2 hours ago, IceHot42 said:

It took me several tries but I beat Rhino Expert with the pre-con deck. I drew Abom (Shadows of the Past) on the second turn of each of the first 3 games either naturally or off way too many surges.

I couldnt beat Klaw Expert until I modified the aggro deck... cut 11 cards (including She-Hulk, Sentry, Av Mansion, 1x Martial Prowess to prevent resource flood) and added...

3x Chase Them Down, Jarnbjorn, Valkryie, Counterattack x1, Combat Training X1, Mockingbird, 1x Hall of Heroes, and Relentless Assault x2 (I should have put Tigra in as well but left her out for some strange reason, perhaps hiding somewhere in the Thor deck.) I would cut the Hall of Heroes for Tigra.

When I did beat Klaw I somehow survived the last 3 turns with 1 health and 7 threat.

Ill try to tackle Ultron tonight (after Hockey), but I expect infinite losses.

That's about how often and quickly SotP came out for me while playing solo.

I had a really hard time against multiple targets with the man...thing...person?

I could not beat Ultron Expert with Hulk/Aggro solo. Got close but the extra encounter cards I couldnt get rid of, locked out the end game. I had three games where I was able to setup a two-turn clock with a large grip of cards and a reaonable board, but Ultron III was spamming 2 or 3 encounter cards which was too much to over come.

It seems they need to make some aggro cards that have cost based on hand size.

I just cant bring myself to run Hulk as Justice or Leadership. I might try protection or just relegate him to multi-player.

Just got Hulk today (which was supposed to arrive with my Red Skull order, but that's another story...) and am equally baffled by how broken he is solo. I get how he can be improved with a custom deck, but you shouldn't have to do that to succeed against a basic Rhino. Generally in deckbuilding I would expect prebuilt decks to yield moderate results with basic villains but struggle against expert with custom decks providing a higher level of success. Prebuilt Hulk is pretty much a guaranteed loss every time in solo and makes me question playtesting in this scenario.

I did make one modification that seemed to balance it out in solo mode to where he played as respectably as the other heroes. I bumped the hand size for Bruce Banner to 6 instead of 5. The limit of 4 for Hulk made perfect sense, mechanically and thematically, but the limit of 5 for Banner left me scratching my head. The way he's designed, you have to spend most of your time as Hulk to unload as much damage as quickly as possible given his lack of thwarting. You're really not spending a lot of time as Banner anyway and having one additional card in alter ego mode was just enough of a boost to get established early on without having to count on a super lucky draw to have any success.

I've been a little spoiled by Doctor Strange though (my hands-down favorite) so maybe my perspective is a little skewed...

7 hours ago, mike8104 said:

Just got Hulk today (which was supposed to arrive with my Red Skull order, but that's another story...) and am equally baffled by how broken he is solo. I get how he can be improved with a custom deck, but you shouldn't have to do that to succeed against a basic Rhino. Generally in deckbuilding I would expect prebuilt decks to yield moderate results with basic villains but struggle against expert with custom decks providing a higher level of success. Prebuilt Hulk is pretty much a guaranteed loss every time in solo and makes me question playtesting in this scenario.

I did make one modification that seemed to balance it out in solo mode to where he played as respectably as the other heroes. I bumped the hand size for Bruce Banner to 6 instead of 5. The limit of 4 for Hulk made perfect sense, mechanically and thematically, but the limit of 5 for Banner left me scratching my head. The way he's designed, you have to spend most of your time as Hulk to unload as much damage as quickly as possible given his lack of thwarting. You're really not spending a lot of time as Banner anyway and having one additional card in alter ego mode was just enough of a boost to get established early on without having to count on a super lucky draw to have any success.

I've been a little spoiled by Doctor Strange though (my hands-down favorite) so maybe my perspective is a little skewed...

Did you play him with his actual hand size and come to the "baffled by how broken he is solo" conclusion. Or was that from playing with the inflated hand size?

General consensus among the community is that he's one of the worst (if not the worst) characters in true solo, particularly when paired with Aggression.

How big is your sample size of games? Did you only play against Rhino? Standard? Expert? Modular set?

2 hours ago, jonboyjon1990 said:

Did you play him with his actual hand size and come to the "baffled by how broken he is solo" conclusion. Or was that from playing with the inflated hand size?

General consensus among the community is that he's one of the worst (if not the worst) characters in true solo, particularly when paired with Aggression.

How big is your sample size of games? Did you only play against Rhino? Standard? Expert? Modular set?

