Since the new movie is all about it, I figured it's time to reflect back on one of our favorite gimmicks: Combination.

What's a good combiner for you? Where does the sacrifice get made? Vehicle mode? Bot mode? Combined mode?

For instance, Magnaboss and Tripredacus are two of my favorites. Magnaboss looks impressive, but his toys are all about him, rather than themselves. Conversely, Tripredacus's components are more fun as a whole, but the combined mode isn't as cohesive.

So talk about 'em all. Your favorites, your preferences. Just let's try to avoid 15 pages of "Rail Racer is the best."

 

i love magnaboss too....but i won't say it ill just say those three trains form a really nice combiner.  

 

Railracer was a personal favorite of mine. Maybe if they opt to do another movie combiner, they could try a 3-robot team? I think it'd be a hell of a lot easier than a 6-7 piece team.

edit: sorry to bring him up right off the bat, but along with Magnaboss and Tripredacus he really does show the merits of a 3-man combiner.

 

I love all of these .

Decepticons/Predacons:

Devestator
Menasor
Bruticus
Predaking
Abominus
Piranacon
Monstructor
Lio Kaiser
Dinoking
Battle Gaea
Tripredicus
God Neptune
Baldigus
Decp. Sixwing
Devastaor 6 Builder
Black Sixturbo
Universe Devastator (micromaster)
Devastator Maximus
Bruticus Maximus
Universe Devastator(Landfill repaint)
Classics Devastator
Club Piranacon


Autobots/Maximals:

Superion
Defensor
Computron
Raiden
Road Ceaser
Landcross
Sixliner
Sixbuilder
Sixwing
Sixturbo
Sixtrain
Guard City
Magnaboss
Tripredicus
Sixbuilder (repaint)
Berserker Sixwing
Sixtrain (repaint)
Hate Plague Sixtrain
Black Landcross
JRX/Railracer
Buildking/Landfill
Landfill (yellow)
Superion Maximus
Universe Superion(micromaster)

 

Don't forget about him:


Road Caesar

 

duocons win... end thread

 

The Duocons are not Combiners .

 

Omega Prime

 

Ilove the combiners idea but i have almost no experiance with them to be able to state my faveorite I am hopeful illbe able to get at least one of the target exclusive combiners for ROTF

 

Flywheels"

Split personality -- fights himself more often than his foes. Each half of him is jealous of the other. Often heard arguing with himself, even when unified in robot Mode. Tank has maximum speed of 75mph, range 350 miles. Jet has maximum speed of 1300mph, range 1800 miles. In robot Mode, carries a laser cannon with infra-red sensors for heat-seeking capabilities.

just because he dont have individually personalety does not mean he is not a combiner. He has two form that join up to make a third. = combiner

 

Combiners/gestalts have never been especially fantastic in my opinion. They always seem to loose something by combining. However, as the original, Devastator has a special place -- his separate figures all worked and were playable as individual figure as well as the unified whole. His design wasn't all that interesting, but he certainly worked.

 

Even though he's got weight/balance issues, I still have to give the nod to Omega Prime as my favorite combiner. Gestalts are often partsformers anyway -- so why not take the extra step and make an ENTIRE ROBOT into the add-on parts, instead of having loose fists and feet sitting around? That's what they did with Omega Prime (and, less successfully, with God Ginrai), and they managed to keep a fair amount of articulation (balance issues notwithstanding).

The Energon 5-bot team combiners suffered from only having two unique limbs each -- one "narrow" and one "wide". Despite the "wide" limbs clearly designed to look like feet, and the "narrow" limbs looking more like arms, every marketing shot showed the gestalt with a narrow leg and a wide leg ... because you couldn't use BOTH "wide" limbs as legs without splitting the legs of the center guy really widely, or having to turn one leg at an angle. Add-ons don't solve this problem, which is why I'm still torn on getting the FansProject add-on parts for Superion. That said, I really liked the Bruticus gestalt; you could actually give him elbows if you used the tanks as arms, which was cool.

Notice I said nothing about the pants-shirt combiners ... they were super hit-or-miss.

JRX/Rail Racer is pretty impressive, when you consider that they had to work with INCH-WIDE bullet trains and make a working gestalt with individual robot modes. Build King/Landfill was interesting but strange ... none of the arms ever really looked like it, and the shovel bot just looked off.

I like the idea of Beast combiners just because it's something that shouldn't work at all. Magnaboss works better than he has any right to, and Tripredacus (sp?) is a set I've been meaning to track down.

The old G1 Scramble City combiners were great for their time ... but even as a kid, having one big robot and four little teammates looked really weird and out-of-scale. But you gotta give them credit for being fun.

Finally, G1 Devastator, despite being EXTREMELY fragile, pulled off something no other combiner did for years afterward: have a team of robots ALL THE SAME SIZE who could combine.

-XCN-

 

So by that Notion, you Definition of a "Combiner" is of that ?

So you are saying characters like Overlord , Deathsauras , Headmasters, Brainmasters , Big Powered, God Ginria, Ultra and Mega Pretenders ? Right ?

 

I disagree, always had lots of trouble handling him without at least one arm falling. Plus the separate figures only worked because they put most of the combination features in extra accessories.

 

technicly answer would be yes. Take a Headmaster

He consists of two components, Body that work and thinks for himself although only in vechiel form, and his head that is a separate form. To make the robot complete the head and body needs to merge and combine. This is pure fact and you cant argue against that.

Now that we in the fandom dont count all these 2 piece bots as a combiner they technicly are a form of combination. See Energon, or Armada, Powerlink is a form of combination therefore Superbase Op and Jetfire could have a sub groupe as combiner to.

We as a fan and the creators of TF dont see it this way and the flywheels was merely a funny post but my argumenting here is correct. if speaking generally about combination. There is nothing that say a combiner need sot be a minimum of bots, nor size and so on.

 

It's not out yet, but my favorite will be ROTF Superion with the FP addon. I only wish that there was more variety to the individual alt modes.

 

My personal favourite combiners are Bruticus, Predaking, Raiden, Devastator, JRX & Liokaiser.
Also...
Personally I consider a combiner to be 2 or more distinct and complete entities that combine to make another one.
i.e.
a team of several TFs, all with their own personalities and alt modes, capable of functioning normally on their own, that combine to make a new character altogether.
Considering that a Headmaster is basically an incomplete robot (incapable of functioning autonomously) with a smaller figure to essentially complete it, I don't consider them combiners.
The same goes for Duocons, Ultra/Mega Pretenders, Brainmasters, or even Magmatron to be combiners either.
God Ginrai isn't a combiner because he doesn't become a new character; just a powered up version of Ginrai. The same goes for Victory Saber or any of the recent [insert word here] Convoy power-ups; although they do combine, they aren't a new character when they do.

 

Exactly! Still my G1 Abominus still rates high.