Among my favorite pieces from Avengers Defenders War is the Super Rare Hulk, or Cho Hulk. This guy has a really great dial and like most Super Rare Hulks, he’s still fetching a decent price. How can we utilize this new Hulk to do work?

Like I said a couple weeks ago, there’s so much new product coming out that it’s going to take me a while to get through it all, and I certainly don’t want to skip cool figures. With the delay, this also helps your wallet if you read my builds and go chase after the figures so you can try the team out as prices tend to drop about two weeks after release of a set. I’m sure I’ll be moving on to What If… pretty soon, and there’s no reason I can’t revisit ADW at a later time. I still want to build around the SR Moon Knight, Title Dr. Strange, more of the chases… man, the list goes on and on!

Enough about all that! Today, we’re talking about one of the 4 Hulks from Avengers Defenders War. Amadeus Cho is perhaps the coolest version of The Hulk in the comics because he’s been able to control the monster from day 1 and brings in a completely new character piloting the behemoth to the Hulk mythos. No longer are we burdened with poor Bruce Banner who sees Hulk as something he desperately wants to get rid of and can’t control when he changes. Instead, we have a late teenager who’s over-the-top full of himself and develops his own problems thanks to his arrogance. Also, Hulk’s smart! I always appreciate when the Hulk isn’t some dumb brute.

Anyway, let’s talk about the actual figure himself. Hulk comes in at 160 points which is quite a lot. For the purposes of this article, I want you to suspend the idea that pieces like Jakeem exist for 140 and Goblin King for 175. Let’s just focus on Hulk. Now then, for 160 points, we get 8 clicks of health (which is a tad low), 0 range (duh), Indomitable, and no team abilities. Cho Hulk has two traits and a Special Damage power, and has just two keywords with Avengers and Illuminati. Chances are with 160 points, we’re not going to be building a theme team with him, although there are quite a lot of cheap Avengers these days.

Regarding his dial, this is one of the reasons Hulk is so dang good. His movement is rather slow for a Hulk with 9 Charge up front, shifting to 8 Sidestep on clicks four and five, losing Sidestep on six, and dropping to a 7 on his last two clicks. Attack starts out with 11 Quake for two clicks, 10 Precision Strike for two clicks, a regular 10 for two more clicks, and dropping to a 9 for his last two clicks. Defense is where this Hulk kicks ass; 18 Impervious which jumps to a 19 on click two, shifts to 18 Invincible on three, 19 Invincible on four, 17 Invulnerable on five, 18 Invulnerable on six, 18 Regeneration of seven, and ends with 19 Regeneration on click eight. For damage, we have 4 across the board with a Special Damage power on clicks one through four, and Battle Fury on five through eight.

As you can tell, this Hulk is tough to put down, with only a single click of 17 defense, an average of 18, and a whopping three 19’s. That’s by far his strongest feature, although his damage shouldn’t be taken for granted. A piece that can continually do 4 damage through the whole game is a big deal and will ensure that Amadeus always pulls his weight. Let’s talk about those Traits and Special Power.

BATTLING MONSTERS!: When Hulk hits an opposing character with the Monster keyword or with a printed damage value of 4 or more, after actions resolve remove an action token from him.

This trait solves the problem that a lot of big bruisers has which is action tokens. If your opponent brought a big dude to the fight (or a Goblin King who has the Monster keyword), Hulk can hit them practically for free. With Indom and the right movements/actions, you can keep this Hulk swinging all day long. Let’s see the next trait.

BEST HULK EVER!: Hulk can use Super Strength. When he KO’s an opposing character, heal him a number of clicks equal to the damage that would have been taken minus the actual damage taken.

Traited Super Strength is always good, and with the new rules coming out that remove Ultra Heavies, we can effectively guarantee that Hulk will get a +2 to his damage value whenever you need it. The real gravy of this trait though it the second part that basically says if Hulk ‘overkills’ a piece, he heals for the extra amount. So let’s say Hulk comes in and hits for 6 damage on your opponent, and after everything resolves, they only needed two damage to KO, meaning that 4 damage was completely wasted. Hulk here says “no way” and heals for that 4 damage instead. This gives him incredible longevity that doesn’t seem like it’s there when you first look at the dial. Combined with his high defense Regen clicks, this makes Cho very tough to put down.

Lastly, let’s take a look at the Special Damage power:

OK, 8TH SMARTEST: Hulk can use Outwit. If no friendly character has a power or ability countered, he can also use Perplex.

