The following are a set of posts to try to get new players up and running in the Leagues. There is a lot of new stuff and terminology that you need to know about. You will find that stuff in the first post of either of the Season Threads for the Heroclix Fantasy League (HCFL) or the Fantasy League Elite (FLE), so I will not repeat that information.

Regarding the two Leagues, and you are wondering which to play in, don't worry about it too much. Both are good Leagues with just slightly different rules (e.g. in HCFL you have to earn your ATAs whereas FLE you get them for you team right away). The reasons for this go back to the founding of the Leagues and aren't terribly relevant any more.

Have a browse of these posts. Each subsequent post is meant to cover a different stage of a play by post game:

Squad Setup - how to document your squad in a post

Squad Dial Lists - how to get the dial information for you figures and put them in a post for your reference

Map Placement - how to manipulate the map tool provided by longtime League member Peers

Dice Rolling - covering primarily when you attack, but also anything that might happen on your turn where you need rolls

Turn Actions - how to document your precious actions during a turn

Recap - what to do at the end of a turn

Squad Setup:

Ok - the first thing to do is to subscribe to the thread. That will allow you to keep track of when people post. To do this go to the Thread Tools drop down.

Next up, you need your team. The easiest way to do that is to go into the units section, do up the team, and then copy it directly out of the units team builder table like so:

Build
75 ASM201 Spider-Man
65 ASM203 Dagger
55 ASM022 Cloak
195

Number your team and add the number of clix that each figure has. Where 1/X means you are on click one of a dial that is X clix long. If you get any theme PCs, add it at the end of the team to keep track.
The following is an example of a 200 point team fully done for the setup post:

Mail this team to the commissioner for your League (if you don't know who that is ask in your League thread) along with 3 objects. The Leagues both follow standard object rules - 1 light, 1 heavy and 1 whatever you want. When done, your commissioner for your League will post your game thread with your team, your objects, your opponents team, your opponents objects, a map and probably a battle field condition.

Dials List:

Next thing to do is to copy the dials of your figures into a separate post for yours and another player's reference.

You do this by bringing up the figure in the units section and clicking on the link labelled [dial] in the upper right hand corner. That will open a new tab/window and then you can copy and paste the dial.

Map Placement:

You then take the map that you have been assigned in the game and put tokens matching the numbers of your characters on the map along with your 3 objects (which should also be recorded with your team).

After doing that, press the Map Link button to generate a new link for the map you just set up. Copy and paste that link into the post with the two squads.

Then record the positions according to the row/column label in the unit list for your squad.

The following is a complete example with a map and positions of the Marvel Knights team below.

Dice Rolling:

You can either use the Dice Roller that is available in Peers' Map tool.
Alternatively you can use another Play By Email tool. I prefer:
http://www.pbegames.com/roller/

When recording your labelling your rolls you should do a number of different things:
- record who is making the attack and their attack value
- record who you are attacking and the defence value
- if you move (via charge, running shot etc), record that you have moved and where you are making the attack from
- if you have modifiers, record those
- if you are using PC to reroll, record where the PC is coming from

For example, I would put the following in PBeM,
Spider-man attacks someone ... let's say he Charges from M4 to N8 to Green Goblin at O9 after having been perplexed by Cloak.

Let's say I miss and use my Theme PC with Dagger to reroll.

If the target has some means of avoiding being attacked (Shape Change or Skrulls for example), or a means of evading (Supersenses), or a mechanism for reducing damage that requires a roll (Impervious) or basically anything else that might trigger from your attack, you as the attacker should roll that as well to keep the game moving along.

If you hit, click up the damage, like if Spiderman hit for 3 you'd have:

Turn Actions and Recap:

You will do a number of actions during a round. You should record them in the thread in terms of each action. Usually you record free actions as free, and the rest numbered to track that you haven't overspent your action pool.

Here is the following example:

At the end of all of your actions, you record any new positions of your characters and the action tokens with a symbol of some kind (something like a @). Update the map (as per the Map Placement instructions including any tokens on the map (i.e. the little red and blue pips in the token area).

You should also record any instructions that may be important for your opponent to know during his/her turn. So, for example, if you want to always have control of when PC would be used on your team you can record it like this:

On the other hand, you may know that you are only likely to protect one figure. So you might say something like:

While not strictly necessary, as passive abilities always trigger in the Leagues, it is sometimes useful to also record things that will help your opponent remember key modifier powers like Defend. So if for some reason we had Dr. Strange with a Defender's team ability standing beside Spider-man, we might write: