Turbo Revving Old Punks
Part of: History of the Transformers TCG
Turbo Revving Old Punks (TROP) was a Transformers TCG fan group based in the United Kingdom. Formed after the game’s cancellation, it produced two community releases in 2021, Phase One and Monster Menagerie, became a member of Allied Crossplay, and ran one of the community’s larger Facebook groups and Discord servers. Its leadership changed in September 2022 and the group stopped operating independently soon after. Its releases survive today as Org Wave 7: Monster Menagerie, remastered by transformerstcg.org with the help of former TROP contributors.
Origins and Media
TROP was founded and led by Lee McAlpin of BLEEPEDUPPRODUCTIONS and Dave “EnergonHustler” Cook of Energon Hustlers, the hosts of the One Shall Stand, One Shall Fall podcast. After Wizards of the Coast ended official support in 2020, the podcast became an important long-form program covering releases, designers, and the community’s debates, including a four-part series reviewing World|Strike and interviewing Team Bayformers’ game director in early 2021, and a June 2021 interview with Alpha Trion Protocols’ Dan Arnold whose remarks on crossplay prompted the Allied Crossplay branding. Cook’s Energon Hustlers program added regular gameplay video, some of it first posted to the TROP Facebook group.
The group’s Facebook group and Discord became gathering points of their own. A November 2021 community survey noted that the TROP Discord had “shown tremendous growth” in the preceding two months, as the loss of the largest Transformers TCG Discord scattered players across other servers.
Phase One and Monster Menagerie
TROP began developing its own releases independently while Team Bayformers worked on World|Strike and Waste|Lands. Its first, Phase One, ran a limited, weeks-long beta in mid-2021 and released on July 5, 2021. It was the larger of the group’s two sets and was built to support cards from the original Hasbro run, including the Devastator box set, while adding new characters such as Nightbird // Tera-Kura Construct and battle cards such as Rage. Team Bayformers welcomed the release and made Phase One central to its casual and competitive play in the tournament seasons that followed.
Monster Menagerie followed later in 2021: nine Halloween-flavored character cards, among them Fangry // Cursed Nightmare and Brainstorm // Haunted Schemer, that filled gaps in the existing card pool and introduced new strategies. Together the two sets also delivered a major collection of new tools for the Constructicons.
Both sets were folded into the Allied Crossplay card pool, and in 2022 they were combined into a single Wave, numbered Wave 7: Monster Menagerie.
Allied Crossplay
TROP joined the partnership between Team Bayformers and The Ark that became Allied Crossplay in June 2021, and its releases were made compatible with the shared play environment that Team Bayformers’ tournament scene provided. Allied Crossplay’s releases from Team Bayformers and TROP were particularly noted for their strong thematic identities.
The Impetuous Stand Controversy
Main article: The Impetuous Stand Controversy
Phase One also produced the community’s first major balance dispute. Impetuous Stand, designed by TROP member Matafer, was added as a 20th battle card roughly a week before release, without the cross-group review applied to the rest of the set, and quickly became the dominant Upgrade-removal option in the format.
Cook opened a public poll in the TROP Facebook group on whether to rebalance it, then took the poll down after agreeing that the card’s balance had become a popularity contest. Event organizers eventually banned the card, the first community-created card banned from organized play, and a rework did not keep it off the list.
The dispute strained trust between TROP and its partners and exposed early tensions around creator ownership, balance authority, and collaborative review.
Leadership Change and Inactivity (2022)
TROP did not survive Allied Crossplay’s later years intact. By 2022 it was carrying internal membership tensions alongside the disagreements arising within the wider partnership. In September, Cook stepped down and leadership passed to Matafer; the public record does not establish a single cause for that change. Most of the group’s remaining members subsequently joined Team Bayformers subteams, either continuing in game design there or stepping back from active design work, and TROP stopped operating as an independent group soon afterward.
TROP is currently inactive. Its Facebook group was archived by an administrator on October 12, 2024: its posts remain viewable, but it no longer accepts new posts, comments, or members.
Legacy
Across 2024 and 2025, transformerstcg.org worked with former TROP contributors on a remastered edition of Wave 7. The Org Wave 7 1.1.1 Remaster shipped as a complete physical product for the first time on March 5, 2025, through the Donation Storefront ahead of TFcon Los Angeles 2025. Phase One and Monster Menagerie remain legal in transformerstcg.org organized play through Org Wave 7, and their Halloween monsters and Constructicon tools remain part of the game’s modern card pool.