Bruticuseseses

[Thundercracker]

Here's a challenge for you guys!

There are currently four Fall of Cybertron Bruticus repaints (as far as I know, and RUINATION DOESN'T COUNT, I said Bruticuseseses...), takara, SDCC, retail and G2. As you probably know they have the scramble feature where you can make a limb be an arm or a leg.

My question to you guys is, if you own all four of the Bruticuses how many unique Bruticuses can you potentially create using different torsos, different combinations of the four limbs and with the limbs in different positions (scrambled)? It's fun to think about!

I have the answer so I'm quizzing you guys (I wasn't allowed to post in the rewind section). You will need maths! Also note that the combinations of limbs include all vortexes and all brawls etc. (i.e. 4 vortexes or 4 brawls etc.), basically every combination of 4 taken from the 16 limb Combaticons (limbaticons :D) but also with these arranged in different ways... each can be a left arm, right arm, left leg and right leg.

If no one gets it in a week or so (you can always ask for extra time, tips or maybe clarification) I'll post the answer just FYI.

Disclaimer: I am not responsible if you take 4 of your gestalts and try and make up all the combinations (you will never finish)

[1AZRAEL1]

Currently i have 2 versions, but in a couple weeks i will add the takara version to my shelves. Don't own the sdcc version, and no real desire to fork out the money for it.

[Raptormesh]

Is it 1024?

[Thundercracker]

Is it 1024?

Nope, sorry. It's not very easy so don't feel bad if you don't get it.


Currently i have 2 versions, but in a couple weeks i will add the takara version to my shelves. Don't own the sdcc version, and no real desire to fork out the money for it.

I don't own any lol! I don't think they got any of the colours right for any of the moulds, especially with vortex. I wish they'd just pick some kind of colour scheme to go with e.g. make them look true G1 or true game (at least in robot mode). G2 seems to be true to the G2 colour scheme IF you look at the promotional shots... but in reality you have an onslaught with an all purple head which I didn't like (so I didn't get him in the end, except for my nephew who wont care). If it was all black, even without the red eyes, then it would have been fine. I guess the G2 one was supposed to be the really affordable one which meant you had to do without any fine details... but still. As for retail I completely understand them going with the bright colours to appeal to kids it's just weird when they release other characters like Starscream and Shockwave (actually everyone else...) in more serious tones... VERY PERPLEXING. Also I couldn't stand swindle being so tall and brawl being so short... there was room in the mould to fix this but if you own brawl he takes a lot of plastic so that's probably why he's tiny. When I played the game, however, I realised they reinvented the swindle character so I wasn't bugged by that anymore. But reinventing one of the most iconic characters in transformers... seriously... who doesn't love swindle! "first see if we can trust him, taste one of the energon cubes!"

[Krayt]

218400

[Thundercracker]

218400

Very close but it appears you made a simple error. How many torsos did you include? The question was for four moulds...

[Krayt]

174720... damn thinking in 5's....

But you got me thinking about the G1 Scrambles.... in my own collection I could make 214212480 from 15 gestalts and an extra....

[Thundercracker]

174720... damn thinking in 5's....


Correct, well done. Wanna explain quickly what you did for everyone?


But you got me thinking about the G1 Scrambles.... in my own collection I could make 214212480 from 15 gestalts and an extra....

:)

[Raptormesh]

Oooh, TIL what scramble city meant, lol. I don't have these toys but now I'm interested in knowing more. :)

[Thundercracker]

I think it's what makes these figures really special. Also the fact that they were able to keep all the members within a deluxe class size for the robot and vehicle modes (yes onslaught is quite tall but its still pretty good). It's more like what you would have in the G1 cartoons where onslaught was just as tall as the others unlike the toy where he was at least twice as tall as brawl (the tallest limbaticon). Of course it's the way they look in the game as well! So many great things about the G1 Combaticons :)

[1AZRAEL1]

Well the takara release is pretty close IMO. Closer than the SDCC version anyway.

[Thundercracker]

Yeah actually I really like Onslaught from the takara release, great colours! Also swindle has really good G1 vibe; he's closer to the actual toy rather than the cartoon, since he's pretty yellow in the cartoon :). Brawl's colour is a little strange but at least they made the barrels black where as in the SDCC one they are silver which is kinda weird to me. I really like black barrel/s for a brawl figure, it reminds me of when I had the G2 toy :D

Personally I think they could have done a lot more with the onslaught figure, he could have had a proper backpack which transformed into a chest plate that was grey, so you could have the best of both worlds (G1/game accurate bruticus torso and G1/game accurate robot/vehicle mode). I'm sure everyone is aware of the problem with the arms... I think the main problem is that they have to fit them into these specific classes which can be very restrictive. I was holding my breath for a voyager onslaught LMAO, but only because the deluxe onslaught seemed sub-par. Don't get me wrong, I really wanted to get onslaught because of how good he looked in robot mode and i'm not sure why I never got him in the end, maybe the price. Brawl is the only one I got and I messed up his head thing so I'm waiting on some tiny screw drivers to fix him LOL. Also I actually had a problem with his turret not coming apart for leg mode... and I had to shave the plastic down a bit so it wouldn't get stuck anymore *cringe*, but he is definitely my fave and i'm so happy with him.

