Hmm, though I don't know you, evilsquirel and I'm (unfortunately due to time issues) not such a frequent visitor in these forums, I'd like to give a comment about this issue.
First of all, there's the old design teams. These are established names like ScnPunk, TS, Woad, DGDN and so on and they have their expectations. You can't join them without having at least some one or two scenarios to show. Sure, the "newcomers" don't have such a great chance there, but good work can open the doors for you, and especially due to the fact that these teams are (at least according to my knowledge) still recruiting new members for their AoM division, I think every designer who is willing to spend time and enthusiasm and has good abilities will get his chance there. Still, if you don't have a good reputation, most likely you won't have a chance there.
Second, there's "newcomer" teams like MWD. These teams have been releasing some good-rated projects in the past time and are on a rising path (at least I do hope so for MWD ), and they do have high requirements (we at MWD have, I think). It may be quite hard to join such a team, but good work is a key to success and it's not impossible to get in there.
And last, there's "little" teams which most likely don't last for long. We've been seeing a lot of them here in the AoMH history, and many did have an enthusiastic start but did never release any great map and soon descended again when their team quarreled (most times due to some "leader" issues). I think there's quite some skill needed to lead a design team and this does not only mean organisation and commanding, but rather diplomacy, excellent mapdesign skills, trigger skills, a well-formed allround knowledge of AoM and its editor together with skills of leading people (like not being too dominant and having democratic decisions being made in-team). If you think about these skills, check if you have them all, compare yourself to other teams leaders and founders and then decide that you have all the skills, think about founding a team again and you will probably be successful.Just my 0.02
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» Member of the Mythological World Designers, the first German AoM Design Team.
» Member of the project 0 A.D. at Wildfire Games.