Brains & Brawn - Limitless Strength in Numbers

Welcome to the latest in my ongoing webseries "SiN > U" in which I go around spamming allies and Strength in Numbers into things and make a better world.

Previously on "SiN > U": Star-Lord and Black Panther.

This time it's Hulk's turn, and while the idea of the 4-card handed Hulk being a card-drawing and big effect-slamming type of guy may not immediately make sense I've found that he actually fits really well with it, and in ways I didn't necessarily expect.

1) Burst economy. I think burst economy is an important part of a Strength in Numbers deck, it both helps you play your allies out a turn or two quicker, and it also gives you more firepower to throw from your big Strength in Numbers draws. Burst economy was a big part of why it works in Black Panther and Star-Lord, and Hulk gets Limitless Strength for the same sort of thing.

2) Lots of allies. Hulk's not great at thwarting so having a lot of allies around helps him out on that front but I've also found that it makes it possible to spend some time as Bruce Banner when you need to. It's not a mode I've slipped into very often but there has been games where I needed to stand down into Alter-Ego for a while to recover health or draw more cards and having allies to carry the fight for you while that happens is naturally good for Hulk.

3) Lots of Health. This is the one that I didn't spot but it's become very important and useful. In Black Panther and Star-Lord your allies are pretty disposable and you routinely throw them infront of incoming attacks to buy more time. As a result even though I'm playing Strength in Numbers and things like Triskelion those decks don't often max out the bodies on the board for very long. Hulk's higher health pool means he can soak up a couple of extra attacks and that means your allies stick around much longer. I'm pretty regularly getting the full 4, 5 or even 6 bodies onto the table at once, which means bigger Strength in Numbers and bigger potential turns.

4) The Big Finish. Star-Lord has Blaze of Glory and Sliding Shot, Black Panther has Wakanda Forever Forever Forever, and Hulk has Hulk Smash. That's your endgame goal here - get to a position where you can Strength in Numbers into a big damage turn and finish the villain with a flurry of damage. I've also included Avengers Assemble as an extra kicker for this and I've had turns where I played Strength in Numbers to draw 5 cards then played both Avengers Assemble and Hulk Smash to punch out with ~30 damage. I've also added Goliath to the allies mix now so the potential for a big damage turn is even higher if you get Goliath to attack twice with Avengers Assemble.

eg. Draw 4 with Strength in Numbers /// Hulk (3) /// Avengers Assemble, Hulk Smash /// Hulk (14) + Hawkeye (3) + US Agent (2) + Stinger (2) + Goliath (6) = 31 damage.

The rest of the deck (not that there's much space left) supports this, with Call for Aid to find good Avengers better than playing bad Avengers. One card I'd really like to shout out for is Team Training - because you get so many allies in play just getting one extra activation from them all can be great value on it's own, but bear in mind that if you want to double tap your whole team with Avengers Assemble you'll need them to have enough health not to die to the first consequential damage. Team Training helps a lot with that.

I've not played Hulk a ton but this is the first Hulk deck that felt like it was genuinely a good deck and not just trying to keep Hulk from embaressing himself while his teammates did a lot of the work for him. I've been running Hulk against some serious villains alongside Spider-Woman and Iron Man and he's often been the star of the show... and it's all down to Strength in Numbers (again). Is there anything that card can't do?