Post-War Transformers Conflict: Sports?

[KingSwoop]

One of the more novel, if under-developed, premises of some recent Transformers shows and comics is the aftermath of The Great War. G1 never really showed us this, but G2 did feature the two factions teaming up against the "G2" Cybertronians with an uneasy truce. Armada ended the war, only for Energon to start it up again. Transformers Prime... kinda... ended in peace, but this lead to RID/Adventure treating "Decepticon" as more or less identical to "criminals" and that never really sat well with me. IDW tried as post-peace status quo, Cyberverse did it, and Earthspark opens with it (although the Decepticons are largely presented as criminals again.).

There's always the option to have "former Decepticon forces" refuse to surrender, become space pirates, etc.... but all that's doing is making the Decepticons still villains, but with less resources.

But here's an alternative: What if we saw a post-"Great War" ongoing story/cartoon that focused on sports competitions rather than, say, factional conflicts. Autobots and Decepticons can be citizens of their respective nations which have a tenuous peace and join together for some cosmic Olympics. Maybe each faction could present a set number of "teams" to compete, although admittedly this would be simpler if there were multiple colonized worlds (Speedia, etc.) who could each field a team, but the worlds would be aligned with main factions. Maybe Earth gets to send a delegation that uses transsectors or something, too?

During these olympics, then, the main conflict is your standard "Who will win the sport"? conflict between competing teams, but you can add in both standard sports-drama ("so and so is using performance enhancing drugs, cheating, etc.") as well as the occasional "the war's not over for me" trauma... although I think the first instance of this has to be an autobot.

Possible Sports/Competition:

1. Fighting Competition(s) - a video game tie-in would be nice, but think more or less a fighting tournament with Transformers. If Beast Wars II's video game can do it for the Gameboy, this seems like a fun option that can go full Dragon Ball if you want.
2. Race - This might seem obvious, but Transformers getting into a race is a fun, potentially dangerous, concept. Probably more Speed Racer than Nascar, it seems easy enough to feature different race tracks with different obstacles.
3. ~Soccer. Imagine a 5-6 man team sport featuring combiner teams. I don't know how this'd work, but combining these two concepts (pun not intended) would yield a uniquely transformers sport.

As I see it there are two big problems:

(1) It's far from obvious that you'd get to feature a unified cast; sure some of the combiner limbs might join in a race (or sky race or water race or whatever) individually, and the same is true for the martial arts tournament(s), but you'll probably end up having a cast of dozens if you include a team sport. MAYBE we could follow a new sports-themed Combiner team as our protagonists, and feature pre-existing characters (with easily re-releasable molds) for the ancillary characters, but this could be tough.

(2) The other issue here is making sure that you have enough diverse teams that can compete. I'm assuming competitions can largely be capped at "top 8"; and while I'm sure we can find 8 transformers to fight in a ring, or dozens to race in a race, from a practical perspective it might be difficult to get 8 combiner teams in the toy roster.
(Of course if they decided to use Combiner Wars teams/molds and then just created a few new, compatible ones for the story, it could work.)

Honestly, I don't think I'd want this to be a new franchise/timeline/etc., but if you tell me that in 202X, the Autobots and Decepticons have finally made peace (after, say, a high quality G1 reboot), then maybe I'd be interested in a season or two of something like this. Maybe we spend a few episodes gathering the cast of our protagonist combiner team, have them compete in qualifiers, and then do some training arc stuff, which leads them to the space Olympics.

 

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

Sort of like the Mutant League sports, but with giant transforming alien robots?

Now this is the kind of creative thinking the franchise could use!

Gotta have Cube, I think.

But taking on other Earth sports, and giving them a Cybertronian twist? I'm all for that.

I think I'd be fine with it being a new timeline, but it can be kind of nebulous (not Nebulos, but hey, let's get them in on it, too!), like how Beast Wars followed the G1 cartoon and comic, yet neither and still both. Like, just a "don't think too hard about it" kinda thing.

A variation on sumo wrestling for Titans would be great.

5-on-5 Combiner basketball where the teams combine for epic slam dunks.

Earth tries to suggest wrestling, but they wind up getting confused and end up emulating professional wrestling, which let's face it, is where it was going to wind up, anyway.

Soccer/football would be like Mario Strikers, but with fusion cannons and Dinobots instead of turtle shells and Bowser.

Oh, but we should have commentators! One for each side!

I nominate Blaster and Soundwave, with Cassettes acting as on-the-field reporters. Should be right up Eject's alley.

