Master Builders

The third Back of the Binder challenge stars Grapple, who presents challenge on two fronts.  First, his card abilities are quite difficult to trigger.  More importantly for me, his appearances in the original cartoon were quite limited, making a theme deck more difficult because theme decks based on the original cartoon is what I do!

Grapple is kind of a lame character.  He likes to build stuff. He whines a lot about people messing up the stuff he builds. His only true 'showcase' episode was one where he basically is an idiot.  Naturally, that's the episode I went with!

In "The Master Builders," Grapple designs a solar power tower.  He showed it to Optimus Prime all excited because he designed something cool.  Instead, Prime shot down his idea because he was busy learning basketball from Spike (WHAT?!?) and because the tower would be too difficult to defend against the inevitable Decepticon attack.


Grapple and Hoist went off to pout and got captured by the Constructicons. But apparently the Constructicons had left the Deceptions.  The master builders (see what I did there?) decide to team up on a project and build the brilliantly designed and creatively named solar power tower.  This actually isn't inconsistent with the IDW Transformers Galaxies Rise of the Constructicons characterization of them, but in the context of the show, it made no sense. I guess Grapple's love of building stuff blinded him to all reality. To quote Agent Burns in Bumblebee 'They literally call themselves Decepticons. That doesn't set off any red flags?"

Megatron figured out what the Constructicons were up to and forced them to rejoin his squad.  He gave them some energon to use to convince Hoist and Grapple that they were all in on the Lego Masters, I mean master builders partnership.  Amazingly, showing up with some energon did the trick and they got to work on the tower, using supplies the Constructicons stole from humans. Again, this doesn't seem like something Grapple should be cool with, but whatever.

When the tower was complete, Megatron showed up and claimed the it.  I guess Optimus wasn't so stupid after all, Grapple!  The Autobots managed to get Devastator to accidentally destroy the tower, and they didn't even need Omega Supreme to bail them out.  Grapple and Hoist were forced to clean up the mess they caused while reminiscing over what might have been.

This deck is an homage to Grapple's stupidity, using his design skills to pull off a feat of engineering while reuniting him with the Constructicons to build a tower .

Note: The fortressmaximus.io visual of the deck is included at the end of this post.


Characters:
Grapple (12)
Scrapper (5)
Longhaul (4)
Scavenger (4)
Constructicon Tower card

Battle Cards (Pip Color)(Number):
Bashing Shield (GO)(2)
Kinetic Converter (W)(3)
Pocket Processor (G)(3)
Attack Drone (GW)(3)
Enforcement Batons (GO)(2)
Mining Pick (O)(3)
Heavy Landing (B)(3)
Master Plan (BG)(3)
Overwhelming Advantage (GO)(3)
Pep Talk (B)(3)
Secret Dealings (GW)(3)
Reclaim (B)(3)
Treasure Hunt (O)(3)
Work Overtime (W)(3)
Breakdown: 13 Orange, 12 Blue, 12 White, 19 Green.  24 Actions, 2 Armor, 6 Utility, 8 Weapons.

Why These Characters:
Grapple is a dude who just likes to build stuff - as his card notes, he is the 'Autobot Architect.'  I needed to find some bots who shared his love for building, because absent that, any teammate would probably find him annoying to be around.  Even without "The Master Builders" the Constructions fit the bill. They are construction vehicles, perfect for helping bring architectural plans from paper to reality.  If you've read the Transformers Galaxies Rise of the Constructicons comic, you know the Constructicons had humble origins as a group of dudes who just liked to build stuff.  Having a Gen1 cartoon episode throw them together was icing on the cake.  I obviously couldn't fit all the Constructicons on this team (Thanks for the insane 12 star count Grapple!), but Scapper had to be added to make use of the Tower (which also is great thematic fit for the episode).  Scavenger and Longhaul fit stars wise and had the best mix of health and defense. I also like their bold and tough powers if I ever flip them.






