Last time we looked at the plethora of new cards to be picked up from the Rise of The Combiner Booster Packs for the Transformers Trading Card Game, along with their abilities and drop rates.

Well as promised, this time we will see the cards in play!  As there are already dozens of youtube videos and sites that are showing Combiners facing off against each other, and the only two Combiners I can make so far are Menasor and Dreadwing,  I thought we would do something different – a Combiner vs a Titan!

It would be a bit unfair to send ol’ Dreadwing up against Metroplex I thought, so I picked Menasor for the battle.  I will be looking mainly at how the Stunticons and Menasor perform.  If you would like to read more about how the Metroplex character functions, please check out my review of the Metroplex Pack here.

Before starting, it should be noted that I received these cards for review purposes from Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast.  Neither company has paid me nor tried to dictate the contents of this review.  Bigangrytrev would like to thank both companies for their generosity.

 

Setting up the board

When setting up to battle with a Combiner, you will of course have all members of that team.  There is little point in having 4 Stunticons on the board but leaving Drag Strip at home.  All cards are (for Combiners that use 5 characters) 5 stars apiece. Pick three to shove up front and a couple to hang behind.  The difference between each Stunticons stats is negligible, though Motormaster is ever so slightly stronger, so I recommend getting him ready to rock.

 

Making Menasor

• First off, don’t worry about if some of your Stunticons are KO’ed. You can still make them into Menasor.
• Unlike the G1 cartoon, to join all your characters together they all need to be in robot mode, even your KO’ed ones.
• You need to employ the Stunticon Enigma card. If this has been thrown to the discard pile, don’t worry.  Being a green card, it can be retrieved and swapped with one of your own.
• Once combined, Menasor will carry over any damage points taken by the individual Stunticons, so try to get him to combine before they get too hurt.
• When combined, you will discard all the Utility, Attack and Defense cards your individual bots were sporting, except one from each catagory which can then be applied to Menasor.

 

Menasor vs Metroplex

They have surprisingly similar stats:

*Both have 25 Stars.

*Metroplex has stats of 6 Attack, 35 Health and 1 Defense. 

*Menasor has stats of 6 Attack, 35 Health and 2 Defense.

This makes Menasor that slight bit stronger than Metroplex.  As incongruous as this seems to any diehard TF fan, one must remember that Metroplex can still flip to his City Mode, as well as deploy his 3 sidekicks (presuming they are not already KO’ed), giving him the edge. So don’t get too cocky when you whip out your Stunticon combiner, you haven’t won yet!

Basic Game

The basic game is hardly worth mentioning here.  Given their almost identical stats it’s simply a matter of the opponents taking turns flipping cards until one behemoth dies.  Great fun for really young players, but holds little appeal for even those with a modicum of Transformers TCG experience.

Advanced Game

Gameplay proceeds as usual, with you equipping your characters with different utilities, weapons etc and you and your opponent KO’ing each others cards whilst trying to save your own.  A lot of it is skill, a lot of it is down to the luck of the draw.  If you find any cards specific to your team however, employ them at once, they can really help!

The trick to using your Combiner Group effectively is using your individual characters in conjunction with each other, balancing their strengths and weaknesses as well as their special abilities in order to do the most damage before combining.  For instance Motormaster can protect other characters from non-attack damage, Dead End will give you an extra card and Breakdown can gain you extra attack damage.

I also highly recommend getting many of your characters into robot form as soon as possible, so when you decide to unleash your Combiner you only have one or two characters max that needs flipping.  Keep your eye out for the Stunticon Enigma Card too, if you only have one in your deck and you let it get away that’s it, you may as well let your opponent walk all over you because it’s quite hard to win a game with just the individual characters, since none of them are particularly spectacular.

When playing as Menasor, you get two extra cards right off the bat for combining him.  You then get Bold 1, Tough 1 and Pierce 1 as well as playing an extra action on each of your turns.  This means he can seriously kick Cyberarse, especially if you have the right Action Cards slotted.  In fact of the 4 games with friends of Menasor vs Metroplex, Metroplex was only successful in one instance.

So yes, from actual game play I can confirm that the Rise of the Combiner Booster Packs are well worth picking up. I heartily recommend you trade cards with friends so that you can build yourself one of these awesome Combiner Characters as soon as possible!

Got any questions or anything to add?  Pop them in the comments section below!

 

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