Bah-weep-Graaaaagnahwheepnini bong, gamers, and welcome back to another article about Transformers: TCG. One of the major differences between the Transformers TCG and other major CCG and TCG's out there is how this game manages how many cards you can play per turn. While most games have some form of resource that one has to spend in order to play cards, Transformers does not. Instead, it relies on limiting a player to playing only one Action and one Upgrade per turn at the start. However, there are many ways around this restriction, and today I'm going to talk about how to maximize your action economy by looking at some old cards, some new cards, and some tried and true cards.

Upgrades for Actions

Let's start by taking a look at some upgrades that allow us to get some extra actions onto the field during our turns first, since there are a good number of them less than there are actions that play more actions. One of the early stand-outs in this space, and one of the reasons why the card Swap Parts became overpowered to the point of getting banned but also to make the rules of the game itself change, is the card Multi-Mission Gear.

In a deck that runs specialist characters, getting an upgrade and an action along with your other normal action per turn is clearly very powerful. Played in a deck where you can move your upgrades from character to character, we can start to see how this card can become even more powerful, since the effect triggers when the card is 'put on a specialist', not 'played'. There are a good number of cards and characters that allow you to transfer upgrades from one to another, so with careful planning, we could get even more than the initial single extra action!

While not quite as impressive, or as sure of a play as Multi-Mission Gear, Field Communicator can be just as impressive in the right hands. With the amount of Plan and Focus effects that exist in the game, as well as cards like Incoming Transmission that allow us to stack the top of our deck, we can be reasonably assured that we hit an action. Even if the card that we scrap isn't an action, with Anticipation Engine and Multi-Mission Gear in our decks, it's very nearly the same thing.

Next, and currently finally, on our list is the fantastic Anticipation Engine.

While Anticipation Engine does not allow you to play an extra action during the main phase of your turn, it does allow you to play actions from the top of your deck when the character attacks. In combination with characters or other upgrades that allow you to Plan during your turn, Anticipation Engine allows for stacking your deck with an action from your hand while also playing an action from your hand. Since it is an upgrade, it sticks around to be used multiple turns in a row. Under the right circumstances, and with the right build, Anticipation Engine can provide a continuous advantage and help you keep the pressure on your opponents by simply out-actioning them turn for turn.

Actions For Actions

Let's go ahead and get the obvious one out of the way first. Brainstorm is a powerful card, especially if you are able to chain multiple copies together to simply build actions on top of actions. This goes without saying.

What we care about most from Brainstorm is the number of other combos and action chains we can spin off into. Of course, one of the best cards to chain into with Brainstorm is Leap of Faith if you have stars to spare in your deck. There's absolutely nothing more satisfying than laying down a Leap, scrapping that top card, and seeing Brainstorm smiling up at you. It's like Christmas come to Cybertron!

Not to be left out and forgotten are the trio of actions that allow you to play more copies of that action per turn. Focus Fire, Sonic Scramble, and my new favorite, War of Attrition, all allow for extra action plays and come with some fairly nice bonuses if you manage to play all three copies in a single turn. They also all come with a green battle icon, allowing us to pull these to our hand during combat to save up for that turn where we unleash the full fury of the accumulated actions.

Capitalizing on Advantage

So now that we've seen a bevy of cards that allow for playing more than our allotted single action per turn, we have to find some way to capitalize on them. The deck I'm going to put together actually uses all the cards we've talked about in this article so far, and I'm going to say up front that I do not recommend this build. It relies on a good deal of jank, luck, and overall bad design to put this action generation machine to at least some good use.

First off, we're going to have to include Thundercracker - Mach Warrior in our build. His alt-mode ability is useful in some matchups, but his bot mode ability is really what we're after here. With so many actions being generated per turn, we can't not include the one character that most benefits from the actions we play.

To help get our action engine running, we're going to include Captain Wheeljack - Engineer, Scientist. Not only does he allow us to start the game with a guaranteed copy of Brainstorm in hand, but when he's in bot mode, he's going to be drawing us cards when we hit 3 actions played in a turn. Since our goal is to play as many actions in a turn as we possibly can, hitting a third action isn't going to be entirely difficult.

Rounding out our team, we're going back to the Decepticons to recruit the Predacon Torox - Fueller. He may not seem like much on the surface, especially in alt mode, but he does allow us to flip him early in the game to draw a card and possibly set up the top of our deck to make the most out of Leap of Faith or Anticipation Engine. He very likely won't live long with his meager 9 health and no defense, but with any luck, we really won't need him to.

When we bring all of these battle cards and characters together, what we end up with is a deck that, if we're very lucky, will allow us to not only gain significant action advantage over our opponents, but let us pump Thundercracker's attack enough to really lay a beating out on our opponent's bots. It may not be as effective at one-shotting characters as Overwhelming Advantage, but if we play, draw, and scrap our cards right, we may just see some good results!

The Deck

Battle Icons:

• 2 Black
• 14 Blue
• 11 Green
• 9 Orange
• 19 White

Breaking the Action Economy | Transformers TCG | Royce Thigpen

• Characters (3)
• 1 Captain Wheeljack - Engineer, Scientist
• 1 Thundercracker - Mach Warrior
• 1 Torox - Fueler

• Upgrades (15)
• 3 Anticipation Engine
• 3 Data Bank
• 3 Data Pad
• 3 Field Communicator
• 3 Multi-Mission Gear

• Actions (30)
• 3 Brainstorm
• 3 Focus Fire
• 3 Incoming Transmission
• 3 Leap Into Battle
• 3 Leap of Faith
• 3 Pep Talk
• 2 Secret Dealings
• 3 Sonic Scramble
• 2 Steady Shot
• 3 War Of Attrition
• 2 Work Overtime