Another tip about proper use cases for transformers I discovered that isn't spelled out in the docs clearly enough for those of us of the more mentally addled persuasion. 
Transformers are reactive and will run on page load and whenever the values change so you can't really use them like functions. So if it OK that they just run whenever until you get around to needing their bounty, or you always want their .value nice and fresh just in case then transformers are your ticket. If you only want the code to run on demand, then it seems js queries with liberal use of onSuccess are your effective function replacement.
Other options I have yet to discover on my climb up the Retool learning curve?