Bless My Soul, Herc Was on a Roll...

One of my favorite archetypes in this game is a build-up hero with a puzzle to solve to get there. Ironheart comes to mind, but her endgame tends to fall flat with people -- once she reaches her endgame, the game tends to be a foregone conclusion.

Herc achieves similar levels of power, but does, fortunately, still have to play (extremely powerful) cards in his endgame.

He's a Hero!

The Labor deck is a really cool idea, representing our heroic journey to Godhood! They're not all created equally, however. Our toughest Labor is definitely Defend Humanity, taking us 3 whole turns, unless we draw a Toe to Toe, and is the primary reason for the inclusion of the card. The other two labors are fairly straight forward to complete, just ready your "pair of perfect pecs" off.

Who Put the Glad in Gladiator?!

After Completing only two of the three Labors, Herc is very much online, as all of his kit at that point will be well above 'rate.' You can make a determination at that point whether to go after the third labor or help stabilize.

We're playing a minion killing strategy, as herc has built in overkill (and can do it multiple times a turn once we can ready our upgrades with Son of Zeus.

This enables us to play things like Throg.

Between Appearance Fees and Royalties, Our Herc Had Cash to Burn...

...at least once he's completed two of the three labors. Symbiote Suit is a pretty divisive card, often seen as "win more" but I feel that once we've gotten to the point of the game where are cards are well above rate, the tradeoff for an extra encounter card becomes a no brainer. Feel free to not include it if you're in the camp that doesn't enjoy it. I found through gameplay testing that Herc forcing the team to support him through the labors creates a situation where there can be very little opportunity to flip down, so the extra handsize for symbiote suit made sense. You could probably also just slap an Avengers Mansion in there for your second pass through the deck.

Thor is included for two reasons: 1. His team-up card is insane with Herc, 2. He can clean up a bad situation that you can sometimes get yourself into with minions. Avengers Compound helps with this, storing Thor until we draw the team-up, or until we need him to clear out a ton of minions at once. Once we're rich from Labors, paying for him isn't an issue.

Face the Past is included because it's an excellent setup card, and we can kill our Nemesis with a single Toe to Toe if we need to, but usually a basic is enough between Lion of Olympus, Combat Training and Aggressive Conditioning powering up our basic ATK stat.

Zero to Hero, just like that!

Herc is a pretty excellent hero, who might be a scenario trivializing hero at some tables. The support required from your team to get you through your labors is a somewhat selfish one, but I'm a sucker for a deck with main character syndrome.

Now go the distance!