What’s up Champions?! BananaCrapshoot here, Tommy of Titan and I are breaking down our first impressions of Hulk from the FFG announcement stream today. So we aren’t gonna screw around anymore, time to smash this review.
Bruce Banner-
BananaCrapshoot- 5 hand size is expected for this hero, the 18 HP I wasn’t expecting but isn’t surprising either. His ability seems very lackluster. I am overall underwhelmed by Bruce.
Tommy of Titan- Hand size of 5 is below average for Alter-ego but his action can help you make up for that by finding the cards you need. 4 Rec is solid and 18 Hit Points is ridiculous. I mean this guy has similar hit points to a lot of villain stages.
Hulk-
BananaCrapshoot- hand size dropping to 4 is right what we expect. Have 0 thwart is also expected. The 3 ATK and 3 DEF also unsurprising. The interesting thing here is that you have to dump your hand end of turn. This isn’t a detriment at all really as most turns you try to play out your hand. 0 reason to ever flip ever. With the strong baseline Hulk stats and lackluster lazy Bruce design this is just a straightforward beat machine on autopilot.
Tommy of Titan- I don’t think people would be playing Hulk to Thwart so those stats make perfect sense to me. I got to say though, I am disappointed we aren’t seeing a creative mechanic to switch between the two identities here. One of my favorite parts of the game is the interaction and balancing between forms. I really wish they had flexed that design space here and done something radical. Discarding your hand at the end of your turn really doesn’t feel very limiting at all to me. If anything it’s more incentive to play out each hand more efficiently. Lots of players are discarding cards at the end of the round to get to other cards in the deck anyway. Over all Hulk looks like he’s gonna smash things though.
Limitless Strength-
BananaCrapshoot- Holy Smokes Betty, a 3 strength resource is insane. This helps pay for big cards with his small hand size obviously. Nothing else really to say, good resource card.
Tommy of Titan- With a hand size of 4 you are going to need cards like this that can allow you to play a card all on its own. This is really going to help smooth out turns that this character is in Hero form. I’m hoping that there are 2 of these bad boys in the set.
Hulk Smash-
BananaCrapshoot- Getting any +X attack is good but this is stupid strong, +10 basic ATK?! This thing does exactly what it should and is right in line with the beat box Hulk auto play playlist. Oh and it gains overkill if you use a physical resource. This one shots any minion and gets close to one shotting villains in solo. Ridiculous value here.
Tommy of Titan- Does that thing say +10?!?! Holy green rage monster that’s a bonkers card. This card is really on par with other cards like Repulser Blast or Energy Channel. The 3 cost and the additional payment of having to exhaust your character to make a basic attack are great ways to have this card be amazing but balanced.
Unstoppable Force-
BananaCrapshoot- readying a hero is always strong. It’s especially strong when the Hulk can get to 5 basic ATK every swing and this lets you draw a card, card draw is king so that just adds to the value of this card.
Tommy of Titan- Great card for this hero. Base 3 attack with serious potential to be boosted will give you great value here. The 1 card rebate you get is again important especially because of the restricted hand size this hero has.
Immovable Object-
BananaCrapshoot - +4 HP and retaliate?! Yes please. While this is very strong it again feels lazy as we have now seen multiple upgrades in multiple hero deck do the same or very similar things. I get they are slightly limited in design space. Back to this card, the Hulk is the highest potential Hp character in the game and you need that since you probably won’t ever recover because Bruce is worthless. This card is good. Just uninspiring design to me.
Tommy of Titan- I’m like the biggest retaliate fan in the world but I’m not sure how great this card is going to feel to play. In Hulk mode this is your entire turn. Not only that but it needs to be played earlier in the game to get real value from the retaliate. In some games the game state will dictate that you may not be able to play this card because you will need to accomplish other things that turn. I wouldn’t say this card is bad at all but it’s a tough sell to play some turns.
