Welcome to another installment of Team Build. Today I’m tackling probably the coolest looking figure in Earth X. It’s time for the latest iteration of Hulk Smash!

WizKids has been doing a superb job cranking out Hulk figures and Earth X is no different. Thankfully this isn’t your typical 616 Bruce Banner/Hulk Smash figure – this guy is based on the namesake comic Earth X. The sculpt depicts a massive radically de-aged Hulk with ape-like features in a diaper with a little boy Bruce Banner on his back. I never got around to reading Earth X, but this is a neat idea and his mechanic separates him quite heavily from other Hulks we’ve gotten in the past.

Since Avengers/Defenders War, we’ve seen a massive uptick in the jade giant and what’s really neat is that a vast majority of these guys aren’t your typical vanilla Hulk. We’ve had 6-arm spider-Hulks, Maestro’s, Oni Hulks, armored Hulk, and now this completely different monster Hulk. So what differentiates this guy from others? How do you decide which Hulks to keep and which to ditch? Let’s see what this new guy does and how you can best utilize him.

Like all Hulks, this dude has some great values and reducers. He starts off ultra-strong with huge damage numbers and Super Strength to throw out even more damage and a rather large movement value with Charge. Combined with his Great Size, that gives him a long reach over any terrain outside with a whopping 7 square reach for a melee figure without basing himself. His defenses are strong although the numbers aren’t all that great for 150 points; there’s a lot of 17’s in there. Mid-dial we have some excellent Quake clicks that will pair nicely with his size for some big team swipes. Three clicks of Steal Energy at the back of his dial is neat, but it’s kind of a bummer that once Hulk gets here, he’s going to have trouble climbing back into the fight. Much like a wounded animal, he’ll limp around trying to survive and keep your opponent from scoring 150 points.

Hulks first trait sets up his mechanic of how different he is than others. At the beginning of the game, you get this fancy Bruce bystander

As long as Bruce is on the map, Hulk can choose to not be given action tokens for ANY effect. That means that if you can keep Bruce alive, Hulk basically does stuff for free. He’ll still consume your actions, but he won’t be given tokens. If you keep the boy alive, Hulk can act every single turn. Churning out the damage that this big buy is capable of every single turn suddenly makes him a hell of a lot more playable.

However, this isn’t without a cost. As Hulk dodges action tokens, he’ll rack up Soul tokens that are linked to Bruce’s life. Once Bruce is KO’d, Hulk suffers 2 unavoidable damage for each Soul token, so you have to be careful about how you play this out. There’s potential here for Hulk to never gain tokens but doing so turns Bruce into a ticking time bomb that can potentially automatically KO your Hulk (if he has 4 or more Soul tokens from top click). If you try and run the game a little more closely to normal and give Hulk his first token but never allow him to clear, Incapacitate can be your total bane of existence.

As for Hulks damage power, he picks up full-dial Battle Fury which is very good as Shape Change seems to be a huge player in the game right now (especially with a new Venom Symbiote and a short window where both versions can be played in Modern). It also rewards Hulk based on the number of Soul tokens he has. 1 gives him PROTECTED: Outwit while 3 give him PROTECTED: Pen/Psy and Exploit Weakness. Both of these serve as excellent ways to keep Hulk a constant threat and a horrible figure to try and take down, while at the same time, is a huge persuader to get to the other side of the board and KO Bruce.

Obviously, this Hulk shares the same type of gameplay as his other incarnations which is smash, but that’s not all this guy is about. He can play very differently based on what kind of team you’re playing against, and it’s neat that you have the option to tax Hulk via Soul tokens or to completely bypass this and just get a nice Perplex figure out of your 150-point melee investment. It’s up to you which of those routes you want to go with, but obviously I have a default suggestion.

