Transformers: RID2015 Stormshot Is Something That Exists

Occasionally, you find articles for toys on the wiki that are complete, functional, but little more than a stub. Given how old and self-referential Transformers is as a brand, and how aggressively marketed , this can be a little strange when it happens. Most articles are a veritable web of links, then again somebody has to be the cul-de-sac, I suppose. Stormshot is very much that, with no fictional appearances, no obvious providence, and no retools. He just turned up, and went, and that was it. That's just weird for a release like this. 

 

OK, so context. Stormshot was part of the circa-2015 Robots in Disguise line, a direct sequel to Transformers: Prime. This was largely ignored by collectors for two reasons: 1) it starred Bumblebee, and 2) it was aimed at actual kids. The toys were simpler and gimmicky for the most part, and it didn't make a great first impression, establishing a pattern that Cyberverse would follow. RID2015 did however have a lot of good ideas of its own, mainly the beastly take on Decepticons, and it certainly wasn't relying on nostalgia to pay the bills. It also had "ideas above its station" with the Warrior size class, a cut-down and cheaper version of the Deluxe found in Generations. You got what you paid for, with examples often being hollow and/or rough around the edges, but a good warrior could certainly earn a spot on your shelf. Stormshot appeared in wave 8 of 12, and the designers had found their rhythm by then. With that in mind, I'm quite happy to declare him to be a good toy, if perhaps for a given value of good. There's a few areas obviously in need of paint, a simplistic transformation, and a big cavity in the back of his head. He is however very colourful, has landing gear, comes with two accessories, and makes good use of them.

There's a few interesting threads to pull on. The first is that this toy was originally going to be named "Skyfire", aka Jetfire's alias, which occasionally gets applied to jeftormers. This would explain much, mainly the being an autobot jet with white plastic, but not everything. While Skyfire is fairly sensible in his paintjob, Stormshot has the colours of the U.S flag, but his altmode is supposedly, and loosely, based off the Russian Mikoyan MiG-29. This is a curious combination. Its like someone customised a jet to appear in half-time shows, made it as USA-USA-USA as possible, but brought the actual plane from Viktor Bout. One also wonders if, given the stern face, vaguely villainous hands and stereotypical seeker altmode, if this guy was intended to be a Decepticon at some point? Something that happens a lot these days is the "retool/repaint first" phenomenon, where a toy obviously designed to be a specific character gets released as another first to maximise sales, you might have noticed. This happened a few times during Combiner Wars,Titans Return, and more recently with a lot of Siege/Earthrise. RID2015 did the same thing with Bludgeon, releasing the toy first as the Autobot Blastwave, whom notably made it into the show where Bludgeon didn't. Was this the plan here? Was Stormshot intended to a be legacy character? Or a new character with an old-but-trademarked name? This toyline did have a few of both, and the Aligned Continuity did already have a Jetfire in the video games...

In terms of engineering as opposed to wild speculation, the mould is quite reminiscent of the Combiner Wars Aerialbots, transforming the same way, and even having a connector for a figure stand. This may be a coincidence, as the Aerialbots had simple transformations due to the combiner gimmick, but its too similar to dismiss as one. More interesting however are his two guns. It wasn't unheard of for a toy at this price point to have two weapons, but it was on the uncommon side, with guns in general being a bit downplayed. Stormshot however has a gun, a quite conventional one. And he's also got a pistol too. You generally don't get that combination at all in Transformers, never mind RID2015. These can plug together, seemingly for storage under the jet mode cockpit, but you've also got ports under the wings and on top. It's weird to find a toy so obviously about gunplay in a toy line that explicitly isn't set during a war...

My point? Well, I'd like to know just why Stormshot exists. RID2015 did have its share of toy-only characters, but given the relative prestige of the warrior class its strange that he made the cut. That said, Twinferno/Doublecross also got a warrior and a legend around the same time, plus a full Generations deluxe, so who bloody knows after that. 

 

 

Transformers: Titans Return Alpha Trion Is Something That Exists

What I find inspires me to write these blog articles is the trivia and history of a toy. I don't mean the lore, although I can certainly talk about that. No, more of its oral history and context. How I remember it, what it's like when I take it off the shelf, and what a wiki dives reveals. I then write several at once, and ask twitter to decide for me which of the several I should post. They chose this one.