Yes, I played 3 games using the normal hand sizes against stage 1 Rhino solo and lost all three by a large margin. There was literally nothing that could have been played differently to produce a different outcome - there simply were not enough options presented by the card draws on each turn with such a limited hand size and switching to Banner was not worth the risk because of the extremely low threat threshold on Rhinos scheme solo. The forced discarding punishes his already punishing hand size even more because you can't hold on to anything good that you didn't have the resources to play that turn.

My only win came from tweaking Banner's hand size and it only took effect twice.

I've played every character except Thor and Hulk is, by far, the most ineffective solo.

18 minutes ago, mike8104 said:

Yes, I played 3 games using the normal hand sizes against stage 1 Rhino solo and lost all three by a large margin. There was literally nothing that could have been played differently to produce a different outcome - there simply were not enough options presented by the card draws on each turn with such a limited hand size and switching to Banner was not worth the risk because of the extremely low threat threshold on Rhinos scheme solo. The forced discarding punishes his already punishing hand size even more because you can't hold on to anything good that you didn't have the resources to play that turn.

My only win came from tweaking Banner's hand size and it only took effect twice.

I've played every character except Thor and Hulk is, by far, the most ineffective solo.

Now I'm even more confused, since your initial conclusion was "[I am] baffled by how broken he is solo"

1 hour ago, jonboyjon1990 said:

Now I'm even more confused, since your initial conclusion was "[I am] baffled by how broken he is solo"

I believe @mike8104 is using the term broken as "bad" not "OP".

On 8/19/2020 at 8:42 AM, IceHot42 said:

...

It seems they need to make some aggro cards that have cost based on hand size.

I just cant bring myself to run Hulk as Justice or Leadership. I might try protection or just relegate him to multi-player.

I think he's a multiplayer character for the time being.

I like the idea of Aggression cards that are based on your hand size. Specifically your hand size, not the number of cards in hand (although that could be interesting too).

I don't keep metrics on my games, but I played Hulk solo against Rhino and won handily at least a couple of times. As in, by enough that I would take on the third iteration of Rhino just to see if I could beat all three in one play through. Both times I did that I ended up losing on that third iteration by threating out. Honestly, I'd say he's better than Thor solo (I also actually really like Thor) because Hulk has less setup to deal with; you really just do as much damage as you can each turn and use Sub-Orbital Leap to clear threat when it comes up.

4 hours ago, Duciris said:

I think he's a multiplayer character for the time being.

My current feeling is that he is a niche scenario option or a two-player handicap to make the game more challenging.

6 hours ago, Duciris said:

I believe @mike8104 is using the term broken as "bad" not "OP".

I think he's a multiplayer character for the time being.

I like the idea of Aggression cards that are based on your hand size. Specifically your hand size, not the number of cards in hand (although that could be interesting too).

Is my experience totally unique then? I have found Hulk to be devastating in solo; he can practically one-shot any villain from their stage using Hulk Smash; yes you only play one card per turn typically, but they tend to be very strong cards.

Just now, Derrault said:

Is my experience totally unique then? I have found Hulk to be devastating in solo; he can practically one-shot any villain from their stage using Hulk Smash; yes you only play one card per turn typically, but they tend to be very strong cards.

I just have difficulty with him reliably removing threat he needs to, as well as sometimes being swallowed by minions.

Just now, Duciris said:

I just have difficulty with him reliably removing threat he needs to, as well as sometimes being swallowed by minions.

I mean, he has a lot of good thwarting cards:

3 allies (each of which thwarts well), 3x Rescue (2 thwart each), 3x You’ll Pay for That (up to 5 each, and they pair very well with Toe to Toe), and 3x SOL (3/5 thw)

Compare that with like...Spider-Man’s basic deck: Spider Tracers (3 THW), Chase them Down (2 THW), and allies (no thw or poor ThW)

40 minutes ago, Derrault said:

I mean, he has a lot of good thwarting cards:

3 allies (each of which thwarts well), 3x Rescue (2 thwart each), 3x You’ll Pay for That (up to 5 each, and they pair very well with Toe to Toe), and 3x SOL (3/5 thw)

Compare that with like...Spider-Man’s basic deck: Spider Tracers (3 THW), Chase them Down (2 THW), and allies (no thw or poor ThW)

I did reasonably well with him against Rhino and Klaw.

How are you reliably playing She-Hulk and Sentry you cant play them from your Hero Hand-size 4 unless you draw pump resources? Are you flipping into Alter-Ego mode and drawing donuts for boosts when the villain thwarts.