Why These Battle Cards:
This deck has two goals, triggering Grapple's powers and building a Construction tower to take advantage of Heavy Landing.  Here is how the deck tries to accomplish both goals.

Grapple

Architectural planning through double pips: Grapple's ability requires either flipping or discarding exactly four different colors.  I've never even tried to build a deck around this because it is too easy to screw up. One color too many or too few and you whiff.  To maximize my chance at triggering his abilities, I added multi-color pip cards: Attack Drone, Bashing Shield, Enforcement Batons, Master Plan, Overwhelming Advantage, and Secret Dealings.  I avoided black pips to increase my odds of getting only 4 pip colors.  Maybe I'll get lucky between the double pip cards and my white cards and hit four different colors during a battle.  If I have two cards in my hand with two pips at the right time, I can flip to truck mode and spring his ability without tossing away too many cards.  Given my deck's pip ratios, I should at worst be able to pull that off with 3 cards.

Architectural planning through ... planning: Grapple's abilities require careful planning, which makes sense given his architect background.  I included as many planning cards as possible to allow me to stack the deck and trigger his bot mode ability: Mining Pick, Overwhelming Advantage (which takes advantage of this team having 3 Deceptions), Reclaim, and Secret Dealings.

Constructicons

Can we build it? Yes we can .. by dying: Constructions aren't great, but they have this thing called the tower.  While that doesn't sound scary, what if the tower is a solar power tower?  Now we are cooking.  Thanks to having Scrapper on our team, each time a Constructicon dies, it builds a layer on the tower.  This will happen because these guys are pretty weak.

Can we build it? Yes we can ... by fetching cards: Each time a Construction attacks, they can scrap a card to build the tower.  I added fetch cards to make sure I have some in hand to pitch: Work Overtime, Treasure Hunt, Pocket Processor, Pep Talk, Reclaim, and Kinetic Converter.

Why am I trying to build the solar power tower when I can't form Devastator?  Heavy Landing! Heavy Landing benefits from a high tower. Yes, focusing on building the tower in the hopes of getting that card is a speculative play.  But so was Grapple's decision to team up with these guys.  Even if my tower plan fails, the fetch cards will help Grapple, because you have to have cards in order to stack the top of the deck with them using plan cards.

Strategy:

The plan is to get cards in my hand as fast as possible.  The order I play my characters will depend on which cards I draw.  In the early going, if I have two cards with four pip colors, I'll flip Grapple, discard them, and deal 4 damage and attack with Scrapper.

If my early hand is not conducive to that, I can get to work on my tower by attacking with a Constructicon and discarding a card.  When he inevitably dies, my tower will move to 2.  It will take some luck to get my tower to 6 - I'll need Longhaul or Scavenger to somehow get two attacks in because Scrapper doesn't have the discard a card to increase the tower ability.  If I get an armor, it is probably worth throwing it on a Constructicon to try to get that additional attack out of him. It may also make sense to attack with Grapple to try to draw my opponent's fire.  If  I can make it, this will make playing Heavy Landing satisfying.

If my hand has the right pips and I have a plan card to play, I can use Grapple's bot mode ability to stack the deck and ensure I get +4 Attack.  I'm not sure how I can plan for the Defense side of a battle, so that may just come down to luck.

Analysis: The partnership between Grapple and the Constructicons was like the meteoric rise of a one hit wonder band. They got together, made a sweet solar power tower together, only to have the band (and the tower) break up.  The one synergy in this deck is, both Grapple and his decepti-bros want to draw cards.  Hopefully these guys can work together long enough to get some licks in before Megatron comes in and screws everything up.

I had considered different builds where I used stealth/brave/more armor to keep the Constructicons alive, but at the end of the day, that took away from Grapple's mechanic.  Since Grapple is the focus of the deck, I felt that wouldn't be right!

Should you enter this deck into a tournament?  No.  But if you are looking to use Grapple in a deck that tells the story of an episode, this is the deck for you!