Here is a team I played tonight; "Bruce Wayne, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.":

95 BM 037B (prime) Bruce Wayne
70 AoU V001 (experienced) Quinjet
68 DP 041 G.W. Bridge
60 NFAOS 006B Alexander Pierce
55 CATWS 013 Agent 13
52 AoU 010 Mockingbird

= 400 points

The Quinjet was invaluable in deploying the force (Mockingbird was always the initial pilot), and it was fun to have "Bruce Wayne" acting as the team leader. I felt that the trechcoat and outfit fit the style of the force.

The ranged attackers forced opponents to get close enough, at which point the close-combat attacks (lots of Empower is hiding on those dials!) can engage. Agent 13 and Mockingbird ended up with more KOs than any other figure on the force.

I just had an 'Amalgam Flashback' when I read your team title. (Ah! The 90s!) That's a really good team build and an excellent use of the QuinJet.

Agent 13 is 'up there' along with Balls of Fury Nick (and a few others) as crucial support figs that can take your SHIELD team from 'very good' to 'holy crap'. I hope to cover those figs in a future article (or maybe someone else can? - this is a *community* document after all )

Thank you for sharing your team build (and thanks for the very detailed summary). I know it will help other players come up with new ideas.

A significant fraction of teams I played in the earliest days of HeroClix were SHIELD teams. When I reflect back, there have been three eras of SHIELD play:

1) The days before the "rule of three", before keywords, before the extended power of the Team Ability, and before one of the many TK changes. Think IC and CT as the only sets. SHIELD was never super-competitive (in the 200-point standard game) but if you played higher point values, the Mandroids and LEs like Clay Quartermain, Gabe Jones and the original U Nick Fury with some snipers could focus fire to cripple other comic-built forces.

After the rule of three, SHIELD took a hit because their damage output was just too low to compete as a solo team. If the TA symbol was ignored, it was possible to use SHIELD pieces to back up some of the Ultimates (from the self-titled set), but that always like playing an Ultimates team with points filler.

2) Just prior to 2005 I enjoyed a return to SHIELD-TA forces due to great dials in the Sinister set. The generics were very good, and Mockingbird and Nick Fury were also solid. My favorite figure was LE Sam Wilson who had the perfect dial to make teams mobile, provide extra actions and could even charge in (with 3-damage!).

There were a couple of figures with the team ability that I used prior to keywords: Rookie Psylocke and the U Mystique. I generally ignored the Kree and other figures with the symbol on their base. SHIELD teams could win 300-point events in these days!

After keywords in 2005, this was the era of Battle Field Conditions and so not playing 'theme' really hurt teams. The best figure of this era was IMO the Iron Widow. I don't think of this as a great time for SHIELD teams however. It's my opinion that until the Marvel Cinematic Universe engaged, SHIELD was pretty much a minor consideration. We started to get a lot of expensive Iron Man pieces, but we also had embarrassments like SI Dum Dum Dugan. figures with the TA were still generally low-damage, low-mobility pieces...even in the sets like Captain America.

The current revision of the SHIELD team ability (granting the passive range boost for adjacent friendlies) was a true godsend for the team ability. Even so, it took a little more than a stroke of a pen to make SHIELD teams shine in the current era...

3) I think the era we are in now has its origins with the original Avengers movie-clix set. Partially this is due to the blurring of the line between Avengers Initiative and SHIELD, but the SHIELD-TA figures started getting dials that could actually hurt opposing figures, plus a bevvy of tricks to make their teams much sneakier: during team build, during setup, during play.

The team I built and played above is an example of the sort of force you can make using figures from this 'current' era, even if a few are no longer in Modern Age. Beyond the sly and cunning opportunities offered by SHIELD teams, they can still be built such that they have a large number of figures, which somewhat inoculates the build against most alpha-strike teams. The modern SHIELD dials have the nice feature of cycling through useful powers...so it is not as if opponents can do a little bit of damage and make them ineffective!

If you cannot tell, I have a real passion for S.H.I.E.L.D. teams in HeroClix. Generic forces have always appealed to me, and because of some early-life exposure to Steranko, S.H.I.E.L.D. has always been the comic clix force that appealed to me. Other "organizations" can be fun to play, but typically the comic appearances have had them appear more as mooks and minions of somebody else instead of as their own organization.

I want to give a shot-out to the not-exactly SHIELD, but a definite spiritual predecessor: The Howling Commandos! I haven't played yet with the NFAOS figures, but the Avengers Movie versions, supported with some general issue soldiers from the Captain America set have always been fun to play, and don't simply lose. I will admit that I like to play them with vehicle support (a Military Tank or two), and I am tempted to try out one of the newer Steve Rogers figures (with or without his Motorcycle) as well.

I didn't realize the passive range boost was a recent addition (I only started playing in 2008). What was the SHIELD team ability prior to this?

Yes! Agreed 10-fold! Strenako's S.H.I.E.L.D. is really what got me loving the team. I can't even explain how stoked I am that we now have a Contessa, a modern Quartermain and new Dum Dum to play with the team. CA Gabe Jones is still good enough to field in modern. Even the S.H.I.E.L.D. rig was a nice little nod to that era. It's too bad there's still no comic-universe Sitwell, I guess CA:TWS Agent Sitwell will have to serve as proxy for now...

The effect was roughly the same, but minus the automatic boost to range.

I think it actually changed at least twice, but the previous (2007?) change had the range boost happen as a free action (not automatic) and the description went from something like "give an action" to "give a power action".

Played a full-value Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Fast Forces team yesterday afternoon. I added NFAoS Maria Hill and AoU Monica Chang to make it an even 500pts. My opponent played a fully-powered AvAs049 Captain America and a fully-powered tt062 Superboy Prime. Suffice to say, it did not go well for our favorite Espionage Organization.

Thanks to terrible placement on my end, it took the combined might of 5 SHIELD agents to land a single hit on Captain America. Eventually Cap was KO'd, but the rest of the squad held no chance against a fully-powered Superboy Prime. (pretty comic accurate, I'd say).

My mistakes:
-No heavy-hitters. I had nobody on my force who could do more than 3 damage. I was relying heavily on Nick Fury Jr and Agent May to bring the hurt on.
-Bad placement. I chose a map with a lot of closed terrain (rooms and etc), so there was no good spot to sit Skye so she could take pot-shots at my opponent. All the fighting occurred around corners or through destroyed walls.
-Bad placement II. Did you know that "FIELD TEAM BACKUP" only works when your fig can see the attackee and NOT the attacker? I found out the hard way. And it's just the use of one prob con, not as many times as I'd like. Blerg.
-Bad placement III. I totally forgot about Maria Hill's 'CHANGING THE WORLD' trait. I could've used it to stop Captain America from repeatedly punching me in the face.

The only thing that really went right:
-H.E.N.R.Y. was able to empower someone's damage enough to KO Captain America.
-Simmons' sidestep/outwit combo helped slow down Superboy Prime a few times.
-Fitz' sidestep/TK and his free monkey really helped. I wouldn't call him my MVP, though.

summary: this team would've been excellent in a casual game with an opponent who also planned on playing a large team of low-point characters. but without a heavy-hitter, I didn't have a hope or a prayer of taking out Superboy Prime.