Get the Scoop: Hulkling

Lets talk about the Hulkling preview!

GET THE SCOOP

Skelly

8/15/20257 min read

The Hulkling article is here, and he looks really interesting! For the full preview, read the article here first, and then come back. Lets get in to it.

There are 4 of these in upgrades in total, and he can only ever have one in play at any given time. His alter ego ability prevents more then one entering play, and his hero form has a forced response that will discard any that were already in play to ready Hulkling. So ideally, if you were to replace one you should do it in hero form for the added benefit.

These upgrades make him fall into what I call the "stat flipping" category, alongside Spectrum, Phoenix, and Psylocke. Each of these heroes flip their stats in different ways. Psylocke can do so effortlessly each turn, Spectrum is at the mercy of drawing the right cards to flip (or taking a trip to alter ego), and Phoenix takes time to flip and will likely only do so once a game. The way that Hulkling can flip his stats seems to be closest to Spectrum, where he has to either draw the right cards or flip to alter ego.

Unlike Spectrum, Hulkling is not a "form flipping" hero. These are characters with form cards that can be changed to trigger "after you change form" type effects. Most heroes only have two "forms", hero and alter ego, but Spectrum has her 3 form upgrades as well. When she changes between them, this lets her trigger cards like Surprise Attack and Lay Down the Law. I find it weird that Hulkling is NOT a form flipper, as thematically he really does fit into that category perfectly.

The first thing his Shapeshift upgrades do are modify his stats: attack buff (Hulk Shape), defense buff (Armored Shape), thwart buff (Imitation Shape), and balanced buffs (Winged Shape). But these upgrades also provide an additional bonus, and a unique Hero Response, which adds to the depth of his kit. These added bonuses are really interesting and you can build entire decks around them, so I will be talking about them more in the deck building section.

Did I forget to mention that all of these upgrades can be spent for TWO resources? That's right, any one of them that you don't want to play can be used as a double resource instead! Hulkling has 4 double resources in his kit, which makes him one of the most resource rich heroes in the game! If that wasn't enough, he can use his alter ego ability every turn to grab more copies of them. So if you aren't playing them, its just another double resource every turn. Add in the Shapeshifter event for another way to fill your hand with these extra resources!

But all of these upgrades cost 2, so you will need resources if you want to swap between them. In fact, each card that was revealed for him so far costs 2 each (Even Shapeshifter, as it "turns into" a 2 cost upgrade). Having all these 2 cost cards to spend your double resources will be nice.

Two other events were revealed, and they look pretty great. Shapeshifter Strike is an attack event that also readies your Shapeshift upgrade. To make the best use out of this, you want to play a different event first, and trigger the response on your Shapeshift upgrade. Then this event will ready it, and then trigger it again after it resolves. With Hulk Shape, this is a 2 cost attack event for 7 damage, which is pretty great. The other one we got to see is his thwart event, Impersonation. This gives you an extra flip to alter ego if you clear all of the threat on a scheme. This is a great way to go grab more Shapeshift cards in alter ego! Though, if you choose to flip, you can't trigger the response on a Shapeshift upgrade from playing the event. That's a bummer! So either play a different event first, or you'll miss out. Here's a neat trick that you can try: use Impersonation to flip down, grab your Shapeshift upgrade, flip back up to hero form, then use it as a double resource for another event and trigger the response that way!

The last identity specific cards to be revealed is Teddy's boyfriend, Wiccan! His response get you one of your identity-specific events, and if you choose Shapeshifter, you essentially can use him to get any Shapeshift upgrade that you need!

Just starting with his base stats, Teddy is already looking very unique. 5 hand size in both hero and alter ego, 4 recovery, 1/1/1 stat line, and 13 hit points. He's just shy of that magic number 14 (to utilize Limitless Stamina and Unshakable), but that's okay. He's not stuck with 4 hand size like all of the heroes in that category, and a little extra hp is always good!

While his hand size is 5 in alter ego, that's really just to compensate for the fact that he gets to add a Shapeshift "shape" upgrade to his hand for free every turn. So you will always have 6 cards in hand when in alter ego. His whole kit revolves around these Shapeshift upgrades, so lets take a look at them now.

Hulkling looks pretty complex. How is he going to play? Its hard to say for sure without playing him, but I think there will be essentially two ways to build him:

1) Stay in one Shapeshift Shape throughout most of the game, and use the other ones mostly as resources.

