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.