Bah-weep-Graaaaagnahwheepnini bong, gamers, and welcome back to another article about Transformers: TCG. This past Saturday I judged at one of the country's biggest Energon Open Invitational Qualifier tournaments. We had a fantastic turn out of a lot of great players playing some intense decks, and today I'd like to profile the decks that made it into the final Top 4. The field was broad and varied, which was immensely satisfying to witness. This is a game with an extremely healthy and competitive meta right now and being able to witness all these different decks in action made my heart swell with pride to be a part of this growing scene.

So, let's jump right in and see what decks won the day!

4th Place: Aerialbots by Christian Stoeberl

It was no surprise to see Aerialbots taking the field at this tournament, as they've had a solid showing in most major tournaments since their release back in Wave 2. You can check out my article on them to get some idea of what they're all about in general, but let's take a look at what Christian was doing with his.

So of course, in order to pull off Aerialbots, you have to be playing all 5 of the combiner team characters together, so we can skip over talking about who is on the team and why they're there. They are there to form Superion, of course!

Christian's deck was a solid defensive beast, though with a couple of interesting and surprising choices made. One of the most surprising is that, breaking with the tradition of going full on Blue, he included three copies of Grenade Launcher in his arsenal. Since this build wasn't running any other orange cards besides Grenade Launcher, the point of this was to just swing in with big hits when possible and keep cycling through equipment on the individual bots. Going 5-wide is great, but it does mean that once you've attacked with an equipped character, it is going to be a while before you can attack with that equipment again. With Grenade Launcher, you add a significant amount of punch to your swings while also getting that weapon back in rotation to do it all again as soon as possible.

In order to get those needed cards in hand, we do see Christian opting to play a copy of Intelligence Mission and 3 copies of Inferno Breath. When matching your opponent's activations to try and ensure that you don't have a turn where you're being attacked by multiple characters, tapping for other effects that aren't attacks seems somewhat detrimental. But again, this is where going wide comes in useful. In most cases, especially early game, you're going to be able to use those characters for things other than attacking and still more than likely be 'up' in terms of character activations. Using Intelligence Mission for card advantage and Inferno Breath for direct damage seems like a decent trade off when most of the field you're going up against are only running three characters.

Aside from the above, Christian's deck was a fairly standard defensive affair behind a great team and a great pilot (pun intended) that saw him go all the way to the top four, and probably higher than 4th place had it not been for our big winner, whom we'll talk about later.

Christian's Superion Deck

• Characters (5)
• 1 Air Raid, Fearless Flyer
• 1 Alpha Bravo, Airborne Special Ops
• 1 Fireflight, Sky High Recon
• 1 Silverbolt, Aerialbot Leader
• 1 Skydive, Air Warfare Specialist

• Battle cards (40)
• 3 Security Checkpoint
• 3 Grenade Launcher
• 3 Pep Talk
• 2 Sparring Gear
• 2 Field Communicator
• 2 Aerialbot Enigma
• 3 Noble's Blaster
• 3 Reinforced Plating
• 3 The Bigger They Are...
• 3 Vaporize
• 3 Inferno Breath
• 3 Press The Advantage
• 3 Handheld Blaster
• 2 Force Field
• 1 Intelligence Mission
• 1 Security Console

3rd Place: Insecticons by John Tews

Insecticons get a bit of a bad rap in the Transformers TCG, mostly because the common view on these decks is that they are "dumb simple" to play. You just attack with Skrapnel first to tank any big hits and then pump as much bold into your team as you possibly can to do as much damage as you can as quickly as you can. It's got a reputation for being one of the "easiest" decks to play and build. However, it is still a staple at most tournaments for a reason, and that's because it can dish out punishment at a rate rivaled by very few other builds.

John decided to bring that pain with his deck, which ran like a fairly average Insecticons deck, save for a few choice changes that likely threw his opponents off their game. The first of these changes was a pretty significant change to his line-up. A usual Insecticon deck plays Skrapnel, Kickback, Barrage, and Ransack, but John decided to ditch Ransack in favor of Chop Shop. As you'll see in his deck list, he's also bringing a large number of upgrades to the table, meaning that he'll always have targets for Chop Shop's ability, letting him continuously flip to keep healing his other bugs.

Another major change is the inclusion of Swindled and Scrounge in the main deck. Typical Insecticons rely on playing mostly cards that boost their bold and run as many orange pips as they can and while John isn't shying away from the orange, he's also thinking ahead, leaning heavily into getting upgrades onto Chop Shop, attacking with high attack numbers instead of massive bold, and then using Chop Shop's healing to keep Skrapnel and Kickback doing what they do best. Including I Still Function was an interesting move as well, but when it allows you to bring in Kickback for another hefty swing in a turn, or resurrecting Barrage for his Bold 2, then having a non-pip possibly come up in a combat flip is worth the risk.

Overall, it was nice to see a more strategic Insecticon swarm focusing more on high attack value than high bold being run.

