Hulk Smash, Italian-Style

When MEV came out, I knew right away that the 1 drop Mystique would be a tremendous boon to Lost City-based decks, but I didn't realize until fairly recently just how good it was in a wide variety of legend-type decks. We put it in our Wolverine deck long ago, but I failed to see the possibilities for Spidey Stall and Hulk decks until my friends in Italy showed me the light. I had always built Hulk as a one-man-against-the-world type of deck, much like X-Statix/Villains, but this build is way better. When it gets even average draws and has its preferred odd initiative, it is very difficult to beat.

Characters - 32 

[1 - 8]
4x Mastermind Excello, Amadeus Cho (Warbound)
4x Mystique, Raven (Brotherhood)
[2 - 4]
4x Miek, The Unhived (Warbound)
[3 - 9]
4x Archangel, Champion (Warbound, X-Men)
1x Hulk, Exile (Warbound)
4x Vision, Earth-10101 (Weapon X, Avengers)
[4 - 5]
4x The Captain, Can't Remember His Real Name (Nextwave)
1x Hulk, Green Scar (Warbound)
[5 - 3]
2x Hulk, Gladiator (Warbound)
1x Hulk, Grumpy Green Goliath (Marvel Defenders)
[6 - 2]
1x Hulk, The Green King (Warbound)
1x Hulk, Earth-873 (Weapon X)
[7 - 1]
1x Hulk, Sakaar'Son (Warbound) 

Plot Twists - 21 

[2 - 4]
4x We Can Rebuild Him
[3 - 8]
4x Hulk Smash!
4x Enemy of My Enemy
[4 - 9]
4x Righteous Anger
3x Pathetic Attempt
2x Heroes of Two Worlds 

Locations - 7 

[2 - 4]
4x Avalon Space Station
[4 - 3]
3x The Great Arena

The preferred play on turn 1 is either Mastermind Excello or Vision with a popped shift counter, because you want to start drawing right away. Mulligan for one or the other. If you have both, but no Hulk or Mystique you can discard for Excello, play Vision. This deck wins as a result of having tremendous card advantage, so you need to draw as many cards as you can on turns 1-4/5 to set up the kill on your turn 5/6 initiative.

Turn 2 can be Miek, or Mastermind Excello and a Vision, or two Excellos, or two Visions. The latter play is easier to pull off if you have Avalon Space Station in your row. Miek is hugely important to the deck, but drawing is more so, so Miek is actually the least desirable play here if you have a choice. You can wait on him until 3.

On turn 3, the ideal play will depend entirely on what you have in hand and what you've played before. If you didn't play Miek on 2, you need to play him now. Miek+Vision or Miek+Mastermind Excello are both very good plays on 3. The 3 drop Hulk is a decent play only if you don't have a better one. On turns 1-3, you have two main priorities: drawing as many cards as possible, and recruiting Miek, who will allow you to take away your opponent's ability to reinforce attacks on your kill turn. Note that if Miek gets stunned here, you don't need to remove him from play right away, as long as you are sure he will get stunned again on turn 4, which should usually be the case. Also, you should never, ever recruit Archangel on this or any other turn. Think of him as a plot twist, not a character card

Your best play on turn 4 is almost always The Captain. Give him the name Hulk on 4, and he will net you an extra card. Pretty much the only time you would want to recruit the 4 drop Hulk instead is if you have The Great Arena, and you need to exhaust the opposing 4 drop in order to survive to turn 5. That has to be done in the build phase, when The Captain does not yet have the name Hulk.

Turn 5 can be either of the two 5 drop Hulks, assuming that you recruited The Captain on turn 4. If you played Hulk on that turn, then you will need to recruit Gladiator, and use his boost effect to stun the opposing 4 drop by KO'ing your own 4. This assumes that your opponent has his 3, 4 and 5 drops all still available. This will usually be the case, since you should rarely recruit a 3 drop on turn 3. In any case, it is important to have something smaller than an opposing 5 drop to attack first on a turn 5 init, because you need to get in one attack without being stunned back. By the way, a really good play on 5, if you are stuck on evens, is to recruit Gladiator and stun their 4, then sub him out for Grumpy and exhaust him for Great Arena. Now you have a 10/10. Next turn he will be an 11/11 on his first attack, and 12/12 on his second.

