Today, Fantasy Flight Games announced the Hulk Hero Pack for Marvel Champions, set to arrive in June 2020. This new expansion features X new players cards, including a 40-card pre-assembled Hulk deck that, like all Hero Packs released today, will feature 15 Hulk “signature” cards that go in every Hulk deck, plus 25 other cards, most of which are from the Aggression aspect.
Announced via both a Twitch stream and a press announcement, you can check out Hulk and his alter-ego Bruce Banner below:
Hulk is a fascinating addition to the hero roster for Marvel Champions as he’s a character of extremes. His Attack (3), Defense (3), and Hit Points (18) are the highest or joint-highest in the game to date, while his Thwart (0) and Hand Size (4) are lowest or joint-lowest. As such, Hulk really is just here to smash. Any deck with Hulk will be a major damage dealer, focused on attacking the villain early and often, leaving other heroes to deal with puny things like stopping the enemy’s scheme. In solo games, it’ll often be a race of who can do more damage: Hulk or his enemy?
When factoring in his Alter-Ego, Hulk and Bruce Banner juggle the dichotomy between man and monster. Bruce allows you to filter your hand to set up the perfect turn, but once you flip to Hulk, at the end of the turn, you’ll have to discard all your cards… so hopefully you and Bruce didn’t have any other plans for them. To be clear, this all happens at the end of your player turn and before the reset step, so you will draw a new hand of cards before your next turn, so you’ll want to play as many as you can while Hulked out!
This dichotomy is further highlighted by Hulk’s Obligation, Inner Demons. Obligations are cards added to the villain deck specific to the hero you’re playing to represent the pressures that hero faces in their own life: Peter Parker must pay rent, Jennifer Walters has a date in court. To date, these have all followed a particular pattern, but Inner Demons breaks the formula. For one, the card forces you to change modes; all previous Obligations have had an optional form change. Here, the flip is forced and the effect depends on your form. So often, Bruce becomes the Hulk or Hulk becomes Bruce at the worst time, and Inner Demons taps into that tension. Finally, Hulk has no way of removing this Obligation from the game — Bruce and the Hulk can never be free of each other.
As for the rest of Hulk’s cards, they are all driven by the Physical resource. None epitomizes this as much as Limitless Strength, which provides a massive 3 Physical resources, perfect for playing a card like Hulk Smash that benefits from the Physical resource match. There are some surprises in Hulk’s cards, though: not only is he the first hero with a 0 in a key stat and a new form of obligation, but Hulk is also the first hero with a noticeable absence in his suit of 15 signature cards: Hulk also has no signature ally. Whereas another hero like Captain Marvel will always bring her signature ally Spider-Woman to the fight, Hulk just wants to be left alone.
You can watch the Twitch livestream announcement here and see more card previews in Fantasy Flight’s announcement here. We also have included a special gallery of cards previewed only in the live stream below, including Hulk’s Nemesis: Abomination.
The Hulk Hero Pack will arrive at friendly local gaming stores and wherever hobby board games are sold in June.
This comes to us from the gamesmaster Cory Bullock
Zachary Jenkins co-hosts the podcast Battle of the Atom and is the former editor-in-chief of ComicsXF. Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside all this.
