Glossary

Short definitions for the terms this site uses, with links to the pages that carry the full rules. Every entry has its own anchor, so /glossary#pierce goes straight to Pierce.

A to Z

How This Site Writes Game Terms

A few conventions run through every page here, and they carry meaning:

Keywords, keyword abilities, and keyphrases are bolded: Bold, Pierce, Revenge, the Void expands. A bolded word is a defined game term; the same word unbolded is ordinary English.
Traits are never bolded: Herald, Chaosbringer, Melee, Titan Master. Neither are Station, Attack, Defense, or Health.
Battle icons are written as their emoji, 🟧 🟦 ⬛️ ⬜️ 🟩, never as color words in running text.
Card names with a subname are written Name // Subname: Bumblebee // Trusted Lieutenant. A name never carries two //; when a stratagem’s subname is itself a character’s full name, that name uses a comma instead of a //.
Release names are italic in prose: World|Strike, Waste|Lands, War|Void.

Cards and Zones

Action: A battle card played from hand for a one-time effect, then put in the scrap pile. Each player may normally play one Action per turn.
Battle card: Any card in your deck: Actions and Upgrades. Battle cards carry the battle icons flipped during a battle. See How to Play.
Character card: A bot on your team. Most have two modes, bot and alt, printed on the two faces of the card, and flip between them. Characters carry a star cost, Attack, Defense, and Health, and can also carry traits and abilities.
Deck: Your battle cards, at least 40 in standard play. Battle cards flip from the top of the deck during attacks and are drawn from it each turn.
KO area: Where knocked-out characters go. A character is KO’d when its damage equals or exceeds its Health; some abilities trigger on a KO, such as Revenge and Bounty.
Rolling Action: A permanent Action introduced in Waste|Lands: it stays on the battlefield and can be activated after taking time to spin up rather than resolving once.
Scrap pile: The discard pile. “Scrap” as a verb means put a card there. When the deck runs out, the scrap pile is shuffled to form a new deck.
Secret Action: An Action played face down, revealed when its text says to. An unrevealed Secret Action goes to the scrap pile at the start of its owner’s next turn.
Star card: A battle card with a star cost (★). Stars on star cards count toward the team’s star total alongside characters.
Stratagem: An optional card that modifies a named target on your starting team, at a star cost. Which targets qualify is defined under Stratagem Targets.
Team: Your character cards, plus any star cards and stratagems, built to a star budget: 25 stars in standard play, 35 in Primus.
Upgrade: A battle card attached to a character. There are three kinds, Weapon, Armor, and Utility, and a character can hold one of each. See Upgrade Play.
The Void: An optional resource system introduced in War|Void: cards with the Void expands place chaos counters on your Void, and Heralds and Chaosbringers spend them with Channel. See the FAQ.

Play Terms

Attack, Defense, Health: A character’s three numbers. Attack minus the defender’s Defense is the damage dealt; Health is how much damage a character can take before it is KO’d. Modifiers from icons and Upgrades adjust Attack and Defense during a battle.
Battle: One attack: attacker and defender chosen, battle cards flipped, damage dealt, then post-attack effects. Details in the Attack section of the rules.
Battle icons: The colored icons on battle cards, resolved as they are flipped: 🟧 adds Attack, 🟦 adds Defense, ⬛️ gives Pierce, ⬜️ flips two more cards, and 🟩 lets you swap a card after the attack. Full text under Battle Icons.
Chaos counter: The counters that accumulate on the Void and are spent by Channel.
Combine: Several characters forming a single larger character, such as Devastator or Volcanicus, using their combiner cards. A combiner counts as a character on your starting team for stratagem purposes.
Damage: Marked on a character with counters and kept between turns. Damage that equals or exceeds Health knocks the character out.
Flip: Two meanings. A character flips between bot and alt mode, usually once per turn. During an attack, each player flips battle cards from the top of their deck to add icons to the battle.
Hybrid icon: A battle icon introduced in Wave 5 that carries a color and a trait symbol. It only counts if the battling character has the matching trait.
Station: A type of ability introduced in Waste|Lands. A character can enter a Station and generally stays there until all characters untap, gaining what the Station grants. Often found on Junkion characters; see Factions.
Tap and untap: Turning a character sideways to show it has attacked or used a tap ability. When all your characters are tapped, they all untap together.
Triggered ability: An ability that happens when its condition is met (“When this attacks…”). When several trigger at once, the active player orders theirs first. See Triggered Abilities.

Keywords

Keywords are bolded wherever they appear. Numbered keywords sometimes add together and sometimes do not; Duplicate Keywords has the rule for each.

Bandit: 🟦 icons flipped by a defending character with Bandit have no effect. A Junkion keyword that pairs with Bandit battle cards; see Junkions.
Bold X: Flip X more battle cards when attacking. Bold values add together.
Bounty: An ability used when the character deals enough attack damage to KO an enemy. The Mercenary signature keyword; see Mercenaries.
Channel X: A keyword action for Heralds and Chaosbringers: spend up to X chaos counters from the Void for an effect. Numbers do not add together. Introduced in War|Void; see Unicron.
Drifter: 🟧 icons flipped by an attacking character with Drifter have no effect. The other Junkion keyword, with its own supporting battle cards.
Focus X: Just before flipping battle cards, look at the top X cards of your deck and scrap any of them. Focus values add together into a single look.
Oppress X: While this character is battling, reduce all characters’ Bold and Tough totals by X. Oppress values add together.
Pierce X: Deal at least X damage when attacking, up to the attacker’s Attack value, regardless of the defender’s Defense. Pierce values add together.
Plan X: A keyword action: look at the top X cards of your deck and put them back in any order. Numbers do not add together.
Revenge: An ability used when the character is KO’d. The Decepticon signature keyword; see Decepticons.
Safeguard X: An undamaged character with Safeguard X can’t take more than X damage at once. Safeguard values add together, and a higher number is weaker. The Autobot signature keyword; see Autobots.
Tough X: Flip X more battle cards when defending. Tough values add together.
The Void expands: A keyphrase on War|Void cards that places chaos counters on your Void.

