Zeel1

Taking it as literally as possible, I think 'Recognizable' means that casual fans are atleast likely to know their name but might not know much about who they are. Newer fans have probably heard of a Billy Gunn before but unless you were watching twenty years ago or are hardcore enough to be watching a lot of old stuff, you probably haven't actually seen enough of him to have a strong opinion. And to use another figure hardcores would call a legend, Dustin Rhodes would probably count as 'Well Known' right now. He has that same kind of name recognition but it's combined with being involved in a lot more significant stuff in recent times and being presented at a certain level consistently. So if you're casually following the product you would not only know who he is but probably be able to list off stuff about him and things you've seen him do. Edit: I actually missed that this was set in 2001... that's just a mod thing in that case, I agree he'd probably be a little higher than that. Maybe his momentum would be low enough to drag him down though.

This is something we'd need longer games to get a better sense of I think. But my guess would be more along the lines of having really poor development in those formative years. You're meant to groom a worker over time and let them get better by having matches with better wrestlers and angles with better talkers and such. I believe they generally grow the most as performers during those younger years so if they get past a certain age and they haven't progressed as much as they could have, they probably would end up with less overall star potential as a result.

No problem~ Another little tip would be to do a deep dive onto the attributes your roster has. You can specifically search for them in the filter which is great, look and see if you have any 'tag team specialists' who you aren't currently using in an active team. They can be invaluable for this. PGHW sent me Matt Blackburn on an excursion, a promising hopeful but he literally had no popularity in the US. Feeling an obligation to train him up for as long as I had him, I quickly teamed him with Bart Biggins, who was doing absolutely nothing and actually was the only person on my roster with 'Chilly' momentum so he needed a new thing to do anyway. A few matches together in and I'm already happy with it, their matches against jobbers get towards the high 40s which, if Blackburn was in their by himself against those same people we'd be looking at 20s and maybe even high 10s. And since Bart has the Tag Team Specialist stat, that means that once they build up their tag experience a little and graduate to working main roster teams, they should legitimately be having really good tag matches. Bart's gonna turn out to be a great mentor for the kid I think. And Matt's already got 16 popularity across US after only one two dark matches and a lone B-Show tv match, I consider that pretty good for where he is. Also the "Giving Performer" attribute is a great one if you're looking for the best possible opponents. "Dynamo" is also very helpful to ensure they won't be holding back because they're in an unimportant match or on a pre-show or b-show or whatever the case may be.

I immediately went on a typical young boy signing spree in my TCW game and so ended up with tons of long-term projects, not thinking about how much more you have to think about their use in this one. My main thing that I would totally recommend is that you pair them up with bigger names. You team a 0 pop guy with a really popular tag team for example against a few jobbers and he gets the pin, that allows you to boost him whilst also having a much higher match rating than he'd normally get, and therefore he earns more popularity for it. In general having them involved with bigger stars is always helpful. But keep in mind that since the segments are going to be lower than those stars are usually in, they might have slight side effects on their own popularity and momentum, so it's a thing to keep a balance of. Depending on the product, getting them in segments with those bigger names and making sure the new guy gets a Major Success role in the storyline category seems to have helped me a lot with getting their momentum up. (It doesn't seem like they actually have to be involved in a storyline to benefit from this.) Once their momentum is higher they'll gain popularity faster and it will also mean their perception is skewed higher than it otherwise would be. Getting them out of that 'unimportant' box is very important, once you do that you can get a lot more out of having them squash people. All that said, remember that low rated segments and penalties aren't so bad, it's like a growing pain thing. The key thing is what gets them over. I always went by the rule of thumb that if the worker was involved in a segment that was rated much higher than their popularity, that was a win for them. So even if a 40 rating sticks like a sore thumb next to the rest of your card, if the person involved is sitting at 11 popularity, that's actually quite a positive in theory. It takes some patience. Frankie Perez and Ernest Youngman are guys that I'm positive I could've made into solid parts of the roster by now in old games but after the two months in TCW I saw them go from the 10s and 20s across the board in the US to the 40s and 50s (and high 60s in South West and Tri State 'cause they had a head start there) and it was oddly satisfying. It's more difficult but also more rewarding to me now I think.