Assuming you’re not facing off against a team that can easily get to your side of the board and KO Bruce right off the bat, I suggest getting that first Soul token on your first time. Outwit protection is going to be huge since this Hulk is indeed huge and everyone can seem him rather easily. The key to defeating Hulks has always been neutralizing either their defense and plugging damage, or taking out their movement powers to make them useless. Even if he ends up taking 2 unavoidable damage, it’s worth it having a massive figure that can KO many figures in 1-2 hits that can’t be outwitted. After that point, use your Soul tokens sparingly based on their plays. Don’t automatically assign Soul tokens, and certainly don’t race to 3 if penetrating damage isn’t something you need to worry about.

Tools for Success

Let’s assume that you’re going to want Bruce to survive as long as possible in any given game. I think that’s a safe bet since at the very least he’s a free source of Perplex and at the best, he’s allowing your Hulk to attack every single turn for no cost.

Rather than looking for options that will make Hulk better and cut out his weaknesses, it’s a much better idea to focus on ways to keep Bruce alive. Defend is a great option since Bruce is only sitting at a 14-defense with no powers. Most Defend figures these days have an 18 and that’s pretty good as your opponent will need someone to make it all the way to Bruce rather unscathed and roll well to hit.

Barrier is another great power that can be utilized to basically keep Bruce immune from any attack no matter where he is. You won’t be able to Barrier every turn, but there’s plenty of cheap Barrier figures in the game that a pair of them could alternate between uses. Of course, you more or less neutralize his own Perplex this way, but it does allow you to go ham with Soul tokens.

Maneuvering Bruce is a great way to keep him safe, so any taxi with big movement values and a low cost should do rather well, especially if they have Phasing. TK could be useful as well as it can be used with either Bruce or Hulk to extend his reach even further.

Map choice is perhaps the biggest factor to keeping Bruce alive, so a theme team is almost necessary to run with Hulk. That isn’t so easy as his only keywords are Monster and Earth X. It’s a good idea to pick a map that has a lot of blocking or elevation near the starting areas to force your opponent to cross the entire map to get to Bruce.

Since Bruce has no reducers, Poison is going to be a gigantic pain in the butt, so Outwit is a good option to bring to the fight. Perplex is also a good option as you can use it to either buff Hulk to extreme levels of deadly, make him faster so he can reach farther, or can even use two with Bruce’s own to max out his defense at 17 although that’s a pretty big waste of 3 Perplexes.

Equipment is a total no-go for either of these two. Hulk is a giant so he can’t equip items and bystanders are also unable to equip items. However, you could still equip a solid defensive figure to guard Bruce and make it that much harder to get to him.

300 Point Modern Hulk Team

I decided on a team that’s all about keeping Bruce safe while letting Hulk do his thing. The goal with this team is to let Hulk keep racking up Soul tokens so that he can attack every single turn, obviously changing slightly depending on the team I’m playing or if I lose map roll.

If you want a ton of different ways to keep Bruce alive and safe, I don’t think there’s a better figure in Modern than Goblin King to do so. 18-Defense means he can pick up Defend to protect Bruce pretty damn well. He has flight and Phasing, so he can easily get Bruce out of trouble if the enemy team is heading his direction. Barrier is also an option here as is Willpower, so you can easily keep things changing to make it that much harder to get near Bruce. Goblin King also serves as a fantastic secondary attacker that can be a reasonably good sniper with 7 range and whichever powers you need to exploit their team, a fantastic melee beast with options like Flurry and Close Combat Expert, or a phenomenal tie-up piece with Plasticity. Goblin King does everything we need to keep Bruce around without sacrificing points to just keeping him safe.

With just Hulk and Goblin King, we’re already at 225 points, so there’s not a terrible amount of room left. I went with Dr. Frankenstein as a great option to heal Hulk up if he does manage to take some damage, or Goblin King if someone lands a lucky hit on him since picking Invincible will make him basically unkillable in just 1 hit. He’s also running Perplex so we have two number boosters on the team. This can help to make Goblin King a bit more lethal/harder to hit, or he can simply keep Sidestepping so that he can see the massive Hulk and make him better.

