Combatant

Putty Patrol

Combatants (戦闘員 Sentōin) are nondescript gray humanoids who serve under the Predacons in the time of Galvatron. In some cases, Combatants can acquire normal Transformer bodies after scanning alternate modes.

Fiction

Beast Wars II cartoon

Pretty spry for globs of pudding.

Combatants served aboard the Galvaburg II, including during its stint on Gaia. The New Forces Arrive! Four Combatants were given new forms after scanning four vehicles from the Mother Computer's databanks, upgrading them into the Autorollers. White Lion, Run!

A Combatant manned the bridge of the Galvaburg II while other Predacons discussed the presence of the Insectrons on Gaia. The Insect Corps Arrive

Notes

• Introduced in the first episode of the Beast Wars II cartoon, the Combatants seem to be generic Predacon mooks under Galvatron's command (as indicated by sentōin being the general term for enemy grunts in tokusatsu media such as Super Sentai; like the Putty Patrol from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers). While they received no name (or any kind of acknowledgement) in the Beast Wars II cartoon, the name sentōin comes from contemporary print media like TV Magazine and the Beast Wars II Super Encyclopedia. Alternately, their model sheet labels them as Destron Ippanhei (デストロン一般兵, "Predacon Common Soldier").
• For a number of years, Combatants were assumed by Western fans to simply be protoforms, but access to the aforementioned contemporary print material identifies them as a distinct concept.
• In the series' second episode, four Combatants are upgraded into the Autorollers. As they are depicted as the lowest-ranking members of Galvatron's Predacon crew, used primarily as a labor force, the Autorollers were apparently meant to be nothing more than upgraded Combatants. However, the series later explores the Autorollers as proper characters; the tenth episode presents a backstory where they were mercenaries who already had the vehicular-based bodies they scanned in the second episode. The addition of this contradictory background for the Autorollers and the lack of further appearances of Combatants after the seventh episode indicate that the Combatants were an early idea that production quietly dropped from the series.