Return of the Monster

Intro

I've been itching for a reason to include Hulk in a deck for forever. Coming to the game late, he was already phased out by the time I started playing. Like most core set allies, he just doesn't have the appeal he once did...

However...

There are a couple of unique characters who may benefit from taking damage...

Skip to Deck Strategy to get past the kit analysis

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Survival Instinct

X-23 leans into the growing 'health as a resource' archtype that started with Spider-Ham and continued into Wolverine. Instead of getting resources for taking damage or playing events for health, she can utilize her health to increase her basic attack power until the end of the round via X-23's Claws. She's really very simple, with most of her kit focused on doing two things:

• Basic Attacking
• Readying

She can buff her basic attack power a couple of ways with either X-23's Claws or Claw Mastery. If she needs to thwart, Animal Instinct allows us to utilize attack power as thwart when needed (though that 2 THW stat is not bad!)

A big part of her kit is Honey Badger, a signature ally so integral to her build that 9 cards total (excluding the ally card itself) have interactions with her. Not since Vision have we seen a signature ally be so important to a hero's general kit.

To make the most out of your basic powers, there are a couple of in-kit ways to activate multiple times in a turn.

• Living Weapon allows for a ready when taking damage, perfect for working with X-23's Claws and Grim Resolve.
• Honey Badger's response after taking damage allows for X-23 to ready up to make the most out of all the basic attacks.
  • Consequential damage counts here so you essentially get a ready for just using Honey Badger's basic powers.

Losing Honey Badger is a real concern, especially with Self-Isolation taking her away. Many times I've played alongside insane leadership voltron builds only to watch as the obligation turned X-23 into a shell of a build. There are some relatively easy ways to recur her, though they are all limited to alter-ego.

• Sisterhood is incredible, putting her back in your hand by discarding a signature card
• Laura Kinney's action also allows you to shuffle her back into the deck and draw a card. Not fantastic but increases your likelihood of continuing to draw into her!

Generally, X-23 likes taking damage to ready or gain other benefits so she has a lot of ways to heal.

• She has a card that boosts her health in Adamantium Lacing
• 2 copies of Regenerative Longevity to heal both her and Honey Badger
• Pain Tolerance to heal for each X-23 card played
• A really strong 6 REC value

To make sure X-23 at the top of her game, you need to focus on a few key items.

• Buffing Honey Badger via Training upgrades and Game Time to utilize her more often is a no-brainer (Seriously, why else did they give Honey Badger the X-Men trait?)
• Some alter-ego access and more options to recur Honey Badger as necessary and tools to get her set up fast to not lose momentum
• Further readying tools to make the most out of turns using X-23's Claws and Claw Mastery
• More general healing for X-23 and Honey Badger to counteract all the damage that both characters will take

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Deck Strategy

This deck is built around resources to hit Hulk's response to deal damage to both X-23 and Honey Badger to be able to ready up consistently. Almost all of the and resources here are important cards to stay in play, thinning out the deck nicely so that we are consistently hitting resources when discarding. There are multiple additional upgrades to help capitalize on the 'health as a resource' archetype while gaining benefits from doing so. We've also got cards to make sure that we can continue to stay alive and heal as necessary.

To combat losing Honey Badger, we've got further recursion tools and Danger Room so that she can come back quickly and not require a lot of setup. To capitalize on Danger Room, we have a strong roster of low cost aggression X-Men allies that all synergize well with our strategy. Our cost curve is low enough that we can justify just having 2 doubles, mainly as targets for allies and a few key supports.

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Deck Setup

There are only a few pretty obvious cards to try to get out in play as soon as you can.

• Honey Badger, obviously
• Sisterhood (to get Honey Badger), of course
• Build Support, which can help get Sisterhood or our other 2 cost supports
• Danger Room to make sure all of our X-Men allies entering play from alter-ego can get a free Attack Training
• Endurance or Adamantium Lacing to help boost our health
• Grim Resolve to help us ready without having to use X-23's Claws

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Return of the Monster

(Oh you haven't read this, you fake Marvel fan???)

If you don't know, Return of the Monster is a popular Hulk story where he is on the run after he loses control and accidentally harms an innocent child.

Which is...

Well...

(This sounds a bit strange)

Exactly what we're going for here.

