An idea I had tonight while re-reading this thread. Since I feel that Unity is more broken the later she is in the turn order, while Legacy is at his best when going first (except possibly if he's followed by Absolute Zero or Nightmist, since they damage themselves a lot and don't necessarily profit from it the way Fanatic does), what about assigning each hero a "speed" value, and having each party take turns in speed sequence? You could also use this as a way of hardcoding the "bunker and wraith vs. Adaptive Plating" problem, thereby making Omnitron more of a challenge. Or conversely, you could switch the speed order for easier games when you need the extra help against a tough villain. Unity would be at one extreme of the speed range and Legacy at the other, though I'm not certain who'd go where in the middles. All this would probably mostly apply to solitaire play, of course.
Any categorey involving the word speed should start with Tachyon.
Speed can be simulated by changing the seating order. Part of the challenge, especially if you go random, is dealing with the order of play.
Perhaps, but if that were done it would only be true for flavor reasons, and what I'm discussing is a purely mechanical effect. Plus it would have her take her turn before Unity, unless players went from slowest to fastest, which would seem extremely strange. And as I already pointed out, a dead Tachy taking her turn before Unity is often more powerful than a live Tachy, hence why I want to put Unity first.
(I play mostly four hero games, so this is all geared that way)
Players that I think are more powerful up front are ones with ongoing and environment destruction, and ones that give cards to allies.
Omnitron-X might rank #1 in going first power, he has great destruction and Time shift is great when first, but if you have a visionary and Omnitron-X Visionary is most powerful right before Omni, esp if it is dark visionary.
Adept I find to be really powerful last, buecause his card play granting and power use granting is best served at the end when cards are played and drawn already, Unity is about the only Hero that really benefits more from going after Adept. The only reason I see to put Legacy first is Take Down, when cards grant villain play on hero turns. I actually like it when you have a damage dealer in front of Legacy, so that if you need to switch off of Galvanize, you split the team in bonus/no-bonus. It makes a weaker first round, but not much. Legacies lack of destruction makes him more of a liability than I like first play.
When I am building a team to really do well (a revenge game or a tough challenge) I usually take a destruction heavy hero first, then a more consistent damage dealer that has some destruction, then a legacy or Mr. Fixer type, then a build up to big damage hero at the end.
If you don't need destruction first, like you are facing a Voss or Omnitron and the environment isn't debilitation heavy I like a heavy one-shotter or someone with irreducible damage to lead off, someone who can burst through some DR and set the rest of the team up to mop up the rest.
Tempest and Omnitron-X do well in both situations, Visionary I like first because she has destruction and WtM is often a great card to throw first turn so the rest can plan out their moves with it in mind. A lot of discussion can eliminate that bonus, but we tend to play faster than that. Also Dark Visionary first followed by Omni is ridiculously powerful.
One of my favorite games ever was DarkVis/Omni/Bunker/Adept vs. Chairman. Bunker was ridiculous.
Chrono Ranger can do pretty well, too - The Whole Gang can be very useful for taking out low-hp targets. I've used it to good effect to take out both the Effigy and the Runes simultaneously whilst fighting Apostate. The Masadah means that you don't have to worry about soak, as well, so once you get a few bounties out (and especially if there are damage buffs floating about), ol' Jim can totally destroy a whole load of stuff nice and quickly :).