You can set a retirement age. So you could line that up with the age Vince Sr. was at when the shift occurred. It seems like you're talking about in the middle of a game but you can check in the editor to see if it's been set like that already.

When I'm going to look for staff members to sign or check on my own roster, I basically always have to scroll down on their skill lists to get to the 'non-wrestler section'. This is even in the case of people like Referees or Announcers, where they might literally only have one significant stat and it's buried towards the bottom of the pile. It's hardly a major complaint but I think it'd be a good touch if it either only displayed the relevant stats, or if it gave priority to the important ones. I have a few thoughts on how this could be implemented. 1: You literally only see stats that the worker's role(s) would actually utilize. So if you look at any given ref, you see their Refereeing skill as well as reputation and respect which I imagine would be the two universal ones. And maybe resiliency as well since I notice Adam does take the time to give them all 100 in this even though I'm not sure it'd matter for a non-wrestler. Aside from that, nothing else pops up. Ray Johnson's Menace stat of 2 is impressive but not something I necessarily need to see. (You could of course still see someone's whole skill list by clicking their profile and checking the full screen, this would only apply to the quick list you see on the Workers or Roster sections.) 2: You still see the full list of stats from the Worker and Roster views, but instead of having a universal set order that they all go in, the ones deemed important for particular roles jump up to the top of the list. So when you're looking at someone who's purely a Road Agent, the first things you see are Psychology, Respect and Reputation. Below that you can have the rest of it in the 'normal' order but the particularly relevant stats being pushed to the front of the line would be great. (Either of those systems would have the bonus of making it easier for new players to know what they should be looking for in certain cases where it's not totally obvious such as with Road Agents.) I understand there might be an issue here as it regards to people with multiple roles. I don't know what the proper order of a list of skills for someone like a Farrah Hesketh would be. But even with a rare case like her where you have a worker who does every possible non-wrestler role, if you take all the wrestler-specific stats and push them to the bottom, (the consecutive lines of Brawling to Flashiness and Basic to Toughness) everything that's relevant to her would be presented at first click. It'd also need to update itself after you talk them into different roles. I also understand a suggestion like the above might require a bigger overhaul than is currently possible. With that in mind I have a third option which I do believe would be doable. 3: If a worker has a 0 in a particular skill, it's not visible. This is actually already done with popularity, you just see the regions where a worker DOES have popularity and by the context you understand that they don't have any elsewhere. Kyle Rhodes has 18 skills that are set to 0 and will never rise from 0. 16 of them are shown to you when you first click on his name. Kyle Rhodes is a color commentator and an owner. Every stat that these roles lean on are at the very bottom of the list and have to be scrolled down to. The reason he and others like him have all those skills set to nothing is because they don't matter to the player or the AI, so is it important to show them at all? You can have set exceptions like Experience or Respect since those default to 0 for new workers and will be steadily increasing for as long as they're wrestling, but aside from that, I'm not sure the other rows of 0s need to be displayed. All just my two cents. TEW 2020 has a lot of nice ease-of-use and time saving features and this would be another good one I think.

Two likely related attributes aimed way more at the older eras here, and this would probably require a bit more coding than most but I figured I'd bring 'em up. Shooter Mindset: Not necessarily someone who is a true-life shooter but they atleast believe themselves to be a capable fighter. If the opponent is a certain level of toughness below them (maybe 10 points or so?) they will refuse to put them over even if they're a bigger star. If their opponent is significantly tougher than them, they'll gladly put them over regardless of overness. Easy Way Or The Hard Way: If this worker is unhappy with the planned result of a match, they have a possibility of disobeying and forcing a legit pin or submission. Chance of success could be weighted on the respective toughness of the performers or other physical performance factors. Also more likely to go along with planned screwjobs.