 

[Ookalf]

My immediate question: If there's peace now, why are there still Decepticons at all? Like, in most continuities this is a faction specifically built around the idea of conquering places and oppressing people. Sure, sometimes Megatron has some kind of legitimate grievance at the very beginning of the war, but inevitably by the modern day whatever system he was rebelling against has already long fallen apart and they're just being evil basically for the sake of it. If, in your proposed setting, they're all good guys now, what's still uniting them under a banner that's synonymous with villainy? Or are we gonna write it such that they never actually did anything bad?

(Admittedly, this is probably a question that could also be asked toward official stuff that's tried to have heroic Decepticons, not just your idea...)

 

[Dekafox]

Maybe in this theoretical Sports Transformers, it's just a team name? You could borrow some of the faction names from the old DW War Within stuff for other teams. If it's far enough after the war, there'd probably some city(most likely Kaon) willing to use it for a team name - wouldn't be that far different than a southern US city doing a Confederate reference team name.

 

[Donocropolis]

Depends on the continuity, too. Some settings have Decepticons as a group existing in some more morally neutral form before being taken over by Megatron.

 

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

And after. I think they remained Decepticons in Cyberverse.

 

[KingSwoop]

My immediate question: If there's peace now, why are there still Decepticons at all? Like, in most continuities this is a faction specifically built around the idea of conquering places and oppressing people. Sure, sometimes Megatron has some kind of legitimate grievance at the very beginning of the war, but inevitably by the modern day whatever system he was rebelling against has already long fallen apart and they're just being evil basically for the sake of it. If, in your proposed setting, they're all good guys now, what's still uniting them under a banner that's synonymous with villainy? Or are we gonna write it such that they never actually did anything bad?

(Admittedly, this is probably a question that could also be asked toward official stuff that's tried to have heroic Decepticons, not just your idea...)

I'm envisioning this as a post-G1(ish) universe, where factions are practically nationalities; especially if they end up on different planets. (I'm not a big fan of that; it sounds vaguely cruel of the autobots to banish the decepticons, but then again I'd be worried about "Decepticon apartheid" if they just got their own city on cybertron. I didn't watch Cyberverse (those first few episiodes were insufferable), but the prospect of a line down the equator of Cybertron felt juvenile.

We've seen truces and peace in multiple stories (Optimus surrenders to Scorponok G1, Megatron to Optimus in G2, and Megatron's cease fire in Beast Wars!), and having them keep their factions makes sense.

My intent is that you read "Faction" as "Nationality" or perhaps "broader alliance"; for example Junkion might be an Autobot-aligned world; so a team of Junkions might be "Autobot (alliance) Junkion (race/faction/subgroup/whatever) [Team Name]. In fact "Subgroup" and "team name" would probably be condensed into one; that "The Junkions" are Junkions from the planet of Junk is a bit clunky, but it's not too far off from the Autobot Protectobots from Earth (if we assume the Protectobots were built on Earth in this continuity???).

From a toy perspective, I think you try to leave "Heroic" and "Evil" off the packaging. Maybe you include it when we get a "big bad" or a cheater or something. It's easy enough to make a big bad Unicron-aligned, so "Evil Unicronian" or "Evil Blendtron" might work. Maybe you get the occasional "Evil Autobot"... whether that's SG style, or just a madman like Flame. But if this is trying to be a sports show, you don't really need a lot of genuine villains. Like Zod from the Gobots universe invade the games, the combiner teams combine, beat him up, and then the day is saved and they go back to playing ~Soccer.

Maybe in this theoretical Sports Transformers, it's just a team name? You could borrow some of the faction names from the old DW War Within stuff for other teams. If it's far enough after the war, there'd probably some city(most likely Kaon) willing to use it for a team name - wouldn't be that far different than a southern US city doing a Confederate reference team name.

I think this works best as a "happy end" to the Autobot/Decepticon war, rather than a parallel universe where there is no war, only Alien Soccer.

You still want there to be Earth mode transformers and you want there to be some rivalries that go beyond "I don't like that other Alien Soccer Team" (IE, there should be a moment where the viewer isn't sure whether a fight'll break out... and then it doesn't, and everyone's happy! Most "fights" are sports rivalries; but you can tell the occasional somber story about getting over trauma caused by war/

As for "obscure" team names, I'd rather have a story supported by a toyline. To that end, I don't want people wondering who the "Dynobots" are or the "Mayhem Attack Squad" or whatever. But "Autobot Aerialbot Silverbolt" is no more cumbersome than "G2 Universe Sideswipe". I'd also like to see a return of tech specs (perhaps with a new sports motif?), preferably advertising the toy on the back of the card, or as included baseball-esque cards, or just as online content with a QR code. (That actually seems like the best option, especially if you could download it digitally and it included back up instructions.)

