I so agree with your statement. Not only the over-abundance of keywords a problem on a figure, the lack thereof are as well.

Metallo, being a Veteran figure, should without a doubt, have the Secret Society of Super Villains and the Injustice League keywords, because during his veteran career, he was a member of both teams. As for the Metropolis keyword... I'd say no, only because I don't think we should have a Metropolis keyword.

Like the example you gave, there are dozens upon dozens of figures that should have a keyword that they don't.... HoT Rookie Captain America and his lack of the Invaders or All-Winners Squad keyword is an injustice to all Marvel fans worldwide.

Are you... being serious about the ink thing? If so, that's completely insane. If not, you briefly confused me.

Seconded on all accounts. Bravo. Not completely the point, but it's good stuff.


I agree with the OP in part, though. Non-generic keywords should be comics accurate, nothing more and nothing less. They were not in this set in many cases. Martian Manhunter, Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman did not have the Justice League keyword, which is wrong. I could care less about the generic keywords.

Edit: Also, the tags are probably a little tasteless.

Historically, it has often been a mistake to extrapolate a long-term trend out of the statistics of a single set.

Sinister didn't usher in a new era where 150+ point characters are very rare, the very high AVs in Hammer of Thor didn't continue in Brave and the Bold, the various sets with no cheap TK haven't seen that power phased out on support figures, etc.

Sometimes new trends start, but sometimes it's just an aberration within a single set. This is too soon to tell.

About as tasteless as all the derogatory VGA tags I might add.

I'm always surprised how the modern teambuilding depends on matching Keywords. a missing Keyword never stopped me from fielding a fig in an accurate team

Agreed. It's just different from Bat-Dials from the past. Not terrible by any means.

I'll approach the OP from a slightly different POV: It's early, but this set doesn't offer *me* that many different themes for me to play, so the assigned keywords don't disappoint me.

It's nice that certain 'themes' exist within the set (LoA) but with so many pieces devoted to Alter-Ego, nuREV, and classic (single issue/arc) team-ups there aren't many of my existing forces that can use updates from this set.

Don't misunderstand: I'm happy to have the boost to Apokaliptian forces, and I'm likely to use one or more of the JLI-era figures.

OTOH, I think there are generic keywords that players will be happy to (ab)use. Jason Blood is only Mystical (no Camelot?), Cave Carson is a low-cost Scientist/TAXI that is sure to be carrying Chief around.