19bonza19 · 3
**PUNY VILLAIN WANT TO SCHEME? NO. VILLAIN HIT HULK INSTEAD. VILLAIN REGRET. **
Little green men on internet say Hulk bad hero. Hulk not bad. Hulk MISUNDERSTOOD. Hulk wear green. Green is Protection color. Hulk finally home.
WHAT DECK DO
HULK STAND STILL. Hulk not hold cards good. Puny four-card hand. So Hulk put things ON TABLE instead. Armored Vest. Dauntless. Immovable Object. Three Indomitable. Indomitable mean Hulk defend, then Hulk ready, then Hulk defend AGAIN. Villain punch Hulk. Minion punch Hulk. Everyone punch Hulk. Nobody hurt Hulk. Hulk have MANY hit points. Honorary Avenger give more. Hulk basically wall. Green wall.
HULK SET TRAP. Three Ready for a Fight. Trap sit on table. Hulk turn into puny Banner. Banner have big brain, big hand, nice Laboratory, take nap, feel better. Villain see puny Banner. Villain think "easy scheme time." WRONG. Trap go SNAP. Banner turn into Hulk. Scheme never happen. Villain must punch Hulk instead. Punching Hulk is BAD PLAN. See above. Also, friend turn into puny form too? Villain try scheme on friend? Hulk can take that hit TOO. Hulk good teammate. Best teammate.
VILLAIN PUNCH HULK, VILLAIN GET HURT. Electrostatic Armor zap. Immovable Object make villain bounce. Desperate Defense make Hulk defend HUGE, then Hulk ready AGAIN. Unflappable give Hulk card for taking no damage. Hulk take no damage A LOT. Hard to Ignore, Hulk have THREE, make threat go away every time Hulk defend. Side Scheme too annoying to smash? Containment Strategy. Side Scheme go bye-bye. Hulk not good at thinking about schemes. Hulk defend, schemes fix themselves. Hulk call that EFFICIENCY.
THEN HULK SMASH. Hulk not wait for villain to make Hulk angry. Hulk already angry. Hulk Smash. Crushing Blow. Thunderclap. And Unstoppable Force to go round 2. Sub-Orbital Leap, Hulk JUMP, is like flying but angrier. Deft Focus make smashing CHEAPER. Limitless Strength pay for smashing. Villain phase: Hulk wall. Hulk turn: Hulk WRECKING BALL.
HULK SIMPLE PLAN. Their turn: nothing happen to Hulk, bad things happen to them. Hulk turn: SMASH. Repeat until villain stop moving. Is not complicated. Complicated is for Banner.
HULK STRONGEST DEFENDER THERE IS.
How to Play (Step Aside Big Guy, its Banner's Turn)
What this deck is
A Protection Hulk that solves his two classic problems, tiny hand size and poor staying power, by living on the board instead of in his hand. Hulk can't hold cards, so the deck leans on upgrades that stick to the table and keep working every round. The plan splits cleanly in two: the villain phase is for tanking and passive value, and your turn is for demolition using Hulk's own smash events at a discount.
Opening hand and mulligan
Priority targets: Indomitable, Ready for a Fight, and Deft Focus. Indomitable is the defensive engine that lets Hulk consistently stop the villain's attack on himself, and ideally cover a teammate too. At three copies you'll usually see one early. Deft Focus discounts your entire smash suite, which matters enormously on a four-card hand; getting one down early is worth a whole turn. Armored Vest, Dauntless, and Hard to Ignore are strong secondary keeps. Since Hulk dumps his hand anyway, there's little cost to playing upgrades greedily. Get everything sticky onto the table as fast as possible.
The defensive core (villain phase)
Once assembled, your villain phase runs itself. Defend with Hulk, with Armored Vest and Synch keeping DEF high. Use Indomitable to ready and defend again if a second attack comes. Hold Desperate Defense for the hit that matters, because a clean block readies you yet again. Every defended attack triggers the passive stack: Electrostatic Armor, Immovable Object and Dauntless punish the attacker, Unflappable draws you a card on zero-damage defenses (which should be most defenses with high def and Desperate Defense), and Hard to Ignore chips at threat. With three copies of Hard to Ignore, defending is your thwarting, which is exactly the patch Hulk's terrible THW stat needs. Keep your hit points high: Dauntless cares about them, and Honorary Avenger plus Immovable Object and your huge base pool means you can also afford to eat a hit deliberately. Use Preemptive Strike when a clean block isn't available.
The Banner loop (Ready for a Fight)
Ready for a Fight is a trap, not a motor. Play it to the board and hold it. Flip down to Banner for the bigger hand, the recovery, and Banner's Laboratory, and end your turn there without fear. When the villain moves to scheme at puny Banner, spring the trap: discard Ready for a Fight, flip to hero form, and the scheme is cancelled entirely. No threat lands. Instead the villain attacks a fully armored Hulk and walks straight into your punish stack.
Three notes on managing it.
First, each copy discards itself when used, so three copies means three charges per pass through the deck. Don't end a turn in Banner unless a charge is on the table and you're confident you can eat the redirected attack.
Second, don't spring charges before your armor is assembled; early on, the attack can hurt more than the scheme would have.
Third, the trigger reads "when an enemy would scheme," so in multiplayer you can also catch schemes aimed at teammates during their alter-ego turns, rerouting them into attacks against you. Your charges can protect the whole table's flip-downs, not just your own.
Your turn: smash economics
Sequencing matters because of the flip. Do your hero-form business first: play smash events (Hulk Smash, Crushing Blow, Thunderclap, and Unstoppable Force to ready up), discounted by Deft Focus and paid for by Limitless Strength and Strength. The resource base is deliberately heavy on physical to feed Hulk's kit. Sub-Orbital Leap is your Hero Thwart and reset valve. Then flip to Banner with whatever's left.
Containment Strategy is your answer to side scheme's you'd rather not spend events on: attach it, ignore them, and stay focused on defending the villain, it'll handle itself. Synch, your lone ally, is a flex piece. His +1 is often the exact margin for a zero-damage defense, or he's a spare block on rounds when Indomitable is already spent.
The rhythm
Turns 1 to 3: dump upgrades, defend conservatively, and get Indomitable plus one Ready for a Fight down. Mid-game: run the loop. Banner turns refill your hand and heal you, sprung traps convert schemes into free retaliation, and Hard to Ignore quietly holds the main scheme in check. Late game: with Deft Focus out and the villain unable to hurt you, shift resources from defense into a steady drumbeat of smash events. This deck has no nuke turn; it wins by being unkillable while landing 6 to 10 damage a round between smashes and retaliation. It's at its best in multiplayer, where teammates cover the thwarting beyond what Hard to Ignore provides and your traps protect everyone's alter-ego turns.
No pain, no gain. Get out there and smash.
