Do I HAVE to detach a fragment for each character assigned? Last month the judge said no, but I still kinda feel like the wording means you do. So if I assign two guys, I have to remove two fragments, and it starts in two brackets lower right?

Clearly states that each character that is assigned to the resource you remove one shard and assign it to that character. So using your example, if you assign it to two characters, each character is assigned 1 fragment.

You are correct. Honestly if that wasn't the case then everyone would just run a Phoenix Force assigned to 3/4/5 figures without detaching any fragments so everyone get's all the powers and you start on the most powerful group. Kind of silly.

Thanks for the quick responses! And yeah I thought it was a little ridiculous, I was the only one not running it last month and everyone was super strong. I thought it was wrong but the judge told me they were using it right.

And only those assigned to the Phoenix Force can use it's benefits obviously? That's what it reads, but yesterday I ran into someone using a character of at least 40pts not assigned to the Phoenix Force (Tony Stark 41pts) using the benefits of the Force (and Poison now that I think about it)...