John's Insecticons

• Characters (4)
• 1 Insecticon Skrapnel, Insecticon Leader
• 1 Kickback, Cunning Insecticon
• 1 Barrage, Merciless Insecticon
• 1 Chop Shop, Sneaky Insecticon

• Battle cards (40)
• 3 Swarm
• 3 Focus Fire
• 3 Peace Through Tyranny
• 3 Improvised Shield
• 3 I Still Function
• 3 Supercharge
• 3 Swindled
• 3 Ramming Speed
• 3 Flamethrower
• 3 Grenade Launcher
• 2 Scrounge
• 2 HV Electron Blaster
• 2 Debilitating Crystal
• 2 Force Field
• 2 Incoming Transmission

2nd Place: Aimless Flaming Megatron by Anthony King

Out of all the decks at our tournament, this is the one that surprised and intrigued me the most. I was consistently impressed with the ability of Anthony's deck to put out high attack values while still running a heavily defensive blue stack. I'd love to do a full break down of this deck at some point, but let's just go over some of the highlights for now.

Starting off, we have General Megatron, the super-rare character from Wave 3. While he's not as heavy a hitter as Living Weapon from wave 1, he is still an equipment hog. He also loves dealing direct damage to enemies, and that isn't any small deal, for sure. In fact, this deck seems to thrive off of being able to deal direct damage in addition to swinging big. To pair up with Megatron is Raider Aimless who is just an annoying little guy if ever there was one. Having Tough 3 while he's a bot on your team makes him exceptionally annoying to kill; especially when paired with Flamewar to go to Tough 4. Even when you do finally off the little bugger, he simply becomes a weapon, and more fuel for Megatron's direct damage engine. With a blue-heavy deck running a few bits of bold, getting the 3 direct damage on combat flips is just nasty.

I'm fairly certain this deck would have gone all the way to the top, if it wasn't for the amazing build put together by our first-place winner.

Anthony King's Megatron Deck

• Characters (3)
• 1 General Megatron, Infantry Leader
• 1 Flamewar, Veteran Decepticon
• 1 Raider Aimless, Airforce Weapons

• Battle cards (40)
• 3 Pep Talk
• 3 Leap Into Battle
• 3 The Bigger They Are...
• 3 Security Checkpoint
• 2 Marksmanship
• 2 Vaporize
• 1 Hunker Down
• 3 Equipment Enthusiast
• 1 Callous Leadership
• 3 Handheld Blaster
• 2 Scoundrel's Blaster
• 2 Armed Hovercraft
• 2 Laser Cutlass
• 1 Energon Axe
• 3 Reinforced Plating
• 3 Extra Padding
• 1 Urban Camo
• 1 Combat Training
• 1 Quarter Master

1st Place: Aerialbots by "The Kid"

Once again, we have Aerialbots in the Top 4, and this time coming out on top! I won't put up the player's name, since they're still a minor and I didn't get consent from their parents, but we're still going to talk about this amazingly cool Aerialbots build.

If you were to sit down across the table from this deck, you would more than likely think, on the surface, that it is just another defensive Superion build. You would be wrong about that. Now, that isn't to say that it isn't a defensive Superion build, since most every time I saw the Aerialbot Enigma hit the table, the combined Superion had less than 15 damage on him, but this build is far sneakier and devious. You see, not only is this deck insanely tanky, it's also insanely Pierce heavy. Every turn the Aerialbots were getting 3 or more damage through enemy defenses, while taking almost none in response. Combine that with a fair amount of direct damage, and you come away with a deck that is very underhandedly aggressive.

Cards like Calculated Strike, Surprise Attack, The Bigger They Are, Laser Cutlass, and Energon Axe bring the pierce on your action and upgrade plays, while Dismantle and Smoke Cloak bit you on the flips. He also built in a good amount of direct damage as well, with Armed Hovercraft, Marksmanship, Inferno Breath, and Erratic Energy Grenade. At the end of the day, this Superion isn't just about staying alive, he's also about making sure that his damage gets through any of your defenses, striking to the heart of the enemy and being just a frustratingly brilliant deck to play against.

The deck also clocks in at a whopping 45 cards, but given the utility of each, it makes a lot of sense.

The Kid's Superion Deck

• Characters (5)
• 1 Air Raid, Fearless Flyer
• 1 Alpha Bravo, Airborne Special Ops
• 1 Fireflight, Sky High Recon
• 1 Silverbolt, Aerialbot Leader
• 1 Skydive, Air Warfare Specialist

• Battle cards (44)
• 3 Energon Axe
• 3 Handheld Blaster
• 3 Smoke Cloak
• 3 Security Checkpoint
• 3 The Bigger They Are
• 2 Inferno Breath
• 1 Marksmanship
• 2 Brainstorm
• 2 Pep Talk
• 2 Vaporize
• 3 Armed Hovercraft
• 3 Laser Cutlass
• 1 Erratic Energy Grenade
• 2 Calculated Strike
• 2 Dismantle
• 2 Aerialbot Enigma
• 1 Surprise Attack
• 1 System Reboot
• 1 Diagnosis
• 2 Field Communicator
• 2 Force Field

So that's it for this Tournament Report and Top 4 Breakdown! Join me next week when I bring you a massive, Titan-sized article about, well, the Titans Trypticon and Metroplex!

'Til All Are One!