- Summoning Focused Shaman. Bear Shaman to help with drain (who needs a sammy when you have unlimited earth spirits tossing out 12+ damage with their punches). Will double as secondary face because of the CHA.
- Mage. LOG and WILL focused. Can double as secondary hacker. Can be a primary face.
- Mage. LOG and WILL focused. Can double as secondary hacker. Can be a primary face.
- Technomancer. Doubles as secondary face.

I can see a big distinction: the combat mage can be from a Possession tradition, ideally based on Intuition (go Hedge witchcraft, the most badass tradition ever (IMG:style_emoticons/default/indifferent.gif) ) to handle the front line while the support mage will be from a materialization tradition.

Bio & Cybered Astral Hazing Fomori Troll (counter mages and spirits, uses Astral Hazing to provide a hard datum for team Awakened to operate in Background Count higher than 4)
Were-eagle Aztec mage (charisma based, may face)
Pixie Druidic mystic adept (intuition based, adept boosts in Perception/Astral Perception to ensures nothing surprises the team)
Human Dronomancer with E-Dog and feral AI pets (data control and manipulation, drone support)

I completely dislike the all mage teams. Even with the team I suggested I only had one full mage and one adept. I mean let's face it, even with the disproportionate amount of mages in a shadowrunner team they should NOT be in every position. In every Shadowrun book I've read, the Sammy was the Face. He was a cool collected slot who cool as ice, and deadlier than anything else on the street. He portrayed professionalism and class.

It is also possible to shut down an all mage team with FAB III. An all mage team will have problems with background count and

I also dislike Possession traditions because you get something for nothing. GM's should REALLY enforce the notion that the possessing Spirit might not like the agenda of the mage in question... or the Spirit believes that he has a "better" plan.

Agreed. However, a team where 75% of the members can do anything is the most optimal.

It's a question of optimization, not about fluff. Sure, mages are rare. This does not change the fact, however, that they're strong and versatile. And most Megacorps can field all-mage teams.

FAB: Can be countered by taking Masking. Which every mage worth his salt should have.
Possession: Choose the most badass tradition ever: Psionics (from the SR4A Street Magic). It's intuition based, and the spirits are constructs formed from your own mind, so no "disagree with mage's agenda" shenanigans.

Why exactly is Intuition such a nice drain stat? I was under the impression that Charisma was the most easy to get really high, or Logic with Cerebral Boosters.

Good try, but we can do better than that....

One Free Spirit, one Mystic Adept(caster biased), and a Mage. All same tradition.
The free spirit has metaplanar access, 24/7 uptime, and can appear anywhere in the world. Also a mage. It can handle the sammy role just fine. Sure, force6 costs 305BP, but ITnW 12 gives it good staying power.
The mystic adept can be just as casty as a mage with a high rating power focus, while doubling as a face(improved skill, kinesics,etc) or hacker.(mostly improved skill, analyze device).
The last mage is going to be the one that has the most points free, and so should specalize for the more expensive of the mage rolls left.

One person probably needs Trust Fund, just for the team's safehouse with Aspected Domain.
The last guy might just be a born rich/max cash/black markets contact gear bitch for the rest of the team. Maybe a mechanic/rigger - they need a wheelman, or possibly another mystic adept. Maybe even a cyborg. 3 mages can pretty much hold the fort down, though.

The big question is: Which tradition?

Few races have penalties to intuition, whereas Charisma and Logic are usually reserved for humans and elves. It adds to initiative and perception checks, which are nice to have for pure combat characters.

"What's the best Shadowteam ever?" "The one that shows up when the drek hits the fan, and can get the job done."

That's your optimal team.

Intuition isn't great in terms of high value. Its near impossible to get as high as the others. There just aren't things that add to the augmented value.
You can a raise your cap by 1 via Genetic Optimization(which is a solid buy at 0.1essence, if you're already getting ware, such as trauma damper, platelet factory, cybereyes, pain editor, or a cyberhand with a nanohive).
You can surge for another +1 to the min/max.
Or waste a fuckton of points on it via exceptional attribute.
Aannnd that's about it. There's a few drugs which add to intuition (betameth, psyche, Trance), but those tend to be bad for mages long-term.

