Hulkling and the Power of Friendship!

Hulkling my child. Hulk walked so you could run. Anyways, I like Hulkling in all aspects but I was looking at him closer and noticed he has some rather unique tags. Avenger, Kree, and Skrull. He also has one of the best economies in the game so I thought, you know what? Strength in Diversity is sounding really nice with him. So here is what I came up with: A deck that seeks to juice the lowkey valuable traits from Hulkling and put them to surprisingly good use.

Hulkling has, as previously mentioned, one of the best economies in the game. His 4 Shapeshifter Upgrades can be easily searched with a lot of his cards AND his AE ability which is huge because these upgrades are also double resources for some reason. This allows you to easily pay for big ticket cards often.

------------>☆☆General Flow / Priority:☆☆<------------

On your mulligan you want to try to get as many of your high cost resource generators / economy cards on the board. It's highly likely you will draw at least one double resource on the opening draw phase. You can pair that with the free search you get while in AE to essentially start with a stacked 7 card hand size at the beginning of the game.

Unless it is a very high pressure game you don't necessarily have to play a Shapeshift upgrade on the very first turn or two since you have super easy access to them so I usually use them to build out more. You go through your deck fast so don't be afraid to throw away your combo cards to get setup. As for playing your Shapeshift upgrades I typically use Armored Shape and Winged Shape for whatever situation I need them for early game and to keep me alive for the setup and then late game when I'm gunning for the kill, I will switch to Hulk Shape. Imitation Shape rarely gets used other than to cycle for ready ups or pay for other cards. Most of the time I actually WANT the villain to attack me because of Avenge Me.

Which speaking of, Avenge Me! is here because this card is absolutely stupid and gives you turbo draw power. There have been games where I'm starting out my turn with like 11-12 cards thanks to this ridiculous card. Now it isn't the focus of the deck so we aren't hard pressed to search for it or even keep it most of the time if we need it for resources but it would be crazy of us NOT to have it since we have the Avenger trait.

The Triskelion is here to give you more slots for allies and the Children of the Atom is here to give your few X-Men some more traits to make Strength in Diversity deal crazy numbers. You don't necessarily need either but they give you more consistency and if you run into something that discards a support they aren't bad targets. I usually play them mid game or whenever I got nothing else to do with my hand.

------------>☆☆Hulking's Friends.☆☆<------------

As for your ally line-up nothing here is too crazy but surprisingly the basic line-up has a lot of different traits while still retaining a lot of utility.

Vivian I think is an underdog here. A 2 cost ally that gives you 3 unique traits. Just one Strength in Diversity will clear 6 threat or 6 damage with just her out and she can help ease the pressure of annoying cards for a turn which is invaluable in some scenarios.

Of course we got Nick Fury and Maria Hill for draw power and are excellent candidates for the Avenge Me! and they give you SHIELD and Spy traits. Gambit is an excellent beat/thwart stick and brings two unique traits in the form of X-Men and Thief which if you play Children of the Atom you could stack on X-Force and X-Factor as well. Professor X also great for his utility and does give you another unique trait. Deathlok is here to be funny and recur Avenge Me! and draw even more cards. It's not necessary but it's funny overkill and he has a good stat line.

Everyone else in the deck won't give you any more traits but they do help ease board pressure. In total if you get everything in place. You could be dealing 13 damage or thwart with one activation of Strength in Diversity which is kind of crazy.

------------>☆☆ADDING MORE FRIENDS?☆☆<------------

This deck was built with TRUE SOLO in mind as I am primarily one that does that but I am pretty sure this would do fantastic in multiplayer as it very self sufficient and doesn't really require any help from your table mates. If you can pair up with some more unique traited heroes, you could pop off with Strength in Diversity even more and since your economy is so good you can a lot of times just pay for the card yourself.

This deck in my opinion, is pretty tough. I try to put a deck through the ringer and tweaking it before posting it. Try it for yourself but so far I have got wins on the following scenarios in true solo:

• Expert Thanos
• Expert Klaw
• Expert Ultron

All played with Standard I/Expert I with their default mod sets.

------------>☆☆Closing Thoughts and Changes?☆☆<------------

The original version of this deck had several cards in that I felt were not preforming as well as I originally intended. Band Together and Rapid Response. I felt in many cases most of my allies don't stick around long enough to make good use of these cards and I don't really care to recur my allies like that since we make a lot of fast deck passes. I subbed these cards out for Power of Leadership instead and cut the Make the Calls down to just 2 copies.

You could also switch the ally line up a bit too. Maria Hill could be swapped for Ironheart for another unique trait but I like the extra thwart and multiplayer synergy Maria brings. Hawkeye can be cut as well if you aren't playing against a minion heavy scenario.

I was also trying to keep this deck to a 40 card deck but I just couldn't cut out some cards just for personal preference. Endurance and Honorary Avenger come to mind as potential cuts if you wanna trim the deck down but I quite like the extra bulk they give Hulkling and being able to use Avenge Me in AE is kind of a clutch sometimes. I personally like to flip down to AE quite a bit to get the extra double resources to solidify my plays.

Overall it's been really fun and satisfying playing this deck. If you enjoy this write up and deck please let me know. I'm trying to do some more deck builds and write ups like this.

Thanks and enjoy!