THE CHOSEN ONE

    There was a brief time in playtesting when Legend mode Rodimus was allowed to be played with stratagems. Though this was eventually removed due to being overbearing in certain strategies, there still remain a few specific legend mode characters who can play with these powerful stratagems increasing their overall usefulness in the game. Among these is Ariel, probably better known as Elita-1. Due to this clause that she needs to be paired with an autobot stratagem, she actually has some very strong teams she can be paired with and I would be lying if I said I wasn't on an Ariel kick lately with deck building.  

                                                         Why Ariel/Elita?  

         Ariel is a premium character in most teams due to the sheer amount of versatility she brings for the star cost, not too dissimilar to her 8* legend counterpart in Ghost Starscream. Ariel does a few things no other legend mode character gets the benefit of and that’s definitely what makes her so interesting. Among these things is the fact she has brave in bot mode meaning that you are hitting her unless you put some work into your battle deck to get around brave which apart from spy satellite uplink, doesn’t see too much play in the main deck of most lists. The other thing she brings is a great stat line in Legend mode as well as the ability to heal anyone giving even aggro strategies a deceptive amount of survival. In Legend mode she also prevents enemies from using stealth which means in a lot of lists you can actually skip including spy satellites in your main deck unless you are scared of opposing brave strategies as well. Since she brings all of these things to the table, it is pretty easy to see why she is such a solid character.  

https://teletraan1.net/decks/2b21b7d2/ariel-works   

Here we see her paired with yet another Wheeljack but in a more aggressive shell. Similar to the final list I will be sharing, this list uses Ariel to buy time to find your untaps for your cars while also being a free untap on her own. By pairing her with It Works, you get to see a ton of cards while also juggling Drift flips to attack untapped decepticons when needed or hide from them with stealth. Her healing capability also adds additional longevity to her teammate’s otherwise unexciting base life totals. 

                                                                       Ariel Rally

 https://teletraan1.net/decks/d81debe1/ariel-rally-v2  

     And finally we are at the deck that caused Hot Rod to lose his ability to play stratagems, Rally Bee. This deck may only have 3 characters but it is essentially a 5 wide team due to both Bumblebee and Ariel having untapped built right into their kits. The addition of Ratchet as a support piece gives the deck not only a second leader and a third character to pick up knack with, it also means that by flipping ratchet to bot mode you get extra oomph out of Elita’s heal in legend mode as well as turning the Rally stratagem into a heal 4, an amount mostly unheard of in the game. This deck also gets to play main deck W-5 Gyro blasters which is such a powerful card in shutting down certain decks. While Elita may not as hard as Hot Rod does, she does a pretty good impression with her 6 base attack when given a weapon and the many combat pumps that this deck gets to splurge for considering it doesnt need to spend as many deck spaces on additional untap effects, in fact this list only plays a single turbo boosters. This is very likely the strongest Ariel deck in the format and something to watch out for in the upcoming monthly.