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Grappling the Challenge

2020.04.26

A Blues on Attack challenge was put forth on 2020-04-08 by the venerable Nick Petrasiti. The Back of the Binder #3 challenge was to build a deck around Grapple. Excluded from use are mechanoids who have offended their Royal Bluenesses; namely, Optimus Prime - Battlefield Legend and the Air Strike Patrol. The Off-Road Patrol were also excluded from the challenge for being too easy, as were any Wave 5 cards.

Before we dive into a universe of cards, do a lot of math, and learn about two useful deck-building tools (one premiering in this very article!), let's ask ourselves: "Who is Grapple?"

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I don't mean that in a metaphysical way. I'm not seeking to work out if he is a rugged fighter, a dependable builder, or a lover of beauty, though the truth is that he is all of these things; I simply wonder what his backstory is.

Grapple was an Autobot architect whose works transcended basic engineering to become art forms. He first showed in the comic continuity in 1985 when his persona was loaded from a memory stick onto a new form Wheeljack had built. Comic-wise, Grapple's involvement peaked after building Omega Supreme. Yes, that Omega Supreme.

Grapple's role in the G1 cartoon was much the same. He magically appeared a few episodes in, and he built some things before becoming a background character. Grapple has always transformed into an orange construction truck/crane, which came in useful when humans needed rescuing from damaged buildings. His original toy was clunky and tall, though recent toys have smoothed him out with the new Earthrise toy being especially pleasing. He gains a grappling hook that, rather oddly, appears to sidemount in Truck mode. Oddly, his toy went by the name Grappel for a while.

[See Grapple's tfwiki.net page for much more details]

Card-wise, Grapple is a Rise of the Combiners (Wave 2) 12-Star character with underwhelming stats, 4-11-2 and 4-11-0. That however is a bit of misdirection because Grapple's Alt- and Bot-mode effects are excellent.

Grapple revolves around having exactly 4 colours of battle icon. In Bot-mode he turns into an 8-11-4 character as long as he flips exactly 4 different colors of battle icon, and when flipped to Alt-mode he can throw out a big 4-damage if, when the player discards their hand, it contains exactly 4 different colors. This changes everything. 8-11-4 makes Grapple a very powerful 12-Star character, and he remains the only guaranteed way to explicitly do greater than 3 damage, besides Overwhelming Advantage. Grapple, fearless architect, goes from a glass-chinned nobody to a powerhouse if you build your deck correctly. Kudos to the design team for making Grapple about deck building, I hope somebody at WotC is patting themselves on the back for that design-pun.

Grapple is also a fairly simple character. There have been 5 FAQ/Rules-Roundups for Grapple, each of which you can read at TFTCG.info.

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So now we know a little about Grapple. Let's get ready to deck build, and let's learn about how to use the OCTGN Deck Editor at the same time.

[Continue reading Grappling - Page 2 - OCTGN Deck Editing]