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World|Strike Tournament Season One

Team Bayformers' first organized online season, built to support World|Strike as a community wave, running across five numbered Encounters to the first Omega Invitational.

Ran
Organizers Team Bayformers, Allied Crossplay
Tournaments 2

Launched on February 8, 2021, Tournament Season One was the first organized online season the community game ran for itself, created to support Wave 6: World|Strike as a community wave. It ran online through mid-2022, across five numbered Encounters and several additional formats, and it established the pattern Season Two would follow.

The season began under Team Bayformers alone and finished under a wider banner. On June 21, 2021, midway through the run, the Team’s partnership with The Ark rebranded as Allied Crossplay, and the shared Discord its events ran in gave up the Team Bayformers name to become the “Transformers TCG Community” Discord.

The events

Encounter 1 opened the season on February 8, 2021. The surviving event ban lists date Encounter 2 to April 3, Encounter 4 to July 31, and Encounter 5 to September 25, all in 2021, with a Psi Pre-Invitational running from September into November. Encounter 3’s date is not recorded here.

The season closed with the first Omega Invitational, which ran from March 28 to April 28, 2022 as Allied Crossplay’s world championship.

Encounter 2 and the crossplay experiment

Encounter 2 was the season’s most unusual event. It combined two groups’ cards in one competitive field: Team Bayformers’ Wave BFA World|Strike alongside ATP 1-3 from Alpha Trion Protocols, a mix the organizers called unprecedented at the time.

The results are preserved in a card-by-card analysis. The final came down to [BF] Champion against Brettasaurus, both on heavy Pierce builds, the difference being Howling Howitzer, which earned its slot in Brettasaurus’s three-Ranged lineup and not in Champion’s Melee-heavy one. Lock-On Lasers was among the event’s most popular cards, appearing across five decks between main decks and sideboards, and Despite Any Difficulty turned up in two separate ATP Superion decks.

The experiment did not continue. Team Bayformers subsequently stopped covering ATP content and withdrew support for it in regular events, after the central creators behind Vector Sigma and ATP made clear they did not welcome the coverage and accused creators and organizers who included their content of bias and worse.

What the season settled on the ban list

Season One is where most of the community’s permanent rulings began as temporary ones. Garrus-9, the rotating suspension, ran throughout, and the event ban lists record the first appearance of nearly every card now permanently removed: Peace Through Tyranny and Security Checkpoint at Encounter 2, Decepticon Quake // Ground Assault and Fangry // Sky Tracker at Encounter 4, Sky Shadow Sync at Encounter 5, and Horri-Bull // Ground Trooper at the Omega Invitational itself.

Two suspensions ended in reinstatement rather than a ban. Fight For Position served a single event at Encounter 4, and Turnabout Snare served two, across Encounter 5 and the Psi Pre-Invitational. Both are legal today.

One decision was made outright rather than accumulated. The three Wave 5 Titan Master Health heads, Kreb, Brisko and Grax, went onto the event lists together at Encounter 5 on September 25, 2021 and never came off one.

Prizing, and a survey that changed it

For months the season leaned heavily on cash prizes, chosen to match the prize thresholds set by comparable competitive circuits. The October 2021 community survey found that players wanted something else: custom community items ranked highest, and cash had never drawn much enthusiasm. Transformers-branded merchandise remained popular, and prize strategy shifted accordingly.

Harmony, and the handoff to Season Two

Before Season One closed, Team Bayformers built the Harmony format for its Harmony: Waste|Lands tournaments, which tested the Waste|Lands Public Beta inside the Omega Invitational’s meta. Vangelus streamed several of those matches, including HWL2 in March 2022 and HWL3 that May. transformerstcg.org still uses Harmony as its modifier for Public Beta play.

Tournaments in this series