My house rule is simply "If the number of characters on your team exceeds the amount of room available in your deployment area, those characters begin the game 'behind' your initial deployment zone and are brought in to the game 'through' your deployment zone." And, that is the way that it shall remain in light of the new ruling.

I've never had any player that's had issue with it or tried to exploit it.

Perhaps that's because it seems reasonable and reasonably unexploitable.

Do the walls at the edge of the map "close up" after the figures all make it through? What if they don't all come through? Can you shoot them while they're off the map? (While they might stay off the board as someone trying to exploit the rule, they might also not get moved onto the board in a timely fashion if someone gets caught up in using the ones that are already there.) Oh, and: are they just off the edge of the board or are there a large number of open squares behind the starting area?

This is too specific and annoying, isn't it? It's just that I:

1) enjoy seeing house rules regardless of why they come up and
2) would rather see people's house rules instead of just reading "I won't play it by the official rule."

And I'm a bit bored, perhaps. Thanks for responding to my question.

The point total for the card is decided during your team build. So imagine before the start of the tournament that everyone has to fill out a player card with their team and points on it. On that sheet you would either put the 25 point option (giving you the ability to choose whatever team you wanted each round) or you'd put a discounted option which locks you into a certain TA based on the number of same TA figures you have. If you picked the 25 point option and everyone on your team is KO'ed, your team was 300 points b/c that's how much it was costed at when the tournament began. Same for the second scenario. Just b/c you get Disbanded doesn't mean the discount for the feat goes away.

If you think about it, the same thing happens w/ Thunderbolts. If you get Disbanded and have T-bolts do you get 5 points back for every Avenger you had? No, those points are just basically lost.

Basically the main point with Mercenary is that the point cost is decided at the force construction.

I think that the penalty for having more characters than can fit in your starting area is too harsh. Granted, if you have to lose four characters they will probably be the cheapest four in your force (barring medics), but even so - giving those points to your opponent is such a great initial setback that you're almost guaranteed a loss.

It would be better if the characters were simply removed from the game, and no vcitory points were scored for them by either player.

I absolutely hate the new "starting area" rule. And yes, I HAVE had it come up with a 500 pt Hydra/Hand swarm team I once built. Luckily, it weas a home game and we both agreed that I could just put them in the squares around the starting area as long as I didn't got further into the map than the starting area. So yes, I WILL have to worry about it a little and I hope the judges around here come up with a suitable house rule to get around it.

I don't think someone should get punished for having more characters than another. That's just not fair.

I'm a little bit annoyed that they changed Blue Beetle so he is a flyer, but Shadowcat and Charcoal weren't changed.

The new JSA map has 16 squares in the starting area.

1) Yes.
2) They would count as victory points for your opponent. Essentially, you can't 'save' characters or points from the game simply by never putting them on the map.
3) It's never really come up, actually, as typically line of fire is blocked by the large swarm in front of those figures. If it does come up, and the shot would otherwise be legal, I think that I would allow it.
4) They're considered to be just off of the edge. They count 'coming onto the board' as the first square of their movement.
Nope, not at all. If someone would like to use my house rule as something of a more reasonable alternative to the new ruling, I'm more than glad to help answer any questions that anyone might have about it.

The rule makes sense for 300 points games, which are the tournament default.

Last year I made several narrow maps by gluing together parts of other maps, so that people would have more map choices. One of them puts the hallway half of two prison maps together, making for a more open and playable map. The only downside is that the resulting purple starting areas only have 8 squares each. As such, we'll be ignoring the new rule.

If we ever get any players who try to run Lian Harper orphanage teams, then I may revisit the issue.

Good catch. I guess with the shrinking starting areas, this issue had to be addressed. I mentioned LAMP earlier, and it's not much (100 points) to run R Lockjaw 4x and Lian Harper 4x, and that will take up 12 of 16 spaces on the JSA map. So maybe this ruling is to discourage stuff like that in smaller point games. In-theme swarm teams should be OK here, since most generics nowadays start around 20 points.

I understand trying to shut down the abuse of Lockjaws and pogs as mobile blocking terrain/Suicide Squad fodder, but was it necessary to add a rule this restrictive? Is it necessary to go to these lengths?

Sure, this is probably a good idea at 200-300 points, where the only time someone would have to go outside the starting area would be something that involved abusing pogs. But there are tournaments run at other point totals, and to put something into the rules means it affects ALL sanctioned tournaments. Luckily, its something that can be affected by house rules, and I hope the judges/venues around my area come up with a good workaround for larger point games.

I just don't like the idea that the people at Approved Play have decided to say "screw anyone who doesn't play by our standard rules" in such a way. I suppose it's par for the course for WK as a whole lately...

The only problem I see with that is taking advantage of the fact that they can't be attacked until they allow them to be. You could gamesmanship it and keep a key piece off the board, completely safe, then if the enemy approaches, pounce out with your Spiderman or Superman or Nimrod or whatever. You could also keep off the board the entire game, and only bring in the weaker scrubs if you need to based on points at the end of the game. Or, you could time it so that you're losing right until the last second, then bring your pieces out free and clean and win on their survival. Yeah, not likely, but could happen.

I'm just sticking with 'use purple, unless overflows, then just put next to'. On the new maps, I really don't see what the big deal with entering the '4 square side zone' anyway. What's wrong with new starting areas being the entire 2 rows on your side? That's a holdover rule from the 4-side square maps.

I just want to point this out one more time for everyone out there that thinks WK is trying to ruin the day for everyone that plays swarm teams:

Q: What if the starting area designated by the purple lines does not have enough squares for my entire force?
A: Any figures that do not fit in the starting area (barring special rules that allow them to not be in the starting area) are eliminated. Victory points for those figures go to the opponent.

Emphasis mine. Outside of Marquees and other events that can't be house ruled, this is a total non-issue. Your venue regularly runs 1000 point games? Great! They just have to let you all know what the rules for handling spill over from the starting area will be. Simple as that.

This is not a big deal guys. It really isn't.

I think it actually IS a big deal. It makes more work for judges who don't stick to the standard 300 point Restricted games, because now they have to either make a blanket house rule to wipe this away, or state special rules before each game they want to override this. That just adds a little more work to what they already do.

Is having more characters than your starting area really worth eliminating in such an extreme way? Outside of Suicide Squad/Lian Harper abuse, which really hasn't been a problem worth neutering in the rules AFAIK, what team with that many characters actually has a chance of winning without some well-time critical hits/misses?

As a judge, I can honestly say that adding a line to the scenario description that says "any character that can't be placed in the starting area must be placed in the closest available square to the starting area that it can legally occupy" takes about 10 seconds.

I can say that 'cause I just did it. And if 10 seconds breaks your will to judge Heroclix... well, then maybe that person shouldn't be judging Heroclix