Who doesn’t want Hulk to see more play? So I put on my thinking cap and tried to find more places to play him, and this is what I ended up with:

One of Hulk’s issue is power generation: despite getting three power every round he never seems to have enough, and doesn’t gain any power through builder attacks. Opponents often avoid attacking Hulk to both deny him power and extra dice on his attacks. But there are affiliations out there that help with power generation: Cabal, Brotherhood and A-force all help him get power. So I was considering him in those when I came up with a list-crisis combination I really liked. Having played it, it’s also pretty good.

The plan

You have a Brotherhood roster including Hulk and the Senators extract crisis. Win priority, play senators at 14 threat. You field Magneto, Hulk and Toad as your 14.

Deploy Toad in the middle with Hulk and Magneto either side of him, so the Magneto is within range 2 of Hulk.

First action of round 1, Toad goes, moves twice and checks for the senator in the central safe house. If he finds it: great. If not: never mind. You could check a wider one, but Angela, Corvus and Proxima and other jank can check two in an activation, which you may not want. Then again, maybe it’s not so bad – see below.

You then probably have the option of passing until your opponent has checked one of the wide safe houses. If they find the senator, you leap in to action on that side. If not, you go to the other side which now you know has the Senator.

Now you know where the senator is, Hulk gamma launches Magento, either to throw two big attacks and a bunch of terrain at the character that just picked up the senator, or to grab the senator and move away back towards Hulk, or maybe behind some size 3+ terrain to block LoS if possible.

Either way, if Toad didn’t get the senator, it’s very likely Magneto will. Magneto is pretty survivable and can likely tough out the next few activations.

A currently powerless Hulk sulks and sits on a secure.

Now your opponent is left with tough decisions. Scoring the Senator and one secure gets you 3VP a round. Scoring the (typically) 3VP worth of other secures gets your opponent 3, however just contesting one with a Toad that activates after one of their characters that’s on a secure can contest it, and give you the 1VP lead that is all you need. You have options of toad stealing the extract off Magneto and running away, whilst Mags and Hulk get to work on the other team. Taking down a Hulk with only 14 threat of characters is hard (not impossible, mind), and of you commit to that line of play you are likely not scoring secures to keep pace. Equally going after Mags with his power for pumping his defense to 5 even with the senator and magnetic refraction every round (where you are very likely to have priority to put it up before they attack) is hard to do. Tactics cards like Medpack, Asteroid M and Books of truth make it even harder.

If they don’t chase after your point, you can send a rampaging hulk to clear off a secure whilst mags and toad babysit the senator.

It seems like a really solid game plan. Even some of the classic counters to single extracts like Miles’ Venom Blast and Enchantress’ Kiss don’t feel great as Asteroid M comes online for Magneto to chase them down once he isn’t holding the senator any more (thanks Toad!), or Hulk leaping after them and throwing them back to Magneto.

To get access to this tech, you need a roster slot for Hulk and a tactics card slot for Gamma Launch. That feels like you’ll be more able to fit it in single affiliation, but maybe it fits in more places. I’m going to be thinking more to see if I can find other uses for him in the roster.