So, update on
>>10940809 and
>>10940826Having had a chance to transform all three of them a few times, I've decided that Shard is probably the best of the bunch. Starscream's pretty good, too, but I never owned the original, so I have nothing to compare him to, and the alt mode is...kinda messy? The panels on his bottom in jet mode hang weirdly, his robot arms are just kinda there, and his tail hangs off his backside. It's an interesting take on the Tetra-jet idea, and certainly a more satisfying transformation than the Siege Seekers, but still. His robot mode is great, though, and I like how you can remove his Null Ray/sword pods from his shoulders and clip them to his forearms if you wanted to give him a more realistic method of using the blades. The little Planet key is neat, too - if completely useless.
Sandstorm is meh. The only mode I really like the way he looks in is his helicopter one; his buggy looks weird and lopsided from the side, while his robot mode is just a mess of panels everywhere. His cage accessory is also useless - too small to really put anything bigger than a Headmaster into, and the only mode he has a dedicated way of storing it in is his buggy one - it either has to hang from under his helicopter mode (can't be withdrawn INTO the copter, so if you don't have a flight stand for him to sit on, you need to put it to the side), and you can't do much with it in robot mode other than peg the winch into one of the two available 5mm holes on his back and let it hang awkwardly from his backpack. He's not horrible, but he's definitely not worth the Leader pricetag, and while he looks a bit closer to his G1 appearance, I much prefer my T30 Sandstorm (who looks a lot less messy in all modes, even if they aren't accurate to the source material).
