Stop! I know you want to see the preview card right away. Everyone knows that no one cares what we write in the preview articles; they just want to see the card. Well, if you want to save the excitement ’til the end and get a chance to solve a Vs. design problem on your own, read on. For those of you who want to see the card now, go ahead . . . I don’t mind waiting . . . No, really, it’s fine . . .

Man, people who skip ahead in preview articles just make me so angry!

You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.*

Hulk, Gamma Rage is everything that Hulk should be—he’s big, he’s bad, and if you attack him you’ll only make him angrier. Hulk is the ultimate finisher for an Avengers leader deck.

Hulk was a fun card to play with in design and development. Lead designer Mike Hummel initially submitted Hulk with the following text:

Reservist. As an additional cost to play Hulk, discard an Avengers Leader. Whenever Hulk is stunned, recover him and move him to your support row.

Now, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m a big Hulk fan and I’ve been waiting a long time to see the Big Green Monster on a Vs. card.** So I wanted to make sure that Hulk was really cool. In my mind, there were two problems with the card as it was originally submitted—one thematic and one mechanical. I’ll give you a minute to think about what those problems might be . . . Don’t worry, I’ll wait . . .

I seem to be doing a lot of waiting in this article. Are you done yet? No? I hate waiting! Rage rising . . .World turning red . . . grrr! Oh, you’re back? Great. Umm . . . anyway, on to the answers:

Thematics

From a flavor perspective, I really liked the extra recruit cost on Hulk. Hulk has never been a team player and he requires the attention of a good leader to keep him on track. The thematic problem was that while Hulk does regenerate, he isn’t really famous for just taking hits. Hulk gets mad! Hulk being able to recover infinitely was probably close enough to satisfy some fans, but for me, representing Hulk getting stronger as he gets beaten up was essential.

Mechanics

The mechanical problem with Hulk was a little more serious than the flavor problem. With the originally submitted wording, if you gave Hulk invulnerability (say with Superman, Returned) and reinforcement (say with Burn Rubber), and Hulk was your only visible character, then you would never lose endurance from attacks! Even without the complete lock, any time that Hulk got invulnerability, it was nigh impossible for an opponent to win the game.

In order to address both the thematic and the mechanical problem, we designed the following card (which I am sure you already scrolled down to anyway):

Hulk has largely the same recovery ability as before, but without the damage lock problem. One downside to the new wording is that you can no longer recover him if you have less than 7 endurance. In compensation for that minor defect, though, Hulk now truly does get stronger as you anger him. He is already larger than almost every 7-cost character in the game, and now he just keeps getting bigger. I once got him to 20 ATK/20 DEF on turn 8 in playtesting. And do you really want to attack into a guy who is riding an atomic bomb? I suspect that a lot of people will enjoy applying a truly Savage Beatdown with the original big bad beater. It’s been a long time coming.

* You would, however, like Danny Mandel when he gets angry. He’s like a grumpy teddy bear. Try poking him a lot the next time you see him!