Well the meat of Botcon 2006 was announced and overall, this here geek can't complain.
I'll give Master Collector the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are going to try and take the constructive criticism of last year's event to heart.
The figure set will be 5 Beast Wars era figures in their "pre-beast" Cybertron modes. We know that the characters will be Optimus Primal, Cheetor, Rhinox, Rattrap, Dinobot, and one undisclosed convention-attendee only one.
Of course, the fan boards are ripe with speculation about what these figures will be repaints/retools of.
No doubt Armada, Energon, and Cybertron will serve as the source for the molds for these figures. I think that's a given. Though truthfully, the info stating "Golden Disk Keys" could mean repainted Cyber Keys so that would limit these to Cyberton releases.
All I ask is that we get a little better than all those basics and the repaints on repaints of basics. That was just a little out of hand last year.
If Cybertron is what we have to choose from, then I'd have to say I agree with some of the fan speculation about what would work:
Optimus Primal (from Crumplezone)
Cheetor (from Nitro Convoy)
Rattrap (from Brakedown or Ransack)
Dinobot (???)
Rhinox (from Red Alert)
Now I don't care for the speculation about Dinobot from the retooled-for-Cyberton Longrack. Yeah, the original source of this figure, Armada Hoist, could be sorta-kinda Dinbot in the head but man, I'm sick of that hoe arm. Hell, this even came up recently in a previous post.
If basics are going to be heavily used, then I can see the Clocker mold coming into play too. I think Rhinox could be fine from Armorhide or even Energon Demolishor. There's a lot of Jungle Planet bots that need to be obviously excluded here so that does indeed limit the choices from Cybertron.
I can't say I'm excited about the Friday night "miniature and card" game thing since that to me personally is a major waste of time. I'm not a gamer and this kind of thing just is to be avoided on my part. Of course, there's always the bar to pass the time at.
All in all, I'm excited about these figures and the especially the fact that the con is only 3 hours away!!!