Hercules - Lonely Labors

"I bring you the gift-- of battle!" ~ Hercules

Player Count/Type : 1-4p / Johnny
Power Level: High
Complexity: Med
Key Cards: In Harm's Way, The Best Offense...

"This deck packs an arsenal of readies for any occasion and easily clears labors before crushing the villain"~D.M.Tip

Lonely Prince

Hey y'all! This is the second Hercules deck I've played and it didn't disappoint. There is nothing novel here about the included 'solo/Ronin' suite of cards, but they are absolutely savage with Hercules, especially when combined with other readies and Taunt. Let's get to it.

Stand and Fight

The overall idea here is to have flexible tools to deal with each of the labors and develop a board state that can sweep the villain. The steps are quite simple:

1. Build up your DEF stat with the included upgrades. You're not doing this really protect yourself or the team, but to power The Best Offense... and In Harm's Way.
2. Make tempo plays to stay in the game. More on this below.
3. Work on completing the labors at hand.

Ready to Work & Keeping Tempo

No matter what labor comes up, you've got insane flexibility to deal with them. Protection is particularly adept at readying, and that only gets stronger with Army of One in the mix. Not including the readies from completing labors, you've got 11 ways to stand back up. On top of this, you can use a basic activation to exhaust, and then use Stand Alone to get ready with Taunt.

Normally, readies are only good for Herc to go on the offense, or clear his Embody Pathos labor that has Assault. This changes with The Best Offense..., which lets you weaponize your increased DEF value to keep threat low. In Harm's Way is also an incredible tempo card that feeds off of your stacked DEF, which lets you easily clear minions or chip at the boss while removing threat.

A Friend for a Time

One of the biggest issues you might notice is that we need Amadeus Cho to clear Protect Humanity. This, essentially, breaks the pure efficiency of Army of One and In Harm's Way. It also shuts off Ronin and Stand Alone, but these are not as important.

The work around for this issue is quite simple. Just use these inefficient cards as resources to make other plays while clearing Protect Humanity. You might get stuck with a handful of them, but odds are you'll run into at least one Taunt to help you clear it quickly. Amadeus Cho also gets you an extra card which helps you play inefficient cards if you really need the tempo, or to draw into something else.

How you handle it is completely up to you, but shifting focus on something else is easy to do in this deck. How you shift focus may change depending on when Protect Humanity comes out. If it's first, you don't have a high DEF to benefit from In Harm's Way and you aren't going to benefit from The Best Offense... yet. Try to get at least one Taunt to clear it in two turns and use the extra cards to build out your board state.

Once it's cleared, Cho needs to kick rocks so that you can work alone again. The quickest way is to have him step in front of the next villain attack.

Days of Labor

The other labors are more straightforward. If you have to face the Lernean Hydra, you've gone 16 non-upgrade resources plus Olympus and Quincarrier to stop it from healing.

Alternatively, if you have built out your DEF upgrades, The Best Offense... and In Harm's Way can help you punch straight through this foe or easily clear Embody Pathos.

Job's Done

Once your labors are clear, you are set to pummel the villain. Your readies will let you just slam them over and over until they yield to your overwhelming power. If you get The Best Offense... out with a handful of readies, that'll be your path to victory. If not, you can still deliver The Gift of Battle and stay In Harm's Way until the end.

I've had a ton of fun with this deck and can't wait to get him on the battlefield again. If you haven't gone solo with the Prince of Power yet, I highly recommend it! If you like it or give it a try, let me know in the comments below.

~Peace!