Now, if I'm designing a toyline for this, I think I bite the bullet and say that it's a revamped Combiner Wars-compatible line. Deluxes & Voyagers are comprised of 5-man teams, with the occasional toy that doesn't fit that play factor. The occasional Leader w/o CW functionality could work, but I'd also like a the option to see ancillary show characters like commentors, managers, coaches, and even fans/seat fillers. I also imagine gift sets of the less-featured characters using mostly reused or repurposed Combiner Wars toys.

For example, our [main team] might be an eclectic mix of new characters, as with their main rivals, but I don't see why the (CW) Combatacons couldn't be just in the show as characters they face. Blast Off in the sky race, Swindle trying to cheat his way through the normal race, Onslaught cleaning up the shooting contest, etc.

 

[Arazyr]

It's the Ballobots of Basketrek's time to shine. 8^)

 

[Haywire]

I like this idea, but since it is post-war, who does the refereeing? Seems like any perceived bad calls could reignite a war, so would the referees be an even mix of Autobot and Decepticons, or would they be a mutually trusted third party?

 

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

I like this idea, but since it is post-war, who does the refereeing? Seems like any perceived bad calls could reignite a war, so would the referees be an even mix of Autobot and Decepticons, or would they be a mutually trusted third party?

Quintessons?

 

[CoffeeHorse]

Assuming this isn't the Bayverse, it's not that hard to find Decepticons with some integrity.

Questions like this just remind me how much Energon deserved a better show. It begins with a post war peace that isn't perfect but takes the arrival of a third faction for it to fall apart. It's not the Decepticons deciding to start things up again.

 

[KingSwoop]

I like this idea, but since it is post-war, who does the refereeing? Seems like any perceived bad calls could reignite a war, so would the referees be an even mix of Autobot and Decepticons, or would they be a mutually trusted third party?

Fair question. I'm not actually sure we need factioned-judges; there are civilians after all, but I take it we'd see judges from both sides as appropriate.

However, this does raise an interesting question - would there be sports that allow cheating/deception? For example, a "no holds barred" wrestling competition might allow heckling or cheating or rules manipulation. In fact, that'd be a lot of fun... although, let's be honest, it'd also be super tedious to write for, "Oh, I knew ahead of time that you'd use your sonic disruptor to disable my Magnus Armor, which is why I, the real Ultra Magnus, was in the audience the whole time. There's nothing in the rules that says I have to be in the ring, so at the end of the match it's a tie!" nonsense. You know, a whole episode of Air Bud "there's nothing in the rules that say a dog can't play basketball" thing 2-3 times an episode for that arc.

It's the Ballobots of Basketrek's time to shine. 8^)

You kid, but Adventure did introduce a whole subline of ball transformers. Why not dig 'em out of storage and/or improve upon them to spice things up!

Quintessons?

I see what you're getting at here, but would it really be a bad thing for the Quintessons to petition to join the games in the spirit of peace (but really, evil), and just fill their team with Sharkticons lead by an Alligaticon? Maybe given them cool "team colors" and reissue the Legacy characters in those colors. I mean, we need a team to be eliminated at some point and we do want an antagonist that can antagonize w/o restarting the Great War...

Assuming this isn't the Bayverse, it's not that hard to find Decepticons with some integrity.

Questions like this just remind me how much Energon deserved a better show. It begins with a post war peace that isn't perfect but takes the arrival of a third faction for it to fall apart. It's not the Decepticons deciding to start things up again.

The "trick" with the Energon show is that the war DID end and the Decepticon warriors DID join the autobot alliance. Our main Armada baddies get corrupted, recruited, etc., but all the no-names - the Decepticon G1 Hound redeco, etc. - are all on Cybertron happy and healthy and at peace.

That said, "We defeated Unicron and our leaders are floating in space" doesn't really seem like a satisfying conclusion to untold years of mini-con slavery and attempted genocide, does it? Energon did a lot with what it had, but if the foundation is Armada...

 

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

I see what you're getting at here, but would it really be a bad thing for the Quintessons to petition to join the games in the spirit of peace (but really, evil), and just fill their team with Sharkticons lead by an Alligaticon? Maybe given them cool "team colors" and reissue the Legacy characters in those colors. I mean, we need a team to be eliminated at some point and we do want an antagonist that can antagonize w/o restarting the Great War...

