Dave's Beast Wars Rant:

     Beast Wars Transformers Mutating Card Game

CAPSULE

     Simple rules and the typical modern penchant for gimmicky setups (in
this case, a table-like board with mountains), but surprising complexity of
strategies possible.  I'm not saying it's Go or Chess, but it's more than
your typical kiddie game.  Strongly recommended.  $7.99 at Target.

RANT

     Box Appearance: This is important so you'll know what to look for in the
store.  }->  The box is 7.5 inches by 10 inches by 2 inches (18cm x 25cm x
5cm) and has "BEAST WARS" as the biggest words on it, so stores which bother
to alphabetize should have it under B.  The top half of the box front has
the name, the bottom half has new art of Primal and Megatron duking it out
(toy versions, not cartoon, so Megs has the stupid batwings on his head and
Primal's using the skull mace).  The background is the red scale pattern.
     Rules Appearance: Very clear and simply laid out, with examples
included.  Apparently has learned the lesson of collectible card game
rulebooks.  
     Board Setup: The board is about 7 inches (17cm) wide and around 20
inches (50cm) long, folded to fit in the box.  The card trays become
endpoints for setting this board up like a table, and two cardboard pieces
are included to finish the "mesa" appearance.  The board has 12 spaces the
size of a card, in rock pattern with "energon fissures" between them: three
across, four long.
     Cards: There's two types of card, characters and battle cards.  There's
12 of each faction, with robot mode (art from the toy packaging, for some
this is the first chance most get to see the entire piece of art) and beast
mode (new art by some uncredited in-house guy at Parker Brothers) on the two
sides.  Each has six of its eight techspec stats listed, each in its own
colored box.  It's important to note that not everyone uses the same six
stats, or has them the same colors.  The battle cards each have a diamond of
one of the six colors, and some have "Energon +1," "Secret Weapon +2" or
"Mutate!" on them as well, which I'll explain in the next section.
     Oh, and there's no worry about accidentally mixing up the two types of
cards, even if they mix together in shipping (like mine did)...they're
different sizes.  Battle cards are noticeably smaller than character cards.
They're also a little hard to shuffle, and bend easily, so be careful.
     Rules: You start with three beast-mode characters in your home row, as
does your opponent.  Each turn you can either move one card one space, play a
reserve card (total reserves agreed to before the game, from none to all 9 of
the remaining cards) or attack an adjacent enemy card.  When you attack, each
player draws a card from the battle deck.  The color of the diamond tells
which stat is used in the fight.  For example, Razorbeast has Courage as his
blue stat, so if his player draws a blue Battle card, Razorbeast has a 10 for
that battle.  Mutate cards cause you to switch modes, and while the robot
modes use the published techspecs, the beast modes have lower numbers.
Whichever card has the higher number wins, and the winning card moves into
the space occupied by the losing card, which is forced back one space.  If
there's someone else in the space to be retreated to, the losing card is
captured and removed from play.  If the loser is pushed off the edge of the
board, he dies and is removed from play.  Once one player has nothing in
play, the game is over.
     It's the "loser retreats or is captured" rule that gives the game some
strategy, because it becomes a matter of maneuvering battles so that you
always have an empty space to retreat to and your opponent doesn't.  And the
use of randomized stats means that while Primal will usually beat Iguanus,
it's not a complete given, especially if Iguanus lucks out and gets a Secret
Weapon card.  And the fact that you can't control transformation also makes
the game interesting...a beast mode Primal or Megatron can lose fairly easily
to a robot mode opponent.
     One piece of strategic information which has been pointed out to me by
Suz Ferree is that Predacons are better in beast mode, but Maximals are
better in robot mode.  This favors the Preds in the beginning, when most
everyone is in beast mode, but in the endgame when more Mutate cards have
come up, the Maximals have an edge.
     I'm sure that some dedicated fan is going to find the strategy which
crocks the game eventually ("Play Maximals, play Primal, Rhinox and Dinobot
first, etc..."), but it looks like there's a fair amount of play value in
this game.  It's a lot better than I expected.  Although I recommend dropping
the "Youngest player goes first" rule typical of kiddie games and either
flipping a coin or letting the Maximals go first (since they're at a
disadvantage in the early game).

     Overall: Good production values, a surprisingly good rules set, all
around a very good game.  And cheap, to boot!

     Dave Van Domelen, kinda likes the art of Iguanus's beast mode....