 

Alpha Trion's wiki picture

So, context. Alpha Trion is by far the most famous character/toy I've done a deep dive on, but originally he had no toy at all. He was a supporting character in the Sunbow Generation 1 cartoon circa 1985, left on Cybertron with some resistance fighters, acting as an aged mentor to Optimus Prime when the narrative called for it, and his death proved no barrier to this. One assumes that somebody thought having an actual toy fulfill this position would harm sales, so Alpha Trion was created from whole cloth. A similar character exists within the contemporary Marvel comics, Emirate Xarron, and you still occasionally get versus arguments. For my money, Xarron was handled better. Both also lacked an actual altmode because of reasons, which has obviously been a barrier to toy versions, although Alpha Trion has done better here as he was on TV. Following a failed attempt by convention licensee 3H, Fun Publications succeed with their version in 2007. Here Vector Prime, another famously old dude, was retooled into Alpha Trion, which becomes important shortly. Circa 2010, Hasbro was laying down rules for important chunks of Transformers lore, something that would see fruit in the "Aligned" continuity and Power of the Primes. The specifics of these need not detain us, its a long story, but one effect was to elevate Alpha Trion from "very old dude and mentor" to "mythologically old dude and multiversial singularity".  This didn't really stick, and shortly after it stopped sticking, we got some actual mass market Alpha Trion toys, following a near miss in 2014, when he lost out in Japanese fan poll to choose a mail-away release. The first was a repaint of Minimus Ambus because Takaratomy had to be bloody weird about things, and the next was a completely new mould in 2016. It looked like this. 

 

 

 Seriously.

 

 

Suffice to say, people weren't expecting that. Alpha Trion was many things, including a fighter in his younger days, but a buff barbarian was not one of them. The dude was relatively skinny once you accounted for the cape. Its like someone did a version of Cohen the Barbarian, minus 50 years. Or Ragnar Blackbane in purple. Nor was he a lion or a flying aircraft carrier spaceship with a lion motif. Not that he was anything before. You can deduce the thought process behind this. They wanted to pay tribute to the convention toys, and they took design cues from the Aligned version for the robot mode. Then somebody wanted all voyager class toys to be triplechangers, and for every mould had to be somehow retoolable. This is how we ended up with this inexplicably hench geriatric, he's a pretool of the rather big triplechanger Broadside, this also influencing one of his altmodes. That said, the Funpub convention toy is another clear inspiration, given that it also was a powerfully-built swordsman, and the Titanmaster Sovereign is clearly Beta Maxx from the same convention set, and thus the Mini-Con Safeguard. That toy also gave Alpha Trion a flying altmode, while the lion seemingly comes from the cancelled 3H version. So, I can see what they were aiming for. That's a lot of deep cuts, mixed with pragmatism. Its just, one wonders, if a retool of, say, deluxe class Scourge would have been better received. Something more like the proposed 2014 mail-away version. I mean, that would possibly would have looked too bulky for Alpha Trion, but it's less of reach than the beef mountain here.

So what's he like as a toy? Let's start the obvious, this dude has a presence. The robot mode is a real eye-catcher, the dude just looks huge in a high fantasy kind of way. There is a simply excessive amount of paint. It's not even immediately obvious how he transforms, especially as the lion bits look like a pelt of a slain animal. It is my whimsy to imagine that if this chap has a holomatter avatar, it is Brian Blessed. The sword is similarly impressive, and I get the feeling that Alpha Trion is no samurai or jedi. No, this chap is more like a Dark Souls boss, with simple, telegraphed attacks, but Primus help you if he connects. Mind you, part of that is the functional but not especially great articulation, he's got a lot of joints but a few omissions due to triplechanging. He also does have a 3-barrel blaster, which the Titanmaster can sit in, if that's a plus. The other two modes perhaps aren't as successful, but they generally come across as distinct from each-other as the focal point changes. The lion mode draws your eyes with that big silver mane and front claws, while the spaceship thing goes blocky and foreshadows Broadside. It's not a perfect effect, but enough moves so you avoid obvious flaws like, say, a train with wings, or Octone's jet mode. Where it falters however is with is with the arm/shoulder area. The lion ends up with limited motion in the front legs, nothing in the neck, and paws that like to detach, while the ship needed something to suggest engines. Both modes do have play value, and are pretty striking to look at, with Sovereign's cockpit area being a highlight. Word to the wise, there are two tiny tabs where you can mount the gun on top.