What maxing out on intuition DOES do is give you a really high Initiative, Assensing, Perception. Its also used for Blind Firing a gun, so a high int Int/low agi(8v2 a least) mage may be better off just closing their eyes and firing willy-nilly blind at stuff. And those are good things any runner should have, not just mages.

Where are the rules for Blind Firing?

Edit: Found it.

A lot of people are doing all magic teams because it is easy to get synergy. 
As for background count they could be screwed over at some point but they would 
try to stick away from missions that will end up in a -10 background count.

Alternately you could go with an all rigger/hacker, face/hacker, tecknomancer, AI
And just do primarily matrix jobs. If you were all on the same page when it come
s to the hacking it would solve that problem of one person hacking wile the rest
 
do something else. 

A primarily matrix campaign could be fun in theory. 
It would force the dm to really give attention to detail to the digital world. 
But I could see it getting dulll too.
   

In the usual section for shooting people.

Isn't there a metamagic that lets a mage negate some, if not all, of the penalties from background count?

True, but I think projecting mages still take damage but maybe it only counts modified background count for that. I don't feel like looking it up and don't have an opinion one way or another which way it should be.

Also I had another thought an all magic team could really get into exploring the metaplanes. Sort of like planescape shadowrun edition.

Dryad combat shaman: Main face and a decant support in combat
Dryad technoshaman: Secondary face and the teams hacker
Fomori cyber tank: The teams main combotant

And the fourth guy/gal can be pretty much anythink as all the main functions are covered.

You know that Shadowrun has gone down a bad road when an all Mage team can be considered optimal and accomplish all objectives.

You really want someone with:
Medicine, Cybertechology skill, First Aid, and Healing Spells (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Why? A mage can summon high Force combat spirits until combat is over. If anti-magic defense is in place the technomancer (or heck, even a mystic-adept with rigging skills) can send in some drones.




Turn one of the 3 mages into a mystic adept. It only needs 1 or two points towards mage magic for the healing spells, the rest can boost skills for First Aid, Medicine, and Cybertechnology.

Becouse i wanted more then 2 members for the team and thought that 2 petite girls might want someone big and scary looking with them when moving in the worse parts of town (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

You can make an all Sammy team that's "optimal" and accomplishes all objectives, too. People just apparently really feel the need to work in OP Possession bullshit, etc.



Or your materialization tradition "support" mage can throw around a few high powered stunballs and be just as effective at combat as the obscene stats Possessed Mage.

I understand that instead of a Sammy or a Physical Adept you could just have another Mage who gets possessed into being a frontline wrecking ball, but there is absolutely no need for it. You're not even adding any real depth since there are only so many good spells and when Counterspelling it's a teamwork test beyond the first mage, which really doesn't amount to a lot of dice gained from extra mages.

It might not be the best from a pure magical point of view, but it is the most cost efficient for a combat mage. In combat, a mage uses Body, Reaction, Intuition, Willpower, and the Drain stat. If you have Intuition as your Drain stat, then you have one less stat to raise and you can spend your points on something else. That, plus Orks have no penalty to Intuition so you can take the yummy +3 Body and Low-light vision without any drawback. It's much harder to geek the mage first when he has 7 Body and the armor that comes with it.

Great, now "Geek the Mage" and "Geek the Big Ork with the Big Gun" just got combined.

THey do. Its called Filtering(and needs Cleansing first). It lets a mage make a Counterspelling test against a background count's rating, and if they're successful, then they get to ignore its penalties for a few turns.

There's also Cleansing, which can wipe out astral crap such as background counts(permanetly, too, with effort) or astral signatures.

And also Geomancy. While its long term, and doesn't reduce a background count at all, it DOES let you aspect it into a domain. It does take time, but it can be permanent. Its also one of the more hilariously abusable exploits to use with Astral Hazing.