Saw that the AP3 set is out. I'm not sure I understand all the format differences that Vector Sigma is talking about, but pushing PTT and Security Checkpoint out to a banned list gets a big thumbs up from me. Those cards are both really powerful, and deck staples even if you won't use them as they're double pipped cards orange/blue with no star. I am all in on not seeing those cards ever again.

 

Oh yeah, maybe it's helpful to drop those links here:

Free to print Card PDFs: Vector Sigma:

Season 3 changes: Vector Sigma:

Yeah I think the shear amount of games that get played on the discord (2 events a month of 30+ players, and casual games constantly (our top 10 casual players have 685 games between them so far this month, I don't know what the total games played is since the leaderboard doesn't print all of them) we've been able to be pretty on the pulse in terms of what the meta game needs. It's also been a driving force behind our release size, rather than sending 100+ cards out into the wild with minimal playtesting, we've been playtesting the crap out of our sets before they come out, throw 3 tiers of testing (internal developments, playtesting group, public playtesting). It's been a big help in keeping the competitive scene happy while giving casual players fun stuff to play with.

Then we also have time to take learning from our player events into the next wave of cards to give new deck building and gameplay tools.

In terms of formats, it's just different card pools to play with.

Junkion is designed to be cheap to build, common cards only, so if you needed to buy cards you can build a competitive Junkion deck for less than $10 hopefully.

Titan-1 is still being shaped, but it was designed specifically because back when we were playing wave 5 for like... half a year, people got really really sick of playing 3 wide titanmaster teams. Perceptor +X, Skyshadow +X, Fangry Head Swap, and Quake 3 wide were just designed so far above the curve that at events that's all you saw. So the banlist for Titan-1 started with "You can only have 1 titanmaster on your team" and then grew from there to shape into a slightly lower power level, but still competitive field.

Full Constructed is standard play, it's allowed to have Quakes 3 wide and all those Titanmaster decks.

So far most cards have been designed to be played in Titan-1, so they still may not be 100% up to the power level curve of full constructed official lists, but that's something we're working on. We are just wary of the fact that Wave 5 pushed the power creep so hard.

 

Got it. I really like Junkion. We were supposed to have a commons only tourney at the end of March last year here in Cleveland. Then it all got shut down and the game got cancelled. My son and I were crushed as we had put a lot of effort into those decks only to never get to play them in the local scene.

I’d have been fine learning there was a format with wave 5 as a whole banned. There are times I wish they hadn’t even released that set if they knew they wouldn’t have wave 6 to balance it out.

 

Cameron, not sure which creator group you're referring to here (though I believe only two creator waves have done more than 100 cards: Bayformers and Wave X), but I'm saddened to read this as a fan of yours and ATP's efforts. Our team has embraced the three-tier testing format since the beginning, and we're major proponents of that as a creator approach. Our public beta (where anyone could download and play the beta cards) was almost three months long and had heavy numbers according to metrics. It's doubly saddening since we have played, supported, and promoted ATP sets since the start (and will continue to). Could you clarify this?

 

lol didn't u guys ban your own custom competitive cards in some of your competitive formats? nothing says "finger on the competitive pulse" like banning ur own cards from your own format imo.

 

Lol, I'm not talking about Bayformers. I wasn't talking about any other groups at all. I was just passing along our internal design discussions when we defined our efforts. That scope happened before there were other cards out there to look at.

Your public playtesting has been a real triumph and I dig your transparency regarding it. I participated in some of that myself!

 

I'm not following. Are you saying there's a problem with designing for particular formats? A card designed to keep up with something on the power level of Magnetic Disfunction Ray shouldn't have a place in Junkion should it?

 

Good to hear of the support! I think it's important to add that different creator groups are going to have different breakpoints that work best for their releases, and I don't think a number of released cards has a direct correlation as to said release's quality. ATP appears to work best with small, highly curated, and tested sets that are released more often, and there are many people in the community that dig that approach (heck, we do, even as we work on our next metric ton of cards).

 

lol probably fair then. i guess its just one of the many problems i have with the group in general where i dont get the constant praise showered on them [tho i guess the praise comes only from within the group itself, i havent seen someone who isnt on their payroll say anything positive about them]. as someone who has been following from near the beginning who strictly plays at my kitchen table with my kids i just think it's funny they've done a complete turn around on the casual aspect of the game. it's too late in the day - i feel like i could write an entire thesis on this specific group and how they completely bungled the game especially since they continue to see themselves as a "pillar" of the community lol

 

Congrats to the top 16 of the Season 2 ATP invitational!

Vector Sigma:

 

And we have results from the Eye of the Matrix latest event!

Tournament: Eye of the Matrix: Alpha Trion Protocols - Teletraan I

 

If anyone is interested in a 1 day event, it's an opportunity to play with common only cards and win a Lunar Bumblebee!

Lunar Event 1 - Junkion

 

I wanted to share a deck that I've been playing lately, it's a ton of fun, and very inexpensive to build!

 

Wanted to share some fun decklist ideas:

 

When you botch your Crankcase flips and card plays to throw a game away...

 

So, unsure who all is still playing but ATP-3 I think was a great success. We saw some great growth in the player base and held more events than ever before.

Now ATP-4 is coming out June 15th! And we're trying to represent a new type of Transformation in some of this sets cards!

 

Like Pretenders?

 

Now... Why ever would you say Pretenders?

 

I have been thinking how a mechanic for Pretenders would work. You could stack 2 outer shell armor cards on top of and underneath the inner TFer card. The armor can only take so much damage then it goes to the KO pile and the inner card hits the table in alt mode.

 

Yeah probably something like that