I have hated the Phoenix Team since I first thought them through. And I hate them for story reasons. An MP campaign (or any RPG campaign for that matter) is about the PLAYER characters. The way the phoenix Team is written they are a hug sucker punch to the Players-Suddenly players who have nursed their characters through what was months if not years of sitting around game tables find themselves upstaged by a group of NPCs that they never even suspected existed. Now instead of being in charge of their own destiny, as they have been since they uncorked they get to be petted on the heads like good little children while the grown ups take over.
The Play of the Game section uses phrases like
The Phoenix Team Leader expects "a report from the Player Team right away"
"The Phoenix Leader's Demand for a report"
"the Phoenix leader will display tolerance beyond all reason in answering idiot questions from the Team"
There is some additional text about how the Phoenix Team sees the player characters as comrades and will trust them more then the players will trust the Phoenix guys. This is a total reversal of the initial description.
When I ran Prime years ago I didn't use the Phoenix team, but did tell the players about them and let them read the section in the book. They uniformly were exceptionally glad I didn't include the Phoenix Team.
Again YMMV
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