Greetings! I’m Ken Nagle, design lead for TransformersTCG. Today I want to talk about an interesting deck I built and playtested during design for War for Cyberton: Siege II, which is Wave 4 of our releases.
Clash of the Titans
Part of designing Wave 4 was to create more deck possibilities. While I was at Origins, since players were already playing with Metroplex and friends, I was bombarded with requests for Trypticon as well. That day is finally here. Waiting for you at the bottom of a War for Cybertron: Siege II booster box, you’ll find this monster of a character:
Here’s the decklist:
Trypticon Deck
1 Trypticon, Assault Base
1 Fult-Tilt, Base Recon
1 Wipe-Out, Devoted Minion
1 Brunt, Artillery Drone
3 Force Field
2 Medic's Protective Field
3 Smoke Cloak
3 Point Position
3 Handheld Blaster
2 Security Console
3 Grenade Launcher
1 Sparring Gear
3 Valuable Contract
1 Pocket Processor
3 Hidden Fortification
3 Work Overtime
3 I Still Function!
3 Battlefield Incursion
1 Relentless Invasion
3 Security Checkpoint
Titanic Origins
Trypticon is designed similar to Metroplex, and I was its primary designer with input from the rest of the team. We knew we wanted a design similar to Metroplex, but with “more evil” mixed in. Like Metroplex before him, I started the design process with a green card that deploys a minion:
This card started and ended like this. After all, it worked for Metroplex. That’s right – one of our initial designs for Metroplex deployed his minions with a green card just like Battlefield Incursion. After all, it gives a “1, 2, 3” cadence through the deck like we wanted. However, if you’ve been a Transformers TCG player for a year now, you’ll remember that Metroplex hit shelves before Wave 2 Rise of the Combiners. We wanted to save the green icon (for the Enigmas) for Rise of the Combiners so we tabled the whole “green minion deploy” until we had another chance. 3 sets later is a while, but not too late.
There was a time when Battlefield Incursion had a white icon, but when you hit a Battlefield Incursion you want to pick it up and the white icon sometimes caused another Battlefield Incursion to flip over. So, it printed with just green. Battlefield Incursion can deploy:
Trypticon’s minions all have the Revenge mechanic featured on some choice Decepticons in Siege II. When they are KO’d, you get a bonus effect. If you can flip Wipe-Out or Full-Tilt to Bot mode, you get double the effect. Since 4-star characters can be super powerful in the game, we decided to hard-stamp the Revenge bonus for Trypticon-only. I usually start with Wipe-Out to find more Battlefield Incursions.
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Here’s where there is a substantial difference between Trypticon and Metroplex – both Wipe-Out and Full-Tilt can absorb 1 Force Field attack. The battle deck I’ve built leans on this – trying to get the opponent to “waste” more than one attack on Wipe-Out or Full-Tilt. Note that even though Medic’s Protective Field is an Autobot card, there’s nothing stopping you from playing it on Wipe-Out or Full-Tilt no problem and give them Safeguard 3 to survive.
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These blue-black cards help the small minions get some damage in even though their attack is low. Again, we’re trying to get the opponent to waste attacks on our 4-star minions, which Brave can do.
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This is how we get back our KO’d minions. Valuable Contract on Trypticon can find a Relentless Invasion. Trypticon is now pretending to be a Mercenary! You’ll also want a handful of other 1-star battle cards in your sideboard to find like a Bolt of Lightning or a powerful upgrade like Blast Suit to stop incoming damage to Trypticon.
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These are best card flow for Trypticon that I’ve found. Since your Action play is very important for playing Battlefield Incursion or Relentless Invasion, I’ve found it more attractive to draw cards with Upgrades rather than Actions, and especially Upgrades that are better early in the game.
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Tough keeps Trypticon healthy via blue icons while also flipping over Battlefield Incursions so we can grab them.
Conclusion
Today we saw the origin of Trypticon and where he ended up. From deck box to booster box, he got to crash the Wave 4 party in a big way that only a Decepticon Titan character can.
Thanks for reading this deck profile. I hope you enjoy War for Cybertron: Siege Part II on sale now.
Until next time, may you find a surprise at the bottom of the box.