Aggressive Adaptation

Move over Scott; you may need pouches to contain your rage, but my entire body is a pouch. A pouch for punches!

After reading the very thoughtful and clever "Scott's Pounches" deck by andyr, I was struck by an epiphany; this concept could work exceptionally well (and in some ways better) with the newly released Hulkling. Why, you may ask?

• Hulkling wants cheap events in order to trigger his Shapeshift upgrades; Plan of Attack is exactly that.
• One of Hulkling's best cards, Shapeshifter Strike, is an attack event, which Plan of Attack can pull out of your deck, trigger your Shapeshift upgrade, and then allows you to get the max benefit from Shapeshifter Strike.
• Before Alien Physiology enters play, you can sometimes struggle to pay for multiple events in a turn; Plan of Attack effectively replaces itself, allowing you a lot of freedom on your turns.
• Unlike Cyclops, Hulkling can get Aerial and benefit from Pitchback and Dive Bomb as well.

At it's core, this deck looks to make the most of your Shapeshift upgrades; whether or not you stick with one or swap between them freely doesn't matter and typically depends on the villain. Fighting against Ultron? You're probably staying in Armored Form for that retaliate. But against someone like Klaw, you can find yourself hopping around various forms as the fight wears on.

In either case, this deck is designed to allow you a response to whatever the situation calls for. 9 times out of 10, you'll end up grabbing Shapeshifter Strike as it's just too good to pass up, but there are a number of other events here that can do some work (more on that later).

What's perhaps more important to touch on is how easily you can work the system to guarantee you're getting the events you want every turn. Once you get yourself in position to play Impersonation for the kicker every few turns, you'll have a lot of freedom to shuffle cards back into your deck with Altman Residence. And while some games that'll end up with you just reshuffling Impersonation again and again, this deck makes it so you'll stick Shapeshifter Strike in there, setting yourself up to guarantee drawing it with Plan of Attack, and then immediately getting to play it while triggering your Shapeshift upgrade twice. The smaller your deck, the more consistent you can make this loop happen.

Assess the Situation also helps with this, naturally, as giving yourself an extra card can open up your options when it's called for.

Now, much like the inspiration for this deck, I've put basically any and all Aggression events that could be applicable as a 1-of in order to get your gears turning so you can pick which events you'll find the most useful. In my experience, though, there are a few that stand head and shoulders above the rest:

• Toe to Toe can easily be a 3-of in this deck because of how damn good it is here. Hulkling has 13 HP, which means he can take some hits on the chi and keep going, but there's also a ton of synergy here. If you're in Armored Form, you can take an attack and then heal the damage you took with the upgrade. And if you can't take a hit or don't feel like it, Imitation Form allows you to make it so the enemy schemes instead; this was how I was able to avoid some of the Space Pirates stealing my cards, all for the low price of 1 threat on the main scheme. And because of how cheap it is, this is easily one of the best attack events Teddy could have.
• Pitchback is also a great low-cost event that can be played for a lot of value, but how many copies you include will vary based on how often you'll find yourself in Winged Form. Personally, I found it was fine with 1 copy, but you might want another if you want to use that form more frequently.
• Drop Kick came in clutch now and again, and Hulkling can pay for it, though it can be a little tricky to line it up. Personally, I found 1 copy was fine, but I could see adding another if you tweak the resource counts a little in your favor.
• Piercing Strike is a nice option to remove any pesky tough status cards after the first turn, acting as a reliable tech against enemies that look to slow you down.
• For the first time in a very long time, Get Over Here can feel pretty valuable, being a low-cost event that can trigger your upgrade and potentially drag an enemy over to you if you want to tank some hits for another hero with fewer hit points at their disposal.

And while I never got it to proc, Keep Up the Pressure ties this all together nicely, allowing you to pull your Shapeshift Strike and go to town with a bunch of low-cost events that all have +1 damage for their outputs for a late game push. Other than that, you'll do Hulkling recursion shenanigans and come out the other side just fine.

Thanks for checking this one out, and let me know your thoughts below!