Boundless Rage-
BananaCrapshoot- here’s an upgrade to give +1 ATK along with combat training that makes his base basic ATK 5 which is very strong. You don’t have to worry about this cards discard condition unless you get your obligation.
Tommy of Titan- Any time you can increase the stats of a character and that character has ways to ready itself there is potential. Combo this with Combat Training and you’ll be cooking with a 5 attack in no time. I do like the fact that it gets discarded when you flip too.
Inner Demons-
BananaCrapshoot- This is the most interesting card we saw today. I hope they keep this template for obligations going forward and don’t let them leave the game.
Tommy of Titan- Thematically my favorite card in the preview. This is the kind of design I wish was more prevalent in the identities. I’m sure it would’ve been a balancing nightmare though. I can’t tell you how happy I am they broke away from the traditional Obligation structure. Lets keep moving forward and make each one fresh and interesting.
Abomination-
BananaCrapshoot- Good minion, the forced response is a nice nod to the hulk ally. I feel like his health should be 8 or 9 though.
Tommy of Titan- A considerably scary minion for sure. The 3 attack makes it so that you have to deal with him. Not to mention the ability that will ping the Hulk more often than not. I also love that he has 3 boost icons, especially because he only has 6 health and will be back in the deck reasonably fast.
You’ll Pay For That-
BananaCrapshoot- This is a card aggression needed to help the thwart game out. A good option outside of Chase them Down. Happy to see this in here as it opens up some more options for aggression.
Tommy of Titan- A much more reliable Thwart option than Chase Them Down for aggression but definitely comes at a cost. The synergy with Hulk here is that he can afford to take a ton of damage so he can remove threat with this more reliably.
Toe to Toe-
BananaCrapshoot- I think this card is great, paying 1 for 5 dmg is super good value, yea you take dmg but this thing will be a great minion killer and a good way to build your Hall of Heroes. My second favorite card we saw today.
Tommy of Titan- I really like this card. This is another great way for the Hulk or other bulky Heroes to leverage their hit points as well as boosted attack stats. 1 cost also makes it very flexible and a great way to remove a tough status.
Beat Cop-
BananaCrapshoot-I like this card too, anything that opens deckbuilding I’m down for. This also helps the Iron Man aggression I know people like. This will be a great card to add to your dmg on your finishing round.
Tommy of Titan- This is a very interesting card with tremendous upside. The problem is that it’s going to take quite a while before you get the return on your investment. It’s not a card you will always want to play, but having it early could really help you in the long run as long as you can keep it on the table.
Final Thoughts-
BananaCrapshoot- I think Hulk is strong and a very straightforward beat stick. I don’t want to be a downer but I need to be frank. I’m overall underwhelmed and disappointed by the design of Bruce, he has the most interesting transformation from Alter-Ego to Hero and they missed that here completely. Also the most interesting part about the Hulk is the internal conflict between Bruce and the Hulk(s) and we seemingly get none of that here. Overall this felt like the easy way out. I just think it was lazy design.
Tommy of Titan- Even though I think this character is going to be a powerful one, I tend to agree with Banana. I wish they had swung for the fences with the Alter-ego and Hero interaction. Without the Obligation I think this would be a very disappointing character from a thematic standpoint. Maybe I had too high of hopes for this character though. I think deck construction will be paramount for the Hulk. Players will need to be more intentional about putting a lot of varied cost cards in their decks as well as lots of resource cards to ensure you can overcome that abysmal hand size of 4. It will be interesting to see how this character deals with stun status cards and being exhausted too. He’s definitely good but I’m not sure how he will stack up to the rest of the field just yet.
Well that’s it, that’s the review. This is just our initial impressions based on the cards we saw during the stream. When we see his full kit our thoughts might change. Let us know your thoughts in the comments. For more content from The Side Scheme, check out our YouTube, podcast, and Patreon. For Tommy of Titan, I’m BananaCrapshoot, stay scheming Champions!