Just wanted to note (shamelessly boast really) that I was the one who suggested the Grindhouse Lucha Libre product and it is indeed based off of Lucha Underground. Not that this was unclear but just wanted to say that. I was pleasantly surprised to see the product used in the default C-Verse database and particularly proud to know he actually went with that name, it's easily my favorite name among the ones I suggested.

I actually sorta wonder if colors are even required for it. In the same way that 'Unimportant' and 'Major Star' speak for themselves I kinda think that hot, cold, neutral and all the words in between could stand on their own just fine. Though I suppose the turn of phrase might not be universal and I'm sure TEW is played by people all over the world so if you don't have that association then maybe the color does help.

A lot of people talk about the text colors... I haven't actually seen someone bring up what I'm here to post about, and honestly it's super minor and silly, I didn't even think about it until right now. And it's probably for the best that these things stay consistent and obviously it's well established that red is a signal for bad, so making an exception for this might not be worth it. But with how the momentum is worded now, it's kinda funny to me to see Hot and Chilly. It's mainly just a thing on the cold side really but it's a little weird when you think about it. It's like when people test you by asking you to read the word Yellow, yannow?

The names are fun. I do sorta miss the Masked Avatar being this respected selfless veteran type like he was in the old days. There aren't really others like that, since I wouldn't exactly put Sheik Ali-Avatar in that same context. The younger avatars are probably better for staying active and skilled throughout long-form games but I've always been really into developing younger workers and to just be the kind of guy I'd want to book inexperienced workers against to make sure they look good was pretty nice. Of course I can always just pick an actual veteran wrestler to do that with instead and in fact already have, just started playing as Robbie Retro in RIPW to get the next generation of SWF folk ready for prime time. But yannow.

For my first 2020 save I went for TCW for the first time in a long, loooong time and it seemed that as usual they could use more youth. I wanted a couple dependable heel teams to put over my various new signees. So I went out for some vets and got Remmy Honeyman and Simon Flemmingway. Honeyman I'm good with, but Flemmingway feels like it's a bad ring name on purpose, and while it's kinda funny in that way, I couldn't think of a theme for them like that. So I changed his name to Simon Salt, and they thus became Sweet & Sour. Vinegar would probably fit better in tandem with honey but I don't think that sounds near as nice as a name. In my original TCW game from literally over a decade ago I had signed the Cannonball Kid. That was considered his SWF name at the time and this was a diary so I was taking things like that more seriously than usual. So I needed to give him a new name. I wanted to take from his real name, which is Sam Pratt. But I also wanted to keep a little taste of his former ringname to give him that tinge of recognition. My mom's old family name was actually Cannon, so I'm accustomed to it as a last name and it seemed like a good one for a wrestler. But since I had both Sam Keith and Sammy Bach in big roles on that same roster, that left him to become Samuel Cannon. In retrospect, I wish I hadn't been as finicky about that last part. At the time I'd never seen 'Sami' as an alternative spelling, the name 'Sami Cannon' seems pretty fitting for him and definitely rolls off the tongue better. I was just a teenager back then, of course...

<p>Certain types of "Rated On" factors don't seem to account for any action or content in the game's mind. Basically stuff like Overness, Menace, I think Star Quality, probably Sex Appeal - they basically only infer that the worker in question is, kinda existing in that segment. Think a wrestler standing in the background whilst their manager speaks, something like that.</p><p> </p><p> Atleast one person in a segment has to be 'doing something', meaning using entertainment skills or fighting. I won't claim to know the full breakdown of what counts and what doesn't but this is what I've gathered.</p>

<p>My assumption is that these changes have something to do with the fact that you can play as developmental companies now. It seems like this was achieved largely by making them function much closer to regular companies. </p><p> </p><p> It's a little unfortunate but if that's the trade-off then I'd certainly take it, it was always one of my most wanted additions.</p>

