Two Fist-Fighters

I was stunned when I saw @jiistme's Hulk leadership deck https://marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/11145/hulk-adam-warlock-united-we-stand-1.0. It uses Adam Warlock with Hulk in a way which seems completely obvious now, but no-one seemed to have published a deck like that before. I don't have a lot of experience with Hulk, but I immediately wanted to try something similar.

With a constant supply of , Adam Warlock can thwart for 4 every turn. So the central deck concept is just to get Hulk and Adam working together, and feed them as much as possible: preferably enough to get off Hulk Smash and Adam's response in the same turn. @jiistme's deck is for multiplayer and I am pretty much solo-only so I wanted to make some changes for true solo play. I introduced Strength In Numbers and Assess the Situation to get more card draw, and added a range of allies, keeping the focus on resources (except for Stinger, who can't be resisted in a SiN deck).

Against weaker villains like Drang, this deck works well enough as a rush deck. With a couple of allies out and Hulk Smash, you can clear out a complete villain stage in a single turn. Against more powerful villains like Kang (The Conqueror) there's more of a build strategy. The aim then is to take as much damage as possible on Hulk so that you can build out a full bench of allies. That will mean switching to alter-ego more often. Banner's Laboratory becomes a key card because each time you go to alter-ego it increases your recovery, and provides an extra resource.

Falcon and Spider-Man provide useful extra thwarting until Adam Warlock comes out. He is the real key to the deck because he can reliably remove a side scheme and keep the villain's scheming in check. That allows you to get into Bruce Banner form to get the benefit of the laboratory, extra card and experimental research which makes building up your allies and upgrades possible. Given there's so much of it in the deck, it will usually be possible to ensure that the card you discard is to get the full 4 threat removed.

United We Stand is intended to keep your allies in play as long as possible. In addition to thwarting, they offer more damage options against minions (which can be awkward for Hulk when Thunderclap isn't to hand). Other than Adam, though, it isn't a disaster if one of them leaves play. There are enough to keep filling up the bench, whilst Mockingbird, Spider-Man and Falcon all have valuable enter-play effects.

If you want to get down to 40 cards Black Knight and Deft Focus are the two obvious choices. It isn't a big deal to use Mockingbird or Stinger to clear Tough status cards whilst Hulk's small hand size means that you sometimes struggle to use the card saved by Deft Focus. You could also swap out Helicarrier for Quincarrier. It isn't but the flexibility to generate a resource can be useful when paying to discard villain attachments.

Compared to what I'd heard about Hulk being a frustrating hero to play, the deck greatly exceeds my expectations. There are some little sequencing challenges to ensure that Adam Warlock gets the right card, or to be in hero form when playing United We Stand but this is mostly a fun, simple deck which I really enjoyed.