I found She-Hulk to be ok. I took her out to beat Klaw and then put her into a different aggro deck..she Thwarts once, Attacks once, and maybe does one other thing hopefully in that order. She seems like an overpriced Stealth Strike in a deck that cant afford 4-cost cards.

Sentry is ok but I tend to draw either Shadows of the Past or one of the expert encounter cards off his extra encounter card.

A second side scheme early on is doom.

Hulk Smash can be dead at times against Klaw he has several Toughness minions that can catch you without a ping , as well as a few cards that Exhaust/Stun you and you cant use Martial Prowess to play it....

Sonic Converter can be a bear to unload.

Sonic Boom either depletes your hand or makes Hulk Smash extremely unlikely to be playable.

50 minutes ago, Derrault said:

I mean, he has a lot of good thwarting cards:

3 allies (each of which thwarts well), 3x Rescue (2 thwart each), 3x You’ll Pay for That (up to 5 each, and they pair very well with Toe to Toe), and 3x SOL (3/5 thw)

Compare that with like...Spider-Man’s basic deck: Spider Tracers (3 THW), Chase them Down (2 THW), and allies (no thw or poor ThW)

Kind of curious, do you block a lot with Hulk when you dont draw Hulk Smash?

2 hours ago, IceHot42 said:

I did reasonably well with him against Rhino and Klaw.

How are you reliably playing She-Hulk and Sentry you cant play them from your Hero Hand-size 4 unless you draw pump resources? Are you flipping into Alter-Ego mode and drawing donuts for boosts when the villain thwarts.

I found She-Hulk to be ok. I took her out to beat Klaw and then put her into a different aggro deck..she Thwarts once, Attacks once, and maybe does one other thing hopefully in that order. She seems like an overpriced Stealth Strike in a deck that cant afford 4-cost cards.

Sentry is ok but I tend to draw either Shadows of the Past or one of the expert encounter cards off his extra encounter card.

A second side scheme early on is doom.

I do tend to prioritize allies whenever possible; if they can’t be played due to a lack of resource cards in hand, sometimes they just become fodder for something else. And, yes, I’d sometimes consider it worth swapping to alter-ego to fish for a resource card, or something else useful (Banner’s laboratory can be used to help pay for allies as well)

2 hours ago, IceHot42 said:

Hulk Smash can be dead at times against Klaw he has several Toughness minions that can catch you without a ping , as well as a few cards that Exhaust/Stun you and you cant use Martial Prowess to play it....

Sonic Converter can be a bear to unload.

Sonic Boom either depletes your hand or makes Hulk Smash extremely unlikely to be playable.

I agree, sometimes Hulk Smash isn’t feasible, but when it is, oh boy.

2 hours ago, IceHot42 said:

Kind of curious, do you block a lot with Hulk when you dont draw Hulk Smash?

I almost never block. Hulk blocks for 3, Banner recovers for 4/6 w/lab. You kind of want to suffer a ton of damage and just keep grinding away.

On a somewhat related note, I just tried Captain America with Hulk's aggression deck, with some slight tweaks, and it was amazing. Destroyed Expert Rhino before I was even 1/3 of the way through the encounter deck and only took 3 damage total the whole game.

One of my favorites was exhausting Martial Prowess to play Toe to Toe and Shield Block to deal 5 damage for basically the cost of 2 resources and no damage.

There's a lot of synergy with Cap's abilities and those aggression cards.

Sounds like a lot of comments here are from the perspective of using Hulk with his pre-con deck?

On 9/10/2020 at 3:50 AM, jonboyjon1990 said:

Sounds like a lot of comments here are from the perspective of using Hulk with his pre-con deck?