When you get down to it, the voyager price point in Titans Return wasn't that good. The design team just wasn't ready for triplechanging headmasters that had to pull double duty, and while these weren't necessarily terrible, they weren't Thrilling Thirty Springer. Most were made obsolete by later releases too. However, the odd thing is that Alpha Trion has aged far better than the rest of his kin, simply because it went in a new direction. It is ultimately a toy of earnest ambition, whose only actual sin is over-ambition. You look at that robot tell me it isn't awesome. Tell me why a lion-spaceship-barbarian isn't up your street. Of course, this got serious push back from Sunbow purists, and I can see the argument. No, this isn't the Alpha Trion we know, and for his first western toy, they should have been more conventional. Given how Titans Return in general played out, I'd make the case that they weren't actually trying to be faithful to 80's era animation though, which is not a flaw. Just a different set of priorities. They tried to make the old guy exciting, and we got a good toy out of it. That said, Takaratomy seemingly agreed with the purists, and skipped him, instead opting to retool the toy into Leo Prime. TT had gone full G1 animation for their releases, so this wasn't a surprise, but I'll admit that Leo Prime does look pretty cool. There was also an Alpha Trion in Power of the Primes, but you'll forgive me if I don't take that one seriously, and one toy in Cyberverse. He looks a little familiar...

Cyberverse's 2019 Alpha Trion Toy

My point? Well, just that Titans Return Alpha Trion is a toy that exists. And, sometimes, going in a fresh direction is exactly what we need.

The Mecha Hack: Modding the Engineer

 

 

No, not this engineer, but it is cool. So, sometimes one article flows naturally from another. Following on from my review of the Mecha Hack Chassis/Pilot selection, I got to thinking about the Engineer. The Engineer is fine for one-shots, but declines in usefullness during campaigns, and I should really have noticed that. My campaign has two. What follows is a discussion of this problem, with rambling commentary on the history of such things.

 

Context: The Origins of Hit Points and Party Healers

Hit Points, aka HP, like the entire Mecha Hack ruleset, have their origins in the original Dungeons & Dragons game circa 1972, influencing any RPG you care to name. The term is a fairly abstract measure of how a character might withstand injury, not how difficult they are to harm, or which bone is broken, but how much they can take before they drop dead. In first edition this was literally the case, although it's been common since to have some kind of "they're bleeding to death, somebody help" mechanic. Hit Points can be somewhat binary as it means characters function either at full capacity, or at deaths door, which other systems try to address, but that's outside of the remit of this article. This dynamic combined with magic being a thing gave rise to what the Engineer technically is: a party healer. To go back even further, Dungeons & Dragons, was based on a fairly serious wargame called Chainmail, and this can still be felt in the rules even now. D&D is ultimately a physics engine for fantasy combat, rather than purely a roleplay thing. As such having a party member whom can do immediate and effective triage is vital. Having a Cleric around to heal is so common that it's a consistent balance challenge for games of this type. It's a safety net, both for the party and the games master, but a chore for the person playing it. See also: designated healers in Final Fantasy and Stimpacks in the Fallout franchise as an aversion of the concept.

Context: In the Mecha Genre, is there a comparable role?

Short Answer: no. Long Answer: almost certainly no. There's enough mecha shows out there for someone to make a counter-argument, but you don't see a robot get repaired as part of a 6 second combat round. Repair and maintenance is a fairly big deal, but usually happening off-screen. That's what the hangar crew and/or the super scientist are for. I suppose it would make the robots less impressive if they could be repaired in seconds. The only real example I can think of this are the occasional repair-bots you see in the Super Robot Wars games, but that tends to be a gameplay thing, not a source material thing. Then again, how often do you see people in more action-oriented media take a moment to apply a healing spell? Note: not games, non-interactive media. Generally, you don't, because its boring and makes the stakes smaller. Same with most mundane injuries. Either it gets glossed over, or it's an actual plot point. Giant robots exist in a binary between OK and exploded, although heroes may occassionally be battered and broken badasses.

The Engineer

Serving as one of the original 4 pilot types, an Engineer is one of the two ways to heal your mecha outside of a rest action. This takes the form of a 1 to 2 trade of Armour Points to HP, as a use action. This starts out as a useful but scarce resource, pairing well with the Titan chassis, but is devalued over time. The ability does not scale with character level, meaning that while other pilots stay useful, the Engineer is only useful when you have 10ish HP. For comparison, the only other source of repair, mid-fight, are Repair Nanites. This fixes 1d4+1 HP, but are a single use item you have to buy. The net effect is to make rest actions, aka hangar time, the main way to restore HP, like in animes.

How might we fix it? Should we?

I feel a case can be made that players shouldn't be on repair duty mid-battle. That's passive and dull for a game about shooty-robo-boom-boom. Mind you, we want the Engineers to feel useful and engaged. After some discussion with my players, I offered them the following options to make things more fun for them, replacing or modifying the original Quick Fix ability.

