Featured Team: Iron Patriot & Modern Armor Thor

Iron Patriot (Tactician):
ISO-8:  8 Steady
21-Gun Salute if you have 2 or more charge stacks and their team is still up.  Overcharge to follow it with more of the same next turn.  If down to 1 or 2 targets, you can overcharge into Repulsor Cannon instead to kill off a single target instead.  Only use Plasma Blade if you have no other options available to you.

Modern Armor Thor (Bruiser OR Blaster):
ISO-8:  8 Steady
Thor is very simple:  If you don't have strengthened, use Inspire Bravery to gain strengthened, then Call Thunder and ruin their team.  If they have an area protect up like Omega Sentinel or Rescue, or have Phased targets, use single target attacks like Hammer Throw and save your Inspire Bravery until the protector is dead or the targets are unphased.

Generalist Agent
ISO-8:  8 Violent / 8 Steady (lower levels)
Power of Four OR Protect Item
Maggia "Triggerman"
Neurotrope
Scroll of Angolob

Say hello to my little friend!  Use your quick action items and then spray bullets like it's going out of style!  Infiltrator can also work instead of generalist.  Only use Power of Four if you're sure you can hit everyone (aka the protector is dead).  I might still leave Power of Four on for defense, and hope to get there.

The other option is to replace Power of Four with a protect item, and try to use your Agent to soak up attacks and allow Iron Patriot or Thor another barrage, and triggering "Triggerman" counterattacks along the way.  If I went that route, I would likely use Infiltrator's armor instead of Generalist.

Budget Setup:
Custom Posessed Pistol / Custom Goblin Glider
Sudden Support
Curative Reach
Damage Amplifier

This Agent wants to kill people, plain and simple.  Attack, and hit extra hard, with your quick action supporting items to allow you to make huge hits and finish off weakened targets that your team of AOE murder machines left behind.

Summary

Strengths

This team is a glass cannon:  You spend all your resources trying to make sure they're dead before you are.  Explosive damage potential and not much survivability is the name of the game.  You want an aggressively slanted armory, and as many Blasters and Scrappers as you can recruit to support this kind of team.  (Obviously any hero bonus is good, but still, priority should be towards aggressive bonuses.)  On the bright side, this team will often demolish some teams even on defense, due to the burst damage nature of the team.

Counters

Phoenix and Shadowcat are very hard to kill in tandem with this team, as are agents with Sinister Scepter:  basically, any team that can blank your initial assault can be brutal.  Rescue going before Thor often results in a greatly reduced damage output as well.  If you're up against this team, stripping Might of Mjolnir off of Thor and having ways to remove debuffs can quickly make this team irrelevant, as the AI often uses Full Overcharge at poor times leaving Iron Patriot out of options and letting you burn down Thor before he gains his full offensive potential again.

Rating

Offense:  A+

Defense:  B

Featured Team: White Crown Phoenix // Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde)

White Crown Phoenix (Infiltrator):
ISO-8:  6 Mercurial, 2 Spry
Your plan with Phoenix is to Mind Link on Kitty, then either move mind link between your agent and kitty as they are phased, or attack with one of her attacks.  If someone dies, Phoenix Fire.

Shadowcat (Infiltrator):
ISO-8:  8 Steady
Your basic plan with Shadowcat is to use Call Lockheed first round, then Sneak Attack to break Phased, Shadow Kick next round, then use Phased Attack to repeat the process.  Try to make sure to use Call Lockheed on a tactician to get Combat Reflexes.

Bruiser Agent (or Infiltrator, use Blaster WC Phoenix if so)
ISO-8:  8x Forceful
Sinister Scepter
Neurotrope // Norn Stone
Scroll of Nomaj // Angolob // Shepherd's Staff
Arc Reactor Charge // Sudden Support

This Agent is specifically designed to buff the party and have things to do while it hides under Astral Form.  Ideally, you get to open after Rescue or their Agent use their buff removal, so you can go Neurotrope >> Arc Reactor Charge >> Sinister Scepter, and put a huge hurt on someone.  This stuns your agent, but conveniently enough, you're hidden behind Astral Form and can only really be attacked by psychics.

