Baby's First Organized Play Event
Well, just shy of 37 years old and I finally did it... I took the plunge and participated in an officially sanctioned tournament event!
Myself and the Teletraan-Fun team had been talking a lot in the lead-up to Origins about what we thought the meta of Transformers would be, what kind of decks might surprise, and the nature of competitive CCG's in their early days. We also chatted about how we're far from experts and likely 100% wrong about what we're thinking.
I happened to be the only one among us who was going to be attending Origins (first time at that convention for me) so after waving off participating a whole bunch I finally said I'd give it a shot. One, because I wanted to be able to report back to everyone what I saw. And two, because it was a good way to stop myself from spending extra hours in the Exhibit Hall giving away my hard earned monies.
My Deck and Strategy
Based on a conversation we had about early meta and competitive builds (aggro is king when a game is still young) I decided to just cobble together the most aggressive Predacons deck I could think of. I sadly didn't have time to test it out before going to Origins but I had no illusions of doing well out there. Getting my butt kicked was an inevitability that I welcomed. Spoiler Alert, I was not disappointed in this regard.
So, first up, let's have a look at the deck lured into the tournament hall to get beat up.
So, I think a lot of this deck is pretty self-explanatory but I know a few things stood out when I was talking shop with fellow tournament goers.
Secret Dealings- I wanted this in the deck for two reasons. One, White Pip. Two, I needed something reliable to help me get Peace Through Tyranny and Improvised Shield on top of my deck and out of my hand. Green Pip made that all the easier.
Predacon Enigma- A big debate I always see come up is Two Enigmas or Three when it comes to Combiners. For me, the Green Pip plus the amount of Bold in the deck meant I could shave an Enigma and add in something else. That something else was...
Decepticon Crown- White and Green Pip, I dig that. Also, super helpful in getting White and double Orange Pips out of hand and on to the top of the deck. FOR THE WHOLE TEAM!
New Designs- Normally not the best card but to me, this really needs the upgrades on the table so that with Treasure Hunt, Swindled and the Enigmas were built into the deck to do just that.
Overall strategy here was just to hit very very hard, manipulate the top of the deck in my favor and Steamroll when optimal. And, to be honest, this strategy worked pretty well. That being said, everyone I ran up against had really fine-tuned their deck engines to fire exactly as needed. Way more reliably than I could get mind to, anyway. I found that my deck was very dependent Steamroll coming up, me drawing double-Orange to put on top and me having the Action Economy to spare in order to get that Orange on top vs. doing something else useful with that action. I learned a lot from my rounds and already I know about five or six cards I'd swap out.
What Did I Play Against
Round One had me up against what I thought was the weirdest combo of characters in a crazy all-Blue build. Arcee, Motormaster, Fireflight, Headstrong and Flamewar. I thought this was so bonkers and was super confident I'd smash these bots real quick. Wanna know a secret? This deck gave me the worst beating in the tournament. His offense came in the form of Inverted on Arcee and Flamewar who turned into one-hit killers against my bots while the other three made it impossible to retaliate on Arcee or hammer other bots with a well-timed Steamroll. I lost 0-2 on this one and man... I learned a lot about non-conventional builds.
Round Two I faced a car build. Trusted Lieutenant, Wheeljack and one of the Stunticons who slips my mind at the moment. I was taken by surprise regarding how hard these cars were hitting! I thought i'd at least out attack him but his deck was built around untapping those cars and taking away that advantage. These were close games that came down to one injured bot on his side every time but he still beat me 0-2. Great games. We talked a little shop after while waiting for round three to start. He mentioned his deck ran up against Insecticons in the first round and got beat bad. Me and the team expected to see a lot of Insecticons and that they'd do well so that was a nice confirmation to hear.
Round Three I sat opposite a very unique four-wide tank deck. It was Darkmount, Warpath, Demolisher and Slammer. Very defensive build with lots of pierce in there. Very Bread and Butter for tanks but I'd never seen four-wide and thought that was super unique! First round I beat him pretty handily, second round he pulled out the win with only Slammer remaining (damn that little bot!) and the last round I beat him again straight away. Steamroll turned out to be the all star here along with the gross amount of damage I could output. So this one was 2-1.
Fourth Round I ran up against Orange Sentinels and I had a blast in this game. Learned a ton from a very calculated player. In the first round I beat him very quickly and mentioned post round that he had a lot of trouble in the first round trying to cope with the amount of damage coming his way and being outnumbered. Midway through game two is when he figured out how to crack me though. He committed to swinging with his big hitter first instead of saving him so that he could eliminate Headstrong in one go rather than wasting an attack on him. That, combined with his Espionage plays in the third game (which I think were part of his side board) prevented me from getting Predaking out and sealing the deal in both very very close games that followed. That was a 1-2 game for me.
After that I decided to drop and check out the rest of the convention (i.e. spend a bunch of money on RPG books.).
What Did I See?
From a play-perspective I saw people pretty loose with cards in the play area vs being put into the Scrap Pile early and honestly, I was happy with that. I put things directly in the Scrap Pile all the time and I was afraid of getting called on that but it never came up.
I also saw a lot of really nice courtesy being offered to people. I saw people forget to transform and their opponents letting them do it. I saw people taking back moves and letting each other fix plays done in the wrong order. It seemed like no one wanted to win because of a mistake and everyone was really treating their opponents nicely!I was super nervous about going up against people and looking like I had no idea what I was doing but that never happened. The player base was super kind and I appreciated that a lot.
I saw a lot of Battlefield Legend out there which I expected. I also saw more Metroplex than I expected and that was a surprise. Lots of Inverted. Lots of Energon Axes. LOTS of Press the Advantage. That card was responsible for turn heavy hits into one-hit kills against me so many times. It was in every deck I played against except the Tanks.
Final Thoughts
I'd do this again for sure! I was nervous about not knowing what I was doing and if competitive players would give me a hard time and honestly neither of those things happened! Wizards of the Coast and Pastimes did a great job of getting people registered and up to speed. The players were super inviting and friendly to a newcoming like me. And, I learned so much about deck building, the meta, and running your deck the right way. I'm going to be making some changes to this deck real soon and who knows, maybe some version of it will see organized play at GenCon in August!
Also... I got one prize pack of Siege and it had an Ultra Magnus in it so the most important takeaway is that every pack probably has one, right?
Thanks all for reading through my experience! Hope it was insightful or at least entertaining to see how a first-timer approached things. Good luck and good gaming to you all!
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