To unlock all four fighters in a MARVEL Tōkon match, drive the opponent to a stage boundary and trigger a Break with a grounded throw, a Skill marked with the Break effect, or Slam Launcher into its Blowback extension. Each successful recruit makes another teammate available. If you lose a round while someone is still locked, one additional teammate joins at the start of the next round.
Do not stop when the portrait lights up. Call the new slot once, watch for the Switch? prompt, and use Tag/Switch during that window. A direct Raw Tag can be punished, and a successful switch moves your previous leader into the incoming fighter’s old assist slot. The task is finished only when all four portraits are usable and you can still identify every direction after changing leaders.
This route covers the retail Windows/Steam and PS5 releases as checked on August 9, 2026. It uses action names first so remapped controls remain readable; on the PlayStation layout shown in the official guide, Assist is × and Switch is L2. The July official guide described an open-beta build, so only its controls and team actions that are also present in current retail sources are used here.
Your four selections are not four active fighters
Character select gives you a leader and three teammates, but the first round begins as a 2v2 state. Your leader and the second team member are available; the third and fourth remain locked until the match’s assembly conditions are met. This is an in-match availability rule, not a missing roster character, account unlock, or team-selection error.
A full team also does not mean four separate life stocks. The selected fighters share one life bar. Recruiting the other two expands the assists you can call, the characters you can switch to, and the gauge capacity available to the team. That is why the useful completion check is not “four characters appeared on screen at once.” It is “all three teammate slots now respond, and I can move the leader role among them.”
Read the portraits before moving. If the down and back slots are unavailable at the beginning of round one, the game is behaving normally. If you have already produced a wall event and a portrait is still locked, that is a route failure worth correcting; attacking faster in mid-screen will not fix it.
Map the three assist slots before chasing a wall
Directions address positions in the lineup, not permanent characters. This distinction matters twice: first when the third and fourth fighters arrive, and again after a leader switch changes which character occupies an assist slot.
That makes selection order a match plan, not cosmetic sorting. The second fighter supplies the one teammate slot available beside the leader at the start, so place the helper you need immediately there. The third and fourth choices are gated behind assembly. If your opening plan depends on a particular anti-air or screen-control call, do not bury that character in a locked position and then treat the missing assist as an execution problem.
| Assist input | Selected teammate | Slot role | What to expect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neutral or forward + Assist | Second fighter | Shooter | Usually a projectile or forward-covering call; this is the teammate available beside the leader at the start. |
| Down + Assist | Third fighter | Vertical | Typically an anti-air or launcher; this direction becomes useful after the first locked teammate joins. |
| Back + Assist | Fourth fighter | Assault | A character-specific attack or movement effect; this is the final slot to verify after the team is assembled. |
Use a four-label example to make the remap concrete. Start with Leader A, second fighter B, third fighter C, and fourth fighter D. B answers neutral/forward immediately. After the first recruit, C answers down; after the next, D answers back. If you call C with down and switch to C during the prompt, C becomes leader and A takes C’s old down slot. B still occupies the Shooter address and D still occupies Assault. The direction did not “belong” to C—it continued to point at the same position.
This also gives you a fast error check after a hectic exchange. Do not try to remember which character answered down ten seconds ago. Look at the current leader, then read the three portraits as positions. If the portrait in the down position is the old leader, down + Assist is working correctly even though it now calls a different hero.
“Forward” and “back” are relative to the side your leader is facing. The official PlayStation example shows right for the second teammate and left for the fourth while the leader faces right. Thinking in forward/back terms prevents the mapping from appearing to reverse when the fighters change sides.
Use Startup Battle’s Assemble section as a controls check, then use Training Mode to rehearse boundary spacing. Keep the drill small:
- Call the available second fighter with neutral or forward + Assist and confirm the Shooter portrait answers.
- Call that assist again, wait for Switch?, then activate Tag/Switch once rather than pressing several assists together.
- Look at the lineup after the switch. The former leader should now occupy the incoming fighter’s old slot, proving that the direction is a slot address rather than that fighter’s permanent shortcut.
If the helper attacks and leaves, the assist worked but the switch window expired. If a different helper becomes leader, multiple assist calls may have changed the target: current retail guide evidence says Tag follows the last assist called. Reset the drill to one call and one switch input before practicing the wall recruit.
