Devastator drops TOMORROW, so I figured I might as well share my initial deck build that I’ll be trying out.

To be honest, before Devastator was announced, I was actually hoping that Bruticus would be the standalone box product that coincided for the Wave. Obviously, Devastator is probably the Combiner that stands out the most to people, probably because he was heavily featured in Season 1/2 of the original cartoon series AND because he had a prominent role in the 1986 movie, ripping into Autobot City like it was a Christmas present, smashing Dinobots, and being beaten by two punkass mini-Decepticons.

At the same time, the Constructicons were always just kind of… boring. They all have the same color scheme, they’ve barely been portrayed with any distinguishable personalities, and perhaps most egregiously, they lack the dysfunction that seems baked into almost every single other combiner team (the Stunticons hating Motormaster because he bullies them, the Combaticons having to deal with Brawl’s stupidity and Swindle’s greed, the Aerialbots having to deal with Silverbolt’s insecurity and Slingshot’s arrogance, etc.).

Meanwhile, the Combaticons would have brought us some new blood into existing tribes. Vortex would give us another Helicopter (still waiting on some copter-tribe cards), Blast Off gives us another spaceship (ditto for tribe cards), Swindle gets us a truck, Brawl would give us a cheap tank, and Onslaught could function as our first truck/tank.

Alas, it was not meant to be. Despite that, I’m finding myself intrigued by Devastator, for the following reasons

He’ll be the first 6 member combiner team and the first time we’re able to run 6 characters on the board at once.

You have an additional mini-game to play (constructing the tower).

You have to carefully balance building your tower, damaging the enemy, controlling damage that your team takes, and moving toward combination.

Here are my initial thoughts on a deck. DISCLAIMER: I have had zero experience actually playing Devastator, so definitely take this as a rough draft. I’ll explain my thinking afterward.

Upgrades

2x Piercing Blaster (White)

3x Force Field (White)

2x Scoundrel’s Blaster (Blue/Green)

3x Worker’s Tools (Orange)

3x Databank (White)

2x Bashing Shield (Orange/Green)

2x Drill Arms (Blue)

1x Energon Axe (Blue)

1x Sparring Gear (Orange/Green)

actions

2x Constructicon Enigma (Green)

3x Heavy Landing (Blue)

3x Reclaim (Blue)

3x Work Overtime (White)

3x Bigger They Are (Blue)

2x Treasure Hunt (Orange)

2x Pep Talk (Blue)

2x Vaporize (Blue)

1x Heavy-Handed (Blue)

The deck is pretty mixed, with 11 white pips, 19 blue pips, 8 orange pips, and 2 purely green pips. Our green pip cards include Scoundrel’s Blaster, Bashing Shield, and Sparring Gear, so that we can try to pull in useful upgrades at certain times (Sparring Gear would probably be most effective when combined).

The deck is slanted toward either doing Pierce damage or drawing cards. While uncombined, we’re hoping to use cards like Bigger They Are or Piercing Blaster to push damage through, hoping to take out at least one opposing character before combining.

I’m thinking of playing this in a similar manner to how I like to play my Aerialbots, where I’m trying to sting the enemy to death as much as possible before making my play to combine and start hitting hard.

Ideally, I should probably trim a few white pips and swap them for blue or orange instead. I’d REALLY like to find a way to squeeze Bravery into the deck, but I’m a little bit worried I’m heavy on Utilities as it is. Second draft will probably try to make room for at least one.

My weekend is pretty packed, so my ability to actually get the big green guy on the table is limited, but I’m hoping to be able to update this with some actual table time at some point next week. Until then… PREPARE FOR DEVASTATION!