I guess not, but I just like the idea of their judicial system being applied to calling fouls and stuff.

Getting a fault in tennis leads to a Sharkticon or three being unleashed onto the court, stuff like that.

 

[KingSwoop]

I guess not, but I just like the idea of their judicial system being applied to calling fouls and stuff.

Getting a fault in tennis leads to a Sharkticon or three being unleashed onto the court, stuff like that.

That's a fun idea. Maybe each participant world proposes a game and judges over the game.
1. Cybertron
2. Earth(?)
3. Char
4. Junkion
5. New? Quintessa

and maybe 6. Velicitron, 7. Beast Planet, etc. as needed.

For the sake of convenience, I think each world would present a team of 5 players, but maybe the players would be suited to some sports/competitions over others.

For example, if Velocitron is involved, it might choose a race, however maybe only 1 member per world could participate in that (non-team) sport. A Velocitron official could then be judge, as per your idea, or at least one of a panel of 3 judges (chosen at random?).

Maybe Junkion chooses a variant of an Earth game (because they're tv junkies) like Soccer? Maybe you have Junkions riding each other to bat the ball with their maces towards the goal; but maybe a combiner combines to guard the goal, then just throw the ball across the field? A Junkion judge would need to quote Air Bud at some point, obviously.

Somebody's got to choose a "Pit fight", whether that's Beast Planet or Char, but maybe multiple members are allowed to join in and the fighters chosen randomly. It's easy to see a Decepticon team using "strategic concessions" or just throwing fights to keep their top fighter in prime shape; maybe repairs aren't allowed between matches so it's like a war of attrition.

Earth is a bit question mark, team-wise, although we've got lots of sports we can adapt 1:1. In fact, Earth sports being played by Transformers might be the biggest draw of this kind of project. One option is to have the Earth team be autobots (and/or decepticons) created on Earth, say by the matrix or key to vector sigma. Maybe G1 Protectobots? Another option, though, would be humans piloting transectors. We do have a lot of quality Titans Return toys that Hasbro still loves to use; it's not hard to imagine repurposing them for a team of 5. (Although I suppose that would rule out a Planet Master-team... which is fine, since we're going for broad audience appeal. Although then again, maybe a Planet Master w/ Micromasters for Season 2? A team of 5 Micromasters could make for a good Voyager toy, I think; especially if they combine...).

It's easy to see a Human disagreeing with the two random cybertorian judges as they see the transformer participants flagrantly violating the established norms of the game they chose, but being overruled. "That's travelling! You can't hold the ball and run w/o dribbling it" to which the beast planet judge might say "he's not running with it, he's flying!" and the Velicitron judge saying "and look at him go!"

 

[Stepwise]

Playing around with group/team names and marketing . . .

The Elite Guard and Rescue Bots had insignia that had extra shapes around the main Autobot red mask. Seems like Energon had something like this, too, but I only have Rodimus, so I can't compare his to anyone else's.

What if each of these groups had something like that - Autobot or Decepticon (or Max/Pred?) insignias with extra shapes, so that they were showing their "heritage" (and streamlining the packaging a little bit)?

Also - putting teams like this together would be a great chance to bring in subgroups that don't get a lot of attention, or that haven't been revisited in a while, like Turbomasters, Omnibots, Motorvators, etc.

 

[KingSwoop]

Playing around with group/team names and marketing . . .

The Elite Guard and Rescue Bots had insignia that had extra shapes around the main Autobot red mask. Seems like Energon had something like this, too, but I only have Rodimus, so I can't compare his to anyone else's.

What if each of these groups had something like that - Autobot or Decepticon (or Max/Pred?) insignias with extra shapes, so that they were showing their "heritage" (and streamlining the packaging a little bit)?

Also - putting teams like this together would be a great chance to bring in subgroups that don't get a lot of attention, or that haven't been revisited in a while, like Turbomasters, Omnibots, Motorvators, etc.

Unique sub-faction symbols is a neat idea.

Given the premise, I kind of imagine a Car-Robots-style enterprise; some key new molds coupled with strategic reuse of good and available molds to fill out the cast. A traditional anime would be great, but honestly a CGI show would be fine, preferably cell shaded with minimalist models so you can have a big cast. Probably something a bit better than Cyberverse's animation, preferably, but also probably something less "realistic" than Earthspark.