I'm also in the camp of never having understood the reasoning behind the mechanics thematically.

How do re-rolls and map choice represent teams, teamwork, or cohesive themes?

My solution is different than VGA's but shares a quality: Its simple.

If all members of your force share a keyword, add 5 points to your build total for each figure beyond the fourth.

This will allow you to have more thematic team building options and makes more theme VARIATIONS possible in standard games. How many times would you have liked to play a more complete team, but the build was just ten points too high to include that last figure, but leaving one figure off gives you a huge point deficit, and you end up filling up the gap with Feats that don't make any sense thematically.

and worse yet, you weren't playing theme for fun in the first place... you were doing it because you need those theme probs to be competitive...

The build solution works both ways... gives you a slight edge with a team~theme advantage, and puts more points on the table for your opponent to score. Pretty balanced!

crazy.

I was responding to the initial post, but I guess we had similar ideas at the same time...

There ARE keywords that they could put on just about EVERY figure that doesn't already have them, though, and they just chose not to either start a new keyword or went the lazy way and gave the character(s) generic keyword(s).

I would give non-generic teams 1 prob control per 3 figures instead, then +1 to die roll at beginning for each 2 figures.

On top of that, I would also say that each character only applies once, so you couldn't have 5 Nightcrawlers trying to be a theme team.

I think that would help real theme teams to be more useful and interesting to play.

I've found that in practice, this isn't much of a limitation at all.

I agree with most of what VGA is saying, but without a serious rework of non-generic keywords, generics keywords are still badly needed (for example, to build the Pet Avengers team). Some of them (like Martial Artist) could and should be done away with though!

I like Hellboys solution of non-generic theme teams getting a point bonus. Some way to be able to bmup up your point total is badly needed when building teams sometimes. And it's not all good for that player- your opponent has the chance to earn more points in a clean sweep if you have a higher build than them.

The idea is ok, but the implementation was flawed from the start.

Instead of giving keywords to all the figs past and present, they could have keyed theme teams off of the printed team symbols, saving somebody the time & effort of assigning keywords in the beginning.

This time & effort was why the mutant keyword was shelved-it became too burdonsome to give that keyword to all the figs for whoever undertook this massive effort from the get-go.

I myself always hated BFC's.
They were just another complication to the rules that you were forced to remember during the game-and sometimes you forgot they were even in effect.

They should have just retired all BFC's instead of nerfing them with a theme team. Most people brought ord day anyways-so in 3 rounds, you may face 1 BFC. WHY BOTHER????

Theme probs-NEVER ENOUGH. Why only have 2-3 pc rolls when you can bring along a probber?

Some theme teams don't have any probbers in them, so In my experience, the theme team probs ARE NEVER ENOUGH.

Especially with the defense creep we see today on the newer figs-you almost need 3d6 now to hit in hindering.

NEXT-some theme teams are more powerful than others-why is R Origins Shazam and the mystical theme teams the best?

When one group of figs dominates another-something is lopsided in Smallville.

SP's and traits won't balance it back either-they are already starting to go stale/stagnant with ideas for them.

We have done this a few times at the venue I play at for fun nights. It works very well and everyone seems to like it. But then again, nearly everyone builds a team to get the bonus, so I couldn't compare it to playing without the bonus.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean here. The REASON a different mechanic was needed because of the flawed implementation of team symbols. Team symbols were used to cover multiple, unrelated teams. How does keying theme team bonuses off team symbols fix that underlying problem?

Since hindsight is 20-20, I guess we could go back and say they should have just implemented team symbols better. There was no need to take up more PAC space for Team Abilities if the WK development team had just leveraged the same Team Ability for multiple Team Symbols. For example, give Alpha Flight their own SYMBOL, but let them use the Avengers Team ABILITY if you think that appropriate. They could have avoided the fiasco with the Serpent Society and Morlocks Team Symbols if they'd just added the Symbols to the PAC and assigned them one of the existing Abilities.

WK should use their Print and Play system to fix keyword assignment and tweak the rules a little to make them more comic accurate. Currently the king keywords are Generic keywords. That is what the current mechanic encourages.


I've never heard that. My understanding is that the Mutant keyword was phased out because it would cover about half the characters in the Marvel universe (maybe more). It wasn't a "time & effort" issue, it was a "why bother to have any other keyword" issue.

You don't see how action-based rerolls represent team members working together to achieve a better result?

Seriously?

I've never understood why people don't get the theme team prob. Map choice or BFC cancellation, sure, I get why that is confusing. But the rerolls are the one element of the mechanic that ABSOLUTELY seem to be in line with the mechanic from a background standpoint.

If that were the only re-roll in the game, and it were explained as such from the beginning... but the very fact that we call them Theme Team PROBABILITY CONTROL rolls illustrates my point.

that mechanic is taken.

We all conceptualize it as a bending of fate/reality. The representation of power sets like Longshot's and Domino's.

furthermore, its a weak point in the game design. Probability control has become such an integral part of the game in every match that they shoehorned it into every team so that you wouldn't have to put a PC character on your team.

because of this, there is no reward for playing a theme team. There is in fact a penalty for NOT playing one.

EDIT>>

here's what always got me... the REroll.

If it were just an increased chance of success, that would seem more like teamwork, but additional attempts? Doesn't seem like team action... seems more like fate alteration or time travel. (conceptually)

this is what I've been saying since they first assigned the wrong Team Symbols way back in (I can't remember).

I'm in the "like the idea/was poorly implemented/why do a bunch of kids merit bonuses?/generic keywords are the devil" camp.

Well maybe they're not the devil, but generic keywords should exist for use in special powers ("Captain Goober can use perplex when adjacent to a friendly character with the politician keyword"), but I'd like to see the team bonuses apply only to non-generic keywords. I like to think that the Avengers, having trained together, function generally better than a motley crew of brutes.

There is a drawback this though, and I'm trying to figure out a way to get around it: most villains do not get many non-generic keywords, so the generic keywords end up being the only way for many (outside of the Rogues, Injustice League, etc...) of them to team up and earn the bonuses. Maybe "Evil" should be a non-generic keyword

This isn't *wrong* but it is *misguided*.

Despite 'generics' needing more figures to qualify as a "theme team" (at a given point value), once they do qualify, they will typically enjoy MORE benefits for being a theme team: More figures means more prob controls and a better chance of controlling map choice.

Wow. I find myself somewhat agreeing with VGA... and I checked, and hell hasn't frozen over. Hmmm.

I like Hellboy's solution. Giving a few extra points could make a difference, especially since there aren't REV's anymore. I can't tell you how many times I've been just a few points short of squeezing in one extra fig and had to substitute feats instead - I like it.

I like the prob thing too, though. It works pretty well and I think it makes sense - think of it as strategy and/or team synergy. Things are more likely to happen successfully if a team works well together, and prob represents that.

I'm not a big fan of generic keywords, but I think there are a lot of times they're necessary to truly represent the theme. (My Atlantis teams come to mind.)