I like Goblin King as the main option of keeping Bruce safe, but there are going to be a lot of fights where you’ll want that 75-point figure to hit targets, especially if the enemy team is weak to ranged attacks. Carnage fills the roll of a dedicated taxi that can easily jump in and cause some real chaos. At just 10 points, he’s also a great way to boost your map choice, and ideally, I would add a second Carnage over 2 Symbiotes.

About those Symbiotes, why did I dump 20 points into them when we’re already short on points? Well they’re certainly not a bad investment, and they can serve as body blockers and tie-up for figures that come anywhere near Bruce. Unless the opponent has a figure that can see over or through characters, theses two can sit in front of and next to Banner to make it basically impossible to get near him. Plasticity will do a great job of stopping anyone in their tracks if they have improvements from powers. And again, if you’re facing a force that has a lot of trouble getting to banner, these two will be fantastic disposable attackers that can lock down Hulk’s prey.

With the last 15 points, I went with a trio of equipment, map, and terrain. First up is the Waterfront map from Batman: The Animated Series. This is a great map for Hulk as it’s outdoors so he can progress over any terrain and reach any figure on the enemy team. It also has a ton of elevation with some stretching next to either starting area so you can easily get Bruce up there and safe on the first turn, regardless of which side you’re on. Figures without terrain avoidance will hate playing here as the water will be a massive deterrent. My favorite part though is that you can continually generate objects for Hulk so that he’s always swinging for 6 or 7 damage rather than 5, and the squares to do that in are in the center of the map which is where he wants to be.

For equipment, I wanted to give Goblin King something to help him stay alive longer instead of turning into an easy 75-point KO if he picks purely defensive powers to protect Bruce (like Barrier and Prob for example). The old Symbiote object was the best option for Goblin King and this new version is no different. Gobby can easily take Sidestep on turn 1, drop Bruce off on top of a building, and then fly to pick up the Symbiote, taking Willpower on turn two to equip it.

Last up is the Invisible Plane, which gives you a 2 X 4 space of blocking terrain which you can drop anywhere on the map, at least 3 squares from starting areas. The plane gives adjacent figures Energy Shield/Deflection when targeted through it and it’s hindering terrain for lines of fire, basically giving figures a +3 to defense. So if you have Goblin King next to Bruce with Defend, both of them are sitting at a 21 defense from range, and forcing opponents to move around it, which the Symbiotes will be happy to guard. Not bad, but it gets even better. Take a look at the layout of the map:

Let’s say you start on the south end of the map (row 24). You can place the Invisible Plane on the edge of elevated terrain on the right side of the map and then drop Bruce off on P21. This forces any opposing figure that doesn’t have a way around blocking AND elevation terrain for Lines of Fire to move behind the Plane to get to Bruce. That’s one hell of a safe zone and easy to defend. Hell, you can sit both of your Symbiotes on O23 and O24 and basically make it impossible to target Bruce by anyone sans a handful of figures in Modern. If you happen to get stuck on the other side, it’s not as easy to defend, but you can place the Plane in that corner of water terrain (A5-D5, A6-D6) and create a nice little wall and corner for Bruce to hide in. Again, not ideal compared to the other side, but still not bad. Or you could even place the Plane between the two buildings (L6-O6, L7-O7) and fly Bruce behind it, making the only targetable squares on the rooftops above.

Hopefully you can win map roll with just a +4, but if you can drop a Symbiote and add another Carnage (or two more if you’re freakin’ rich), it should be pretty easy to get your map roll a bit higher.

This team is all about getting Hulk in there and attacking non-stop and I think it accomplishes that task well. There’re some scary offensive capabilities here, and only 30 points of the team are dedicated to support while everything else can pump out quite a lot of damage.

What are your thoughts on this team? What have you paired Hulk with or who are you looking to pair him with? Let me know in the comments section below!

Join me next week back over on Clix Fix as Team Builds are well underway as I return to the second team build I ever wrote with the return of the Sinister Syndicate! There’s so many different candidates now, so it’ll be very exciting to revisit this keyword.

Until then, may your dice roll in your favor and remember, the real fun begins when you’re Two Clicks From KO!