Budget Setup:
(Custom) Only for Killing
Digital Decoy
Curative Reach
(Custom) Posessed Pistol

This setup is designed to be an aggressive one:  Only for Killing applies Mental Anguish much like Emma Frost, so use it on characters who will attack primarily with their first action, otherwise, either apply Digital Decoy (do this the turn before Shadowcat will be unphased) or unload with the Possessed Pistol.  You can use Posessed Pistol to set up devastating Sneak Attacks with Shadowcat.

Summary

Strengths

This team is a very powerful defensive team, and the ISO-8 are set up to take advantage of the AI as much as possible by making sure that Kitty's HP is higher than the Agent's and Phoenix.  Phoenix's AI will mind link the character with the most HP, and much of the time that will be Kitty, allowing you to string counterattacks if your opponent doesn't know what's up.  This team also is fairly durable even if they do know what's going on, since the agent and Kitty are often invulnerable and Phoenix has multiple resurrection effects.

On offense, this team can punish teams without both Rescue and an Agent with scrolls, getting numerous counterattacks and being immune to most attacks as they do so.

Counters

This team is very soft to psychic attacks, as well as a sustained buff removal team like Rescue and an agent with scrolls.  Rescue's AI is very soft, but on defense this team struggles against her.  You want to focus fire down Phoenix, making sure to kill her twice with back to back attacks to prevent her from using Phoenix Fire.

Rating

Offense:  B+

Defense:  A-

Featured Team: Brown-And-Tan Wolverine // X-23

Wolverine ISOs:  Steady (Attack/Accuracy/Health)
X-23 ISOs:  Steady (Attack/Accuracy/Health)
Agent ISOs:  Chaotic (All Stats)
Total CP cost:  270

Do you like bleeds?  OF COURSE YOU DO.  Do you like snikting bubs?  OF COURSE YOU DO!  Do you have trouble winning fights against Rescue?

Well I can't help you there, buddy!  This isn't the team for you.  But if you like solid teams that punish nearly every other kind of team that likes to take multiple actions, this one is for you.  It's particularly good against teams that run scrappers, particularly Quicksilver teams.   This team is also particularly good against teams that rely heavily on shields for their defense and healing, since bleeds circumvent many of the shields not provided by Omega Sentinel or Rescue.

Rescue is unfortunately a huge problem for this team, which is why the Agent is set up the way it is.  With the Scrapper Aegis Armor you can apply Targeted to Rescue or other tough defensive heroes, and with Monstrosity and Custom Bolt Action 4-Bore you can hit incredibly hard and entirely circumvent the debuff skipping your next turn.

This team has many viable other item choices, including avoiding that entirely in favor of setups including Neurotrope, Kuzuri, Scroll of Nomaj (in addition to Angolob) in an attempt to beat Rescue, or by using an Infiltrator Agent with something like Sinister Scepter to allow you to freely counterattack her if she attacks your agent.

Budget Agent Build:
Infiltrator Armor (preferably) or any 8 slot armor of your choice.
Custom Posessed Pistol
Magnetic Field Generator
"Snikt!" // Golden Feral Claws
Digital Decoy

The basic strategy for this team depends on the turn order.

If Wolverine acts first:  Use Adamantium Claws on an Infiltrator if possible, otherwise, use it on the most annoying non-Bruiser.  X-23 should follow up with her Blades of Rage, and your Agent should use Custom Bolt Action on the bleeding target to try to polish them off either right there, or on the next bleed tick.

If X-23 acts first:  Use Snikt on a suitable target, preferably a scrapper if present.  Wolverine should target a different target with Adamantium Claws.  The Agent in this case should focus fire on the target Wolverine has bled, to try to kill it off quickly.

If the Agent acts first:  This is the worst scenario.  Hopefully their team has done something you need to react to, otherwise, I would pick a target to focus fire.

If you lose someone early:  This is where this team shines.  Even if one member goes down, X-23 or Wolverine can both win fights entirely on their own, provided that you're a bit lucky with their proccing survival or with Berserker Rage.

If the target you want to attack with X-23 is not the Trigger Scent target, Blades of Rage is your best option.  Use her Assassin's Strike to finish off characters like Rescue who you might not be able to kill, but can get low.

This is a really fun and flavorful team, which I highly suggest you give a try.  It's also a decent team on defense, since it has several ways to get lucky and win even with poor AI.

