Next month at my venue I am going to try something new to encourage more off-beat teams. You can build your team as normal, but if you build a Themed Team you receive points, person with the most points at the end of three months gets a special prize (SCAM or maybe Thor's Chariot). Obviously some Keywords are more competetive than others, so I have a point system from 1 to 10 based on the competetiveness of the Keyword. So Scientist would be worth 1 point, Circus of Crime would be worth 10 points.

So what would you consider the five MOST competeive Keywords. and what would be the five LEAST competetive? Keep in mind that Keywords with only one or characters are sort of no-brainers

Right now I would say MOST are:

Spy
Scientist
Armor
Avengers
Teen

LEAST (excluding 1 or two figure Keywords)

Brood
Badoon
Mudpack
Morlocks
Omega Flight

Some fairly competitive keywords are:

Future- KCGL & his buddies, LoSH, Terry Bats, KC Supes, Kang, Rip Hunter. A good amount of WC abuse along with inexpensive figures to swarm opponents and some big tentpoles to deal massive damage.

Cosmic/Herald- Really not too bad, per se. Adam Warlock can be great as a BT. A good number have PC/Quint. The only downfall is you really need to run a lot of Rookie Firelords to get enough figures on the team for Cosmic.

Rogues- Seriously. Alchemy, Zoom, Grodd & Abdra Kadabra? This team works great for me. Though not really a top five.

OotS- Detective, Gotham City, Justice League, Outsiders.

Martial Artist- With Gamora, Karnak, Red & Green Arrow?

Mystical- Dr. Strange, Scarlet Witch, Red Tornado, Yondu, Doom...


Down on the other end?
I'm always trying to get New Warriors to work, but can't really get it to.

Supreme Soviets

Task Force X

Skeleton Crew

Seven Soldiers- Depending on the build total they may just get wasted...

Right now I have the Rogues as 5 points. After your post I re-looked at them and think I may have move them to a 3 or 4. They aren't bad at all. Heralds are 2 points, and I keep thinking maybe it should be 1. Supreme Soviets has a single member so automatically gets 10 points. New Warriors I have at 6 points, mostly because they have a couple of TKers. There are some good individual figures, but I can see where they would be hard to field as a team.

Teen, Martial Artist, Future, Spy and Soldier are probably what I'd consider the best keywords. They offer loads of options and have TONS of power.


When picking worst, you have to give some leeway. For example, you can't call Spirit a bad keyword because only one piece has it (being Gentleman Ghost). In my opinion, a bad keyword is one with a decent amount of pieces, but just no synergy. That being said, my top 5 worst are:

1. Royal Flush Gang-only 3 pieces, and they add up to 215 pts. Yea, that's pretty bad.
2. Omega Flight
3. Femizons
4. Hellions
5. Serpent Society-Don't really wanna say this one, but if you look at what they offer, its not very competitive.


Of course, since generic keywords offer WAY more playability, its sort of hard to compare them. Look at my lists: ALL the good keywords were generic, and ALL the bad ones were non-generic. So I'll include some of the worse generic keywords as well to balance it out. Personally, I think Mutant isn't that great a keyword based on the restrictions they placed upon it. Also, Herald, while still a cool keyword, seems really hard to put together, since most of the pieces are in the 140+point range. A few aren't obviously, but because of their high cost, building a team of them and getting the bonus is difficult.

In my opinion...

BEST:
Spy
Scientist
Warrior
Avengers
Teen

WORST:
Superman Revenge Squad - You only get 6. One is CJ Luthor, the others are the new henchman, Toyman, the new Parasite, and rookie & LE Maxima.
Shi'ar - The mediocre Shi'ar generics, plus Lilandra, plus Deathbird. The only decent one is Gladiator but he's 205pts.
Brood - As already stated
Badoon - So far only fits 3 Badoon generics
Blackhawks - So far only fits 3 Blackhawk generics

Yeah, Superman revenge Squad is abag ol' bag of suck. Right now I have them at 9 points, missing 10 only because the Henchmen are somewhat useful and they do have a TKer.

Shi'ar I have to disagree with. I think the generics are terrific--Super Strength/Leap Climb, RCE, Charge/B/C/F, Leadership. In lower point games the Shi'ar are a great swarm team, and in higher point games Gladiator is a beast.

Best:

Spy

Martial Artist

Teen

Scientist

Avengers(specific cause there are so many of them)

Worst:

Kid

XCalibur

Justice League Antartica

Ruler

Politician

I think I'll need to disagree on this one. Politician isn't great, but they're not at the bottom either. With figures like Howard the Duck, Amanda Waller and even Firehawk, for an inexpensive RS figure; along with power figures like Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, Lex Luthor...they're pretty decent.

They also offer some fun figures that add a bit more to your game with Tempest, Anarky & Count Vertigo. Then there's Iron Man, Nick Fury, Doom.

The only thing bad about them is really that they're mostly expensive figures and you may need to resort to playing two Howards.

Yeah I was scrambling on that last one, I didn't think it all the way through I was trying to come up with more generic keywords that weren't great. Also I'm more of a DC player so I didn't know Doom and Iron Man were politicians. Sorry I goofed. Thanks for setting me straight.

Bah. You think you guys know bad keywords? I got the worst one of all: Cyberforce. Only one figure has it-Cyblade-and she's unique so you can't even make a team of duplicate Cyblades.

Good- Monster
Bad-Excelsior

We play highlander rule, so every theme team that only has a few guys is automatically hopeless I wil lju st leist good oens that I use form time to time actually every tie!!! because i liek theems.:

Robot
Mystical
Avengers
Scientist
Future

I made a tier list quite a while ago, it may prove useful:

http://hcrealms.com/forum/showthread...light=tier-ing