A mostly-unpowered mastermind type with a rather different approach to things than his peers.
The Malevolent Machinator
The Machinator was once a trial lawyer named Hector Whitman who specialized in defending supervillains unfortunate enough to actually see a formal trial without escaping beforehand. After a decade and a half of watching his clients squander their enormous personal gifts in badly-planned heists, ill-considered plots and schemes a schoolchild could have spotted the flaws in, he finally cracked. Calling in some favors and spending heavily from his considerable mostly-legitimate fortune, Hector dropped out of polite society and reinvented himself as the Machinator, a villainous mastermind-for-hire nonpareil. There were many thuggish villains out there who simply couldn't manage a convenience store robbery without fouling things up somehow, and a surprising number of self-proclaimed "super-geniuses" with such impractical plans they stood no hope of executing them successfully.
The Machinator would correct that for a suitable fee. Using his extensive knowledge of what had tripped up his old clients and a small army of well-trained, highly valued operatives to scout and prepare the scene of any given crime, he could improve the odds of success to near certainty. Even in the face of superheroic meddling his patrons quickly discovered they were getting better results than ever before, especially when they paid premium prices and had the Machinator oversee things firsthand. While not a powerhouse combatant by any means, Hector is very good at acting as a force multiplier for other villains and his connections with the pragmatically-minded S-Cape Artist has made him and his employers very hard to catch if something does go awry.
Most "proper" masterminds look down on the Machinator with disdain, seeing him as wasting his own (admittedly impressive) talents working with simpletons and madmen for mere cash. Hector just smiles at that and continues as he has been. Let them sneer. He isn't called the Machinator for nothing, and has schemes of his own in the works that go far beyond mere monetary gain.
Description: A short, lightly-built man with a black bowl cut and pudgy facial features. His costume is a loose dark-purple jumpsuit with bright green boots and gloves and a wide black belt studded with buttons, toggles and switches. A variety of gadgetry hang from his belt but no obvious weaponry. He has a thick metallic collar like a neck brace with speaker grills all around it, which also incorporates an encrypted radio commo system. Unlike some villainous masterminds he usually resists the temptation to monolog about his genius, but when he does his rather high, piping voice is deepened and amplified by his collar.
Gender: Male Age: Early Forties Height: 5'3" Eyes: Brown
Hair: Black, Bowl Cut Skin: Caucasian Build: Puny
Approach: Tactician Archetype: Domain
Health: 50 + (5 x H)
Powers: Gadgets d8, Presence d8, Remote Viewing d6, Teleportation d6
Qualities: Leadership d10, Masterful Schemer d8, Investigation d8, Self-Discipline d6
Status: (# environment targets and challenges) 3+ - d10 / 1-2 - d8 / 0 - d6
Abilities:
Control the Battlefield (A) Activate one of the environment's twists in its current zone or one zone closer to red.
Directed Action (A) Take a basic action using Masterful Schemer. Use your Max die. One nearby ally also takes that same action using their reaction.
Familiar Ground (I) Ignore damage from environment sources during the environment turn.
Follow the Plan (A) Boost using Leadership. Use your Max die. The bonus applies to every ally's action until the beginning of your next turn.
Hapless Dupe (R) When Attacked, redirect the Attack to an environment minion.
Upgrades & Masteries (optional, but common unless forced to improvise):
Mook Squad +0 Health. Gain Activate Agents (A) Replenish your Undercover Agent minions up to the number of heroes in the scene.
Master Behind the Curtain (I) As long as you are not directly involved in the fray and are using your influence indirectly, automatically succeed at an Overcome to manipulate a situation.
Tactics
The Machinator lives up to his name in a battle, preferring to stay out of direct confrontations and act indirectly. He'll selectively employ Control the Battlefield to use the environment against the heroes, making sure to keep a Hapless Dupe in play if possible. He's quite immune to environmental damage during its turn thanks to Familiar Ground as well, and will happily move into potentially perilous locations. Follow the Plan is his other go-to ability and can greatly improve his allies' performance. Machinator rarely uses Directed Action unless things are going off the rails somehow or he sees an opportunity to create an interesting challenge using an Overcome.
His upgrade lets him reliably deploy more of his signature minions than the environment can generally provide. His mastery really encourages him to stay out of the thick of things the way he already wants to.
Conceptually, the Machinator has no superpowers beyond cunning, masterful planning skills and the resources to use them both to their best, relying on technology and trickery to emulate the "powers" listed. His rather huge Health pool represents not physical durability but him using prepared gimmicks to elude personal confrontations for as long as possible. The heroes basically have to trash a lot of the scenery before he finally runs out of decoys, escape routes and pre-planned hidey-holes, which takes a lot of raw damage. Most of his abilities don't require actual proximity to use, so even finding him in a complex scene may be difficult, perhaps even requiring an Overcome to pinpoint his location - until he "teleports" away again through a hidden passage or timely decoy maneuver.
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Undercover Agents d8 minion
Description: These agents will always appear like they belong in the existing environment, with suitable garb and equipment and appropriate behavior to blend in until they reveal their true colors. If they aren't armed in their cover role they'll be equipped with concealed weaponry in the form of light pistols and folding knives and truncheons. Even exotic beings like robots, aliens or supernatural entities will have been reprogrammed, suborned or otherwise compelled to serve a new master.
Perfect Cover: You always count as both an environment minion and a villain target and ally for purposes of villain abilities, twists and status dice. You take your turn when environment threats do (normally just after the scene tracker advances).
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