Bah-weep-Graaaaagnahwheepnini bong, gamers, and welcome back to another article about Transformers: TCG. Spoilers for the fourth wave of the TF:TCG; Siege II; are rolling out in full force lately, and recently one of the big reveals is the concept of a third faction entering the game, Mercenaries. Comprised of bots who, historically in the Transformers fiction, have never fit into either the Autobot or Decepticon camp are now making their appearance, and bringing with them some powerful abilities to aid those who would call them allies, even if those alliances are paid for in cold, hard, cash.

It's not just characters, either, with a bevy of new battle cards coming into the game to help bolster this new faction, the options and opportunities for deck-building have increased dramatically. Along with a new keyword ability in this set, Bounty, this new faction is sure to shake up the game's flow and pacing while allowing for new and interesting combos.

Today, I'd like to introduce these new mercenaries, some of their supporting battle cards, and see if we can leverage some of this to bolster one of the remaining factions with some hired help in a deck revolving around these new mechanics.

The Mercs

So, let's look at our roster of possible new hires from the pool of mercenaries at our disposal so far. Each one of these new characters has a Bounty ability, which allows us to activate an effect when we KO an opposing character.

First up on our roster, Deadlock - Soldier of Fortune. His stats are fairly solid, and he has stealth from both Autobots and Decepticons while in his alternate mode, while also being able to deny other Autobots and Decepticons the ability to hide from our attacks when we flip to it. Now, notice that this doesn't say "your opponent's" bots, so this applies to our own as well. When in bot mode, his Bounty effect allows us to draw two cards, and flip him back to alt mode. Not too shabby, but let's look further.

Up next we have Detritus - Arms Dealer, a hefty little bot who packs a lot of punch and high health. When you flip him to his alt-mode side, he allows you to play any card with a black battle icon for free. On his bot mode, he keeps himself plowing through his targets by healing himself every time he KO's an enemy.

Statted similarly to Detritus, our next option on the table is the fan favorite, Lockdown - Bounty Hunter. This bot looks like a powerhouse on the surface, getting +2 attack for every card underneath him, and when flipping to alt mode, drawing a card for each one tucked away, as well as each upgrade he's sporting. You then scrap that many cards from your hand, but the options that you gain should be worth the trade. In bot mode, his Bounty ability is what gets you the afore-mentioned cards beneath him, allowing you to tuck one under him every time he KO's an opponent. In a meta filled with small characters, getting him to +4 attack isn't unreasonable.

Coming in at the second lowest cost of all Mercenaries is Mudflap - Hired Muscle. With a beefy attack stat for his star count, he certainly is a brute to be reckoned with. Flipping him to his alt mode allows us to stack our deck for an upcoming attack with his Plan 1, while his Bounty ability in bot mode lets us reveal and play the top card of our deck. Even if we don't need to play it, we'll at least know what our top defensive flip may be. Situational, but powerful in the right deck.

Last up from the normal line-up, the super rare, thirteen-star cost Octone - Capricious Agitator. Being a triple changer makes this guy interesting enough, but his stats and abilities are enough to make us take a second look. In truck mode, he gets an extra attack bonus against Autobots, while also making our opponent choose an Autobot to deal 1 damage to when we flip to that mode. In his plane mode, he does the same, but against Decepticons. If Octone is in bot mode, however, his Bounty ability allows us to simply do 2 damage, regardless of the enemy faction.

Now we've got a special entry in our list, the promo character Nightbird - Enigmatic Agent. Her alt-mode ability is, off the bat, quite powerful, forcing your opponents to deal damage to their own team to play actions, making them think a lot harder about their plays, and hopefully slowing down their game. In her bot mode, her Bounty ability lets us play one of our opponents' own actions against them from their scrap pile.

All these options have their advantages and disadvantages, but for what I'm thinking of building in this article, we're going to go with Nightbird as our hired hand. Teaming up with her is an old pal of ours, Raider Aimless, and a new friend from wave four, Raider Spinister.

Now, to more fully support our team, let's look at what battle card options we have to empower our new employee.

Battle Cards

This build is going to be all about being defensive and piercing our enemies with steady amounts of damage each round, as well as some direct damage to keep the pressure on. The goal is to keep Nightbird alive as long as we possibly can to make our opponents really think twice about playing any actions against us. Thankfully, with Scoundrel's Blaster and Energon Axe both having blue icons, we've got some of the best piercing weapons in the game at our disposal. Wouldn't it be great if we could equip them both onto each of our characters? Spinister already has two weapon slots, so he's fairly set, but what about our other bots.

Well, thankfully we have a couple of new options to work with that handle just that scenario. Dual Wield may seem like a good choice at first, since we're running the mercenary Nightbird, and the possibility of getting a free weapon play off it is appealing, but that weapon is going to go away at the end of the turn, as well as the extra slot we'd been granted. Instead, we're going to use Shoulder Holster, mainly because it sticks around, and because of the blue battle icon.

Since we have a mercenary on our force, we can also bring in Opportune Offensive to add some extra raw damage and 3 pierce to our Decepticons. Since it only relies on the mercenary having been on our starting force, the card continues to provide value even if Nightbird is KO'd. Even if we flip it during combat, we get that one black pip's worth of pierce, so this is a very welcome addition to our defensive arsenal.

Our next new card is an absolute Primus-send for Spinister, Multi-Missile Pod. It doesn't add any raw damage or pierce, but since Spinister has two weapon slots, we can easily fill one with as many of these as we can get into our hands. With these equipped, we can scrap them to do damage equal to the number of scrapped Multi-Missile Pods. Unfortunately, these check when they're scrapped, so we aren't doing 3 damage per pod scrapped if we get that lucky, but we will get a cool 6 damage across all of our opponent's bots. Even getting one damage for scrapping a single missile pod is worth it taking up a weapon slot on our whirly-bird friend.

Finally, rounding out our bevy of new toys to give to our hired gun, a new action and utility. Urban Camo is simply a decent utility that gives the upgraded character Tough 1, something we'll need to keep ourselves kicking long enough to get maximum effect from Nightbird. War of Attrition is a blue and green pipped action that forces our opponent to deal one damage to one of their bots, but also allows us to play another War of Attrition. If we can play 3 of them in a single turn, we get to heal one of our own bots for 3 damage.

The rest of our deck is rounded out by a few old standbys to add pierce and attack, while also being blue-pipped cards to keep ourselves rolling. Most of these I've talked about in past articles and are decent tools to play with if you're looking to pierce straight to the heart of the opponent's team.

Come on back and join me next week, where I try to make the most out of Wave 1 Thundercracker and see exactly how many actions we can play!

The Deck

Battle Icons:

• 42 Blue
• 6 Green
• 6 White

Hired Muscle | Transformers TCG | Royce Thigpen

• Characters (3)
• 1 Nightbird - Enigmatic Agent
• 1 Raider Aimless - Airforce, Weapons
• 1 Raider Spinister - Infantry Aerial Assault

• Actions (22)
• 2 Hidden Fortification
• 3 Opportune Offensive
• 3 Quartermaster
• 3 Security Checkpoint
• 3 Surprise Attack
• 3 The Bigger They Are
• 2 Vaporize
• 3 War of Attrition

• Upgrades (23)
• 3 Armed Hovercraft
• 3 Energon Axe
• 2 Laser Cutlass
• 3 Multi-Missile Pod
• 3 Reinforced Plating
• 3 Scoundrel's Blaster
• 3 Shoulder Holster
• 3 Urban Camo