So far I think Wotc has handled reprints quite well. Okay, reprinting "Armored Plating", "Primary Laser", and "Rapid Conversion" already in Wave 2 led to a bit of an overkill in my collection, tbh.

Personally I do not mind reprints when they feature alternate artworks, like "Pep Talk" or "Force Field" from Wave 3. Though some time (read sets) would have been okay, since we just got a "Pep Talk" in Wave 2 and the Wave 1 version of "Force Field" is featured in a lot of products.

Though I still think it is a bit weird that we got a reprint with alternate artwork of "Brainstorm" in Wave 3... but no new "New Designs"? (Pun intended)
It may be just me but I like to keep those two as pairs and if one gets a reprint the other should get one as well. I also like that we finally got Decepticon versions of "Handheld Blaster" and "Improvised Shield".
I can potentially see a Decepticon version of "Pep Talk" with Megatron motivating his troops before a great battle or after a big blow to the cause (remember Spotlight Megatron? Something like that! Might happen when they return to use IDW artwork for the cards)

Also, with more Titan Character Cards coming out, I think a reprint of "Height Advantage" would be cool, so people that want to use Titan Character Cards do not have to go back and buy a Metroplex deck just to get this particular card. A new artwork using Trypticon or Scorponok would be cool. This way the Metroplex version keeps its uniqueness.

The same can be said about "Working Overtime" a good and generic draw card, that currently is only available in the Devastator deck. I see this card in more and more decks, because it is good and fits in (almost) every deck mechanic. So reprinting such a generic card in the (let's hope not so distant future) would be nice.

What do you think of reprints and alternate artworks in general? What would you like to see again, polished up with some new art?

 

Cooling Vents needs new artwork. That ROM meets Leader-1 from the Gobots needs to get a replacement.

 

I'd be curious to see if box set exclusive cards would see reprint in a new wave, because that diminish the sale value of the box sets. But I'm down for new art on battle cards.

 

I see what you mean, though there will come a time when this products go out of print. For my example I chose "Height Advantage" because it supports Titans in general, there are still two Metroplex-exclusive cards left to keep the product interesting. But I agree that "Working Overtime" is not the same as "Height Advantage" because it (WO) is pretty generic and can fit in every deck.

 

One thing I like about alternate artwork for cards and comic book covers is that some times the alternate art is better than the original and you can just pick and choose your favorite versions.

The thing I HATE about alternate artwork is that some variants tend to be more rare and there for more expensive than others on the after market so good luck trying to find your favorite art work if it happens to be the more rare and expensive variation.

I figured this one out when I was tracking down the Doctor Who/Star Trek crossover comics and I found out about variant covers. I got kind of lucky looking at prices that most of my favorites were in the cheaper price range. There are 8 comics in total and out of those 8 comics I think only one of them was a more expensive cover variant. It's also not THAT much of a price difference I think if I remember right they were all about $8-12 each so about a $4 difference just depending on which artwork appears on the cover. Not a huge deal but still worth mentioning... Of course if you went in the higher price range for the entire collection that adds up so instead of only paying $4 more you end up paying $32 more than you would have if you bought all the cheapest versions. So yeah, again, I'm lucky that my favorite covers just happen to be the cheaper versions and only spent the extra for a single comic.

I imagine trading cards due to the nature of blind packs would be a lot worse. Especially if they ever made reprints of anything other than commons. I can't imagine if a card is rare and they reprint it with variant art making the original card art even more rare. And then since both the original and the variant are rare cards you'll be lucky to find any at all let alone a specific version with the artwork you want.

I think the after market nature of variants really kills the only good thing about them.

 

While a rotation format hasn't been created for the game yet, once it's implemented it will work similar to how Magic is. Any version of a card is permitted for use as long as it is legal in the format you're playing. So in an eventual future when, say, Waves 1-4 have been rotated out and only Wave 5-forward is permitted for "Standard" play, you can still use your Wave 1 and 2 Improvised Shields and Handheld Blasters, since they were printed in Wave 5.

 

What are you talking about? Why would a card not be permitted? Functionally they're still the same card so it shouldn't make any difference what wave they were released in unless they made a significant change in the functionality of the card in later waves. Like when they introduce new game mechanics and alter certain older cards to work within those new mechanics.

I seen this happen with Digimon… which wasn't really a very good card game to begin with. Digimon Tamers introduced a new Digivice with a card reader as it's gimmick specifically to try to cross promote the card game that wasn't really selling very well before that. A lot of the older cards were reprinted to work with the card reader on the Digivice making them functionally different cards from the previous versions. It was essentially a whole different card game at that point. For that matter no other cards before or after Tamers utilized that Card Reader gimmick.

As long as the cards are still functionally the same cards it shouldn't make a difference what wave they were released in.

 

That's exactly what I just said. To give an example, the "Siege Block" that was popular for a little bit (Only permitting cards from Waves 3 and 4), you could still use your Wave 2 copies of Pep Talk or Wave 1 copies of Medic! in your decks, since they were both reprinted in Wave 3, and are functionally the same cards as their Wave 3 versions. Wizards does not change the functionality of cards between their printings, as their games mechanics (outside of joke sets) to not care about version specific information such as art, rarity, or collector number.

While a card's text may be updated each printing (see Brainstorm in Wave 1 vs Wave 3), ALL versions of the card are considered to behave the same way.

 

Gotcha. That wasn't very clear the way you worded things hence why I was asking what you were talking about.

