Okay, what's ATA?

ATA = Alternate Team Ability

Alternators gonna alternate.

No. Dislike.

I don't like being the new whipping boy. All the abuse I suffer here...

Moderators gotta moderate.

[Insert funny Quebs/Stan/SuperFro/Shel/etc. photo here.]

Masticaters gonna masticate

Dictators gonna dictate.

As Charles said, it's an Alternate Team Ability.

Basically, (And, stop me if the game has changed drastically enough that this is no longer correct) it's a feat card that you sometimes have to pay for, sometimes don't, that changes a particular team ability to another entirely.

For example, the old school Fantastic Four Team Ability did some healing whenever a team member was KOed. Then the Fantastic Four ATA card came out, at a cost of 0 points, that let them just share their defenses instead (Simulating Sue's ability to defend her teammates).

ATAs have been a hot topic here and there, because some of them don't just change the mechanics, they change the name as well, like changing Avengers to Thunderbolts, changing Injustice League to The Society, etc. Add in wildcard abuse and you've got the perfect recipe for terribly stupid arguments all over HCR.



EDIT: Elaborators gotta elaborate.

Stop. You're wrong.

It no longer substitutes for the original TA. It provides an alternate one on top of whatever you already have. So in your FF example, they'd still heal when one of them dies in addition to share their defenses.

And it's really different now. ATAs have all been retroactively FAQ'd to key off of keywords now instead of printed TAs.

Interesting. One thing I didn't totally understand (in addition to flying characters... That still confuses me) was how many team member does one need to activate a Team ability like that? Just 2?

As far as I know, either two team members or one team and one wildcard copying the team ability. (Unless it's restricted only to keywords, in which case I am not sure how the wilcard abuse comes into the picture.)

Depends on the team ability, some need only one, while others need 2. Superman Enemy TA needs two characters using the Superman Enemy TA to use it, whereas a single Mystics is all you need.

Then there's Defenders and JSA for sharing defense values between adjacent friendly figures, and Sinister Syndicate and Batman Enemy for sharing attack values. You can place 4-5, or even more figures with that TA adjacent to eachother, and they all will have the highest value of the group.

Then there' wildcards who can copy and use any TA or ATA a friendly figure possesses. Which is why Citizen V with Thunderbolts is so liked in a wildcard team with the "soldier" keyword. SI Punisher now uses Ultimates? niiiice.

This game gets more and more complicated the deeper I try to understand.

That's one thing that I dislike about the game design. They continue to add new complexity with almost every set they release, making it that much harder for someone to buy some Clix off the shelf and start playing. Add to this the fact that they did away with New Guy Night and quite frankly it's a chore even for an occasional player to keep up with all of the changes to the FAQ's and additions to the errata.

Don't get me wrong, I love Heroclix. It's a great game. But the rules and mechanics - Oy!

That's something that I feel our D&D players have some benefit from. But yeah, the rules were out of hand from the beginning, and then it only got worse.

When people asked me why I played a kids game, I could only shake my head. What kid could play this game?