The Combiners are coming! The Combiners are coming!

After the Transformers Trading Card Game made a splash with their oversized character cards, then their ridiculously huge, 12-inch tall city bot card (who is so big he deploys his own cards), the folks at Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast took a look at the buffet of assets laid before them and said:

“We can go bigger.”

And bigger they will go! On March 1 we’ll see the release of the next expansion for the Transformers Trading Card Game: Rise of the Combiners.

When I spoke with Drew Nolosco, Brand Manager for Transformers TCG last year, he coyly ducked my direct question of “Will there be combiners in the game?” with this answer:

One of the cool things about working at Wizards of the Coast is that we’ve been creating trading card games for 25 years. That means we have a ton of card technology at our disposal. One of the most rewarding things about working on Transformers is that we get to match up all of those interesting printing techniques to unique card mechanics. For Wave 1, size is the main thing we’re playing with. I can’t divulge any details, but with all of the methods and ideas we have, I can say that Transformers fans will have a lot to be excited about!

Though he did also say in that interview that G1 Devastator was one of his favorite characters, so keep that in mind as we get more character reveals (you can read the rest of my interview over at GeekDad.com)!

C-c-c-c-COMBO! (Image: Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast)

How Do You Combine Cards?

Wizards of the Coast is delivering on their promise of “interesting printing techniques” in the Combiners expansion. Not only will you get all five members of the Predacons (or members of one of the six other combiner teams released in the expansion) as playable characters with their own abilities and alt modes, but when you play the enigma named for their combiner form (like Predaking), you combine all five cards into one giant character (like a puzzle).

Most of my time with this card will be spent folding and unfolding it. (Image: Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast)

How does this work when each card only has two sides? Well you fold it in half to play it, of course. What? Don’t believe me? Intentionally folding your cards over and over again sounds like a really bad idea? Yeah, that’s what I thought too until I saw it in action. The card is prescored and played folded in half, where it’s the size of a battle card. Once it’s part of the combiner, you unfold it and reveal the character art for the combiner on the other side. Still don’t believe me? Check out this tweet from the official Transformers TCG page:

For folks who wanted a close look at the dimensions and folding functionality of the Combiner Character Cards, here's a video of a card in action! pic.twitter.com/RwihskJPrE

— Transformers TCG (@TransformersTCG) January 10, 2019

The play style will be different for combiner teams as well. You can only use your combiner’s enigma card if you have all five characters “in play” or KO’ed. They’ll retain any damage counters on them (which is only fair, combiners have huge health pools). But they’ll gain extra attack, health, and impressive new abilities (like Predaking’s ability to use five weapons at once).

Ready to combine and tower over your opponent. (Images: Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast)

If creating a combiner with damaged bots from your KO pile doesn’t sound appealing, then you’ll want to make sure you have a few battle cards with the new green battle icon. After a battle, you can swap one card in your hand for one card with the new icon. And just like that, you’ve got a completely undamaged combiner component sitting in your KO pile, ready for the enigma to come into play. Conveniently, all the Combiner Enigma cards are green pip cards.

Oh, you can combine? That’s *yawns* cute. (Image: Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast)

Planes, Trucks, Cars, and More

But combiners aren’t the only new characters to be slated for Wave 2 (there’ll be, at max, 31 combiner component characters). The super rare Windblade was teased last year, and she’s now been fully revealed in her combiner hunter glory. With the ability to give every character on your team Pierce 4, she’s here to make sure your newly combined super bot falls to pieces almost immediately. It’s a good thing she’ll be really hard to find!

Windblade isn’t the only new solo character in Wave 2. Bluestreak will be a solid addition to your car decks. He has a helpful ability that lets him transform automatically after specific types of attacks, making it all that much easier to get all of your cars in alt mode (a requirement for many car deck abilities).

There’s a new common Megatron that has a abilities meant to upgrade him quickly and do even more damage. Tank players everywhere are going to want this one.

Acid Storm is a new plane whose main use will be to shut down Bold decks. While his stats are somewhat dull, the inclusion of “Your opponent cannot use Bold” on his bot mode will have your opponents’ Dinobots quivering.

Why Not Both?

Even more interesting is that Triple-Changers are coming! They haven’t been revealed yet, but I’m guessing they’ll utilize the new folding cards, with their bot mode on the unfolded card and their two alt modes on either side when folded. There’s only two in Wave 2, but I can guarantee at least one of them will be Blitzwing. Not only do his tank and jet modes fit perfectly into the existing meta, but he’s got plenty of name recognition right now from the Bumblebee movie.

Who could the second Triple-Changer be? Maybe Octane – his truck and jet modes would slot in well with many decks. But if Wizards of the Coast decides to split down faction lines, the only choice is Springer. Not only is he the most recognizable Autobot Triple-Changer, his car/helicopter modes would work with all kinds of Autobot decks.

Why is that last part important? Because there will also be two, as yet unseen, battle cards that reward you for starting the game with all Decepticons or all Autobots. So those mixed decks you’ve been running are going to be a lot less attractive come March 1.

Suffice to say, the old meta is going to be toast. (Images: Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast)

Fill in the Blanks

There are new mechanics in addition to combiners as well. If you’ve been frustrated by constructed decks that fall short of the 25-star maximum, you can now add one-star battle cards to the mix! The cards revealed – a wicked action card that does three damage and an even wicked-er upgrade card that can fit in your weapon, armor, and upgrade slots – are perfect for those instances when you’ve got as many characters as you can but still have a few stars left.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a WotC game without new keyword abilities. Rise of the Combiners introduces Brave, which forces you to attack that character (if it’s attackable) and Stealth, which won’t let you attack a character unless it’s the only character you can attack.

When and Where?

Wave 2 will be released in early March in blind booster packs, much the same as Wave 1. For a collector at heart like me, that means I need to save up for purchasing two full cases in order to collect the entire wave.

Collecting every character wasn’t necessary in Wave 1, since the focus there was on introducing mechanics and letting players create fully functional and competitive teams from just about any characters. But with a combiner, having all five members is essential. That could get expensive fast.

I’m hoping combiner team characters will be easy to find, and the extra characters in the wave will be rare and super rare. Based on the previous wave’s breakdown, there will only be 28 common and uncommon characters. Depending on which combiners we get (like I mentioned above, Devastator is a pretty good bet), we’ll need either 30 or 31 combiner team characters. All Predacons revealed so far are uncommon, so we’ll have to wait and see if someone’s getting the rare treatment or if the rarity ratio will be different for Wave 2.

Wave 2 boosters will be around $4 and found at your local, friendly comic book shop or (eventually) in Transformers TCG endcaps at Target. If you have deeper pockets and want to ensure you collect the wave in its entirety, I’d recommend preordering a couple of booster boxes from Amazon. They should be around $100.

If you want to watch me unbox Wave 2, follow me on Instagram! I’ll be doing a live stream of me fumbling through a couple of boxes when they hit the streets.