• His precon isn't great . It's full of welcome additions to the Aggression Aspect. But many of them aren't a great fit for Hulk and the deck itself is bad. Sentry and She-Hulk are too expensive. 3 Drop Kick is excessive. Martial Prowess at x3 is insane and Hulk only actually has 2 copies of an Attack event anyhow (Crushing Blow). Avengers Mansion is too expensive. Do you really have time for Helicarrier?
• Hulk demands a totally new playstyle . Particularly in solo. Hulk is a welcome change of pace. I've found in my 200~ plays of the game so far that whilst there's a lot of variety to be had in the Hero/Aspect/Scenario/Mod set combination, most games follow a roughly similar pattern: 1) in the early game try and get set up. 2) mid game stabilise and don’t lose. 3) end game keep playing your attack events from your now thinner deck and beat down the villain for victory. Hulk flips this on its head. You don't want or need set up cards, you don't have time or the resources for them. Other than hitting Boundless Rage/Immovable Object, Hulk has little to no arc; you flip to Hero, stay there as long as possible and smash.
• You're in a straight up race with the villain . With the above in mind, you need to not play the long game or spend much time or resources on stuff that doesn't attack the villain. Most of the time you want to focus on that health dial. This is why I don't actually think Toe to Toe for example is a good fit for Hulk in solo Aggression. He doesn't need the extra damage, even at such a cheap cost, and Toe to Toe doesn't let you race, since the villain gets another attack at you. Hulk relies on his basic attack, so you can't defend much either. Counterattack at x3 is much better; it's a similar effect since you both trade blows, but it's an attack you were going to receive anyway and it prevents the villain from over taking you in the 'race'.
• Look at your cost curve. Hulk doesn't have any extra resource generation and a hand size of 4. This means you can either play one 3 cost card, two 1 cost cards, or one 2 cost card and one 0 cost card. I find the 'draw a card' on Drop Kick and Unstoppable Force frustrating because of this! When I switched to this deck by another user here, I started actually winning and having some fun with Hulk. I think the only tweak I made was +1 Chase them Down -1 You'll Pay for That, but it's probably a mistake since you don't want to be attacking minions anyhow.

I have only played him solo Aggression so far. It's a bit of a crapshoot and may not be to everyone's playstyle - it's fun but pretty random.

Having said all this I'm still only 4-12 with Hulk Aggression solo!

I also find Unstoppable Force really annoying - but I've ranted about that elsewhere, so won't repeat it.

Re: Martial Prowess, in the default deck he has several targets: Crushing Blow, Drop Kick, and Toe to Toe. Two of those are 1-cost, so you can always play them if they’re the odd card left over. TtT is also great for clearing high health minions, rather than the villain necessarily, who probably hits far harder. That being said, if you’re looking at a ton of stun in multiplayer, you can exploit it by stunning, doing TtT, and then stunning again.

4 hours ago, Derrault said:

Re: Martial Prowess, in the default deck he has several targets: Crushing Blow, Drop Kick, and Toe to Toe. Two of those are 1-cost, so you can always play them if they’re the odd card left over. TtT is also great for clearing high health minions, rather than the villain necessarily, who probably hits far harder. That being said, if you’re looking at a ton of stun in multiplayer, you can exploit it by stunning, doing TtT, and then stunning again.

I'm pretty sure the 5 damage from toe to toe doesn't activate unless the villain actually attacks you. It's the same thing as not drawing a card from focused rage because you prevented the damage, or not getting an ultron drone from assault on N.O.R.A.D. because you prevented the threat from being placed on the scheme. Stun prevents an attack, meaning you don't deal 5 damage to the villain.

1 hour ago, Venompuppy said:

I'm pretty sure the 5 damage from toe to toe doesn't activate unless the villain actually attacks you . It's the same thing as not drawing a card from focused rage because you prevented the damage, or not getting an ultron drone from assault on N.O.R.A.D. because you prevented the threat from being placed on the scheme. Stun prevents an attack, meaning you don't deal 5 damage to the villain.

You still deal the damage even if the villain doesn't attack. Toe to Toe is not formatted in a cost: effect way, so you simply resolve as much of the text as possible and no part of the ability is contingent on the resolution of other parts.

Quote

Hero Action (attack): Choose an enemy. That enemy attacks you. Deal 5 damage to that enemy.

It would have to say "That enemy attacks you, then deal 5 damage to that enemy" to work that way. Or be something like "Hero Action (attack): Choose an enemy. That enemy attacks you > Deal 5 damage to that enemy. "

5 hours ago, Derrault said:

Re: Martial Prowess, in the default deck he has several targets: Crushing Blow, Drop Kick, and Toe to Toe. Two of those are 1-cost, so you can always play them if they’re the odd card left over. TtT is also great for clearing high health minions, rather than the villain necessarily, who probably hits far harder. That being said, if you’re looking at a ton of stun in multiplayer, you can exploit it by stunning, doing TtT, and then stunning again.

3 copies of it is crazy though, especially since it's Max 1 per player. And Hulk really doesn't like 2 cost cards either.

On 9/10/2020 at 3:50 AM, jonboyjon1990 said:

Sounds like a lot of comments here are from the perspective of using Hulk with his pre-con deck?