Let's assume, though, that you are on odds and that your opponent entered the turn with at least their 3 and 4 drops remaining, while you had only The Captain. You recruited Gladiator and KO'ed The Captain to stun their 4 drop, then they recruited a 5 drop. Your plan to win here should be to swing Hulk into their 3 drop with a boatload of pumps, some of which are for the turn, then ready him with Righteous Anger and make a second attack into their 5 drop. With even a modest amount of pumping power and some other key cards, Hulk is going to be huge. Suppose you have 1 Hulk Smash, 1 Archangel, 1 Enemy, 1 Mystique, 1 Righteous Anger, and Avalon in your row. Miek has taken away reinforcement. After declaring an attack into their 3 drop, use Enemy to get another Archangel. Play Hulk Smash and the two copies of Archangel, then discard Mystique for Avalon to get them back. Hulk now has 10+8+3+3+3+3=30 ATK for this attack. After it concludes, use Righteous Anger to stun and ready him. He still has 22 ATK to use going into their 5 drop, and that should be more than enough for game. What I just described was a rather sub-par hand, by the way. Normally you will have more ammo than that.

Assuming that you got stuck on evens and are trying to win on 6, the plan would be similar. Use Great Arena with your 5 drop to exhaust their 5 and do some burn, then recruit Green King with boost to make him an 18/18. You would want the Weapon X Hulk only if you were defending on 6 and needed to limit damage.

In a match you are going to win, you should never make it to turn 7. Nevertheless, you can play the 7 drop Hulk if you get here and it is your init, but if you played the Weapon X Hulk on 6 you might want to play Green King with boost instead, since he will be bigger, 19/19 instead of  17/17. If you are looking for somewhere to cut to make room for more pumps, such as Trouble With Dinosaurs, or Omnipotence or some other tech card, I'd probably start with the 7 drop and 3 drop Hulks.

I've discussed most of the plot twists and locations in the deck already. Obviously, We Can Rebuild Him is mainly for use with Vision in order to draw cards, but you can also use it with the Weapon X Hulk on 6 to bring him out for 5 resource points, then use the 6th on Excello or Vision. Heroes of Two Worlds is the other tutor besides Enemy. It can be used to fetch Archangel, The Captain, Hulk, or Mystique (note that you can name a different character and still use it to get Mystique). The Pathetic Attempts are mainly for countering opposing effects targeting Hulk, particularly anything that might stun or exhaust him, or KO him while stunned.

I also want to point out how versatile Avalon is in this deck. Its best use is on your kill turn, allowing you to fetch and replay spent copies of Archangel, and if you have two copies of Avalon in your row on that turn, even better. But it is also useful on earlier turns for creating card advantage, and for getting back used copies of Vision and Excello so you can replay them. If you have an Avalon in your row and a Mystique in hand, use them whenever possible to create 2-for-1's. Those extra character cards might come in handy later as discards for Enemy or Heroes or We Can Rebuild Him.

If you are one of those people, like me, who always played a straight Warbound build of Hulk back in the day, I strongly urge you to give this version a try. The tremendous draw power of this build makes it both more consistent and more powerful than anything else I've tried. And if you like it, you can join me in toasting my Italian friends yet again. There's no Charlize Theron in this Italian Job, but it's a winner nonetheless.

Trinity (aka Money.dec)

If you had to pick one Vs. set to be woefully underprinted, there are some good choices. MSM and DSM spring immediately to mind, with DLS hot on their heels. But no, UDE printed plenty of those sets. Instead, DC Legends is the one that they really shortchanged, as they printed only enough cards to fill all of their advanced orders from dealers and nothing more. Sadly, that means that arguably the best DC set is filled with expensive and hard-to-find cards, and that's not a recent development. Even when it was the current set that was the case. And so it was that the Gotham/JLA Trinity deck became known as Money.dec. How much money, you ask? I just priced the rares on the list below on coolstuff, and came up with a grand total of $1,100. Ouch! Custom proxies anyone?

