HULK Hulk Hulk Hulk Hulk… Goose!

This is a most unusual location from which to be updating the VS Ruminations – at a yacht club overlooking the docks, a couple of hours from the urban cacophony that is Manila.  I’m here as a speaker for a franchisee’s conference to educate the franchisee guests on the nuances and practicalities of the franchise agreement, which I suspect 75% don’t actually read before signing.  This conference is a good first step towards enlightening them, but we’re looking into providing a crash course on the franchise agreement periodically for all new franchisees to attend before they actually sign the damned contract.

Anyway, over at the Lost Hemisphere, they’ve announced that the MEV previews will be starting soon, so the bloggers had better get cracking once again, which means I’d better update this site with more frequency.  Part of the hassle, aside from my recently punishing work schedule, is looking for appropriate pictures and plastering them on the site to give them more visual appeal.  The Deranged Bear has successfully ignored this concern of mine, kudos to him, but I find myself occasionally needing to throw a graphic file in the mix every so often.

Gah.  Next time, maybe.

Anyway, today’s post highlights a deck concept that I threw together last week, after playing the heck out of Hulk Warbound, noting that, much like Doom, the team affiliation is almost insignificant since the best cards for the deck key off the Hulk as a character anyway.  I thought, then, why not take all those Hulk-stamped effects and toss them into another team that can support Hulk as a major character element?  A team like… Marvel Defenders?

Admittedly, Hulk doesn’t come into play for the Defenders until turn 5, so this is not a quick-win deck. But once Hulk is recruited, his extensive Defender support base gives him the rage that he needs to decimate the opponent’s field.

HULK DEFEND!!!!

Characters

2 Elloe Kaifi 1-drop W

2 Wong 1-drop D

4 Rick Jones 2-drop W

3 Tanya Belinskya 2-drop D

2 Archangel 3-drop W

4 Hellcat 3-drop W

1 Sam Parrington 4-drop W

2 Nova 4-drop D

2 Brood 4-drop W

4 Hulk 5-drop D

2 Hulk 6-drop W

1 Quasar 6-drop D

2 Hulk 7-drop D

1 Hercules 7-drop W

Non-Characters

4 Secret Defenders

1 World War Hulk

3 Righteous Anger

3 One-Man Rampage

4 Hulk Smash!

4 Savage Beatdown

2 The B-Team

4 Warbound to the End

3 The Great Arena

Again, this is a rough draft based on cards that I have and the general concept. I’m sure you professional deckbuilders out there can really jack up the power level of this deck.

The fundamental idea is to get the ever-growing 5-drop Hulk to attack as many times as possible on turn 5, clearing your opponent’s board while at the same time hopefully inflicting a ton of damage via breakthrough. This isn’t too hard to do in theory, between Sam Parrington, One-Man Rampage and Righteous Anger, and if Hulk can attack even three times in a single turn, he’ll be a hefty 12/12 bruiser, and that’s not even taking into account the various bonuses that can be granted to the Hulk. Tanya hands out those +4 ATKs, Elloe is good for a +1/+1, Hellcat grants a +2/+2, and Quasar provides a whopping +4/+4 to an attacking character for the turn. Ideally, Hellcat and Tanya will still be around on turn 5 with an Elloe removed from the game for a starting 16/12 5-drop Hulk that becomes a 17/13 monster on his first attack, and grows angrier with each subsequent exhaustion. If you’ve got evens, Quasar steps in to boost Hulk into a 21/17 attacker. In a pinch, 6-drop Warbound Hulk is there to consume the 5-drop (and likely be bigger starting out).

The 7-drop Defenders Hulk is there as a finisher just in case the 5 and 6-drop Hulks don’t close out the game, and has the added bonus of being able to re-ready itself for an extra attack’s worth of punishment.

The assortment of cards is something of a jumble and may not be the best selection, but the concept is there for the most part, and it’s finally a Hulk deck that isn’t Warbound.