Hulk Smash

Hulk is undoubtedly one of, if not the, "weakest" heroes in the game. But as this game is a collaborative game, I think that it's this inherent imbalance in the game that makes it fun to try out different heroes and different decks. As such, Hulk is a hero I keep returning to, thinking that there must be some way to make him work - by which I mean to make him both playable, and fun to play.

I think it's the second half of that last sentence that in many ways seems the hardest. I've tried a few different decks with him now and, IMO, they boil down to the following:

1. Play a very generic Leadership deck where the allies do a mix of the thwarting that Hulk struggles with, and providing hulk with the card draw he needs to actually do something useful with his cards. It works, but it's so generic a deck that you could swap in any hero and it would work just as well, probably better. Further, it doesn't work for me thematically. I don't read many comics, so it's probably my limited understanding, but Hulk as a team leader just doesn't seem right to me.

2. Use Justice to shore up his main weakness. Having some more ready access to thwarting does help out in solo, and Concussive Blow, at least, does feel quite hulk-like. It's okay. It needs a lot of things to fall into place to be considered "good", and some of it feels quite like Hulk, but other things (Skilled Investigator and Under Surveillance, for example) feel less like Hulk.

3. Protection is a natural fit for Hulk, making good use of his high defence, but by the time you've paid for a Desperate Defense or similar card, you've not got much left to actually play down in the hero phase. Plus, if you're exhausted because you've defended and not had the card available to stand back up again, you can't make use of Hulk Smash, which is probably the most hulk-like card in his deck. This one I think doesn't actually "work", even in multiplayer. You are so often left playing suboptimal hands where you're defensive play leaves you with a remaining hand of cards that you can't actually play.

So that all brings me to look more closely at Aggression. There are a lot of obvious synergies between Hulk and aggression. Some of them are traps. There are some other more subtle synergies, too...

1. Jarnbjorn: Card wastage is a massive problem for Hulk. If I have a hand of 4 cards and all I do is play one of my big 3 cost events, great, but if I play a 1 or 2 cost event, I'm likely left with one or two spare cards that are just going to go straight into my discard pile. In another deck, if they were worth playing I can just leave then for next turn, but this option is denied to Hulk. This is where Jarnbjorn comes in as a cornerstone of the deck. As long as you're attacking, you can throw away unwanted (or perhaps more accurately, unplayable) cards for extra damage. A key to making Hulk more efficient.

2. The economy dilemma: Trying to get the most out of a 4 card hand can be tricky. I've had so many turns where I've had a hand full of resources without a viable card to spend them on that I've grown wary of overstocking with the standard set of three basic resource cards. Energy and Genius can't even be thrown away on a Jarnbjorn and leave you short for those cards that require you to spend all . Further if you end up with too many resource generating cards in hand at the same time, you're likely only to be able to play one of them, with the rest being ditched, and with him restricted to 4 cards a turn, those cards don't cycle back round quite so readily. It's also a tempo hit getting these out in the first place, as that's likely the only thing you're doing that round. Then once you've got one or two such cards in play, you start to find that you're using them to play cards, but then just leaving yourself with other unplayable cards left in hand. Whilst it might seem obvious to more resources and resource generating cards into the deck to make up for the 4 card hand size, with experience this is a trap.

3. Making Martial Prowess Work: Martial Prowess is a great card for Aggression, but it doesn't synergise as naturally with Hulk as you might expect. Neither Hulk Smash, Thunderclap nor Unstoppable Force are attack actions, and so can't be paid for with Martial Prowess. Hence the deck needs as many attack events as possible. This is not actually a bad idea, as it happens, as those events are also often resources for Jarnbjorn, and once you're going you can pretty reliably churn out a couple of them a turn.

Hence you get this deck: lots of events, heavy on the and light on expensive set-up. I've been experimenting playing it and it has some weaknesses into Toughness or decks that cause Stun, but otherwise it's pretty nice, and feels very like you're hulk tearing it up and smashing everything that gets in your way.