• His precon isn't great . It's full of welcome additions to the Aggression Aspect. But many of them aren't a great fit for Hulk and the deck itself is bad. Sentry and She-Hulk are too expensive. 3 Drop Kick is excessive. Martial Prowess at x3 is insane and Hulk only actually has 2 copies of an Attack event anyhow (Crushing Blow). Avengers Mansion is too expensive. Do you really have time for Helicarrier?
• Hulk demands a totally new playstyle . Particularly in solo. Hulk is a welcome change of pace. I've found in my 200~ plays of the game so far that whilst there's a lot of variety to be had in the Hero/Aspect/Scenario/Mod set combination, most games follow a roughly similar pattern: 1) in the early game try and get set up. 2) mid game stabilise and don’t lose. 3) end game keep playing your attack events from your now thinner deck and beat down the villain for victory. Hulk flips this on its head. You don't want or need set up cards, you don't have time or the resources for them. Other than hitting Boundless Rage/Immovable Object, Hulk has little to no arc; you flip to Hero, stay there as long as possible and smash.
• You're in a straight up race with the villain . With the above in mind, you need to not play the long game or spend much time or resources on stuff that doesn't attack the villain. Most of the time you want to focus on that health dial. This is why I don't actually think Toe to Toe for example is a good fit for Hulk in solo Aggression. He doesn't need the extra damage, even at such a cheap cost, and Toe to Toe doesn't let you race, since the villain gets another attack at you. Hulk relies on his basic attack, so you can't defend much either. Counterattack at x3 is much better; it's a similar effect since you both trade blows, but it's an attack you were going to receive anyway and it prevents the villain from over taking you in the 'race'.
• Look at your cost curve. Hulk doesn't have any extra resource generation and a hand size of 4. This means you can either play one 3 cost card, two 1 cost cards, or one 2 cost card and one 0 cost card. I find the 'draw a card' on Drop Kick and Unstoppable Force frustrating because of this! When I switched to this deck by another user here, I started actually winning and having some fun with Hulk. I think the only tweak I made was +1 Chase them Down -1 You'll Pay for That, but it's probably a mistake since you don't want to be attacking minions anyhow.

I have only played him solo Aggression so far. It's a bit of a crapshoot and may not be to everyone's playstyle - it's fun but pretty random.

Having said all this I'm still only 4-12 with Hulk Aggression solo!

I also find Unstoppable Force really annoying - but I've ranted about that elsewhere, so won't repeat it.

Some solid points here.

What does 4-12 mean: what are you 4-12 against Expert Rhino, Expert Klaw, or perhaps 2x Expert each of the first 6 villains? Lately I have been baselining against Klaw/Bomb Scare Expert and its been brutal in solo for 8 different builds.

1 minute ago, IceHot42 said:

Some solid points here.

What does 4-12 mean: what are you 4-12 against Expert Rhino, Expert Klaw, or perhaps 2x Expert each of the first 6 villains? Lately I have been baselining against Klaw/Bomb Scare Expert and its been brutal in solo for 8 different builds.

4 wins, 12 losses with Solo Hulk Aggression. Just checked my stats for you. I had one game of Hulk pre-con and Cap pre-con vs Rhino - Expert - Masters of Evil and won.

The rest were solo games, all with Hulk solo aggression. I can't remember how many games I played with the pre-con before I made a new deck, but it was probably 3-5 games. You'll also notice I quickly switched back to Standard haha!

• Rhino - Expert - Bomb Scare Loss
• Rhino - Expert - Bomb Scare Loss
• Rhino - Expert - Bomb Scare Loss
• Klaw - Standard - Masters of Evil Loss
• Klaw - Standard - Masters of Evil Loss
• Rhino - Standard - Bomb Scare Win
• Rhino - Standard - Bomb Scare Loss
• Rhino - Standard - Bomb Scare Loss
• Rhino - Standard - Bomb Scare Loss
• Rhino - Standard - Bomb Scare Win
• Rhino - Standard - Bomb Scare Loss
• Klaw- Standard - Running Interferance Win
• Ultron - Standard - Under Attack Loss
• Ultron - Standard - Under Attack Loss
• Ultron - Standard - Under Attack Loss

10 hours ago, jonboyjon1990 said:

3 copies of it is crazy though, especially since it's Max 1 per player. And Hulk really doesn't like 2 cost cards either.

Yes, although my suspicion is that pretty much every deck is better balanced for multiplayer, because then you can play it for your teammates as well. So, in a 2-3 player game have 2-3 copies can be just awesome. Edit: The synergy with Tackle and Concussive Blow are enormous.