Traits and Factions

Faction: The allegiance a character belongs to: Autobots, Decepticons, Mercenaries, Quintessons, Junkions, Unicron, or none. Each faction has a signature keyword. See Factions.
Herald and Chaosbringer: The two Unicron-aligned traits from War|Void. Non-Herald characters commonly generate chaos counters; Heralds and Chaosbringers spend them.
Team: Also a trait: a named group such as the Dinobots, Wreckers, or Sentinels whose members share a trait that cards can reference. Distinct from your team of characters.
Trait: A word printed on a card that other cards can refer to: Melee, Ranged, Specialist, Leader, Titan Master, Weaponizer, Car, Plane, Herald, Chaosbringer, and many more. Traits have no rules of their own and are never bolded. A stratagem may name a trait as its target.

Formats and Legality

ABR lists: The Allowed, Banned, and Replaced lists that together define the organized-play card pool. See the Ban List.
Casual play: Any game outside organized play. Its one rule: everyone at the table agrees beforehand, including on the card pool.
Full Constructed: transformerstcg.org’s primary format, using the full Allowed card pool. See Formats.
Harmony: An event modifier, not a format: the event’s normal card pool plus one or more named Public Beta releases. See Formats.
Limited: Formats where you build from a provided pool of cards rather than a collection: Sealed Deck, Booster Draft, and Turbo. See Formats.
Primus: A casual multiplayer format for three or more players: 35-star teams, singleton decks with Signature cards, and player tiles. See Primus.
Proxy: A stand-in for a card you don’t own a printing of. Allowed in casual play by agreement; in competitive play it must look like an established printing. See Tournament Rules.
Raid: Cooperative play against a shared enemy, historically the Unicron Raid. Casual and outside the supported card pool today. See Formats.
Replacement card: A community-era card that replaces a specific older card in the pool; the original is on the Replaced list and the replacement is what you play. The Jumpstarter Update Booster collects them.
Store Constructed: A Constructed format limited to cards obtainable as physical product today. See Formats.
Two Lwosers: A casual format built around the game’s most neglected stratagems, played with two decks. See Two Lwosers.

Releases and Development

Goodies Starter Deck: transformerstcg.org’s annual starter product, free to download and print, built as an entry point to the current game.
Hexcode: The short code that identifies a specific card printing in transformerstcg.org lists; the Store Constructed Allowed list is indexed by it.
Jumpstarter Update Booster: The release that collects the community-era replacement cards so an older collection can be brought up to date in one go.
Org Wave: A numbered Wave published directly by transformerstcg.org. Earlier community Waves keep their names until transformerstcg.org remasters them, at which point they are republished as Org Waves; Monster Menagerie became Org Wave 7 that way.
Pre-Alpha and Alpha: Development stages before Public Beta. Not part of the supported card pool and not legal in organized play under any modifier.
Print-and-play: Free downloadable card files meant for home printing. Every transformerstcg.org release is available this way on Downloads.
Public Beta: A release that is playable and in the supported card pool but not final. Legal in casual play, and in organized play only under the Harmony modifier. See Formats.
Remaster: A republished edition of an existing release with corrected text, updated art or layout, and the current template, published as an Org Wave.
Wave: A numbered main release. Waves 1 through 5 are official Wizards of the Coast releases; later Waves are community releases numbered in sequence. See Releases.

Organized Play and Community

Aequitas: The elected community rules committee that answered rules questions from 2020 to 2022. Its roundups are preserved under Rulings.
Allied Crossplay: The 2020 to 2023 partnership between Team Bayformers, The Ark, and other groups that shared a card pool and play environment. See History.
Black Hole: The archive at the center of the table that preserves historical fan releases for casual play. Inclusion there is not legality.
Competitive information asymmetry: A situation where some competitors hold privileged access to gameplay information the wider field does not have, such as unreleased cards, private testing results, or submitted decklists. transformerstcg.org answers it with competitive lockouts. See Guidance on Ideal 1.
Competitive lockout: The restriction placed on anyone with meaningful private design access or privileged event information: they keep playing, and none of their results count toward standings, qualification, ranked event wins, or awards. Six months at minimum, a full season for full-Wave designers, permanent for the game director. See Guidance on Ideal 1.
Encounter: A numbered event within a Tournament Season.
Energon Invitational: Wizards of the Coast’s official championship, last held in December 2019.
Omega Invitational: The community world championship, held in 2022 as the climax of Season One and modeled on Wizards’ Energon Invitational. See History.
Team Bayformers: The Bay Area group that produced World|Strike and Waste|Lands and became transformerstcg.org in December 2023. See Team Bayformers.
Tournament Organizer: The person running an event, who sets its format, modifiers, and time limits. Abbreviated TO.
Tournament Season: A run of online events under one card pool, named for the release it supports: World|Strike Tournament Season One, Waste|Lands Tournament Season Two.