Remember how good the Super Rare Hulk was from Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. in that he could hand out Outwit? That was insane. How about instead of needing to clear actions to get Outwit, we just get it to start? Yeah, that seems much better. Oh, and if none of your pieces have an ability countered, you get Perplex too?! Man, this is a huge buff to the Hulk. If you’re planning on rushing Hulk in first, you can boost his attack to a 12 to make sure he hits, boost damage to really make that first hit hurt (especially after Outwitting your targets defense power), or wait until the attack hits and up his defense to a 19 (or 20 on some clicks). Giving a beat stick like this two of the three top-tier support powers means you can trim elsewhere on the build.

With these Traits and Special Power, Hulk goes from great to grand, and is a much harder piece to deal with than he seems. So now that we have everything spelled out for him, let’s do the Positive Vs. Negative analysis to really understand his strengths and weaknesses.

Positive: Strong defenses. Hard to KO. Great self-sustain. Double support powers on primary attacker. Consistently high damage. Token removal. Standard size (TK/carry).

Negatives: Lack of improved movement. Only three clicks of Charge. Somewhat slow. Vulnerable to Pen/Psy and Exploit on first clicks.

I think the biggest weakness with Hulk is the fact that everything on the map slows him down. Whereas as most Hulks that we’ve seen before this set could ignore hindering and elevated for movement (because Hulk Jump!), this version doesn’t play that game and is stranded like most pieces are. However, if you manage to land the first hit, he’s going to do irreparable damage and continually do his thing.

As I usually dive into before the build(s), I want to talk about what we need to make The Hulk work. Mobility is an issue, and you almost always want an alpha strike with a piece like this. One Outwit on his defense and he’s going to have a bad day. Because he’s 160 points, TK might be a little too expensive, especially if we want to play an Avengers team. If you don’t care about theme, run TK. If you do, run a taxi. More Outwit is going to be a big deal for him as well. The key to his defense is making sure you don’t have anything countered on your team, so the best way to do that is to play lots of Outwit yourself. Perplex is also another department that Hulk will like a lot as it will elevate his defense to crazy levels making him hard to hit. We want everything we can get that will keep him in the fight. Support could be a decent option, but good luck hitting his 18 or 19 defense when he’s on those clicks. Lastly, I would recommend either a sniper that ignores characters to whittle characters down or a dive buddy that will help Hulk knock people off their first clicks (or injure them first so Hulk can activate his healing from overkill).

For builds this week, I’m going to go with two options; a 300 point non-theme team and a 400 point theme team. Both builds will be Modern with no resources as I don’t think any of the three resources in the format will help The Hulk much.

300 Point Modern Cho Hulk Build – No Resources

I know what you’re thinking; believe me, I do. Goblin King… really? Yes, really. Think about everything I stated that The Hulk needs and Goblin King accomplishes it all for 75 points. Need a taxi? How about 8 Phasing and then Sidestep afterwards? TK? Yep, I got you covered. Perplex to help his numbers and Prob so he doesn’t miss? Sure, why not. Someone who can’t have their powers countered to make sure Hulk gets to use his damage power? Yep, I do that too! How about a dive buddy OR ranged attacker to pick pieces off? Goblin King can do that as well. As much of a cop-out as Pick-A-Power pieces can be, with only 140 points left on the build we can’t really be too picky. Goblin King satisfies so many things that The Hulk really, critically needs for only 75 points that it would be crazy not to use him. The 4 clicks of health is a bit of a turn-off, but if your opponent wants to go after Norman, that just means that Hulk is going to keep going and eventually they’ll run out of gas while the Hulk just keeps healing himself.

I still wanted a taxi to get the entire team into position and since Goblin King flies, we needed a vehicle. Overdrive is obviously the pick here, and although I would actually prefer Vanisher to counter out maps with lots of elevation or hindering, the utility and extra 5 points gives Overdrive the edge here. What’s really neat is that Overdrive has Empower to help boost Hulk, and if his car is destoryed and you don’t need it, it becomes a Heavy object that Hulk can use in an attack. Win-win!

For the remaining 30 points, I was torn between running two Betty Brants or Karen Page, and Karen won out. Although she has to push for Perplex, her ability to boost everyone’s attack value is just a better option. Now our Hulk will have a 12 attack (13 if he wants to Perplex himself), and Goblin King will have an 11 which means we have very good odds of making our attack rolls. If the +1 attack isn’t working out, just push her into Perplex and change whatever values you want. Overdrive will easily make sure she can get within 3 squares of an opponent and then bail her out afterwards.

