Help please choosing AMP wattage for a newbe

FWIW, I'm in the Audiofeil, Stanwal, Phaelon camp: choose your speakers first.

The same argument can be used in reverse: how do you tell in advance how a component(s) will react with speakers that haven't been tried with it/them?
The way I hear it, speakers seem vastly more colored than most other components, and perhaps even more importantly speakers react more differently in different rooms or with different placement, with less user control, more so than most other components.
The old cliche' of "gabage in, garbage out" doesn't hold water with me. It doesn't matter at what stage the signal is contaminated, it's still contamintated. Just as a speaker can't make a poor input signal better, a "better" sources benefit can be negated going through poor speakers. The weakest link will cause problems regardless where it is. IMHO, it's just more likely that deviations from accuracy are more likely to occur at the speaker end, and especially in the speaker/room interface. If we accept that speakers and the speaker/room interface is more colored than other components, it makes sense (at least to me) to; 1. list the least colored speakers in ones budget, that will fit, and can be appropriately placed in the given room planned for use, and 2. of those, choose the ones whose "palatte" of colorizations is least objectionable/most acceptable to you, then 3. work back from there.