Team Size versus Skill

[isoaker]

With the challenge to try to divide a group of people into fair teams, while simple dividing a group of people into equal (or as close to equal)-sized sub-groupings is the simplest way, it may not always result in an even distribution of skilled players. Moreover, it is often difficult to determine the relative skill of one player to another.

That said, if you have some sense of some of the players, but not for everyone, when setting up teams, do you think it is better to try to divide the known skilled players into more balanced opposing teams or just let people get separated based on some other system (e.g. counting off, random split, clothing color, etc.)?

One can also argue that separating teams based on individual skill doesn't matter as much since good teams also depend on how well the players in the team work together, not just how good each individual is. If that's so, should there even be concern over who goes into which team?

[the oncoming storm]

I have seen this happen several times

Team captains tend to pick friends over more skilled older players and get destroyed. boys VS girls generally fails because boys on the whole are more relentless and girls mentally "give up" sooner, line picking isn't random because you can stagger and chose to be on someone's team (my best friend and I do this frequently)

Captains work best, while the resulting teams may be unbalanced they both have an equal chance to get the good players

[HBWW]

One problem we've encountered today was differing player/team chemistries. Some players simply fought better together and had a better understanding of how to play amongst certain teammates. However, this problem seems generally solved by playing with different groups/players.

[marauder]

We used team captains once today. Tony and Danny picked teams and it turned out to be pretty balanced.

[mr. dude]

My opinion is that skill level matters to an extent, but not completely. So if we've got experienced players mixed with first-timers, then I'd want to make sure there's an even mix in each team.
However, if everyone's got at least a little bit of skill, then in my experience team chemistry starts to take over.

I'll cite my last battle for this, a year and a bit ago (I posted a report here). While it would be fair to say that I was probably the most skilled individual among my friends, our games were still very even.