Wave 4 of the Transformers TCG is coming in a little less than a month, which means that the “Siege II” news is starting to pop up everywhere. There have been a lot of character reveals so far, mostly focusing on the new minibots, but this past weekend, TFTCG fans got a big surprise!

New Faction – Mercenaries

(Image: Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro)

Revealed at NYCC over the weekend, the new Mercenaries faction adds four new characters to the Transformers TCG: Deadlock, Lockdown, Detritus, Mudflap, and Octone.

(Image: Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro)

While these characters have traditionally been Decepticons, they’re now part of their own unique faction. As a result, Autobots and Decepticons may ignore them in favor of their sworn enemies (as is the case with Deadlock), or, like Octone, they do damage to one faction or the other depending on their alt mode.

(Image: Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro)

Regardless, all Mercenaries have the new Bounty ability, which lets them take an action every time they KO a character. For some, like Detritus, it’s a simple heal ability. For others, like Lockdown, it lets you pile cards underneath the character card, giving him +2 damage for every card.

I can see Mercenaries characters being welcome additions to every deck, allowing you to create snowball strategies that make your team unstoppable as you start taking down opponents.

(Image: Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro)

With the new faction comes new Battle Cards! Some cards aren’t faction locked; they just mesh well with the Mercs’ flavor, like Crude Club. But most of the new Battle Cards give a bonus if they’re used by Mercenaries – like Dual Wield, letting Mercs play an additional weapon from the scrap pile. There are also cards like the non-faction-locked Valuable Contract upgrade utility that lets you put a one-star card from outside the game into your hand as a Bounty and letting other non-Mercenaries characters get in on the fun.

I love the characters that WotC chose for the Mercenaries faction. Lockdown has been a favorite of mine since his debut in Transformers: Animated, and it’s great to see him again. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly the meta adopts the Mercenaries. I can see them providing a ton of utility to even the most reliable decks.

Exclusive Reveal: Private Sunrunner

But let’s get to the main event, shall we? Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro have been kind enough to share with The Roarbots an exclusive Wave 4 card reveal!

(Image: Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro)

Private Sunrunner is one of the new Battle Patrol cards for this wave. Whereas before, it would be insane to field more than a couple of these pint-sized characters, new synergies and powers make it a viable option to add as many Battle Patrol cards as you can to your starting lineup.

He has stealth when untapped in alt mode and does automatic damage to a tapped enemy of your choosing when one of your other Battle Patrol characters is tapped. And you’ll definitely want to tap them to set up a big hit later in the game. He gets one damage and one defense for every Battle Patrol character in your KO area.

So if you leave Sunrunner untapped until the last possible opportunity and send in, say, four other Battle Patrols, you can get four free points of damage on another character. Then, as those additional characters are picked off, flip to bot mode and unleash his fury! With a potential 7 damage and 5 defense, this minibot suddenly has the punch of a much larger character.

I’m really enjoying the minibot patrol synergies in Wave 4 and can’t wait to see what else WotC has in store. “War for Cybertron: Siege II” will be in stores in early November. But you can preorder your booster boxes on Amazon right now!