Featured Team - Spider-Man//Invisible Woman

Future Foundation Spider-Man -Infiltrator

ISO-8: 8x Steady (Health/Attack/Accuracy) OR 4x Deft, 4x Mercurial.
(I have moved to Steady as there are enough ways to make your unbuffed avoidance irrelevant.)

Future Foundation Invisible Woman -Infiltrator

ISO-8:  8x Steady (Health/Attack/Accuracy)

Agent - Bruiser

ISO-8: 8x Chaotic ISO-8

Armory:  This team wants you to have a very defensive armory, since the offense from this team comes over time.  Ideally, you'll have something like a 30/70 offense to defense.

Optimal Gear:

1. Warbringer's Axe
2. Scroll of Angolob
3. Scroll of Ocerebi Nomaj
4. Coulson's Revenge

Starting Player Gear

(This is intended for players who are new to the game, and do not have access to gold items, limited edition items, or the like.  Consider it the "budget" recommendations, although I will recommend many customized items from epic bosses, so expect to do a bit of farming.)

1. Curative Reach
2. Custom Bolt-Action 4 Bore
3. Norn Stone
4. Custom Only For Killing

This gear set is a bit finicky, so I wanted to go into detail about it, specifically Norn Stone.  This team is one whose game plan is to go very long, and if you can keep your Agent alive until The Future Is Now, with a couple Norn Stone buffs you can be unstoppable.  Custom Only for Killing is also something you want to use right away on their damage-dealing team members.

Team Strategy:

This is a very defensive team, that has a clearly outlined plan:  Use the Future Foundation synergy to generate "The Future is Now" after three rounds.  Surviving until then is the hardest part of your plan, once you do the opposing team tends to be dead quickly to your swarm of critical hits.

So how do you do that?  Your opening sequence is very important.  Spider-Man needs to Spider-Sense, and then web someone.  You will fall into a rhythm of Web Shot and Web-Slingshot, only using your Web Swing if you need to stun someone or lose.  I find it's more of a desparation attack than a reliable tactic.

Invisible Woman should always open with a shield unless she has already counterattacked a shield onto the team.  You will prioritize shielding your team and for the most part, unless Wolverine, Human Torch or another powerful debuff-applying Scrapper or Blaster is present.  If their scrapper cannot be easily beaten by your agent, you can use Force Cage to contain them.  You should also Force Cage War Machine out of the gate, as the AI will then use Charged Capacitors and have no attacks to make.  If you know the enemy Agent has Power of Four, the same thing applies.  There's a number of fights where Force Cage can cause the AI to act extremely poorly, potentially throwing away a number of turns, stamina and cooldowns extremely poorly.

Your Agent is your primary source of offense at first, and you'll want to use them to crush out the opposing team as you heal Spider-Man.  Spider-Man is an exceptional proc-based protector, and his Tingling Sensation buff makes it so that teams that attack you repeatedly like Quicksilver will soon be unable to touch you at all.

Summary

This team is one that used to perform much better than it does today.  It was one of the best teams in the past when Tingling Sensation didn't stop stacking and didn't remove itself over time, but it's still a powerful synergistic team with a lot of potential.  Since the game is very much about Tacticians right now, this is one of the few teams that can really punish players for using them.

This is also a reasonably good defensive team:  It has a lot of protects and reasonable offense if they survive no matter what they do, which makes it a fine team to leave on defense.  It's a bit slow to use on offense, since it plans to go long and one of the most important things about attacks in PVP is being able to make them quickly.

At low levels this team is exceptional, where players aren't sure how to approach it.  At higher levels, it's a fine team that has some pretty glaring weaknesses, but it is still a fine team, and if you have Spider-Man you really should check it out.

Ranking:
On Attack:  C+

On Defense:  B

Counters  

Wolverine.  He's the best at what he does, and what he does is kill Spider-Man dead in short order.  There's a reason the Agent is set up to beat him around the ears, and that's because he will otherwise run over you.  You also have problems with teams based on Rescue, since she can strip away Tingling Sensation and your shields.