For the last 10 points, I went with the Symbiote, and I actually don’t recommend putting it on Hulk. Instead, this should go on Goblin King since he’s only got 4 clicks of health. This will allow him to focus on support Hulk or picking offensive powers while Shape Change will help to keep him safe. It gives you automatic breakaway to carry Hulk away if you don’t want to dedicate a move action for Phasing (meaning picking Sidestep). If you want him as a dive buddy because the enemy team is ranged, if gives him Plasticity to lock people into his incoming Flurry attack for tons of damage. Hulk already has protections in place, so why not protect your 75 point guy? If you want to though, you can easily TK Hulk on turn 1 to the Symbiote and throw it on him.

This build is a little risky because it throws literally all of your game into two characters, but it should be very hard to take them both down. The amount of damage this team can pump out is absurd, and the utility you have with Goblin King will really help Hulk out. Let’s see what we can do with a more… mellow and cost-effective Avengers team.

400 Point Modern Cho Hulk Avengers Theme Team – No Resources

This team build is broken up into 3 attackers and 3 support pieces. Let’s go over the attackers (aside from Hulk) first.

Title Dr. Strange makes an appearance in this build and he’s one heck of an attacker for 80 points. With good stats, the ability to pump damage for himself or an ally, and his amazing ultimate ability that lets you re-roll one dice roll every turn, he’s a great secondary attacker for the points. He’s also got flight meaning he can serve as double duty and act as a taxi service for anyone else on the team.

Vision is another character that has flight and acts as two different rolls via taxi and attacker. He’s also a variable threat response character in that he can either dive in with Hulk and Exploit enemies and clogging doorways with his amazing defenses, or he can swap out to a ranged attacker that can take shots along with Dr. Strange. Vision is a fantastic piece at 50 points and is borderline an auto-include in any Avengers team. The amount of things he can do and his longevity is crazy for his cost.

Kicking off our support is Old Man Cap. While I didn’t really care too much for him when the set released, pulling one made me really appreciate what he does. With both Perplex and Outwit along with Stealth, he’ll make sure that Cho can both use his damage power and can aid in any number buffing. He’s also incredibly good running around with Dr. Strange as he can use Leadership as though he were 200 points which means Strange can keep him in hiding with Cap’s Stealth and potentially attack every turn (building his title points rather quickly). Cap also has Perplex on his entire dial, so he’ll always be useful.

I threw Black Panther on here because like Vision, he’s practically an auto-include on Avengers teams. 30 points for Stealth, Outwit, and the Avengers team ability make this Panther an extremely good support piece, and borderline the best Outwit in the game. He’s actually very strong as a tertiary attacker as well since his more combat-oriented dial has got some sharp claws. Since he doesn’t need to burn your actions to move, you don’t have to worry about carrying him and can let Vision be Hulk’s personal transport service.

Rounding out the team is Jessica Jones, probably the best use of 15 points an Avengers team can have. While Stealth isn’t going to block Hulk from doing his thing, it will stop him from using Outwit on his target, and it will stop Dr. Strange and Vision from taking pot shots. 4 clicks with Toughness and a Wild Card ability to steal Mystics from Strange or Avengers from anyone and not take your move actions, and shuts down Stealth for only 15 points is A-okay in my book.

You might notice that the last 15 points is dedicated to 3 ID cards and I didn’t fill these in. I figure since this is more of a budget build than the previous setup (I know, I know, there are 3 Super Rares on this team.), it would be lame to also include the Con LE Giant Man on his retaliation dial. So instead, feel free to fill these last points with whatever ID cards you have. War Machine with Peace Machine could be great to get some TK early in the game or stop a huge incoming attack. Level 7 with any number of S.H.I.E.L.D. pieces is always incredibly strong. Dr. Strange with the rare Shifting Focus piece could swing huge numbers on your turn. Of course, if you don’t want to go any of these routes, just run H.E.N.R.Y. since he’s a bystander and doesn’t break theme.

Avengers teams are a lot more fun these days thanks to Avengers Defenders War, and I like that if you don’t want to run multiple Super Rares, you can easily swap things out on this build with practically anything else from the set.

That wraps up this week for Clix Fix. What are your thoughts on these Hulk builds? Think they could be stronger? How much do you want the rest of the Champions to be printed in Modern so we can run a full team at 400/500 like I do? Let me know in the comments section!

As usual, you can catch more of my stuff on Two Clicks From KO every Thursday. Until then, take care… and HULK SMASH!