Offensive.

 

Nightbird // Enigmatic Agent
Soundwave // Communications
Buzzsaw // Spy
Ravage // Saboteur
Armed Hovercraft	3
Laser Cutlass	3
Scoundrel's Blaster	2
Drill Arms	1
Reinforced Plating	3
Smoke Cloak	3
Data Bank	2
Security Checkpoint	3
Hidden Fortification	3
Marksmanship	3
The Bigger they are …	3
Opportune Offensive	3
Calculated Strike	3
Steady Shot	3
Disarm	2

This is similar to some of our previous Soundwave decks, but Nightbird proves a very synergistic ally. Nightbird’s ability to accrue damage from your opponent’s plays synergizes well with Soundwave’s hand disruption, just remove the Upgrades from their hand and they will be forced to play Actions to make any headway! Going second with Nightbird and dropping a Security Checkpoint for your first play is going to put your opponent on the back foot right away. Nightbird is also ranged giving us enough redundancy with Buzzsaw to utilize Armed Hovercraft and Marksmanship effectively. You’ll find the deck has a lot of guaranteed damage, which pairs great with the defensive blue battle icons.

That is a mean blue deck!

This is just the start, I looked forward to seeing which Mercenaries you employ to turn the tides.

Check back next Wednesday where I’ll talk more about the creative decisions that went into Mercenaries and the rest of Siege II!