Hulk is fantastic for X-23 because of his response when discarding an resource. He gets to deal 1 damage to each character. Not enemy, character. For the majority of heroes in this game, the only viable build for Hulk is focused entirely on resources, as getting hit with 1 damage is not ideal. With health as a resource being so important, that's not the case here. is actually preferred!

In addition to chipping away at tough status cards or minions, he can also do two things here:

• Deal damage to X-23 to trigger Living Weapon and ready her
• Deal damage to Honey Badger to trigger her response to ready X-23

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Monsters Inc.

We've got plenty of other monsters mutants that help out here. All of our non-Hulk allies are all X-Men. This allows us to help make a few things work best:

• Make the most out of Danger Room and Attack Training
• Heal every ally via X-Mansion if needed
• Benefit from tribal synergies

The aggression X-Men allies are all relatively low cost and extremely powerful and luckily, most of them are as well! They also work well with Honey Badger staying on the board.

• Beak will almost always enter play removing at least 2 threat from a scheme
• Dust can attack each minion in play if needed
• Goldballs can swing for 5 if needed!
• Legion operates as a slightly nerfed version of the based Hulk builds I mentioned earlier. He can swing for 2 and then do 2 more damage thanks to !
• Professor X can either confuse the villain or ready Honey Badger
• Sunfire works well with all the resources to remove any attachments
• Triage helps to heal Honey Badger

When these allies enter play, always grab Attack Training from the deck with Danger Room to remove resources from the deck!

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Sibling Rivalry

With Hulk dealing damage to Honey Badger, we have some built in ways to get her back in play quickly.

• Laura Kinney's action shuffles her back into the deck and you can draw a card
• Sisterhood guarantees her back in your hand at the cost of discarding a single signature card
• Mutant Education will also shuffle her back in and you'll get the card draw from X-Mansion. Essentially just a repeat of Laura Kinney's action but also !

Thanks to Danger Room, playing her again while in alter-ego will allow you to have her set up again almost immediately!

While in alter-ego, always make sure to trigger Laura Kinney's ability if you can to shuffle back in Sisterly Bond. Utilize Mutant Education to shuffle in Claw Mastery and Regenerative Longevity primarily, as both are resources.

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Self-Sacrifice

We will be taking a lot of damage. Here's all the ways we're almost dying and our benefits from doing so:

• Battle Fury allows us to ready after defeating a minion and pings us for 1 damage for the ready
• Blood Rage gives us card draw after defeating a minion as well as letting us take damage to ready
• Grim Resolve is perfect for paying for the low cost Claw Mastery or Regenerative Longevity as well as any of our 1-cost upgrades

With all these ways to take damage, we need to heal too. In addition to Regenerative Longevity, we've got tools to stay alive.

• Adamantium Lacing and Endurance boost our base HP
• Pain Tolerance I don't play much but can be useful
• X-Mansion can heal X-23, Honey Badger or any of the other X-Men allies
• Ready to Rumble allows us to use a basic recovery without sacrificing a basic activation after we flip

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Other Card Considerations

I really wouldn't recommend making any changes to this because you don't want to affect the resource distribution. There are a few cards that you could swap out if you really want to:

• Combat Training and "Now I'm Mad" both made appearances at some point to boost attack damage but I never found I was really struggling for damage. Ended up costing a lot for benefits I didn't need. Same with Symbiote Suit
• Glob and Shark-Girl are both X-Men allies and also . You can't play Glob though. Shark-Girl works well with Puncture Wound but I wasn't playing it often enough to get the extra benefits. You could swap out your ally of choice with Dust and Sunfire being the most replaceable depending on scenario
• IPAC is not a bad card here to help guarantee minions for our aggression upgrades, but the ended up stopping it from the final build
• Specialized Training is fantastic when it's in play but a 5 threat side scheme in aggression is just so hard to justify. Build Support is better and we're not struggling with attack damage!
• Wolverine is a really strong ally to work with Danger Room but is so high cost in this build that I wasn't ever playing
• X-Men Instruction is an resource but Mutant Education already grabs Honey Badger as well as strong low cost events. You could experiment with this if you wanted to run fewer allies but loop them more often

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Results

This is fun! Hulk works great here! Surprised I haven't seen anyone make this connection yet and hope everyone has fun if they give it a shot. I've played both in single player and multi-player to strong success (and frustrated partners at times). Tell your partner to bring Spider-Ham so they don't get mad at you!