Featured Team: Black Widow // Wolverine

Grey Suit Black Widow -Tactician

ISO-8: 8x Steady (Health/Attack/Accuracy)

Brown-and-Tan Wolverine - Scrapper

ISO-8:  8x Steady (Health/Attack/Accuracy)

Agent - Scrapper

ISO-8: 8x Chaotic ISO-8

Armory:  This composition favors balanced, slanting towards attack, or all out attack.  Defensive setups on this team are likely not ideal.

Optimal Gear:

1. Kuzuri
2. Scroll of Ocerebi Nomaj
3. Neurotrope // Warbringer's Axe
4. Custom Magnetic Field Generator

Starting Player Gear

(This is intended for players who are new to the game, and do not have access to gold items, limited edition items, or the like.  Consider it the "budget" recommendations, although I will recommend many customized items from epic bosses, so expect to do a bit of farming.)

1. Sabertooth's Claws // "Snikt"
2. Curative Reach
3. Custom Magnetic Field Generator
4. Custom Only For Killing

It is also worth mentioning that the regular, non Brown-and-Tan Wolverine is nearly as good as the Brown-and-Tan, so if you are very short on CP's you can use him.  The same cannot be said for Black Widow, her Tactician Grey Suit is mandatory to make her useful in PVP.

Team Strategy:

This team is all about focus fire.  Widowmaker's ability to take someone out in one pass, particularly blasters if someone is fool enough to send one of those on defense, leads you to very strong openings.  Your openings are very much reliant on turn order, but they often fall into one of three categories.

1. Your opponent has a blaster.  This means that your Agent and Wolverine should focus on applying three stacks of bleeds with ravaged to someone other than the Blaster, and Widow will focus fire the blaster down with Widowmaker and her Flying Kick.
2. Your opponent has an Infiltrator.  This means that Widow and the Agent should focus fire someone, while Wolverine applies three stacks of bleeding and ravaged.
3. Your opponent went first and got their defenses set up // the above two scenarios don't apply.

The third scenario is the most complex, since you can fairly easily win the other two.  We'll talk about this one.  What if your opponent has a protect that you don't want to hit with your scrappers, like Hercules or a Bruiser Agent?  As it turns out, as long as they're not immune to bleeds you're probably OK just focusing everyone's efforts on the protector directly, and knocking them into next week.  If their protect is based on a buff, Widow can Flying Kick it off while Wolverine uses Feral Ambush on someone else, and your agent takes defensive actions like setting up Custom Magnetic Field Generator, or using Scroll of Nomaj to punt buffs if you have it.  Then, it's a matter of continuing to apply bleeds, and using Widowmaker to keep key members of their team on the back foot and stunned.

Rescue is particularly difficult, so I'll detail how to beat her with this team here.  What you really want to do is make sure that the first time she puts up her healing shield you can dispel it with Scroll, and the second thing you want to do is focus all your fire and efforts on whoever it is on their team can actually do damage.  Rescue's primary weakness is that she is very poor on offense, and if you can cut the legs out from under their offense before you're too weakened, Wolverine can usually do the rest on the back of his natural healing and your agent's ability to heal and shield him.

I haven't seen a ton of this team on defense, but my defends tended to be moderately poor.  You should likely only use a Scrapper agent on offense, and switch their suit to something more effective on defense, like Bruiser or Infiltrator.  This is a team that I really like on offense, and I used it to get Adamantium this season, but I often switched my defending teams around and just used this because it can quickly end fights.  This is a particularly important facet of this team for the last few days of PVP when your attacks are so critical to keeping up your rating.  You will face a lot of defensive fights, and a slow attrition-based attack team can't win enough fights quickly enough to keep up with the assault.

Summary

This team is great, as long as you're not leaving it back to defend at high tiers of play.  The team defends just fine for leagues below Vibranium, and features a number of neat abilities and the ability to largely ignore protects.  I use it, and that's the best recommendation I can make.  However, it's pretty bad on defense and since the last PVP reward armor was Bruiser, this team composition should probably use a different kind of Agent overalll, and possibly Infiltrator Wolverine on defense.

Ranking:

On Attack:  A

On Defense:  C+

Counters  

This team can be countered by heavy Bruisers, like Captain Britain, Juggernaut or Hercules.  Hercules is particularly good at beating this team down, as long as you have a way to remove bleeds from them.  Other things that can stop this team are teams like Rescue/Phoenix that can remove the bleeds quickly enough to blunt Wolverine's offense.  One of the keys for fighting this team is to make sure not to use AOE attacks:  Focus your fire on the Agent or Wolverine, first, and leave Black Widow for last.  Her AI isn't perfectly good, and the last thing you want to do is let her spam free attacks by attacking her before you can kill her quickly.

