There will be some big changes to the Omega Invitational's structure and format for Season 3. We're announcing this now, at the very start of the season, so that this won't be a surprise later.

Like Season 1, this season will only have five Encounters. They will all be through webcams. Details on a digital-focused series will be announced in the future.

Encounters will reward points in the same manner as previous seasons: 3 for full participation, another for making top 8, and an additional point for winning. However, there will only be ten players invited to the Season 3 Omega Invitational.

We feel that both prior Omega Invitationals have been more "invite everyone who played" rather than "invite the top players". All of our other tournaments are open events, where anyone & everyone is welcome, but we'd like to keep this one event as something that you must work towards.

Beyond the change in player count, the structure will be changing as well. There will not be a bracket. Instead, the ten players will be divided into two groups: odd-numbered seeds & even-numbered seeds. Each group will play a complete round robin, playing against everyone in their group in a best of 3. The top two from each group move on to round 2, the rest are eliminated. In the case of any ties, they will be settled with a best of 3.

After the conclusion of the group stage, before round 2 properly starts, all four players will have roughly 24 hours to change their sideboards. This is to add a small sense of suspense to the game, and to keep the top four on their toes. The idea is somewhat inspired by the sealed format that was part of the original Energon Invitational.

In round 2, the top even-group player will play the second place odd-group player. Likewise, the top odd-group player will play the second place even-group player. These matches will be best of 5.

The two winners from those groups will proceed to the grand finals, which will also be a best of 5.

We discuss this more on the recent episode of Alive on 1. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to a team member or to Zero directly.

We've released a revision to Wave 7: Monster Menagerie. Not much was changed in terms of balance, but you can read all the updates on the Wave Revisions page.

You'll be able to make use of that update in our upcoming tournament, Odd Squad. This is an odd-waves only tournament, and it is the first Encounter of the season! Get a head start on qualifying for the next Omega Invitational!

Wave 9B is officially released! The set includes Bruticus and the Combaticons : Blast Off, Brawl, Onslaught, Swindle, and Vortex. It also includes [B9B001] to combine them, as well as some battle cards to help them and the Decepticons - Lock and Load, and United Front, Unfriendly Fire.



Have fun building decks with them, there might be involved in an event in the near future...

Due to an error, the Store has accidentally had all the items removed. There is a backup from July 7th that will be put back up in the near future. Sorry for the inconvenience.

First off, congratulations on the big win! Working your way up through the loser's bracket is an impressive feat. Did the additional matches of the bracket weigh on you?

It wasnt the easiest path primarily because of the matchups, I faced a lot of teams with Crasher early which obviously slows down Metro quite a bit. Finding the time to play back to back best of 5 matches in the finals also wasnt easy, but Penguin was a great opponent and is a real rising star. He deserves a lot of credit for creating a unique archetype and piloting his deck so well.

Despite players' success with Metroplex in the past, a lot of people were still surprised to see him win the whole tournament. What were your thoughts & strategies on choosing Metroplex and building the deck?

Metroplex was already one of the strongest decks in the format even with suboptimal deck construction and piloting. It was then given a very powerful stratagem that adds 3-6 damage per game with almost no drawback. In a finely balanced meta that often has matches decided by a final swing, adding that damage to Metro tilted the scales a little too much in my mind. I think the deck was also stronger than people realized when properly built - previous iterations failed to run enough white pips, flip effects and max out double pipped cards.

Metro is ultimately a pip focused deck and TFTCG is a pip focused game. Its easy to forget that most cards arent played, they are flipped. And in a deck like Metro they can be flipped 3-4 times in a game. With that in mind, including a single pipped card means exceeding an incredibly high bar. I would suggest you want to optimize for triggering with bold 3-4, and the math says you want 13-15 white pips to do that, but you also have to keep in mind the two best upgrades (whip and might) are often sitting on Metro and the green/white pipped flip effect is often in your hand or just played, so your effective white pip count can actually be even lower than you think at first blush. You also want your first 3 actions to be flip effects in almost every game, and even post minion deployment they power whip/sixgun/scamper. So running a nearly full complement of flip effects helps increase both the consistency and power level of the deck quite a bit.

Overall Metro is stronger against wide decks for obvious reasons. I expected more wide decks than I actually encountered and less main deck Metro hate, so I cant say I made a good meta call, it was just a really powerful deck.

You boasted a lot of confidence going into the event, but were there decks you were concerned about running into?