[Thundercracker]

bahaha! I just saw this (sorry for the double post but I had to)

http://tformers.com/ig.php?mode=view&album=19328&pic=Takara+Tomy+Edition+Generations+Fall+of+Cybert ron+Combaticons+Images+Show+Game+Colors+Figures+Im age+%2814%29.jpg&dispsize=600&start=0&sl=transformers-takara-tomy-edition-generations-fall

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4rx1gsOqKg&t=1m25s

[1AZRAEL1]

One problem with brawl is he is too back heavy and you have to lean him quite forward so that he doesn't fall backwards. He really needed an "heel" extension, which i am working on fashioning some for him.

[GoktimusPrime]

I didn't like that image of the all Brawl Bruticus. The one thing that I really like about the Combaticons and Bruticus since G1 is the diversity. Each Combaticon is so unique and distinctive from each other in form, when you look at Bruticus in whatever combination, you know who's formed which limb. Each robot transforms differently from each other. This is the complete opposite of the Aerialbots/Superion where the limb robots all have the same basic transformation scheme, and when combined they have a uniform but rather bland pattern to the gestalt. So often in G1 it became difficult to tell which Aerialbot had formed which limb!
Look at these pictures and see if you can which Aerialbot has formed which arm or leg!
http://tfwiki.net/mediawiki/images2/6/69/Menasor_superion_heavy_traffic.jpg
http://tfwiki.net/mediawiki/images2/a/ac/Superion_blood_on_the_tracks.jpg
http://tfwiki.net/mediawiki/images2/6/60/Menasor_superion_perchance_to_dream.jpg
http://tfwiki.net/mediawiki/images2/5/56/Superion_inside_story.jpg
Artists have to work extra hard to ensure that you can see minor details and colour differences in order to tell them apart. Even looking at Bruticus in black and white (http://www.zaslike.com/files/68dpf850o6yo2d6soubr.gif) you can still clearly tell which Combaticon has formed which limb.

[Krayt]

For those wondering about the math.....

4 brutici have 4 limbs each
4 x 4 = 16

Once one is used, the next spot has 15 possible to use, etc etc....

So 16 x 15 x 14 x 13 (that's the limbs)x 4 onslaughts

Same way to work out your tattlotto odds....

[Thundercracker]

Great summary, thanks! I used pages 21-23 of this:

http://www.math.upenn.edu/~guffin/teaching/spring11/lectures/lecture-13.pdf

You can go on and calculate the amount of distinct four limb Bruticuses you can make (without considering limb position) by dividing by the amount of ways you can arrange 4 things 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 (each distinct set of four you make is repeated for all the different possible scrambled positions using the calculation in the previous post, but we want only want one distinct combination of four limbs)

so we get [(16 x 15 x 14 x 13)/(4 x 3 x 2 x 1)] x 4 = 7280 which is still a whole lot!

which is page 4 of here:

http://www.math.upenn.edu/~guffin/teaching/spring11/lectures/lecture-14.pdf

Finally a use for maths! :P

It'd be good to hear more comments on what you think of the various Bruticuses, maybe even your thoughts on Ruination? Who's interested in getting him? The weapons seem really cool and I like how they are made for the specific characters. I think they are going to use the wreckers logo as well! I think all the remoulds so far in the FOC line have been great since they offer more paint and accessories to sweeten the deal. They have to make remoulds to be profitable but I think the way they went about it this time round has been really good. I think the name Ruination is a good choice and fits the theme as well even if it was used before for RID. The colours look great but we've all seen how G2 Bruticus looks FANTASTIC in promotional shots but didn't live up to it in the final release.

Another great thing I liked about the mould in general is that you don't have any loose bits that will lie around in any of the modes, especially how the Bruticus hands are built in (even if some are lame :D). It's kinda like what they did with the original Bruticus mould with the newer RID releases, you could make Ruination and not have one single part lying around (one trick someone told me was to put onslaught/mega-octane's chest plate into the back of brawl/armohide's sonic blaster)