The Transformers Card Game
Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast--the brand behind Magic: The Gathering--have a new card game that is now available in stores now, revolving around the world of Transformers. The game has players pitting famed Autobots and Decepticons against each other in battle, while adding equipment to them to make the characters more powerful.
Essentially, it's a very stripped-down version of Magic, using some familiar faces from the very popular Transformers line. Currently, there are two packs available to help you get going with the new game.
- Autobots Starter Set ($15): It's enough content for two people to play. The set comes with Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Ironhide, and Red Alert character cards, as well as 40 battle cards.
- Booster Pack ($4): Each booster comes with one character card and seven battle cards. These boosters are all random, so you have no clue what you're getting.
In total, there are 40 different character cards and 81 battle cards available within the Booster Packs. Here is the full listing of cards and their rarities. It doesn't take many cards to get a game going, which is a good thing. But how do you play this new game? Using the Autobots Starter Set and two Booster Packs sent to us by Hasbro, we're going to run you through the cards and how to play the game.
Official rules, in the way of videos, are available on the Transformers Card Game website.
Character Cards (Alt Mode)
Here are the characters in their vehicle (or dinosaur) mode, which is called "Alt Mode." Most cards have a unique ability to use during gameplay--which we'll get into later. Additionally, the stars on the bottom left of the card are essentially the power of each card, which you'll use when picking out your decks.
Bot Mode
Here is the Bot Mode for those same cards. When you flip these cards, its attack (orange) and defense (blue) may change, but its health (red) will always stay the same.
Character Ability
Many character cards have abilities you can use during your turn. In Dinobot Swoop's case, when you flip from Bot to Alt Mode you can move 1 damage from this character to an enemy. Moving damage around is a unique part of the game.
Board Setup
Each player picks some character cards for their match. However, the stars added together for both of your characters should be equal to your opponents. However, in this case scenario, the team of Optimus Prime and Red Alert equal 13 while the team of Cliffjumper and Bumblebee equals 14. This isn't an ideal setup as Cliffjumper and Bumblebee will have a slight advantage. All your characters start in Alt Mode at the beginning of the game.
Shuffle and equally split the battle cards for each player. The official rules recommends 20 per player. I recommend building a battle card deck for yourself--that's as long as the person you're playing has their own set of cards as well.
Before the game starts, each player draws three Battle cards.
Next to your undrawn Battle cards will be your scrap pile, for used and discarded Battle cards.
Battle Cards
There are four types of battle cards:
- Upgrade - Utility
- Upgrade - Armor
- Upgrade - Weapon
- Action
Each character can only have one of each type of Upgrade attached to them. So if your character already has a Weapon attached, and you attach another one, the first one goes in the scrap pile. Action cards are used and immediately put in the scrap pile.
Notice the colored squares in the top right corner? They're called Battle Icons and they will be explained a little bit later, as they're a part of the attack phase.
What To Do On Your Turn
Decide who goes first. When it's your turn, here's what you do:
- Draw a battle card
- Transform one of your characters to its other mode by flipping it (Battle damage carries over)
- From your hand, play one Action card
- From your hand, play one Upgrade card onto a character
You always draw a battle card first, and there is not a hand limit. However, the following three actions you can do in any order you want or not at all. After you play an Action card, it goes into your scrap pile at the end of you turn.
Note: The player who goes first at the start of the game can't play actions of upgrades for their first turn. According to the official rules, to start the second turn, the other player can only play one action or upgrade on that turn instead of two. For personal play, we skipped the latter part of this ruling.
Attack Phase
Here is the Attack round. You first choose one of your untapped characters to attack one of your opponents tapped characters. If none of your opponent's characters are tapped, the attacker chooses who to fight. You cannot have a character attack two turns in a row, unless it is your only character left.
After the attacker and defender are figured out, here are the next steps:
- The attacking card becomes tapped
- Both attacker and defender flips over the top two battle cards from their deck.
- If any of the flipped cards have the white Battle Icons, that player flips two more battle cards, but this bonus only happens once per attack round.
We'll be taking a closer look at the next steps on the next two slides.
Attack Phase Part 2
On the attacker's side, Bumblebee has 4 attack power. When that player flipped over the Battle cards for the attack, there were two orange Battle Icons on the card, so those get added to Bumblebee's attack power for a total of 6.
Attack Phase Part 3
Red Alert is being attacked and has a defense of 2, which becomes a total of 3 after adding the one defensive Battle Icon card.
Now, some simple math. 6 Attack - 3 Defense = 3 Damage to Red Alert.
Attack Phase Part 4
You use the provided damage counters to add to the card. Personally, I'd suggest grabbing some D20 dice instead to use as damage counters, or even a few D6s to keep track of damage, as these counters aren't great.
Red Alert has 3 damage counters on it, meaning its health is currently 7.
End Phase
After the attack is over, put all the flipped Battle cards for the fight into the scrap pile. Your upgrades stay on your character.
Keep Fighting
That's pretty much it. Players go back and forth, attacking each other's character cards, until one player's character cards are all KO'd. Full rules are listed on the Transformers Card Game website, both in PDF and video formats. The gameplay is extremely simple but there's a lot of room to grow, especially with some homebrew rules.
The Transformers Card Game is available now at local retailers.
from GameSpot - All Content https://ift.tt/2OhZ9vQ
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