Im not sure I was as confident as I may have seemed. After a lengthy hiatus I needed a bunch of play testing games with Naga to even remember some of the rules and Im still not sure I could tell you what some of the newer cards I played against in the OI actually did. I think any of the decks with crasher/motormaster/end hostilities main are tougher, especially the ones with a way to fetch/recur end hostilities. That card is probably the single best anti-Metro card, and almost half my sideboard is dedicated to dealing with it. Bellicosity was definitely the sideboard MVP.

Like you said, you took a lengthy hiatus from the game, and didn't participate in any encounters this season. You were invited to the OI as the returning champion, but inviting someone who hadn't participated in the season was a hotly debated topic. Even though it clearly worked out for you, do you have any thoughts on the topic? Did you feel like you had to try even harder to prove you still deserved to be here?

I like to play TCGs for the competition that comes with them, so having the most skilled field possible is always my preference in any event. If roles were reversed Id want the defending champion to participate and a victory without their participation wouldnt give me the same level of satisfaction.

[A community member has had issues with me since the last Omega Invitational which lead to a lot of stressful arguing. It all resurfaced in the lead up to this tournament.] If he is reading/listening Id still welcome the opportunity to talk, find some common ground and move on.

I of course hope things can be worked out there. Any way, congratulations once again on your big win! Do you have any final words you'd like to say?

The folks steering this ship have put a lot of effort into keeping this game alive and I dont think they get enough kudos for that very hard work, so please take the time to let them know how appreciated they are if you havent recently. I thought the field was very diverse and competitive, and especially appreciated the great games I shared with my opponents. Im grateful to have been included in this community and value all the friendships its allowed me to make. Til all are one!

Wave 9B: Brutal Combaticons is now in beta! It includes the following cards:
• Combaticon Enigma
• Lock and Load
• United Front
• Unfriendly Fire
• Blast Off
• Brawl
• Onslaught
• Swindle
• Vortex
• Bruticus

To celebrate, and to help finalize testing, we're holding the Brutal Beta Bash. This will be a digital event with all skill levels welcome to participate.

The design team will use this data to decide if any final tweaks are needed for the Combaticons .

Please feel free to leave feedback for Wave 9B in the #feedback channel of our Discord server.

The off-season may be here, but that doesn't mean things aren't happening!

We'll be announcing our next public beta next week, along with an event to go with it. Even though it'll be a casual tournament, expect it to still be rather... brutal.

Back. To. Back.

Congratulations to Brettasaurus for his Season 2: Omega Invitational victory, and his second straight World Championship!

He will be receiving a playmat with this season's key art of Omega Prime, a set of sleeves, and 300.


ALostPenguin came in second place, with Hawkhammer in third and Stephen Moss in fourth. They too will receive a set of this season's sleeves as well as 150.

Lastly, all players will be sent an OI-exclusive gold label copy of the newly Paddles.

Thank you everyone for playing this season! It's been a blast. We'll see you soon for the start of Season 3!

In celebration of the concluded Season 2: Omega Invitational, we are releasing a new Dinobot !

Inspired by Nonnef's conversion kit, we have Paddles. Much like Nonnef's set, we used Dinobot Sludge as a base but then turned into it something totally different.

In alt mode, Paddles will protect his fellow Dinobots , shielding them from extremely large hits and even taking some it onto himself. When his allies are in trouble, you can flip Paddles to bot mode where his anger will strengthen him to save his damaged friends.

Paddles is in stock in the Shanix Store right now, and he's available in the OCTGN mod and will work in decks exported to Tabletop Simulator. He's going to give the Dinobots so much needed survivability, and we're eager to see how far he takes his dino buddies in future events!

The whole team wants to give a big "thank you" to the very talented Natephoenix for the Paddles artwork, and of course a "thank you" to Nonnef for commissioning it and designing such a cool conversion kit.

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Tournament Statistics

First Round Opponent: Spacewarp603

Tournament Bracket Seed: 1

Season 2 Results: None, returning champion from Season 1.

Number of Tournaments Played: 12

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Player Interview

Where are you from?
[no response]

When and how did you discover the Transformers TCG?
My son wanted to buy the cards when he saw them at Target and I decided to learn the game so I could teach him how to play.

What was/is your favorite team to run and why?
Autobots - The good guys always win.

When and how did you discover the post-cancellation community?
[no response]

Whos your favorite Transformers character and why?
Optimus Prime - Hard to argue he isnt the best.

Whats your favorite card and why?
The one that wins my next game.

Do you have any advice for players who want to get into the competitive scene or the TCG in general?
Have fun, be kind and eat your vitamins.

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