I forgot to mention, but we do this with all his Modes - "cannot draw cards during Draw Phase," "cannot use powers during your Power Phase,"and "cannot play cards during your Play Phase." Bunker's already inflexible enough without ruling out so many interactions with other heroes and/or his own deck.
Bunker is one of my favs, and I usually don't have any problems with him. The restrictions on Turret Mode and Recharge Mode are usually worth the benefits. The only card of his I'm not very fond of is Upgrade Mode, and that's simply because you have to wait a whole round before you can benefit from it while losing use of your powers.
We use a few.
Akash starts with 1 primeval limb.
Gloomweaver zombies have H hitpoints.
All of Ambuscade's trap cards play the top card of the villain deck after you arm them.
Having Ambuscade play a card after arming a trap works really well. It makes him a touch harder, and gets the deck moving to make the trap more of a threat.
Bunker:
We redid Engine of War Bunker with house rules on some cards, to help him get cards into play a bit easier, and be better overall.
His base power also has you draw a card, so you ditch a mode card, draw a card, destroy one ongiong.
We alterred each mode, so it does something when you destroy it, the overall result is a much more mode focused Bunker.
Upgrade: When you destroy at start of turn, you may put one equipment card into play or search your deck for one equipment card and put it in your hand.
Recharge: When you destroy at start of turn, you may put a mode card into play from your hand or the trash
Turret: Destroy one equipment card to gain an additional +1 to damage till the start of your next turn.
Maintenance Unit: Recover two health or play an equipment card (even in turret mode)
Team Leader Tachyon: Change base power to allow her and one other player to draw a card. It's more balanced, but I'd like a better idea, I'll try the one about drawing an extra card.
AZWrath: We allow his base power to target himself for 1 damage, so it gains the healing of the original. It makes AZ pretty strong imo, but my one friend still prefers the original.
Expat: Never had a trouble with her myself (she's my favorite damage based hero) but for one of our players we let her base power be draw or play a card, although a suggestion was to allow her to discard and draw again if she draws ammo without a gun in play (not her original four, just draw phase).
Argent Adept: We have used this rule occasionally for my one friend, but I hate it. We make all his songs relics, not ongoing.
Mr. Fixer: We've tried an alteration where he only destroys or returns style/tool cards at the end of his turn, so you can have more than one of each out for your turn, then you lose all but one of each. It makes AA-MF really fun. I like it better than the discard to do 2 damage, it just makes MF really fun.
I have not tried any adjustments to villains, but I definitely will.
I've tried a few ideas with Gloomy. The most recent is:
1. Put any zombies not put into play at startup into the trash ie no zombies in the deck.
2.Seperate out all voodoo pins into a second pile. Whenever a cultist enters play, play a voodoo pin from this pile if able (ie it isn't empty).
Everything else stays the same. With this setup he only has 14 cards in his deck and 3 of them are Vast Following which plays the next card anyway so he can get through it pretty quick. Also a Vast following that gets out a couple cultists that each bring out a couple pins can be a handful.
I have an idea for Bunker that haven't been played, mostly because its too much to fit the way we like our rules (one simple change, not multiple ones). It really has 3 parts:
1.The rule that restrictions on his modes are only for normal phases ie no draw DURING DRAW, no power DURING POWER etc.
2.Make his base power the ability to play a card.
3.Turn Upgrade mode into an ongoing destruction one-shot (since it is now pointless and in honor of EoW).
With this setup he can go into turett mode early and still continue playing cards. He can't draw normally in this case but if he plays the Aux Power Source, he can get 3 cards. He can play Decommissioned Hardware to get it back. Of course ammo drop still works, and he might draw one off of the Power Source if he didn't have it already in hand. He could play Foam Grenades and External Combustion while staying in turret mode as well as contiue to build if you get more equipment later wether it grants a new power, armor, or a gatling gun even.
Sefirit wrote: "With this setup he can go into turett mode early and still continue playing cards."
This would be madly overpowered, especially if he has Ammo Drop in play in a target rich environment.
As written, Turret Mode is plenty powerful. With almost any two equipment cards in play, the ability to use two powers at +1 damage is awesome.
Playing a card would be one of the two powers so he wouldn't get two powers in addition. It would basically make turret mode "+1 damage and don't draw a card" compared to normal play.
I understand that this would give him more flexibility and make him more powerful. That is somewhat the point given his stats, though even more so I think it would make him more fun to play with more options each turn. Would it make him OP? I highly doubt it.
Edit:
What is trying to be accomplished here is allowing him to get into turret mode without having to be too set up before hand. He can get into turret mode with just a flack cannon out for the bonus damage but contiue to set up after having entering turret mode.
Honestly, if modes could be returned to hand at the start of turn instead of destroyed it might accomplish close to the same thing. Not as strong surely, but it addresses the fexiblity issue. That might be a doable home rule.