So at my tourney this weekend I played against a player who was using SUe Storm with the FF Feat card and U Dr Doom. When I finished off Sue he suddenly optioned off his Feat card and said Doom healed a click. I let it slide since it was too little too late for Doom anyway but told the player I'd be going online to get an answer to this question. Sure this wasn't legal? I know most Feats are optional but I didn't think you could turn FF or TB feats off at will and regain the original TA.

I don't think you can, since T-bolts and AFF both state that "members of this team gain ______ team ability instead of the Avengers/Fantasic Four TA".

But I'm never that good at rules....where's Normalview? He knows twice as much as I do....

Alternate team abilties replace the exisit team ability. So a character is no longer an Avenger, it is a Thunderbolt. If you cancel Thunderbolts (or alt FF) it is just like canceling the normal TA; in other words, you do not have a TA.

Batman cancels his Batman Ally TA so that Raven can PC him if she needs to. While the TA is canceled he doesn't get some kind of super-secert Batman TA... same thing with the alternate team abilites. If its off, its off.

Told ya! Good ol' NV......

Sounds logical to me. Thanks guys, this is the argument I shall use to persuade this other player that he was mistaken.

You're welcome, though my assistance was rather limited....

I gave this one some thought when Tbolts and the alternate FF TA first came out and I didn't like the conclusion I came to.

Feats are optional. Turning off a feat returns you to the state that you were before the feat was applied. For example, if you are using Armor Piercing, if you turn it off, your shots are now back to their normal state of being reducable down to 0. Likewise, as much as I dislike it, I would think that if you turn off the Thunderbolts Feat or Alternate Fantastic Four team ability feat, you would return to your previous Avengers or Fantastic Four state.

I believe the example above is slightly off since they're not actually turning off the team ability, but turning off the feat that modified the team ability, thereby returning it to its pre-feat state.

Except that this has been ruled as I explained it for a while on the WK boards. At first glance, your explanation may seem correct, but alternate TAs have been ruled to completely replace the original TA and canceling the TA and the feat are one and the same. Meaning if you cancel the TA/Feat, then that figure does not have a TA that turn.

NV, this is a first for me... Are you sure the ATA feats can be cancelled? I thought there was a FAQs entry that said they could not be cancelled. Did the new FAQs change something? Am I reading your answer incorrectly?

ahh ok, I wasn't aware that they had ruled the ATA feats to be different from the normal ones.

I think you did misunderstand me; sorry for any confusion. What my previous post meant was that the by using the feat to gain an alternate TA, you have now linked the feat and the TA. Normally, feats may be turned off similar to optional powers, but just because you chose not to use Haymaker doesn't mean you can't attack at all (instead you just make a normal attack).

In this particular case, though, turning off the feat is the same as turning off the TA since they are linked. If you don't use your Thunderbolts (or alt FF) feat, you do not have a TA for that turn, just as if Batman or Silver Surfer chose not their TAs.

Does that make more sense now?

I certainly get the rule as far as not switching back to the old TA during a game.

But can this be done during a tournament? You go into a tournament with the alternate F4, play two games, then your third game opponent plays "Isolation." Is it an option to go back to the old school TA? I wanna guess no, but I wanted to double check.

Since feats are part of your force, and you can't change your force mid-tournament, you may not drop the alternate FF feat.

It clears it up quite well. I now understand what you meant, and you are right as usual.

You can't cancel JUST the feat. If you try, you are cancelling the new TA as well.