I have iim009 Crossbones. I give him the Thunderbolts ATA:

If I use this ATA to choose the Police team ability, does it stack with Hydra? Both read as follows:

I only ask because someone said that this wasn't the case - that since the abilities are identical you don't get both. I've looked through the rulebook, but it's really not clear to me that this is the case.

As a secondary question, if I have two Crossbones with both Hydra and Police team abilities standing adjacent to someone making a ranged attack, does this mean that the target of the ranged attack gets -4 (capped to -3) to his defense value assuming that both Crossbones have line of fire?

They stack up to the golden rule of 3.

You can't use the same effect twice unless otherwise stated. So no Hydra and T-Bolted PD, sorry. Also, a Mystic/Wildcard copying Archnos would only give one feedback damage, not 2.

This is what I was thinking at first, but then I read the PG entry.

Wild cards can’t use a team ability if they are already using an identical mechanic through another game effect.

If the character was Police TA and a Wild Card, they couldn't copy the HYDRA TA, due to them being identical mechanics. But, Thunderbolts only prohibits using a TA if it can't be copied by a Wild Card, such as Power Cosmic. Police TA has no restriction. There is no specific restriction for Thunderbolts ATA that conforms to the Wild Card restriction, so I can't see any reason Crossbones would not be able to TBolt to Police, effectively granting a -2 DV.

Ah, good catch. I love CB even more now

Meet TBolted Crossbones, and his newBFF, TBolted Crossbones! Ranged attacks with 11 AV and -2 DV? I think I have to play that, now.

Thanks, alexanderwales!

Yeah, the plan was to use two of them with Man-Thing, which has this ability:

So he can carry them up into hindering on the first turn where they'll have stealth and on the second turn they can start firing with a very low chance of missing (assuming I don't need to use TBolt for something better).

Thanks for the clarification - good to know that plan is legal.

I would agree !

IIM206 Crossbones could not T-Bolt to HYDRA then Wild-Card Copy Police, but there are no restrictions I can find stopping T-Bolt (whatever) + Hydra.

Until/Unless we get an Orange Stamp of Approval on the ruling, you might want to bounce it off your Judge first.

Mystics, Crossgen, Arachnos, and Kaiju were all ruled to be the same game effect and do not stack.

Police and Hydra would then be considered the same game effect for the same reason and do not stack on one figure.

Wildcarding PD while he already has Hydra from T-Bolts will do nothing, because it is a game effect he can already use.

I agree with this.

That's where it seems to have been stated that team abilities don't stack, following from this rule:

Though I guess I'm a little bit confused about what a game effect is then. If a character has Poison and is given Poison by a fragment of the Phoenix Force they can't use Poison twice - I get that, and it makes intuitive sense to me. What I don't get is why this is the case for two game effects with different names.

I guess I can understand that if that's the ruling, that's the ruling, and I'll have to find something more awesome to do with Thunderbolts, but I don't really understand the logic or grounding behind the ruling, which worries me.

The Player's Guide says this:

Is that a consequence of the rule about redundant game effects, or a special rule in place because that's not the general rule for things that have the same mechanic but different names? (Though I do think the above quote about wild cards is pretty definitively on the side of not being able to use the Thunderbolts ATA since the ATA says you can't use abilities that can't be used by wild cards - though I guess not everyone on the team needs to have the Hydra team ability, so it seems conditional).

i think this does need a clarification. it is an intriguing prospect.

That is WHY it says Game Effect and NOT "Ability/Power/Trait" etc... Two team abilities with different names are two DIFFERENT team abilities. That doesn't mean they aren't the SAME effect though. This whole thing came about a long time ago because of Mystics/Crossgen/Arachnos on the same figure. So it's fairly long standing. It definitely is NOT the Thunderbolts ruling that disallow this. It's the same game effects. And if you read the two TA's it's pretty clear that they are the same game effect.

As do I, fwiw.

When I was looking everything up, I missed this line:

Game effects which grant the use or possession of another game effect have no effect if the recipient can already use the new effect.

With that in mind, it doesn't look like the HYDRA TA/ TBolted PD TA would work, since the effects are identical.

My problem seems to be that when I wanted to look up clarifiction on Team Abilities I was looking in the Chapter for 05 Player's Guide to Team Abilities. That little nugget of wisdom was in 01 Player’s Guide to Playing HeroClix under Powers/Abilities.

Even after I obtained a merged copy of the 8 pdfs, I still managed to miss this in my searching. I will use this as an object lesson that only spending 5 minutes looking up rule clarifications isn't sufficient for me. More time, or better memorization, on my part will be required in the future.