2) Flip between forms frequently, triggering the responses often with cheap events and capitalizing on the extra readying.

I think both methods will work, and here's why:

Lets say you want to build a deck the first way. You are focusing on one Shape, so you will only need to play one event per turn to trigger the response. This means that you can afford more expensive events, and since you will not be playing all of your other Shape cards, you can use them as double resources for those events!

Then what if you want to build the second way, by flipping between them? Then you'd like to trigger the response on each Shape before you swap them, and then also trigger the response on the new one that you play. This means that you want to play a lot of events, and to do so, you should include cheap events (0 and 1 cost). With cheap events, you wont need double resources, which is perfect since you will be too busy playing those Shapeshift upgrades.

I think that the first method, of mostly sticking to a single shape could be the stronger of the two. But the flexibility of flipping between them is worth considering as well, especially for solo play. Now that we've gone over all of his cards, lets take a look at some deckbuilding options!

Basic

Hulkling is swimming in resources, and Basic is a great place to make use of them. He can easily afford expensive cards like Avengers Mansion, Helicarrier, Quincarrier, Lockjaw, Nick Fury, and Symbiote Suit. There's also Hope Summers, who he can easily afford to play and would really like to get his Superpower events back. He could also use Deft Focus on those events, though I think that might not be worth doing since they only cost 2 to begin with.

With all of his extra resources, he could easily build some good Web-Warrior decks, or Dora Milaje decks.

Hulkling seems to have a lot of great deck variety in each aspect. I'm a big fan of stat flipping heroes like him, and I think he looks great! Both of the heroes from the Civil War box should be very good, but out of the two he's the one I'm more excited to try.

Aggression

I'll be looking to play aggression events like Pitchback, Clobber, Drop Kick, or Toe to Toe with Hulkling. I think he could run a Honed Technique build, with expensive events pretty well too.

Justice

Justice builds can focus on either Imitation Shape or Winged Shape or by going back and forth between these two shapes. I'm looking forward to trying a turbo justice build with Imitation Shape to draw tons of cards while keeping the threat down and avoiding the enemy, Secret Invasion style. One Way or Another can draw you 4 cards with this shape. Threat will be added quicker in this form, but with the extra card draw and +2 thwart, it will be easy to keep in check. You can flip to Winged Shape whenever you need more burst threat removal. Upside the Head could work well if you are flipping between shapes, and Turn the Tide is a nice cheap damage source. I like the idea of Impede for him, since he doesn't mind the 2 cost, and you can double play it for when you are swapping between shapes to trigger both responses.

Protection

We haven't seen a defense event from Hulkling yet, but his Armored Shape and high health pool makes protection a natural fit for him. You could run perfect protection or Change of Fortune builds with him. Armored Shape gives him 3 Defense and a heal on the response, which makes Dauntless easy to maintain. The retaliate from that will stack with Armored Shape for 2 damage every time he gets attacked. Change of Fortune will be easy to build around with the retaliate and also the response on Hulk Shape.

Protection has a lot of events that he could use. You could pick any of the cheap 0 or 1 cost ones that you like to easily triggering his Shape responses. Since he can get aerial on Winged Shape, he can run Ever Vigilant. This will trigger the response on that card, doing 4 total threat removal, and a ready. He can do something similar with What Doesn't Kill Me. If you play this in Armored Shape, you can double up on the healing, for a total of 4.

Leadership

With all of his double resources, he can easily afford playing a bunch of allies, which makes Leadership a good choice. You can do temporary ally builds with cards like "You Got This!" or Last Stand to get extra value out of those allies, and to trigger your Shape responses as a bonus. You can use cards like Suit Up and Regroup to recur Wiccan. Note that he needs to be played from your hand to use his effect, so avoid cards like Make the Call for him.

Avenger ally builds in Leadership should be good, with Mighty Avengers, Avengers Tower and Earth's Mightiest Heroes. Spectrum is really great because two of his Shape cards have two different printed resources. So if you pay for her with Winged Shape or Armored Shape, she gets +2 health and either +2 Thwart or +2 Attack.

He has 3 traits in hero form, and with Winged Shape, aerial makes it 4 total traits. This makes him a great candidate for Strength in Diversity.