Featured Team: Rescue // Phoenix

Heroic Age Rescue -Tactician

ISO-8: 8x Deft (Health/Defense/Evasion)

White Crown Phoenix -Infiltrator

ISO-8:  5x Steady (Health/Attack/Accuracy), 3x Mercurial (Evasion/Attack/Accuracy)

Agent - Bruiser

ISO-8: 8x Chaotic ISO-8
Armory:  This comp will work with many type of armory balances, but I prefer ones that lean towards attack, since this team is naturally strong defensively and needs the extra punch.

Optimal Gear:

1. Warbringer's Axe
2. Scroll of Angolob // Scroll of Ocerebi Nomaj
3. Neurotrope
4. Blade of the Guardian // Kuzuri

Starting Player Gear

(This is intended for players who are new to the game, and do not have access to gold items, limited edition items, or the like.  Consider it the "budget" recommendations, although I will recommend many customized items from epic bosses, so expect to do a bit of farming.)

1. Curative Reach
2. Custom Magnetic Field Generator
3. Custom Bolt Action 4-Bore
4. Custom Only For Killing

Team Strategy:

Rescue has a lot of stamina and with luck you will have Neurotrope give her regenerating stamina, so your plan for her is to always use Flyby Attack (unless you have Exhaustion, this is very important) and then either her Protector Protocor or Reconstruction.  Use Status Reset whenever the opposing team has buffs that either allow them to pierce your defenses, or if you have bleeds/multiple DoTs that you need to get off of Rescue.  Your natural debuff removal should make it so you don't often have to use this defensively, but rather as an offensive tool to keep your opponent's team off balance.

Phoenix can be used to keep up the wall of protects, usually using Mind Link on herself if you have optimal gear, or the Agent if you are using the gear without Limited Edition items.  She also is your primary form of offense, so don't be afraid if you are not taking a lot of damage to just spam attacks like Telekinesis or Psiblast.  She has Psychic attacks so you can attack people through protects, and while this will not be your primary method of attack sometimes you can use this to finish off a weakened team member.

The Agent's job is much like Rescue's:  Spam buffs, protect and counter, and depending on which attack weapon you use, apply generalized or attack through protects.  If you are using the Blade of the Corruptor route, then both Phoenix and the Agent can ignore protects and hammer on specific targets.

The fun really begins when your first team member triggers Death and Rebirth.  Phoenix Fire refreshes, allowing you to severely wound the opposing team, and is yet another source of debuff and buff cleansing.  Often, Phoenix Fire combined with the solid healing from Rescue and the defensive nature of your team will allow you to get multiple uses of Phoenix Fire and make it frustratingly hard to defeat your team.

Summary

Rescue and Phoenix are one of the better AI-controlled defense teams around.  They often sequence their attacks decently, and have an advantage against teams that do not have sustained burst, like other Rescue teams.  Similarly, this team beats many of the older popular teams like Torch/Strange, making it ideal for low level PVP if you happen to have unlocked Rescue.  It does suffer from being slow to use and hard to focus fire, which means that it is not an ideal aggressive team, but it is definitely one of the better AI teams and worth considering for your defensive lineup.

Ranking:

On Attack:  B

On Defense:  A-

Counters  

Want to beat this team?  The best ways of doing so involve strong Scrappers to assault Phoenix, and stealthy/psychic attacks to ignore Rescue's attempts to defend her.  This does present the problem that their agent is a Bruiser.  Other approaches involve characters that break shields or remove buffs, or exploit shields.  Try team compositions that include either Shatterstar, MK 42 Iron Man, Juggernaut, Thundra, Hercules, Union Jack, and similar.  They often have the tools or the durability to survive the relatively low offense of these teams and either buff themselves enough to break through, or remove Rescue's protects/shields and pound away.  Other approaches that I've used successfully include using Wolverine to keep constant pressure on Phoenix since he has a Stealthy attack with a follow up, along with Tactician Widow to make sure you're going to crit along with her ability to both stun Phoenix and ignore Protects.