Paid Members DEF Posted August 17, 2020 Author Paid Members Share Posted August 17, 2020 38 minutes ago, air_raid said: Best post on TF gimmicks I could ever imagine. That was a superb read air_raid. Well done I actually completely forgot about Triggerbots and Triggercons. Also I never got a play with Quickswitch but he always looked rubbish you're right. Never seen those combiner Cassettes. They look great fun. I'm a fan or the Powermasters. Always loved the gimmick but you're right it's a pain in the arse if they you lose bits. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members air_raid Posted August 17, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted August 17, 2020 (edited) 56 minutes ago, Joe Blog said: I really don't know what the best team set up is. The best team setup is your strongest cons by bot power until you have 8-10 4* to choose between. Even then you want everyone at level 45-50 and ability lv5+ before you start worrying too much about composition. Typically you want a 50/50 split between high DPS and high health, about half your team is likely to be specials like a leader (Megatron), some real death dealers/tactically useful cons/tank types (Razorclaw, Deathsaurus, Divebomb, Malus, Impactor, Lugnut, Hun-Gurr, Motormaster, Dead End) or triple changers (all three are great cons). Then a couple of gunners or aerials if you need more DPS or warriors if you need more health, plus a medic. If you get the balance of types right you can have every one equipped with a Combat core too.  My best 4* team is currently Razorclaw (special, 3* Terror Axe, Alchemist Prime), Swindle (gunner, 3* Blowpipe, Gmetal flak jacket), Blitzwing (triple changer, 3* Catgut, gold Vitality), Scavenger (special, 3* Ravage, silver Special Force flak jacket), Dead End (special, Liege Maximo, 3* Cratermaker), Viper (aerial, gold Enhanced Ordinance, 2* Cratermaker) and Reflector (medic, silver Ray Boosters, 2* Ravage). It’s a good mix but when he’s fully levelled Galvatron with silver Vitality and 2* Catgut will replace Viper since he’ll be another special to benefit Scavengers squad core and Catgut is easily the best Combat of the freely available ones. Raid team has 3* Cyber Starscream for the extra damage, Cutthroat for protection, Dirge for hacking the supercharged defences, then Reflector and three sacks of meat from the 4* lot. Edited August 17, 2020 by air_raid Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Surf Digby Posted August 19, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted August 19, 2020 On 8/14/2020 at 3:18 PM, Ronnie said:  These two pictures properly demonstrate the gap between the excitement they generated at launch, and the clinging to indifference of later releases. You can bitch about Ratchet's weird robot mode, but look at all the details. Die cast metal parts, articulated arms, stickers, transparent windows and chromed sections. Compare that to the Throttlebots where they're mostly one colour plastic (and cheaper, softer plastic at that), painted on windscreens and fuck all in the way of detailing. Would it really have hurt to splat a bit of silver paint onto the headlights and Goldbumble's bumper, or a sticker around the neck area like Kup? I know the original Bumblebee - and other Mini-Autobots - had opaque windscreens, but with the chromed wheels, more detailed paint work and a little bit of articulation they were just better. The only way that second picture could make me feel any more joy, is if they were standing on a shiny blue/purple background with gridlines on it. On 8/17/2020 at 9:49 PM, air_raid said: Secondly we’ll discuss the Double Targetmasters. Overall, these aren’t terrible either.  Badass. Let’s be honest, the 1987 Headmasters make these look like cheaply made knock-offs.  Shitty little man.  It's bizarre which Transformers I had that I've remembered and which I'd forgotten. Until I saw that picture, I'd forgotten that I had Quake, which is odd because at the first mention of Targetmasters I thought about the mini-Nebulans that came with him. Because I also had Needlenose, I swapped the weapons round a bit so that the two black double barreled ones went together, and the two purple single barreled ones went together. Nightbeat was basically the twatty step-cousin to my Hardhead. Not as well detailed, unnecessarily opaque windscreen, cheap knock off Tech Spec display, and fuck all attempt to conceal the hinge in the middle of its bonnet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Chris B Posted August 19, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted August 19, 2020 24 minutes ago, Nostalgia Nonce said: Nightbeat was basically the twatty step-cousin to my Hardhead. Not as well detailed, unnecessarily opaque windscreen, cheap knock off Tech Spec display, and fuck all attempt to conceal the hinge in the middle of its bonnet. It's a shame it was such a crap toy, because Nightbeat was one of my favourites in the comics at the time. Probably just because of the name, Furman wrote him as a Private Eye in these silly noir mystery stories. And the artists clearly had fun on the covers, giving him a PI coat and fedora. And the final image just reminds me how much I loved Geoff Senior art at this point in time. One of the stories (Bird of Prey) led to me watching The Maltese Falcon, which was a nice way in as a kid. Â Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members air_raid Posted August 19, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted August 19, 2020 (edited) ^^^^ Notice that Nightbeat is always drawn with Sirens head and vice versa compared to the toys. The guns/ears are the biggest giveaway but if you had their helmets to compare, you can tell. Eyes too. The drop off in toy quality is stark between when Hasbro ran out of toys to import from Diaclone/Microman and start making them themselves, excluding a few from Bandai and elsewhere like Jetfire, Whirl, Roadbuster, Deluxe Insecticons etc. The Scramble City toys/first wave combiners  were part of a cancelled Diaclone range when TF was taking off and Takara realized it was more profitable to sell TF to Japan rather than make Diaclone and sell it to Hasbro. There were even early releases of those toys that had metal parts