Another thing to consider is how to handle movement and power ranges without going crazy with tape measures.
Great Forge's range system goes in the right direction, but is a mite too abstract to work on larger scale.
What about splitting the combat area up into regions - depending on the scale of the game arranged in a strip of rectangles (think, small scale one team vs a few mobs) or a grid of hexagons (larger scale)?
Each region would be able to hold several characters or enemies - consider one region of the combat area to be one "brawl" at melee range.
Simplifies movement, reduces book keeping related to power ranges too.
AoE and cone powers... using templates could help. IIRC there have been some print-and-play weapon templates for Warhammer 40k going around for years now, could be a starting point.