I've... I've made a startling discovery today. I'm not happy about it. I'm not happy about it at all. I- just- okay, let's just do this... Here's Robert Oxford's stats, right? Yep. Yep that's correct, exactly how it should be, hahaha yep EVERYTHING IS AS IT SHOULD BE- It's... all lies. The tag name was all lies. Oxford was carrying him all along! The tandem SHOULD be called A TAG TEAM SPECIALIST & THE FRAUD JOEL BRYANT

The 'important match' penalty could definitely use some finetuning. It's a little silly because it might literally demand a 20 minute match in some products even when one side is Unimportant, which would itself definitely qualify for a hefty 'overuse' penalty. Think about that scenario. Your base would hate seeing it go twenty minutes because one of the dudes is nowhere near important enough to take up that much time. But also their match is way too important to them for it to not go twenty minutes.

<p>For a few in-game years I've been running a custom fed, starting in a 1987 mod and currently in late 1990. I call it Silver Side Pro Wrestling, no particular reason other than liking the sound of "Silver Side", been wanting to use it for a long time. In it's early years it was topped by guys like Terry Funk, Stan Hansen, Bob Backlund, Bruiser Brody, Jerry Lawler and Ric Flair. Big stars and great workers, but by the time I started they were already at the tail-end of their primes. With that in mind, they were my initial headliners but I was always building on the youth underneath, with guys like Owen Hart, Dynamite Kid, The Great Muta and especially Brian Pillman rising towards the main event.</p><p> </p><p> By November of 1990, I now have Pillman as my world champ, he beat Flair in June and will still have it until February. Flair and Lawler will stick around the main event scene for a while longer but Hansen and Funk are kind of being slowly phased out. Backlund is already considered a midcarder at this point. Brody has been working in my dev territory just to give it a big headliner and an experienced, talented hand.</p><p> </p><p> But something very unexpected has happened, kinda been happening really. I've become a super financially strong company, so much so that when a promotion's on it's death door I'm very likely to buy it out and take what I can. I've done this three times, with the most important one being All-Japan Pro Wrestling. </p><p> </p><p> The other companies I've let fold whilst just cherry picking a few names to keep around. But All-Japan was a key thing, because I was already working on becoming International at the time, but I had nothing going on in Japan. This acquisition fast-tracked me to that, suddenly now my promotion has a ton of pop over there, though most of my roster is unknown over there for now. (This will change soon as I also got a TV deal in Japan out of this!)</p><p> </p><p> Given the unique situation, knowing I'd have a ton of popularity in Japan out of nowhere (going from like F+ to Bs across the board here) but little way to make immediate use of it, and being a bit sad to see All-Japan go, I decided on the spur of the moment to continue running it myself. Rather than pick and choose, I took everything I could from All-Japan. The whole roster, titles, shows and all. And I made it into a second brand.</p><p> </p><p> Thusly, while Silver Side will continue running in North America, Europe and the UK on occasion, All-Japan will continue going on in their home country. This not only allows them to live on in some form, but also gives me a haven for aging top guys that can still go. I'd rather not let the old big names fade into obscurity out of respect, but I know it's best to focus on the sustainable young names.</p><p> </p><p> So the new All-Japan brand allows me to kill two birds with one stone. AJPW had already lost some big names so they could use the infusion of main eventers. Guys like Hansen, Funk and Brody already have significant popularity in Japan due to their history, and Backlund should fit in just fine over there as well. Plus, the Great Muta has been a clear future world champion for some time in Silver Side but would've had to wait a while as Pillman and Flair's feud will continue being the main thing for a while. So now Muta can be a king in his home country for a while until I'm ready for him to make that last jump. </p><p> </p><p> I'd actually been slowly building Shinya Hashimoto as a name over in Silver Side but now I can just, let him be a star in All-Japan instead and raise his popularity worldwide in the process. People like Dynamite, Owen, Art Barr and others can also reinvigorate All-Japan's Junior division, and the Malenko Brothers can take over their tag ranks just like they did for Silver Side a year earlier. The Steiner Brothers should have a good time overseas too...</p><p> </p><p> Yeah, my roster was pretty well-suited to this kind of thing as it turns out! Plus since it helped me get to International, now I can/have signed other great Japanese talents that were free. This was in no way something expected but I think I'm gonna have fun with this!</p>

I don't know if this would apply to the majority of this world but I'd rather like a Toonamiverse.

