Swarm of Bees

Bumblebee.  If he isn't the most popular Transformers character, the Transformers people think he is.  He's got a ton of Transformers TCG cards (5 plus a battle card).  He's got his own movie. He's in the new War for Cybertron Series on Netflix. And now, he has his own deck.  And by own, I mean literally because he's the only one in it. Bonus points if you catch the references in this post.

Note, the fortressmaximus.io deck visualization is at the end of the post.

Characters:

Bumblebee Brave Warrior

Bumblebee Courageous Scout

Bumblebee Legendary Warrior

Battle Cards (#)(Pip Color):

Agility of Bumblebee (3)(O)

Attack Drone (3)(WG)

Data Pad (3)(W)

Diagnosis (3)(W)

Emergency Repair Patch (3)(B)

Energon Axe (3)(B)

Force Field (3)(W)

Fusion Borer (3)(BL)

Grenade Launcher (1)(O)

Last Stand (3)(BL)

Peace Through Tyranny (3) (OO)

Start Your Engines (3)(B)

Treasure Hunt (3)(O)

Turbo Boosters (3)(O)

Stats: 16 Orange, 9 Blue, 3 Green, 12 White, 6 Black. 15 Actions, 10 Weapons, 6 Armor, 9 Utility.

Why these characters: What's better than one Bumblebee?  Two Bumblees!  What's better than that? Three Bumblebees!  Luckily, none of the Bumblees talk via poorly edited radio snippets.  And the best part is ... no Agent Burns! 

Why these battle cards: I have three Bumblebees so I need three Agility of Bumblebee cards to make them ... agile.  After that, it helps to look at the character abilities.  Legendary Warrior likes being the last bot standing.  Peace through Tyranny and Last Stand can help with that by sacrificing Brave Warrior. Courageous Scout likes to flip and get white cards.  Start Your Engines helps with the flipping (and gives us an untap). Emergency Repair Patch is a white Autobot healing card, along with the defense of Force Field, the draw power of Data Pad, and the stackable attack of Attack Drone.  Turbo Boosters is added because all these dudes are cars.

Strategy: We start by flipping Courageous Scout.  Brave Warrior better be brave, because we are attacking with him first. Once he gets some damage on him, we canmake him fodder for Peace Through Tyranny or untap him with Start Your Engines to squeeze some more value out of him.  Courageous Scout flips back to car mode to snag a card and plan.  Then it is time for Legendary Warrior to do his thing. Legendary Warrior gets first dibs on armor because odds are it will be up to him to win the match.  If you can pull this off, you will stay alive and graduate to head of the Bumblebee class.

Random Bumblebee Musing: Volkswagen Bumblebee > SportscarBumblebee.  This cannot be debated. Volkswagen Beetles were known as 'bugs.'  Bumblebees are bugs.  It just fits.

Random Bumblebee TCG Musing: Bumblebee might have the strangest subtitle names:

1. "Least Likely, Most Dangerous" - Objectively false because that card isn't very dangerous at all.

2. "Brave Warrior" AND "Legendary Warrior" - I guess you can be brave and legendary, but neither really fits Bumblebee.

3. "Trusted Lieutenant" - As opposed to an officer you don't trust? He may not be very good at anything, but at least we can trust him!

Random Bumblebee Fact: Approximately 1/3rd of the food we eat is the result of honeybee pollination.