Nano-Smith Ability: When using Repair Nanites, add 1d6 to the result. During downtime, you may convert a single Scrap consumable directly into 1 Repair Nanites, rather than the normal rate of exchange.

Bodge-Job Ability: As a use action, reduce your AP by 1 to restore d6+ 1 HP to a close mecha. If you restore the maximum amount, that mecha then rolls its Reactor Die.

Quick Fix Ability - Modification: As a use action, reduce your AP by 1 to restore 2 HP to a close mecha. You may spend multiple AP at once in this way. (I.e. 5 AP becomes 10 HP restored on the target.)

The overall intention here was to make repairs a hard decision rather than an easy one. Nano-Smith bolts on to an existing consumable, making it more powerful, but ultimately is something players pay for. Bodge-Job is an improved version of Quick Fix, but has a side effect if they heal too much. Both options have a wide spread of potential results, as opposed to the flat bonus of Quick Fix, so using them are a gamble. Alternatively, if players want to stick with the rulebook, we can make Quick Fix scale up. Job done.

If you end up using these rules, do let me know how this turns out.

Plamo: The V Link Mecha Frame Striker & Logistic Set

Yes, once more the gnawing emptiness that serves as my soul drives me to purchase some random robot bits off the Intarwebz. This time, it's one of Rihio's MultiAbyss kits, a line of 1/60 scale toys on the lower end of the pricing scale. Further details seem to be obscured behind the language barrier, but this never stopped me before. Its my birthday! I'm allowed to indulge.

 

The first thing I want to say here is that this does not feel like a model kit or even a gunpla once assembled. The plastic here has a more robust, "toy-like", vibe. I was reminded of the time I attended a Botcon custom class and built an actual Transformer from factory runners and sprues. Had this come to me pre-assembled in the packet, I would have had no reason to assume it was a kit. This is not a criticism, just something that frustrated my need for categorisation. Model kits don't normally sit on my desk once completed, to be played with, like a Transformer.

Anyways, this kit features 5 sprues and a baggy of pre-painted parts. Probably an excessive amount of parts, to be honest, but we'll comeback to that. The build is maybe 1 hour of work, with nothing especially difficult. You get a choice of building it as the battle ready Striker, or the sentinel-power-loader-lookalike Logistic version. There's also a third style not explicitly named in English, a static gun turret type thing that's less impressive. Its possible to, and largely the point, to swap between the variants after assembly. Or indeed create your own versions. In the absence of anything pressing to do, I touched up some bits, cutmarks being a thing, and applied some contrast paints to the little pilot figure.

Once assembled, the toy is a small but perfectly formed robot, based around balljoints and 3mm pegs. The overall style puts me in mind of Votoms, and those boxed mechasuits you see in the modern Diaclone. Detailing is effective for the scale, but not lavish. This can make some parts a little indistinct, but you do get a great many of them. Mainly guns. Enough guns to satisfy The Punisher, and I'd like to highlight the rifle and sword with their two tone metal effect. In no particular order, there are also, 2 pistols, 2 larger pistols with top handles, a twin flamer assembly with a flexible plastic hose, 2 shoulder missile launchers, 2 things which I think are TOW launchers which I don't like, 4 stowage packs, a probable grenade launcher, a missile rack, paired shoulder cannons and some other stuff I don't recognise. That's an insane amount of ordnance, more than two of these mecha could easily carry. Also 5 assorted faceplates. I am not photographing all of it. 

 

 

This makes the set some spectacular conversion fodder, and I could easily see myself building some Killa Kanz, or possibly T'au battlesuits from this. You get two sets of legs, could save a lot of time... However, what makes it all work is the articulation. Its simple, but very well-executed, moving exactly as well as something that looks like this should. The Striker form has a huge range of motion in the arms, enough for it to grab for weapons on its back, sufficient balance for on legged poses, and it collapses into a Votoms style sitting mode. Logistics form however puts a new slant on things with completely different shoulders and reverse knees. It's all very nice.

As noted, I'm hesitant to call this a full-fledged model kit, but this little dude was rather up my street. Its as a projects go, its a nice little palette-cleanser, and the end result is such fun. I'm very pre-disposed to like posable and tiny robots, especially when they have a daft amount of gun. In fact, it has so much gun that the dial rolls over and the omissions become glaring. There's just so many spare bits, it makes you wonder why you can't just build two robots at once? Because they want you to buy two. Mind you, that's about the worst I can say of it.