What to do with Red Hulk Fractured Frontier
If you've been playing the new draft mode, you may have encountered this week's new Series 5 card already! Red Hulk Fractured Frontier is already live and draftable in that mode (along with a future Scarlet Witch card, briefly!). We've had an Infinity six-shooter, a hammer gun, blade guns, and a scythe rifle... get ready for BIG GUN. Here's everything I want to try with the new 3-Cost stat stick, Red Hulk Fractured Frontier.
Conditional Synergy
With a new card, we usually look at what synergy hooks it has, what cards go well with it, and cards it can benefit in turn. But with Red Hulk FF, the two sides of it, the Quickdraw and the regular On Reveal have opposing synergy. So how do we build a deck that takes advantage of this push and pull?
Playing with Power
Luke Cage can prevent any negative Affliction our Red Hulk gets or Shadow King can set him back to 8-Power if he gets pulled down. Of course, there is some anti-synergy with Shadow King and Red Hulk's Quickdraw, but there are plenty of decks that play a few cards that gain Power alongside Shadow King. I think the two can easily co-exist. By playin one or both of these cards we pull Red Hulk's floor at 8 Power most of the time. The Quickdraw just becomes gravy. A 3/8 with potential upside and very rare downside sounds pretty dang good!
Clog
Clog is an interesting soft synergy package for this new Red Hulk. He can fulfill a similar role as the old Red Hulk as a tall lane winner on a clogged lane when you hit his Quickdraw at the right time, but he's also just solid early Power when you don't! This is an archetype that definitely wants both Red Hulk FF and Shadow King. Pulling an additional low-Power card with Doc Ock can make our Red Hulk bigger, assuming we can time up our draws. Of course, there's another Doc Ock that can help with that...
Quickdraw Synergy
Could the new Red Hulk be the card that makes Doctor Octopus worth it? Ending on a 3/11 Red Hulk that can grow bigger feels quite powerful! Of course, any Quickdraw card has a little extra synergy with Thanos Fractured Frontier and since he's the best card in the game at the moment, any new card that works well with him is that much more valuable.
Control Cards
There are a variety of ways to manipulate where our opponent plays, from softer ways like Adam Warlock and Iron Patriot to stronger incentives like Nebula and Jean Grey. We can either avoid or punish those moves depending on when we draw Red Hulk FF. Even something like Mojo or Lasher into Red Hulk could push an opponent to avoid contesting a lane quite early.
Kill and Fill
Of course, we can simply reduce the amount of cards an opponent has at a given location by destroying them! Playing and Elektra on the same turn as your Red Hulk FF sounds pretty fun!
Additional Payoffs
The real reason to play Red Hulk FF is the way he can help grab priority and facilitate other payoffs. The biggest criticism I've seen for Red Hulk FF so far is how he competes with Wilson Fisk. But with Fisk recently being knocked down to 8 Power himself, Red Hulk will be preferable in some decks. Further, they can co-exist! Having one of two 8-Power cards to reliably play on Turn 3 is nice consitency and Red Hulk helps us play Fist later!
Scosco's Day One Red Hulk Decks
Shadowlands Big Bois
ToFF
Red Hulk can slide right into ToV decks for added consistency alongside Starbrand and Fisk. Rarely, he can even help discount Skaar! Those are the games you want to Snap in!
Quickdraw Pardners
Shadow King and Luke are both proactive here and reactive to common opposing strategies!
Clog Back?!
There are a variety of ways we can end the game after, hopefully, clogging one lane. We can play a Quickdrawn Jane or Hulk or we can cobble something together with one of our 3s and some 1s.
Is He Worth It?
Red Hulk FF isn't a flashy cards, but I do think he's one of the premier 3-Cost stat sticks in the game now. There are some decks that have particular synergy hooks that mean they'll still prefer Kraglin, Debrii, Jane Foster, Speed, or others, but any deck that plays Shadow King or Luke Cage already will be happy to see Red Hulk in that role. He'll likely be replacable by one of the many other cards that already fill that role, but you're likely to see a lot of lists over the next few weeks with this card.
Thanks to SnapFan and Snapcomplete for images and information contained in this article! Be sure to support them as well!