Silver Side Pro Wrestling Title History as of Supercard VIII (June 1990) Silver Side Pro Wrestling Champion: Brian Pillman (June 1990 - Present) Previous Champs Ric Flair (November 1989 - June 1990) Stan Hansen (February 1989 - November 1989) Jerry Lawler (June 1988 - February 1989) Terry Funk (June 1987 - June 1988) Silver Side Tag Team Champions: Los Guerreros (Eddie & Hector Guerrero) (February 1990 - Present) Previous Champs The Malenko Brothers (Dean & Joe Malenko) (June 1989 - February 1990) The Rock 'N Roll Express (Ricky Morton & Robert Gibson) (September 1987 - June 1989) Silver Side Trios Champions: Power & Paint (Vader & The Road Warriors) (November 1989 - Present) Previous Champs The Midnight Express (Bobby Eaton, Stan Lane & Dennis Condry) (June 1989 - November 1989) The Fabulous Freebirds (Michael Hayes, Buddy Roberts & Terry Gordy) (September 1988 - June 1989) Silver Side Television Champion: The Great Muta (2) (February 1990 - Present) Previous Champs Owen Hart (November 1989 - February 1990) Terry Funk (November 1989) Ted DiBiase (September 1989 - November 1989) Barry Windham (June 1989 - September 1989) Dynamite Kid (January 1989 - June 1989) The Great Muta (October 1988 - January 1989) Brian Pillman (April 1988 - October 1988) Silver Side Grand Prix Winner: Brian Pillman (1990) ^G1 style tournament. This was the inaugural edition. Silver Side Battle Royal Winners Tito Santana (June 1990) Rick Rude (February 1990) Owen Hart (November 1989) Curt Hennig (June 1989) Ted DiBiase (February 1989) Buzz Sawyer (November 1988) Keiji Mutoh (aka The Great Muta) (June 1988) Vader (November 1987) ^Battle royal held to commemorate each Supercard event.

I got these e-mails on the same day... I know moving can be hard but damn!