Characters - 32 

[1 - 4]
4x Alfred Pennyworth, Faithful Friend (Gotham)
[2 - 7]
4x Huntress, Vicious Vigilante (Gotham)
3x Roy Harper <> Red Arrow, Coming of Age (JLA)
[3 - 6]
4x Batman, Founding Member (JLA, Gotham)
2x Barbara Gordon <> Oracle, Hacker Extraordinaire (Gotham)
[4 - 5]
4x Wonder Woman, Ambassador of Peace (JLA)
1x Aquaman, Founding Member (JLA)
[5 - 4]
4x Superman, Metropolis Marvel (JLA)
[6 - 3]
2x Batman, Cape and Cowl (Gotham)
1x Aquaman, Lord of Atlantis (JLA)
[7 - 2]
1x Aquaman, King of the Seven Seas (JLA)
1x Wonder Woman, Founding Member (JLA)
[8 - 1]
1x Martian Manhunter, The Last Martian (JLA)

Plot Twists - 28 

[1 - 6]
4x Mightiest Heroes
2x Bat-Signal
[3 - 14]
4x At Their Finest
4x The Hook-Up, Team-Up
2x Bat Got Your Tongue
2x At Your Service
2x Brains and Brawn
[4 - 5]
4x Savage Beatdown
1x From the Darkness
[5 - 3]
3x Indestructible

There are lots of ways to build this deck, and back in the day I tried many of them. For mostly financial reasons, the World's Finest (Gotham/Team Superman) build with no Wonder Woman got more run back in the day than the Gotham/JLA Trinity version, but if you have the cards (or the proxies), Trinity is definitely the way to go. Of course, if you have the cards, you probably have your own pet build already, but pretend for now that you don't...

Alfred does not work quite as well in the Trinity version as in the World's Finest build, which generally played Maggie Sawyer on 2. That deck could sometimes play Alfred once on 1 and again on 3 with a 2 drop, netting you two plot twists. Here you get his effect only if you play Alfred on 1 and Huntress on 2, or underdrop him on 2 and activate him on 3. The effect is so good, though, that I think he is worth playing. If you are trying to find room for other plot twists, however, it is reasonable to play fewer copies or drop him entirely.

Huntress is the preferred play on 2 if you have Alfred or Bat-Signal. Otherwise Roy Harper is probably better, just because of his stats. The main problem with this deck is that you can take a lot of damage on turns 1-3, and he helps with that, as does playing Huntress visible. I will sometimes play her visible on 2 and then sub in a hidden copy on a later turn for more attacking power.

On turn 3 you want Batman if at all possible, for several reasons. First of all, you want his effect and his ability to attack, and secondly you want to be able to use the plot twists that require him to be on the field. Ideally you want to recruit him on 3 and sub Barbara in on 6, then recruit the 6 drop Batman. You miss all the card advantage she creates for you that way, but it's just hard to win if you play her on 3, because you usually don't want to attack with her.

Turn 4 should always be Wonder Woman if you have a choice. Aquaman is a good card, but Diana is better. This deck generally wins by messing with your opponent, negating his effects and foiling his attacks. Wonder Woman can be a key player in that strategy, whereas Aquaman cannot. I have also played Batman, Twilight Vigilante as the alternate 4 in that slot. I don't have him here because he is fairly worthless if you played Batman on 3, but he is better if you didn't.

On 5 you simply must recruit Superman, because you will almost certainly lose if you miss him. He has great synergy with Batman thanks to Brains and Brawn and At Their Finest, and a strong effect. But what makes him so good in this deck is Indestructible. I generally take evens if I can, hoping to play Superman and Indestructible on 5, and recover him with Brains and Brawn in the event he gets stunned. The idea is to have your entire field (3-5) going into a turn 6 initiative, sub in Barbara, recruit Batman, play At Their Finest, and then swing for game with Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and Barbara. But as long as you have Indestructible, you should be OK on odd initiatives as well.