but very hard to find now. Have a look at Hasbro originals starting with the 87 Targetmasters for instance and they just aren’t as lovingly crafted as the imported molds. My favourite thing about Diaclone is that’s a portmanteau of Diamond Cyclone. Edited August 19, 2020 by air_raid Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Ronnie Posted August 19, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted August 19, 2020 3 hours ago, Nostalgia Nonce said: These two pictures properly demonstrate the gap between the excitement they generated at launch, and the clinging to indifference of later releases. You can bitch about Ratchet's weird robot mode, but look at all the details. Die cast metal parts, articulated arms, stickers, transparent windows and chromed sections. It's easy to do that when you're using somebody else's moulds, of course. I think I recall GoBots having "diecast" as a selling point on their advertising too, and the toys are much closer to the Diaclone-/Microman-licensed early Transformers than to the later ones. How well did that work out for them, though? The characters weren't compelling the way that the anthropomorphised Transformers were. I suppose there's not much of a better example of Hasbro not caring than the 1990 release of the Action Masters: Transformers with the unique ability not to transform. I'd outgrown them by this point (I was more occupied with watching Palace and Man U play to a 3-3 draw in the FA Cup final) so can't say I noticed them. But it brings to mind something related to my earlier point: Hasbro could do that because the children had grown to love the characters. "You can get Wheeljack and Megatron, kids, and this time they actually look like them!"  If the character models for the animated series had stayed true to their toys, I just don't see kids developing that attachment, just as they didn't with the less anthropomorphic GoBots. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members air_raid Posted August 19, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted August 19, 2020 4 hours ago, Ronnie said: If the character models for the animated series had stayed true to their toys, I just don't see kids developing that attachment, just as they didn't with the less anthropomorphic GoBots. Plus, some GoBots just plain looked like crap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members quote the raven Posted August 19, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted August 19, 2020 (edited) https://io9.gizmodo.com/20-gobots-that-remind-us-why-the-gobots-sucked-so-incre-5976109  Some of those are awful   I had this as a kid. There is a whole range of these rock lord things Edited August 19, 2020 by quote the raven Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members air_raid Posted August 19, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted August 19, 2020 I had virtually all the Rock Lords that were just warriors, not vehicles or creatures or something. I even had two He-Man toys that turned into rocks. I was a mark for anything that transformed. My childhood video store lent me Battle For Gobotron and GoBots : Battle of the Rock Lords around the same time as Arrival From Cybertron, Desertion of the Dinobots and Megatrons Masterplan. I only really remember damaging fingernails making some of them transform and Nugget being pretty unique because he was shiny. They didn’t take hold of me obviously as just like GoBots and HeMan before them and presumably Turtles later on, they were sold to finance other toys. Yet I still have all my Transformers. Also Power Rangers <<shame bell>>  But fuck Rock Lords, seriously. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members air_raid Posted August 21, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted August 21, 2020 (edited) Feel compelled to share a little joy from Earth Wars about the two new Combat bots (nearly always Targetmasters when you get down to it) - the medic assistants Rung and Shrute.  (spoilers for IDW MTMTE comics) Shrute is a bit of a pedantic sort and is actually a rename (trademarks) of Hairsplitter (clever dual meaning) an original Nebulan partner of Spinister. Rung however is a much more colourful character, in that it turns out the unassuming cleric type in the IDW comics actually turns out to be the physical embodiment of Primus, hiding in plain sight. So obviously as a Decepticon player I’ve been voicing my displeasure that the newest additions are GOD if you play Autobot but a character from the US Office if you play con. Imagine my delight when I found out that Shrute’s new name actually WAS inspired by Dwight! .... it’s been a long day. Edited August 22, 2020 by Chest Rockwell Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Chris B Posted August 22, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted August 22, 2020 That's a pretty big spoiler for MTMTE, which not everyone has read and a lot of people are recommending. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members DEF Posted August 22, 2020 Author Paid Members Share Posted August 22, 2020 Yeah that's true. I mean i read it and thought, 'makes sense'. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Ronnie Posted August 22, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted August 22, 2020 5 hours ago, Chris B said: That's a pretty big spoiler for MTMTE, which not everyone has read and a lot of people are recommending. Yep. If I didn't already know and were one of the people working my way through a six-year series which had recently been recommended in this thread, I'd be pretty frustrated with air_raid. Revealing it like that seems bad form to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members air_raid Posted August 22, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted August 22, 2020 Sorry about that, have reported so a mod can tag it for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Chest Rockwell Posted August 22, 2020 Moderators Share Posted August 22, 2020 8 minutes ago, air_raid said: Sorry about that, have reported so a mod can tag it for me. For reference in future you had the tag as 'spoilers', but it's actually just 'spoiler'. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.