When Hasbro bought the Wizards of the Coast trading card company they got into the collectible trading card game market using their Transformers and G.I. Joe properties. I thought the Joe cards/game were really well done, but the idea of cards that you punch out pieces to build robots to play the game just doesn't work for me. I bought one pack in early 2007 before the first live action Transformers movie was released. I didn't care for the gimmick so I just filed the cards away and forget about them.
Recently I've been seeing the Energon Wars packs in the $.99 discount bin @ my local Target stores so I grabbed a pack to see if anything changed. It looks like they implemented a few new game play ideas, but the premise is the same. Let's take a look inside one of these thick trading card packs.
From what I can tell the packs come in 2 varieties - G1 Starscream (pictured above) and G1 Inferno.
The aforementioned Inferno graces the folded up instruction booklet.
When playing the game the objective is to eliminate your opponent's HP. First player to do so wins. Each player starts off using their vehicular mode. There are 3 possible attacks to choose from - red, green or blue. Each character comes with it's on stat card that lists the HP for each form as well as it's attacks.
Each player has small tokens that correspond to the colors of the attacks. Each player chooses one color/attack and reveals them at the same time. On your player's stat card is an attack color. If this color matches the color attack your opponent selected then damage is done to your character. The stat card will tell you how much damage you received. The game is played in rounds until someone's HP reaches 0.
#1 Blurr (uncommon)
The number in the upper left corner is that form's HP. Listed in the middle are the color coded attacks and the damage they do. The points in the lower right corner are only used in multi-figure battles.
#1 Blurr
The Transformers come on 2 cards. These double sided cards feature the vehicular parts on one side while the robot parts are on the other side. Once you punch them out you can assemble either the vehicle or robot mode.
#21 Ramjet (common)
#21 Ramjet
If you know anything about Transformers you'll notice that not all of the characters in the game are of their Generation One (G1) form. Blurr is taken from the Cybertron series while Ramjet is from the Classics line. There are a total of 26 characters with random levels of scarcity.
AUTOBOTS: Blurr (uncommon), Cheetor (common), Classic Bumblebee (rare), Grimlock (rare), Hot Rod (uncommon), Inferno (rare), Optimus Primal (rare), Prowl (uncommon), Side Swipe (uncommon), Skids (common), Trailbreaker (common), Warpath (common), Whirl (rare)
DECEPTICONS: Blackjack (common), Blitzwing (uncommon), Classic Bonecrusher (rare), Classic Starscream (rare), Cruellock (common), Predacon Megatron (rare), Quickstrike (rare), Ramjet (common), Rampage (common), Ravage (uncommon), Sky Lynx (uncommon), Skywarp (uncommon), Vortex (uncommon)
Some of the character selections are really surprising. Hasbro pulled from a lot of different Transformers series such as Beast Wars, Armada, Energon, Cybertron and Classics. For example: Cheetor is the Beast Wars Transmetal 2 version, Side Swipe is the horrible Armada version, Skids I have no idea! For the Decepticons Blackjack is also a mystery to me as to what series he is from. Blitzwing looks more like the G1 Targetmaster Quake to me. Cruellock is from Energon. Nice to see Quickstrike from Beast Wars included. Sky Lynx I believe was a Mini-Con from the Cybertron line.
For more info and pictures of the characters visit
http://www.wizards.com/transformers/
Since I'm more of a card collector than I am a collectible card player I don't plan on assembling these cards. Besides, it'll be easier to store them un-assembled. I'm guessing these didn't go over or sell very well since packs can now be had for $.99 each. It's a novel idea I suppose, but the execution falls really short.