Really appreciate the responses this thread is getting, thanks everyone~ So now that I don't have to worry about the OP getting bigger, I'd like to talk some more about that '87 custom fed game since I actually did end up making a ton of faction for it. The first stable of note is, kinda ironically, called the Unstable. (D'ya get it~?!) They were initially co-led by Terry Funk and Bruiser Brody, and the other members were Eddie Gilbert and Buzz Sawyer (who teamed together as the Night Runners, which to me is a team name that would've sounded very edgy in the late 80s) and to round them out, a very young Cactus Jack. Funk was the first champion of this promotion thanks in part to the remarkably dangerous backup that he kept. After he lost the title to Jerry Lawler, things became a little uneasy in the group. In early 1989 Brody found himself ousted from the faction, with Funk putting the blame for the faction's denigration on his first lieutenant. New life was breathed into the group in the form of Brian Pillman. Since the company's inception the fresh faced Flyin' Brian was seen as the future. He impressed every time he went out there, and was steadily rising up the card but he seemed to be bumping against the glass ceiling. He just barely lost every time he faced off with a true headliner, which was a real sticking point because he was obsessed with becoming a top dog in wrestling. He was getting increasingly frustrated until, one day, he snapped, turning into a psychotic heel and joining the Unstable. This ended up being the last big push he needed to become a world champ. The other major heel faction is a group called Revelations. The name is biblical, a nod to the Four Horsemen, because the cornerstones of the faction are Arn Anderson & Tully Blanchard, the Brainbusters. They found themselves in an unexpected storyline when a routine bout against Buddy Rose & Doug Somers saw Arn legit injure Somers, putting him on the shelf for a loooong time. (Originally a year but surgery helped him come back a few months early.) This suddenly turned Buddy from an arrogant comedy heel to a sympathetic babyface as he sought to avenge his friend, and he formed a weird alliance with Scott Hall to fend off the Brainbusters. This turned in the heel's favor when they gained a new ally in the form of the Great Muta (had previously gone by his real name of Keiji Mutoh before donning the paint to join this group) and that's when they started calling themselves Revelations, hinting at a secret leader that'd be coming if people continued to screw with them. Given the name of the group and Arn being the main talker, it would be implied to be Ric Flair... The tide was turned once more when Doug Somers finally returned to make it a 3-on-3 feud, and Rose & Somers beat the Brainbusters in a long-awaited rematch. This only furthered their anger. In a trios match, Revelations got the victory with help from their newest member Barry Windham, who made clear that he was not the leader but he was the ace in the hole. This left the faces overwhelmed but luckily the Brainbusters also kicked up a feud with the Rockers at that same point. Sick of dealing with this same lot, Arn proposed a 5-on-5 where they would finally reveal their leader. The faces happily agreed but nobody was expecting what would come when their leader turned out to be the feared and respected legend Stan Hansen! The Revelations christened their completed group with a win and over the next four months Hansen ran through everyone before taking the top title from Jerry Lawler in record time. He'd then hold onto the belt for most of 1989. In a twist of fate, on the same night that Hansen became champion, Ric Flair actually arrived! After his successful debut against Art Barr, Flair would go undefeated throughout the year, defeating every member of the Unstable one-on-one and then doing the same with the Fabulous Freebirds before setting his sights on Revelations. He went through one last gauntlet, including defeating his old Enforcer before becoming the man to topple Stan Hansen. (Flair is in turn the one Pillman would later unseat.) The other groups haven't had quite as big a part but they're fun additions all the same. Wild Thing is a largely Hispanic-flavored faction, basically an assembly of various pre-existing teams and relationships all getting together in one place. Rick Rude already had an established team with Manny Fernandez, and Fernandez had an established team with Hector Guerrero. In turn Hector naturally teams with his younger brother, the upstart Eddy Guerrero. These four made up the base stable but before long Eddy brought his good friend Art Barr into the fold as well. Later, Chavo Guerrero Sr. joined too. Initially he was only meant to be here for a month, a little short story surrounding him but the old man's performances wildly exceeded my expectations and I decided to keep him around. I see these guys as my top babyface stable but since they didn't have a built-in centerpiece main eventer, instead being more of an assembly of rising midcarders, they've gotten there very slowly. Hector & Eddie did become tag champs recently though, and in the four years of this companies' existence they're only the third team to have held them, so that's a pretty big deal! The last two groups are inextricably linked together. They're old-school minded folk and mind you, that's old school by the late 80s definition. But one has this spirit in the face side and the other very much the heel. Bob Backlund leads the simply named Team Backlund. Bob respects tradition more than anyone but also isn't afraid to see the business evolve. With that in mind he teams with Curt Hennig, Brad Rheingans and the Steiner Brothers, four men who he sees as defining their generation of grapplers, the men who will rule the 90s. Opposite him is Larry Zbyszko's group, which he likes to call Hard Knocks. They're bitterly resistant to any form of evolution and given Backlund's place in wrestling they find his open-mindedness disturbing! Larry leads the middle-aged yet still very talented and respected Billy Robinson, Greg Wojokowski and the group's own promising young tag team, Dave Finlay & Steven Regal. Like rival wrestling schools, these two have feuded in some form or another for two years straight. Yes, all of these groups exist in the same promotion at once... and also with the aforementioned Vader/Road Warriors grouping, and the Freebirds and Midnight Express. Aaaaand also Los Villanos, all five of them~! Also the Rock 'n Roll Express, the Malenko Brothers and most recently the Fantastics, who I forgot to mention now team with Jeff Jarrett in Trios action sometimes. It's a fun place~

This actually reminded me of another team from that 2001 game, not successful in the slightest but super endearing... the greatest Hardcore Champions of all time banding together - Norman Smiley and Crash Holly~!