Force the recruit at a stage boundary
The assembly condition is tied to the opponent reaching a wall state, not simply to landing a strong-looking attack. A stage with another area can show a Break and transition. A boundary without another transition can produce a Wall Bounce or wall splat instead. What matters for this task is the paired result: the opponent hits or crosses the boundary, and a locked teammate becomes available.
Set the attempt up before choosing the move. Walk or carry the opponent toward the active boundary until the next launch or throw can actually reach it. If the same attack connects at mid-screen, it can deal damage without assembling anyone. This spacing check is the fastest way to explain an apparently “correct” move that leaves both portraits locked.
Grounded throw: the simplest input check
Near the wall, land a grounded throw with Medium + Heavy. The retail team-building guide identifies this as an easy Wall Break or Wall Bounce route, while the broader retail Steam guide lists successful throws among the ways to reunite with the third and fourth allies.
A throw that lands too far from the boundary is not proof that throws stopped working. Watch the opponent, not just the input: if there is no wall event, move them closer and repeat. If the wall event occurs, immediately check which locked portrait became usable instead of continuing the combo and missing the confirmation.
Break-effect Skill: use the move label, not appearance
Open the current character move information and choose a Skill whose description explicitly says it triggers the Break effect. Several character Skills have that property, but a large animation alone does not prove it. Put the opponent at the boundary, land the labeled move, and require the same two-part confirmation: visible wall result, then newly available teammate.
If the move hits without a Break, distinguish range from move choice. First shorten the distance to the boundary. If it still fails there, recheck that you used the correct Skill version and that its current description contains the Break property. Do not substitute a visually similar move or an old beta description.
Slam Launcher into Blowback: a route when the throw is being read
Slam Launcher begins with down + Heavy near the opponent. Use its Blowback extension to send the target toward the breakable wall. This costs more execution than the grounded throw but gives you a second repeatable plan when the opponent is defending against throws.
A Light Link Attack can also trigger a Break, and the current task guide names Light Link and Assemble Smash as practical boundary options. Treat those as alternatives, not guarantees at any range. If one produces damage but no wall reaction, return to the explicit Break-effect move or Blowback route rather than repeating an unverified mid-screen string.
After the first successful recruit, read the portraits again. Down should now call the third slot. If the fourth remains locked, rebuild the same boundary condition and earn a second recruit; do not assume the first wall event silently activated both remaining fighters.
A lost round recruits one teammate
Losing a round is the recovery branch, not the efficient opening plan. If at least one fighter is still locked when you are defeated, one additional party member joins at the start of the next round. Current retail task evidence supports one recruit here; an older pre-release page said all remaining members could arrive, so do not plan around that broader claim.
Pause at the next round’s opening and inspect the lineup. If the third slot is now active but the fourth remains locked, the fallback worked exactly once. You still need another boundary recruit—or the same comeback rule after a later lost round—to finish the team. This check prevents a common mistake: pressing back + Assist, seeing no fourth fighter, and blaming the control mapping when that slot has not joined yet.
Do not intentionally surrender a healthy round merely to assemble. A Break can recruit while preserving the current round, whereas the fallback costs the round by definition. The loss rule is valuable because it turns a failed assembly attempt into a narrower next-round problem: verify the one new slot, then pursue only the teammate that remains locked.
Use Switch? to rotate the finished team
Once a desired teammate is available, call that exact assist direction first. During the brief Switch? window, activate Tag/Switch. The called fighter becomes the leader, and the previous leader replaces that fighter in the same assist slot. If you brought in the third fighter with down + Assist, for example, down now points to the old leader after the switch.
This is safer and easier to verify than an uncovered Raw Tag. Raw Tag means using Tag plus the target direction without calling the assist first. It can be punished when the opponent is close enough to act. Save it for a position with space or cover; in ordinary pressure, let the assist occupy the opponent and use the visible prompt rather than guessing at a direct switch.
Call only the teammate you intend to become leader. If you fire several assists in succession, the switch follows the last one called. When the wrong character enters, the correction is therefore not faster input: stop, let the sequence clear, call one direction, and respond to its prompt.
Your team assembly is complete when four portraits are usable, neutral/forward calls the current Shooter slot, down calls the current Vertical slot, back calls the current Assault slot, and one prompt-timed switch leaves the former leader in the expected position. Re-read those three addresses after every leader change. That final slot check is what turns two successful wall events into a team you can actually control.