A discussion that came up on the Across the Bifrost and Recalibration Matrix discord channel – available to Patreons of either podcast – was about the most dice you could possibly roll in a single attack. Naturally, my thoughts turned to Hulk.

Setting the scene

This is a thought experiment to try an calculate the maximum amount of dice you could roll in one attack. The situation described is incredibly unlikely, but possible within the confines of the game. It assumes a number of unlikely but possible events, but has to obey the rules of the game.

Hulk Smash

Hulk was the obvious starting point. He has powerful attacks, and gets more dice if he is damaged:

So if Hulk has taken 18 damage, he gets an extra 6 dice. Nice. So let’s assume he is on 18 damage. Now a Strike would roll 12 or a Smash rolling 14. That’s a decent start.

Tactics cards

There are a few tactics cards that increase the number of dice you roll:

• One-Two punch adds two dice for one power. That seems good here. It requires another character to be nearby, but that’s an easy one to meet.
• Smash allows Hulk to destroy a size 3 piece of terrain to add three dice to all his attacks in that turn, at the cost of two power.
• Battle lust adds four dice for four power, so long as Hulk can move first.
• Doomed prophecy would add two more for three power and can be triggered at the start of the round.

That’s a total of ten power, the most a character can have on their card, so you could play all of them. You have a limit of 5 team tactics cards, but this only uses four of them, so that checks out too. We don’t have enough power currently to pay for a smash attack, so the 11 extra dice from the cards added to the 12 for the Strike gets us to 23.

Hammer time

The Fear Grips World As “Worthy” Terrorize Cities extract crisis puts four Celestial Hammers on the table, each of which adds an extra die to attack rolls. If Hulk picked up all four hammers, he’d add four dice – potentially taking our total up to 27. But that would also make each team tactics card cost four more to play. So the obvious solution is to have Hulk pick up all four hammers after playing the cards. To pick up a hammer, however, you need to pay a power for each, so he’d need 4 more power. That gives us a minor headache, as you can’t have 14 power on your Hulk all at the same time.

Managing your power. And anger.

There are some work arounds, though. First, doomed prophecy can be played by Hulk at the start of the round. Later, a character can attack Hulk, do three damage and thus give him back the three power he spent.

That reduces the load to 11 power. We do have one slot left for a team tactics card – Anger Management provides a way to get more power on to Hulk – up to 5 more. So after spending the five to play battle lust and one-two punch, another ally can transfer power back on to Hulk. That five also allows Hulk to have enough power left after all of the above to use Smash instead of Strike – two more dice.

Putting it all together:

So the sequence of event would go:

• Hulk starts the round on 10 damage and 10 power
• Spend 3 power (to 7) for Doomed Prophecy on Hulk (+2 dice)
• Hulk gets attacked for 3 damage (13 damage, 10 power)
• Hulk moves and uses smash (+3 dice, -2 power), battle lust (+4 dice, -4 power) and one-two punch (+2 dice, -1 power) for a running total of +11 dice and leaving Hulk with 3 power.
• Use Anger Management to transfer 5 damage (now at 18) and 5 power (now at 8).
• Pick up four hammers (-4 power, +4 dice) leaving Hulk on 18 damage with four power and adding 15 dice to his next roll.
• Use the Smash attack (4 power, 8 dice) with 6 extra dice from You Won’t Like Me When I’m Angry for a total of 29 dice.

Making the most of your attack

29 dice is good, but what about rerolls? Baron Zemo could be the character up near the target to trigger One-Two Punch, also giving Hulk a reroll. Shuri could be hanging around nearby to use Upgrades for three more rerolls. Can you fit those in a team, though?

Well we know we are playing the Hammers scenario, which has 18 threat. We need to be in Avengers in order to play Anger Management, so we need three Avengers in order to bring Shuri and Zemo. So how about this:

• Captain America – 4
• Hulk – 6
• Black Widow – 2
• Shuri – 3
• Baron Zemo – 3

That adds up to 18 and allows Hulk to roll his 29 dice with four rerolls.

And then your opponent uses Odin’s Blessing…