[Burnsaber]

You are making this way more difficult than it needs to be. You can easily create impressive nuklear strike with the explsprites we've got.

Let's create spells A, B, C, D. A nextspells B which nextspells C which nextspells D.

A is your beam, with AoE: 1, there is a "massive orange pillar" explsprite*, this spell will represent direct hit. B has AoE 5 to 6, you should probably use the massive expanding white explosion sprite. C has AoE 3-4 (since this effect will go on *each* square where B lands it would hit 15-24 squares), for sprite, use something orangish or yellow. D would be some sort of black smoke effect.

This post in nutshell: use #nextspells to stack graphical effects. It will look epic, trust me.

*it might be flightsprite, not 100% sure. You can find the explsprite numbers from the mapped spell flightsprites & explsprites charts, just search for "massive".