Phil Coulson: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Possibly your best one yet.


Done.

Ack, his black is too wordy! Maybe just make it key off of blue, green and purple?
It also has issues. It costs 12 but has a "5 Black in reserves.." clause. Does that mean you need 17 to get the bonus damage? With just the effect it would almost be worth the cost by itself (destroying the board and getting a bunch of AP back). Everything else is pretty fair.
What if, instead, it was a cheap black attack (e.g. 6) that also consumed 5 AP in your largest color pool, if able, creating a bonus effect based on that color. So instead of being a Avengers Assemble! type nova, it's a swiss-army knife power with some fun choices (e.g. "Oh, if I make one more purple match before activating it, I can shake the board instead of creating protect tiles"). Or not, sounds like that would still be really wordy.

I like the Yellow. The colors of AP gained would have to increase (or countdown decrease) over the rank progression but it's really nice passive AP gain that's not broken. If you're getting a ton of AP out of it it means the enemy is hosing you.

Finally I don't know what I think about , there's a lot of that going around these days. Already 4 3-stars anyway. I suppose since Greater Good is passive it could be any color (Green or Blue echoes Loki or Hood, respectively). Even though the Big Gun is a reddish power, it might be better in a different color, like Purple, as he's not really a heavy-hitter and thematically it's a sneaky unexpected strike, not simply innate power. Just going by "feel", he seems more like a mascot type rather than a heavy-hitter like Cyc, Cage, or Capt. Marvel. And Colossus. (They all start with C, odd.) Or maybe a .

I don't know if a formatting change will save it. Mostly I think it's unwieldy because one power has six effects. Fury's power is less complex, and still leaves out a lot of information (e.g. "Hulk smashes.")

If you're set on keeping it as is, the following simplification would help the text be readable. (Reiterate for every clause).
"Heal your team for 500. If you have 5 in your AP reserves, increase this by 750."
becomes
"Heal your team for 500, or 1250 if you have at least 5 Green AP."

I'd suggest simplifying it to one basic effect, with a couple bonus triggers. At the very least you could cut one color from the specials (the color used to activate it). I've simplified it further in this version of the power that I'm color-shifting Coulson to for the purposes of the spec (which keys off of ) but you could just keep it black and have it key off of .

"Nothing to See Here" 12 AP
Coulson diverts some of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s vast resources to improve the situation. Gives allies a burst of 500 health and stuns the target for 1 turn. Three S.H.I.E.L.D. agents arrive to create 2 special tiles. Each agent creates 2 additional tiles if you have at least 5 AP in their color: Protect (Blue), Attack (Red), or Strike (Black).

Rank 2: Agents create 3 special tiles of each type. Rank 3: Heals allies by 1000 and stuns the enemy team for 1 turn. Rank 4: Stuns the target for 2 turns. Special tiles are created at higher strength. Rank 5: Agents create 4 special tiles of the corresponding type.

Notice how clean the power is. It loses the unpredictability and complexity of relying on all 6 AP types, but is comparable to your original spec (without the damage, which I replaced with strike tiles, and the absurd AP gain/cascadeath from purple). Tile strength could vary based on type (you might want to make the strikes a little weaker than the protects) but since that all scales with level it's not super important to have in the description; all we know is, we use the power, We heal, we get a stun, and we make 6 special tiles, or up to 18 if we have enough AP at max rank; they're good tiles.

Still, from a design perspective this is still way over the top for a 2* character. 2*'s need to be simple so new players can easily grasp what they offer. Fury and Kingpin can have crazy complicated powers because they're designed for experts. Even Big Gun's dynamic price adds unnecessary bloat to the power (And synergy is weak; Besides Phil, only Human Torch creates attack tiles at the 2* tier); does it really add much excitement?