Joe's Thoughts on Mini-Bot Masters

After we first discussed the idea for this tournament, all of my gears started turning. Would these small characters favor an aggressive or defensive strategy? How many Battlemasters should I run over Minimasters? Should I have characters overlap the battle icons needed to trigger their ability, or diversify? Five wide or star cards?

After looking long and hard at all the li'l bots that came in Wave 3, I decided that their generally low stats meant that a small difference could have a relatively more impactful effect. I made a spreadsheet, mapping out everyone's health, attack, and defense for every mode they had. I highlighted the highest tier of each category and looked for characters who had multiple boxes checked. I also had a column where I weighed the stats by how many stars they had -- looking for the biggest potential bang for my buck. For health, 8 and 9 seemed to be the higher echelon; attack for either side was 3; and alt defense topped out at 2 or 3 (all bot defenses were 1 or 0). On a per-star basis, the best Minis appeared to be Road Hugger, Detour, Storm Cloud, and Flak -- two that use blue pips, one green, and one orange. The blue pips intrigued me.

I also decided I wanted to use all my stars on characters; having five opportunities to tap or attack seem greater than what star cards could afford. On a five-wide team, Tote interested in in his ability to discard a black battle icon to untap another character of 6* or fewer, so I decided to draw the line there. So, blue/black. That meant no Raider Aimless, who sits at 7*, despite my running the blue icons he needs to trigger his *great* offensive ability as a weapon. I think not including this character was a huge mistake.

Instead, I went with Raider Nightstick as my main Battlemaster. I figured if I could proc his ability to get an opponent to discard, great! However, I was more interested in the base stats he gave as a weapon: +2 attack, +1 defense. That's an Ion Blaster of Optimus Prime! Putting this upgrade on a character with good base stats would make them even better.

So I had a plan! Get characters with good stats, load up five-wide, put some Tough onto my characters, flip black pips to ensure little bits of damage, and let the blue battle icons boost their defense as their superior numbers naturally overcome the inferior opposing team. I added Road Hugger, Tote, Mudslinger, and Red Heat as starters. I was going to have Detour as my sideboard character, but decided to roll with Smashdown in case I wanted to run another Battlemaster (after my first match, Smashdown became a permanent starter).

The deck was interesting, and a solid concept for the format, but the character choices were definitely not optimal. I could not find a combination that felt right, but having at least two Battlemasters felt good. Almost every match felt like a race where I was just always a half-step behind. With a magic wand or time-turner, I'd definitely go back and run Aimless... or switch to the Lionizer/Blowpipe/Smashdown rainbow-aggro idea I had. Either way, still got my cupcake!