One of my favorite things in any TEW game, be it real world, c-verse or anything else, is banding people together in new groups or tag teams. No matter what kind of promotion I'm in, I find myself doing it as I always want deep tag divisions and having major stables always makes booking weekly shows easier. In general it can just be really cool to put together people who never had anything to do with each other. I'm sure I'm not the only one and I'd love to hear of other examples, so share your favs~! One game of mine that had a ton of examples of this was a long-term game in BHOTWG where I based it heavily off of how New Japan does things, which meant basically everyone of note was involved in some kind of faction, loose or otherwise. I actually had ten stables even in that one! Probably my personal favorite - atleast among those I made from the ground up - from that game is Purepuro... essentially they were the main purveyors of strong style, living to ensure that Japanese wrestling is forever dominated by heavy hitters. The founding leader was the much respected Eisaku Hoshino but the true star of the group was quickly established to be Funakoshi, earmarked as a future world champ. Mitsunari Fugunaga provides more veteran wisdom, Gonkuro Kamioka is seen as right behind Funakoshi. The rest of the group is filled out with the promising Atsumori Takemura and the solid Ryushi Sato and Sojuru Sen, who along with the upper members are constants in the tag and trios divisions. I also took NEO and expanded it greatly, enough that I feel it qualifies, and it's my actual favorite group in that game. I always likened it to Los Ingobernables de Japon, just a band of jaded outcasts who don't care about anything but each other. If nothing else thinking of Koshiro Ino as a Tetsuya Naito kinda figure made him way cooler to me~! I added Marihito Masuko as a kind of a Hiromu type, he often teams with Black Magic to form a strong trios team. The Rebellion, Natsu Miyamae and Ken Shimedzu reformed and joined the group as well, but this didn't last too long as Shimedzu didn't age near as gracefully as Natsu. So he was sent down to help people in developmental instead, and replacing him in the team was the Australian Black Flash, who acts as the Bushi of the group~! The last addition was Hitomaru Suzuki, pegged as Ino's most likely successor. In that same game, I was able to sign Emerald Angel as a huge Junior name. After some time in the sun as a singles, I had him pair up with another new signee, Mercury. I noticed in Mercury's bio that it was a dream of his to team with Emerald Angel and just thought it'd be really cute to make that come true. Together they are... Space Angel~! A particularly colorful one came from a UEW game. This one was pure cartoon, almost like a Dungeon of Doom kind of group. See, I got Louis Figo Manico to return from his otherwise eternal hiatus and quickly made him my ace. But then came Scheming Behemoth, who was bitter at Manico for the abrupt close of UCR which ended up signalling an untimely end for his own career! Vowing vengeance, the clever mammoth of a man sent a seemingly endless series of foes his way! He quickly assembled a true rag-tag motley crew of ne'er-do-wells. His faction in total: Jamie Anderson, Menace, Jimmi & Kalvin Addams, Greg Gauge, Merle O'Curle, Joey Beauchamp, Super Ninja and Hercules Johansson! In a CZCW game, I eventually formed a trios division - I kinda tend to do that as it's just so rare otherwise - and I was pretty happy with the division I'd assembled. We had the Coastal Classics, who speak for themselves: Super Ninja and American Flash. There was The Legit, a group of straight-laced badasses who generally thought themselves above the pure high fliers that made up most of the roster: Chris Morrisette (helluva get there!) & The American Cobras. The Street Snipers were a brutal gang, with Sayeed Ali leading Bullseye and Waylon Walls. There's more but perhaps my favorite from there is the uniquely named Soulgoal. That was the name of Remmy Skye's rock band, with the Rock City Stars as his Trios partners. They were also backed up by their favorite roadie, Roger Monteiro! While I never got around to adding trios titles to a MAW game or had much emphasis on stables, I did have some custom made tag teams that I really liked. Kid Fantastic and California Kid came together, called the Carnage Kids (I may have just let the name suggestions keep going until I found a good one with 'Kids' in it...) and they not only became my premiere