 

What wasn't clear about my post?

 

Does it matter at this point? We already cleared things up.

 

A bit, yes. If I said it in a way that's unclear, I'd like to know what was unclear about it so I don't cause the same confusion in the future.

 

Fair enough...

"While a rotation format hasn't been created for the game yet,"

For starters I wasn't sure what you meant by "Rotation format" so that made things unclear right off the bat. This probably would of made more sense to someone with more experience in TCGs in general but my experience has been kind of limited so out of context it doesn't mean anything to me.

"once it's implemented it will work similar to how Magic is."

I've never played magic so again, referencing something I'm unfamiliar with without explaining exactly what it is you're talking about. Again this might of come across more clearly to someone who actually knew what you were referencing but for casual card players like myself it just flew over my head.

"Any version of a card is permitted for use as long as it is legal in the format you're playing."

That was pretty straight forward no issues there.

"So in an eventual future when, say, Waves 1-4 have been rotated out"

And again now I'm confused as to what you mean by "rotated out".

"and only Wave 5-forward is permitted for "Standard" play"

And where I really got confused as to why only cards from certain waves would be permitted if they're the same cards from previous waves.

"you can still use your Wave 1 and 2 Improvised Shields and Handheld Blasters, since they were printed in Wave 5."

And here you seem to confirm that is indeed the case but the previous quote made it seem like maybe that wasn't the case for some unspecified reason.

 

So card rotation is when older sets become illegal in competitive play. This happens for two reasons:

1. It reduces power creep, where there is always the risk of a new card or set of cards ending up as utterly broken because the process of playtesting with the entire existing cardpool becomes increasingly difficult as more cards are added to it. You just can't check for every possible combo when there's too many cards.

2. It incentivizes players to continue to buy new cards. This is of course the craven capitalist reason that rotation exists. If half or more of your deck suddenly becomes illegal in official play, then you need to buy more cards in order to build a legal deck. It also means that cards that may have been overly dominant throughout the game (For example, pretty much every Insecticon deck is gonna include Wave 1 Skrapnel. It's too good to not include!) end up removed so there can be a possibility of more deck variety.

I've listed those reasons, but I admit I'm personally not a huge fan of rotation in tcgs myself. Magic gets away with it because they have their primary format, called "Standard", in which cards from the last 2-3 years are legal, but there are also formats that allow people to build decks from much farther back in the history of the game. Other rotation-based tcgs, like Pokemon, don't really have that luxury. You're playing Standard, and that's that.

The other end of the spectrum is Yu-Gi-Oh, which does not have rotation. You can build decks with cards in them from the very first set. You won't do very well, but you can do that. Instead, Yu-Gi-Oh has embraced power creep almost entirely. New archetypes will be introduced that simply demolish older decks, and stronger cards will get banned or at least be limited to fewer copies being allowed in a deck. This forms a sort of de facto rotation, where most cards are technically legal, but if you actually want to win, you're gonna need to change your deck.

Transformers is still a very young game, and very well designed, learning lessons from it's predecessors. The fact that we have a couple banned cards are actually a good sign that the designers are intent on having this game be well-balanced and not subject to a bunch of bullshit combos. There are far fewer competitive Transformers events, but the ones that we have seen have had a fairly remarkable variety in terms of character choice and deck construction. I do think rotation is probably inevitable, but hopefully at a slower rate than Magic has to do.

 

Well, looking at the way it was handled by WOTC all reprinted cards (doesn't matter if they had new artwork or not) still had the same rarity as the original print.

 

Couple things...

1. You realize that's a really old post you're reacting to?

2. I'm not talking about the rarity of the card, I'm talking about the rarity of the ARTWORK on that card, these tend to be totally different things. If I remember correctly... the original print was only available for the first wave or two before they reprinted the card with new art work. Every print of that card in every wave since has been of the new artwork. Since there are more waves of the reprint than the original, the original would become more rare as the result.

There's also the deal with Soundwave's cards as the G1 style print cards were created to be more rare as a convention exclusive. The retail version is going to be more common than the G1 style exclusive version despite being the same cards. A "Common" card is still going to be marked as "Common" in both prints because that's the rarity of the card itself not the specific artwork you're looking at. The rarity of that artwork is going to be limited to how many prints they made with that specific art work and has nothing to do with the rarity of the card which includes all variants of that card not just the version with that art work on it.



That is more rare than this.



The cards from both box sets are all marked with the exact same rarity because they're all the exact same cards except for the art work. But I was specifically talking about the rarity of the artwork not the card. Hence why the Exclusive box set is more rare than the retail version, because of the art work. If you don't care about the art work or your favorite version happens to be the more common retail version you're in luck. But if you really want the G1 style prints those are going to cost you.

I'm just using these as an example cause it's really easy to just grab images of the box sets than random individual cards. I personally don't actually care about the G1 style version but I know there are other collectors out there who will prefer to get that more rare variant than just whatever box set they can get their hands on. And I actually still don't own either of these... but honestly I'd just be happy to find the retail version some where. I've not seen it out in the wild.

 

Well, it is less then a year. I was under the impression the game still has a some kind of following here on TFW since other topics get new posts and updates as well.

I just want to keep talking about the game I like.  

Sadly, we will never get an answer to that.  

Truth be told, I did not take the SDCC version of the Blaster vs. Soundwave deck into consideration when I started this thread. I was mostly thinking about the regular waves.