Eric's Thoughts on Mini Bots Masters

Deckbuild
As soon as we received the *Masters challenge, I knew I wanted to play with the Sports Car Patrol for so many reasons (at least three!):
Of all the Micromasters, their abilities seemed by far the best. Repeatable Pep Talk and Leap into Battle? Heck yeah. Their toys were some of my favorites as a kid. Detour in particular saw a lot of time on my building block roads. Blue decks tend to be my fav, as IMO they often allow for more interesting interactions than straightforward bashing.
After that choice it wasn’t hard to add Aimless, who seemed incredibly powerful in a full blue deck.
Laserbeak was the next addition for his substantial utility -- I figured Pierce on one side and looting on the other would do a lot of work, and his native health is among the highest of the *Masters.
Stakeout was thrown in after debating between a 4-star character or 4 star cards to round out the team (probably would’ve been 3 EMP Waves and a Leap of Faith). Ultimately I decided that another body gave more consistency over star cards, and there needed to be a kind of “blank” character up there to do the scrappy fighting and let good things like Leap into Battle happen to. Stakeout has the highest attack value of any of the 4-star characters, and his bot mode ability (Rapid Transformation) was potentially useful for triggering draws off Laserbeak, so he made the cut.
The basic idea of the deck: Laserbeak and Stakeout would be the scrappers, receiving weapons plus benefits from Mr. Leap-into-Battle, Road Hugger. Detour would make sure I have the cards I want in my hand. Aimless was to fill the Dylan Thomas role, not going gently into that good night (too dark?).
How It Actually Played
In general I found an all-Masters format to really emphasize your programming decisions -- with such small attack and health values, doing one or two damage on an attack was a frequent occurrence you had to plan for and optimize. Additionally, pretty much everyone ran defense-heavy decks, which had consequences I’ll explain below.
In total, Road Hugger and Laserbeak performed precisely as I thought they would, becoming my MVPs for sure. Putting Scoundrel’s Blaster on Laserbeak was especially effective in an Autobot-heavy tournament; a swing of 4 pierce 4 every turn does a lot of work when your opponents top out at like 8 health. The ability to push extra damage through with Road Hugger’s tap ability was also clutch in securing KOs numerous times.
No one killed Aimless, ever. Not in any of my 6 games. The built-in Tough was a lot to deal with, and no one wanted to be staring down his gun form. In one game, he was my only character left alive. He ended up becoming a scrapper as well. Aimless + Laser Cutlass = v good.
I ended up using Detour’s built-in Pep Talk way less than I thought I would. It was still awesome when I needed the cards, but there were several games where he just chilled in car mode and, after being equipped, became another valuable rank-and-file fighter.
At five health, Stakeout became the sacrificial lamb. Not surprising. He ended up getting off maybe one or two attacks in a game before he bit the dust. I never used his tap ability and didn’t miss it.
What I’d Change
Not that I think there’d be occasion to run this deck again, but in the post-game analysis, there were definitely huge shortcomings to be addressed.
With an all-Masters team, Force Field is basically useless. What kind of hits are you protecting these guys from? They’re so often within 4 HP of death anyway, it’s basically a dead card in hand.
Speaking of dead cards, because Aimless never died, Spare Parts was a total waste. My white balance hit like I needed it to, though, so I’d need to make sure to replace those 5 whites with other similarly-pipped cards.
I noticed that so many of these games came down to Pierce (and yet I didn’t find myself wanting any Black pips…). I should’ve main-decked all three Surprise Attacks and sideboarded another Scoundrel’s Blaster -- since I won a couple games by Quartermastering a piercing weapon onto a ready fighter.
Ultimately the biggest card I missed was Swap Missions. I so often wanted to attack with Laserbeak or a piercing guy multiple times in a cycle and never had that ability. You may notice I had Tote in my sideboard; he could’ve helped me with that, but I didn’t think there were enough Black pip cards strong enough to run to reliably count on his ability. I suppose I could try to rejigger the deck to add more Blue/Black hybrid stuff but I think ultimately a set of Swap Missions would be more worthwhile. Even in a meta where Pierce won most of my games, native Pierce and Pierce-granting weapons and abilities seemed far more impactful than playing Black-pipped cards.
I’m most surprised that nobody brought a Lionizer/Bold deck. I’ll never know how this would’ve held up!