Dear Wizkids--

Clearly some changes were made to the Justice League and Gotham City related keywords last year. I didn't see another open thread about this (though presumably there's been one) so I thought I'd just leave my feedback and see what others have to say.

First of all, condensing all the Justice League keywords except 'Justice League International' into 'Justice League' is brilliant. Thank you so much for doing this! Building teams with 'JLA' or 'Justice League' or 'Justice League of America' was way too tough, but now building interesting and functional JL teams in Modern Age is easy as can be. Love it.

I would love to see a similar streamlining for 'Society' and 'Secret Society of Super Villains', and maybe even 'Injustice Gang' and 'Injustice League' and 'Legion of Doom'. These are largely different instances of the same idea, and building villain teams in this game is relatively hard.

Gotham City, meanwhile, has gone the other way. I can understand wanting to distinguish between Gotham's heroes and villains, and even between people you might find in the Batcave and people you wouldn't, but this is a bit messy.

I don't think there's a need for both the Gotham Underworld and Arkham Asylum keywords. For instance, Hush worked with loads of Arkhamites in his debut, but he has 'Gotham Underworld'. The mobsters and Arkhamites fight sometimes, sure, but those groups also fight among themselves. They're villains! They do that.

I don't mind the Batman Family/Gotham City split, but even here there's a few goofs. For instance, the new Azrael and Batwoman both have 'Batman Family' and not 'Gotham City', but from their stories it would make more sense the other way around. Michael Lane was very much a Gothamite, and he and Batman did not really work together.

In general with these finer distinctions, please just be extra careful to choose the correct keyword, and when in doubt just be generous and give both! It's a rare thing for Clixers to complain about a piece getting too many keywords, but the opposite gets us riled up all the time.

Thanks for reading, and thanks again for making 2012 the best year ever for fielding the Justice League!

Agreed. I feel like some older keywords got streamlined very well, while a couple others got unnecessarily muddied up.

Also - and I don't know if something like this would ever get done - I'd love to see an errata for all/most of the Golden Age Justice League keywords, to make them all interchangeable. I understand what they were originally going for ("JLA" for the '90s Morrison era, etc.), but in practice it's always been clunky. It's awesome that it's finally being fixed on new figures, but... now they don't work well with my older figures! lolsob

I suppose I'm in the minority here as I think it went too far. Justice League Dark, in my opinion, shouldn't fall under the same category as JLA (which in this principle it now does) in much the same regard as Secret Avengers and West Coast Avengers should not have the same keyword.

If we're going to generalize keywords then let's go back to the days before keyword theme teams. As it is folks have so many glaring issues with characters and keywords (broomstick Green Goblin having T-Bolts is the first one that comes to mind)...

Now, while I understand why some players wanted the streamlining for the Justice League (for some time now), I really will fight the Injustice Gang/Society merge. There's definitely a difference in those teams.

I'm not trying to be all negative on your ideas here, just sharing my opinion on the matter. But then, from day one I've had issue with the keyword theme team mechanic. It's why I build off character more often than off keyword. I don't feel WizKids has ever quite gotten it right on the mechanic and I would prefer the days prior to the bonuses.

Again, just a serving from the other side of the discussion.

Keywords are flawed because there is only two distinctions (generic and named) between keywords where certain keywords will bring you 10 figures to choose from and others will bring you 100 (avengers, justice league)
There is just NO WAY to fix it, except removing all thematic bonuses from the game.
There was a thread about it.

Anyway, if wizkids wants to keep keywords at least they should retroactively revamp the keyword list for older figures so that golden age is not a complete mess.
But they don't. So i guess WE as a player community SHOULD do this job for them. It is OUR GAME after all.
And we've all freedom to use "home rules" (even if home is the whole hcrealms sometimes)

i think a revamp of KWs for some older pieces is a good idea. making all the various JL teams fall under one or two KWs instead of the 10 that are out wouls really be nice. i also think Gotham City should have been left alone. the 3 keywords werent necessary.

the KW bonuses are great. the KWs themselves and enforcement of the rule (especially when it comes the MLFs SP) need to be clarified and updated.

Yeah, but you need like proofreaders and stuff for that..... We cant even get them to spell check!

Fixed that for you.

I see your point about JL Dark being a pretty different thing, and I agree with that. On the other hand, the JL Dark pieces aren't a great team on their own, so in that specific case I think it's been okay to have them with the standard JL keyword so that the pieces see some use.

And I didn't mean that Society should be combined with the Injustice League; I meant that SSoSV and Society should be combined, and maybe Injustice League and Injustice Gang should be combined, but not all of them in one big lump. I was unclear about that.

I don't want keywords to get too overly general; I just think that it's good for characters (especially second- or third-tier characters that only come around once every few years) to get a correct and useful set of keywords (especially non-generic ones) so they can be used to their fullest.

Have to agree with the OP re: Gotham. In my home games, we have said that villains with the "Gotham City" designation get "Gotham Underworld" or "Arkham Asylum" but deciding which is sometimes difficult. I figure Penguin gets Gotham Underworld, and Riddler gets Arkham Asylum...but does he also get Gotham Underworld? Hard to say, for some figures.

The keywords make absolutely no sense to me and I have been playing since 2002. They dont think about half of them. Ill stick to my old Idea of a them team. Everyone has the same team ability. There were no perks to playing it back then it was just cool. I think people get too caught up in making a keyword team instead of a good or fun team.

How does slapping them together by TA make sense to you when the keywords don't?

I'm wondering what you would do should you ever want to make a GLC team.

You mean there's more to the GLC than 16 Hal Jordan's and 2 Kyle Rayner's?

For a minute there, I thought some bot from a completely different message board had invaded ours...

I love a good themed keyworded team, and I actually take personal offense when Wizkids throws the wrong one(s) on characters on their behalf. They really should take a little more time on them before releasing sets, something I think keeps getting said more and more 'round these parts.

In regards to Justice League Dark, I'm a big fan of the series and love the figures that came out with the Nu52 CTD, so needless to say I was disappointed that they didn't have a JLD keyword. My only reasoning for why they didn't was I recalled the hesitancy on DC execs for doing the book in the first place and how most thought it would be canceled and the characters would get folded into other books. So I just assumed it was Wizkids trying to give their clicks a little more longevity through the flat out JL keyword.

Then I think about Constantine and the odds of him joining the JL. Teaming up with some members? Sure. But flat out signing on? No way.

It's time JLD got their own keyword, and a few more figs seeing as to how the roster has changed (and probably will again). I'm hoping with marvel mystics creating such a buzz in the Spider-Man set maybe they'll carry that on over into a DC set later this year. Or maybe they'll just do a trinity war set: three months- three different CTDs and OP kits.

I couldn't disagree more.

Justice League is already DC's biggest, most powerful superteam with access to the majority of the top tier heroes in the DCU. Breaking the keywords up into even three era-specific sub-terms still left them with a huge advantage in selection and team building over smaller groups like the Doom Patrol or Outsiders. I honestly believe that the reason this change was made was that there were too many players who got confused by the notion that JLA =/= Justice League.

But now that "JLA" and "Justice League of America" (as well as Justice League Europe and Justice League Task Force from the looks of things) are being left in the past, it just further diminishes the older clicks in our collections into uselessness. Retirement and power creep weren't enough?

Justice League Dark should have been it's own keyword. What's more I'm saddened by the fact that "Titans" as a separate keyword from "Teen Titans" looks to have been abandoned as well.

I didn't even know that "Titans" was a keyword. And being as only one figure ever even got it, and the same figure also has "Tern Titans," I'd go so far as to say that it doesn't really count as abandoned.