As I said, turn 6 should normally be Batman, subbing in Barbara if you still have your 3 drop. But if you don't have her, you can also play Aquaman and get back a character card and a used plot twist--maybe a Savage or At Their Finest, for example. I rarely play anything other than Batman, but I can imagine cases where Aquaman is the stronger play.

Since I rarely play Aquaman on 6, and sometimes have my 4 drop on 7, I usually play Aquaman on 7. Depending on how you form and how big your field is, he can get back one-three used cards for you. That effect can win you the game if you are on odds and he is getting back some used attack pumps for you. But if there's nothing but characters and tutors in your pile, and you don't have your 4 drop, Wonder Woman is the stronger play. Some people play the 7 drop Superman here, but I almost always have my 5 drop on turn 7 because of Indestructible and Brains and Brawn.

Given that all decks are effectively Golden Age now, I should probably ditch the 8 drop for another plot twist, possibly a fourth copy of Indestructible. It would also be nice to find room for a couple copies of Lasso of Truth, for that matter. Anyway, Martian Manhunter was a decent 8 drop when this was a Modern Age deck in a metagame that wasn't especially fast. He's really only helpful if you are on odds and failed to win on 7. Take your damage on your opponent's swing, then recover and ready your 7 drop and swing back with your 7 and 8. In practice, though, the game is normally decided before 8 or you are playing against a deck with a better end game that is going to beat you anyway.

This deck has terrific tutoring, thanks to Alfred and a trio of plot twists. Mightiest Heroes can normally get you all your drops from turn 3 on. If you don't have Barbara or The Hook-Up, though, you need to play it before you draw. Bat-Signal can do the same thing once you are teamed up. The exhaust is normally not a problem. The other tutor is At Your Service. It can only get you your 3 and 6 drops, but it can also get you At Their Finest, Brains and Brawn, and From the Darkness. Given a choice, save it for finding plot twists rather than characters.

In some ways the most important plot twist in the deck is The Hook-Up. You want to be teamed up if at all possible, but beyond that you want the card cycling that you get from it. Once it is on the field, you will see three new cards a turn rather than two, four if you have two copies of it out, and five if you have Barbara. That gives you a huge advantage over most other decks, and it's one of the main reasons the deck is as good as it is.

Negation is another strength of the deck, thanks to Batman and Wonder Woman and another trio of plot twists. From the Darkness is objectively a better card than Bat Got Your Tongue, but you have to have a ready Batman to play it. That's the main reason why I play more copies of BGYT. The other is that I can search for From the Darkness with At Your Service. The other "negation" card here is Indestructible, which essentially negates one key attack by your opponent. Aside from The Hook-Up, it's the best plot twist in the deck. I would play four copies, but it is generally only good on a single turn (5 or 6), making the second copy you draw a dead card. On the other hand, you always want one on that turn. Three copies is the sweet spot for me, but I understand the argument for four.

The remaining plot twists are Brains and Brawn and the two attack pumps, Savage Beatdown and At Their Finest. Brains and Brawn is a terrific card, both because it can be used with either Batman or Superman, and because it can be tutored with At Your Service. Imagine a turn 5 in which your opponent swings at your front row Superman with his 5 drop, only to be blocked with Indestructible. Now he swings in with his four drop and a pump. You reinforce and take 5. He thinks he is going to go into your 4 drop with his 3, but you recover Superman with Brains and Brawn, and now he has no play, or he has to go into Superman for a third time. If he can't, you swing back with Batman and a Savage to stun their 5, then head into 6 with huge board advantage. On 6 you play At Their Finest, turning your 5 into a 6, and your 6 into a 7, magnifying the effect.

This is not a great Golden Age deck, to be perfectly honest. When I play this deck now, against my son, I play it only against tier 2 and tier 3 type decks, because it simply won't hold up either against top tier aggro decks like Brotherhood Reservist or Migga City, or against really good control decks like Spidey Stall, Crisis Doom or X-Mental. But if you have the cards or don't mind playing with proxies (maybe even custom proxies, like the ones shown here), it is a really fun deck to play, with the added benefit of having three huge DC legends you can trot out onto the field. Winning with the Trinity characters is somehow always more satisfying than winning with, say, Ahmed Samsarra or Roy Harper.