Nerf to stockpile

Unknown

The stockpiled AP from boost should arrive incrementally rather than sitting there: you have the pool/reserve from the selected boosts and get 1 AP of each color until this depletes. So you still can boot up with 6R 6G but no more 4 volverine swords to start -- without picking up matches you can only make 1 on 4th turn and 3 on 7th. This boost is still powerful and compensates for starvation that can easily happen, but prevents completely unbalanced opening.

Having that, especially if also applying the other suggestion that increases AP cost for repeated ability use within same turn you could cut back on nerfing low-cost abilities so much. And even Rag could safely go back to 4AP.

Nonce Equitaur 2

I like this idea.

I'd rather have the stockpile nerfed than to have a lot of characters nerfed. Getting only one per color per round would fix that. If someone boosted six green and six black, it would take 6 rounds to get them all.

Unknown

I was trying to think of nerfs for this too. One idea was for the opponent to get 1 or 2 AP for every three you stockpile. You start loaded, so you can use abilities, but they aren't left way behind. Another variation on this is to give the opponent environment tiles. So, as you were stockpiling, they were getting a positional advantage. Of course, this is hard with the drastic difference in enviroment abilities. The other idea I had was to be frozen for 1 turn for each stockpile. So it would be more like guaranteeing that you generate certain AP but sacrificing your ability to do damage. That seems a bit much, but maybe for the full rainbow stockpile it would make sense since that one is really overpowered.

mischiefmaker

I don't think this changes things that much. Consider Wolverine. If you start a game with boosts and you play with OBW with Espionage, and you get one of each color match in your first six turns, your damage output looks something like this:

Turn 1: Claws x2, match green = 1238
Turn 2: Claws, match red = 1316
Turn 3-5: match blue/purple/black = 3990
Turn 6: match yellow = 684

Total: 7228 damage in the first 6 turns, +534 in strike tiles on board

Under the scenario you describe, you get 1 of each AP every turn, so:

Turn 1: match green = 150
Turn 2: match red = 150
Turn 3: Claws, match blue = 896
Turn 4: Claws, match purple = 1426
turn 5: match black = 970
Turn 6: Claws, match yellow = 1316

Total: 4908 damage in the first 6 turns, +534 in strike tiles on board

Now clearly, this calculation changes if you get cascades early, or if you're not playing with OBW, or if some of your strike tiles get matched. But this seems like a pretty reasonable representative scenario, and it only reduces damage output by about 2300. I mean, that's not nothing, but it slows down the game less than four turns.

Unknown

that 2300 damage is the very difference -- it means you can down opponent's support character about 6 turns eralier. Before they kill you. Do you want to keep spiderman around for 6 extra turns?

And your list is very optimistic -- many times I find hosed for colors for several turns or must go defensive right away -- again facing spiderman you must grab the blue from him. If you can do it with all the strike tiles on, he'll die, without it's tough.

Try to playtest it pretending you not yet have the AP and see the very real difference.