tag team but once they amicably split, Kid Fantastic ended up being a world champion of mine. Any match they have against one another or any time they reunite, it's always special. Also in MAW - I can't decide if I love or hate this name but the Tap-Out Tyrants consisted of Seth Whitehead and the Architect. Architect is portrayed as kind of an evil genius who brought Whitehead in as this brute shooter that could decimate anyone he didn't like. While they were a great team and two-time tag champs, sadly Architect's master plan all along saw him use Seth to win the world title. But Whitehead got his revenge, swiftly taking the gold from him and becoming a major name in the process. Dang I went that far without even dipping into any of my Real World ones... A recurring stable of mine for any game set between the late 80s and early 2000s is Camp Cornette. It's very easy to just put Corny with a bunch of old school/technically minded wrestlers and have them boast about their superiority over the rest of the world. Probably my favorite incarnation of this was also the most focused. In a unique game, in which I play as both WWF and WCW merged together after the 2001 buy-out Jim manages Lance Storm, Jerry Lynn and Masato Tanaka. Tanaka is, of course, a pretty hypocritical inclusion for Jim but that's part of the point... Lance also found himself feuding with Mike Awesome so Corny brought in his greatest rival to help subdue him. This next one, a Trio - yes I made those titles in this scenario as well... - barely ever got to do anything before I stopped with that game, but it's from that same period and it's one of my favorite eclectic mixes of people ever. It's a dark-themed group called Nightfall. Their leader is Vampiro. As a heavy, they have Batista, still in his Leviathan look. And balancing them both out is the Fallen Angel Christopher Daniels! An '87 WWF game saw a lot of original tag teams made, I actually ended up having a pretty crazy number of tags in that one but I'm cool with that. Early on, Greg Valentine dumped Brutus Beefcake for a huge step-up, teaming with Bobby Eaton and forming the Beautiful Hammers. Billy Jack Haynes and Bruiser Brody formed a vicious, violent team known as the Bloodletters, simply named for how often they busted people open during their assaults. Butch Reed and Bad News Allen formed the Mercenaries, an APA-esque hit squad. One stable that was short-lived and not very successful, but I find kind of endearing anyway, was the Black Sheep. They were named as such because they were all the guys who had been previously kicked out of the Heenan Family, and they formed to fight all of their replacements at WrestleMania. Paul Orndorff led Ken Patera, Hercules and King King Bundy on an ill-fated quest for revenge. Ultimately it was all just an excuse to re-establish the new and improved Heenan Family as a major threat, getting across that this version was far superior to the old. But there was still something I found charming about their union, there was a scrappy underdog vibe to them. But even if I wanted to keep going with them, it wasn't to be. The Mania match was King Kong Bundy's last in WWF due to being a freelancer, and Paul Orndorff had already signed with JCP so he was on his way out too. That left Hercules and Ken Patera, the significantly lesser members, by themselves. And they did stick together as a tag team but there are so many teams above them, they never really had a prayer. So yeah, as a stable, they fell to the team of Superstar Billy Graham, Andre the Giant, Harley Race and Rick Rude. (Also Curt Hennig joined their numbers too shortly after, and eventually Ric Flair debuted and quickly replaced Andre as the centerpiece.) I could go on and on but this OP is already stupid long as it is! So I'll close with my latest group. In a custom-made promotion set in that same '87 mod, I once again made a Trios division. This one was originally just a vehicle for the Fabulous Freebirds to feud with the Midnight Express. But I saw an opportunity to create a new team that I just had to go for and now the division is being dominated by the unstoppable combination of Power & Paint - Vader and the Road Warriors~!

They got nothing on Spiffy Sean Stylez...

Before Genadi's 87 mod, I don't think I ever knew Dean Malenko had family in the business and I certainly didn't know he had a brother who was also a solid technician. Now Dean and Joe Malenko with their dad Boris as their manager has become a staple act of mine, I've taken a real liking to it.